Audiobook Sample: Peace Like a River - Leif Enger

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
Clay from my first breath in this world. All I wanted was a good set of lungs and the air to fill them with given circumstances. You might presume for an American baby of the 20th century. Think about your own first gasp. A shocking wind howling so easily down your throat and you still slipping around in the doctor's hands. How you yelled? Not a thing on your mind but breakfast and that was on the way when I was born to Helen and Jeremiah land in 1951. My lungs refused to kick in. My father wasn't in the delivery room or even in the building. The halls of Wilson Hospital were close and short and dad had gone out to pace in the damp September wind. He was praying rounding the block for the fifth time. When the air quickened, he opened his eyes and discovered he was running, sprinting across the grass toward the door. How'd you know, I adored this story, made him tell it all the time. God told me you were in trouble out loud. Did you hear him? Nope. Not out loud. But he made me run Reuben. I guess I figured it out on the way I had in fact been delivered some minutes before my mother was dazed, propped against soggy pillows. Unable to comprehend what Dr animus Noakes was telling her he still isn't breathing Mrs Land. Give him to me to this day. I'm glad Dr Noakes did not hand me over on demand. Tired as my mother was, who knows when she would have noticed. Instead, he laid me down and rubbed me hard with a towel. He pounded my back. He rolled me over and massaged my chest. He breathed air into my mouth and nose. My chest rose fell with a raspy wine stayed fallen years later. Dr Noakes would tell my brother Davey that my delivery still disturbed his sleep. He'd never seen a child with such swampy lungs. When dad skidded into the room, Dr Noakes was sitting on the side of the bed holding my mother's hand. She was wailing. I picture her as an old woman here, which is funny since I was never to see her as one and old Nokes was attempting to ease her grief. It was unavoidable. He was saying nothing could be done. Perhaps it was for the best. I was lying uncovered on a metal table across the room. Dad lifted me gently. I was very clean from all that rubbing and I was gray and beginning to cool. A little clay boy is what I was breathe. Dad said, Dr Noakes said Jeremiah it has been 12 minutes. Breathe the picture I see is of dad brown hair short and wild giving this order as if he expected nothing but obedience. Dr Noakes approached him. Jeremiah. There would be brain damage. Now his lungs can't fill. Dad leaned down, laid me back on the table, took off his jacket and wrapped me in it. A black canvas jacket with a quilted lining. I have it still. He left my face uncovered. Sometimes said Dr Noakes. There is something unworkable in one of the organs, a ventricle that won't pump correctly. A liver that poisons the blood. Dr Noakes was a kindly and reasonable man. Lungs that can't expand to take in air in these cases. Said Dr Noakes, we must trust in the almighty to do what is best at which dad stepped across and smoked Dr Noakes with a right hand so that the doctor went down and lay on his side with his pupils unfocused. As mother cried out. Dad turned back to me. A clay child wrapped in a canvas coat and said in a normal voice, Ruben land in the name of the living God. I am telling you to breathe.