Something Worth Doing

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  She’d sewed festive curtains from the feed bags, embroidering flowers onto the gray material in the evenings by candlelight when she’d rather be reading or even writing, but she needed color to brighten the rainy days.

  When her “boys” were gone, she spoke to their child, thinking of the baby as a boy, and she told him stories about how to treat a lady. “When your poor momma says she needs a little help with the chickens, you come running,” or “You consult your momma and later your wife about big decisions, like where to move to or what to buy. You remember that, now.” She spoke as much to advise as to hear a feminine voice.

  When the afternoon waned, she would pull out her foolscap paper and write. She thought it a luxury she might not have, once the baby arrived, and since Ben was off doing what he loved, and furthering their livelihood as well, she’d take the time to advance her own. While she stitched, she thought of words to write down, starting with poems that had a hint of humor to them.

  There once was a farmer’s wife.

  Who worked hard to avoid marital strife.

  She kept her tongue still

  When handed a due bill . . .

  “What’s a good last line?” Jenny asked her baby as she picked dried eggs from the dishes. Later, while spinning carded wool, she tried to come up with that final line. “I’ll give up writing limericks,” she said, or not write poetry that needs something to rhyme with “wife.” Still, the effort filled her days and she found when resentment over Ben’s absence or, worse, when he brought his single friends home in time for her to add a plate to the supper table, that word-seeking was a good way to keep her tongue in check. At least until their “guests” had gone. Then she’d spill a few thoughts to Ben about the extra work his “generosity” brought her.

  “I’ll help with cleaning up,” he said.

  “As though that’s the only effort.” She slammed a frying pan down a little harder than intended, and Little Toot jumped.

  “I’ll help too, Sister,” the boy said and shot from the stool, swirling around looking to see what he could do. “Polish the lamp? See to the pigs?”

  “Good idea,” Ben told him. “I’ll check on the chicks.” At the door, he turned and said, “You can out-argue me anytime, Jenny. But you’ll never out-love me.”

  They both scurried out of her way then, which wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted them to ease her loneliness. And, like Ben, to be able to love fully. She didn’t know what held her back.

  There once was a farmer’s wife.

  Who worked hard to avoid marital strife.

  She kept her tongue still

  When handed a due bill . . .

  Knowing payments are a part of life.

  She’d settle on that last line , though her hope for humor had escaped her.

  Spring arrived along with labor pains. Ben patted Jenny’s hand. “I’ll get my sister. Will you be all right while I’m gone? Should I leave? Oh Jenny.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Jenny said. “Just go.” But as soon as he was gone, she wished he were still with her. Little Toot stared. “I’m all right,” she told him. I have to be brave for my brother. “Having a baby. Women do it all the time.”

  “What can I do?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know. We’re two lost pups, aren’t we? Oh, oh, oh!” Another contraction. Pain. Good pain. “Bring in kindling,” she directed. He was panting along with her and would pass out if she didn’t give him tasks. She wished she’d had Kate come, at least. But her sister-in-law Mary had delivered two children and would know what to do. Jenny had been there for her siblings’ births, but now that it was her body bringing forth a babe, it was as though she couldn’t remember the sequence of events. She waddled around the room, stopped to pant with each contraction. Urged Little Toot to read his book. In between the pains, she filled and heated up water in the cast iron pot. What do we need hot water for? Bathe the baby maybe? She gathered up cloths she’d set aside. She walked to the barn, inhaled the wild roses growing next to the log structure, and her brother helped her haul in the old feather mattress so as not to stain their good one. She had covered it with a pieced quilt, made ready for this glorious May day. She didn’t much care what happened to the cover; she wasn’t much of a quilter, knowing her big stitches would never rival her sister Maggie’s tiny ones. Besides, quilting hurt her fingers while writing did not. I can write about this.

  But she couldn’t. “Holy cow chips,” she said to the log walls. She was an emotional train rushing forward with no way to stop.

  She lay on the quilt, panting through the pains, sending Little Toot out to get the eggs. Where is Ben? “Go feed the chickens, check on the sheep too.”

  “I already did, Sister.”

  “Do it again.”

  “They’ll be awful fat chickens,” he mumbled as he opened the door.

  Anything to get him away so she could groan at the pain and not alarm him, all the while wishing Ben were there for her to yell at and at the same time wanting his hand to squeeze.

  Am I strong enough for this? Will this baby be all right? Can I do this?

  She remembered her mother saying, “Women have been doing this for centuries,” and yet it was her first time and she wasn’t sure she could. I have to.

  “Everything will be all right,” Ben told her.

  “Thank God you’re back.”

  “You’ve everything ready, I see,” Mary Gibson said. She was tall, like Ben, but more commanding. It was the first woman’s voice she had heard since New Year’s Day.

  Ben remained in the room, holding her hand while she snapped at him, silencing his utter joy at what was about to happen while she groaned in misery. “It’ll be over soon, Jenny, it will. You’re doing great.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Push now,” her sister-in-law said. She had a high-pitched voice that had once annoyed Jenny, but now her words gave her strength. “You can wail to the moon. Go ahead.”

  Jenny took her advice and shouted, though she didn’t remember her mother ever doing so. But Jenny did, and then the child arrived, ripping its way into the world with a pain nearly as great as the labor pains.

  “I’ll stitch in a minute,” she heard her sister-in-law say. “Ben, you cut the cord. We have to wait for the afterbirth.”

  “Oh, help me,” Ben said, his words a prayer. “My hands are shaking.”

  “Is he all right?” Jenny tried to sit up as Mary placed the wet weight onto her belly.

  “She’s perfect,” Ben said. “It’s a girl, Jen. A beautiful baby girl. We made a girl.”

  “A girl.” She sighed and gentled her hand on the still wet crown of her child’s head. A girl.

  She felt another contraction-like movement. The afterbirth. All was as it should be.

  But it wasn’t.

  “This is going to hurt. You’ve torn quite a bit. Take this laudanum. It’ll ease the pain.” Her sister-in-law picked up the needle and thread Jenny had laid out. “Think of something else. Do you have a name?”

  “We don’t,” Ben said. “Well, not one we agreed on.”

  “I was sure it would be a boy.” Jenny’s words barely passed her lips before she felt herself drifting. A girl. We have a daughter. She looked at Ben and saw his tears matched hers. “We’ll go with your choice,” she told Ben, and then she faded.

  Clara Belle joined their lives. Yes, a girl’s life would be hard. Yes, her mother had been correct in that, and yet to see the tiny lips, the fingers small as new carrots reaching for her, to nourish this child’s body from her own, to imagine a future chattering and exploring with this girl, brought joys she’d never known. She loved her in an instant. In the beginning, she had wondered if she loved Ben as much as he loved her. She had grown to care more for him in the nine months of their marriage. But with Clara Belle, there was no doubt to the depth of her emotion. With the first look into those baby eyes, she was in love. This was unconditional love that only grew deeper in the following days. Cl
ara Belle’s presence eased the loneliness, and Jenny vowed she’d do all she could to make this girl’s life better and maybe other girls’ lives richer too. She didn’t know how, but she was committed to educating her, giving her all the advantages that their small farm could bring. She’d teach her about the joy of the landscape, towering trees with needles ever green, help her notice the soft rains turning their log cabin rooftop moss the perfect shade of jade. Clara Belle would see what devoted parents looked like.

  When she found herself mumbling at the doughboy, kneading bread while Ben and his bachelor chums waited for her to serve up biscuits, she vowed to see their presence not as intrusions but as opportunities for her daughter to see how men could rest while women worked and how one day, working together, women might change that. She didn’t know how. “We need rest too,” she told the intense blue eyes of her daughter in the cradle. “Your father works hard, he does. But so does your momma.”

  She envied the men in her life, that was the truth of it. Ben found a way toward ease that escaped her. He refreshed with the laughter and guitar-playing and singing to his daughter. She’d never learned to rest—she had no practice. Maybe playing with Clara Belle in the middle of the day would bring such pleasure, but there was always work to be done. Eggs to collect. Cream to churn. Butter to place into molds and sell. Laundry.

  Still, as Clara Belle grew, Jenny could imagine standing her on her mother’s slippers as she shuffled a dance away from the stove and into the higher chair Ben had built her or blowing on her belly while she changed her. Those would be small moments she could savor with her child. Her mother must have had those moments, hadn’t she?

  Today, that kindred binding would have to wait. Jenny sighed. Washing a mountain of dirty diapers was the immediate future of this mother and her girl.

  “Everything will be all right.” It was Ben’s mantra, and sometimes Jenny resented Ben when he said it. If she expressed concerns about her isolation or how much her bones ached or that their larder needed filling and there were no coins nor eggs to trade, he’d say “Everything will be all right.” It felt like he dismissed her concerns. Things didn’t always turn out all right. It was what she was thinking as she milked their small herd of three cows while Clara Belle lay in the cradle chewing on a bit of dough Jenny had tied on a piece of string around her toe so her jerky feet would keep her from swallowing it. Chickens cackled, wanting out of their coop. Jenny pressed her head into the side of a cow while she stripped the teats of their white gold. The butter and egg sales were their only income many months. Ben was once again gone to try to sign a breeding contract. He’d taken Little Toot with him. Clara Belle cooed. Jenny loved that sound.

  She felt a cooling come across the timber, and the wind picked up enough to move the harness hanging on the hook beside the open door. The barn darkened. Birds had stopped chirping, and the cow’s tail twitched and she began to prance. Jenny looked outside. A black cloud had moved in. Her heart pounded as she swooped Clara into her arms. She raced to the cabin door as rain poured and she witnessed the shape of a funnel drop down into the timbers, the wind threatening at the leather hinges of their door as she pushed into the cabin. She threw the slide bar across the opening and raced to the back of the cabin as she heard the roar. Deafening.

  Jenny fell to the floor, her baby beneath her as she pushed them both to a corner where they huddled, her baby against her breast. And she prayed, oh how she prayed that they’d survive this tempest, that Ben was all right and Little Toot, too, out in this cyclone. Her words flew to the wind, the clacking of hail against the roof, and then she heard the wrench of logs as the ceiling timbers tore from the walls as easily as an ax splits kindling.

  Jenny hovered over Clara as the hail ground onto them, no protection, no roof. Pellets of ice, some the size of new potatoes; more like popped corn but rough as rocks. They shredded the bed linen, tore at the table, cupboards, the stove. Jenny’s hands were bloodied, held over Clara’s crown; her own head pierced with pain from the ice.

  And then a stillness though the rain poured down, the moss-covered roof, gone.

  Jenny stood. She shook and looked around her. Trees like children’s toys scattered in all directions. She could see them through the missing walls. Fences, gone. Cattle, dead. A timber driven into the side of the house as though it were a peg to hold the clothes of giants. Her teeth chattered in the cold. The barn flattened with timbers sticking up through logs, and a first cutting of grass hay a mass that looked like drenched salad greens. A strip of field crops, vanished. She began crying then, clinging to her daughter.

  What if Ben’s caught up in this? What if—

  She couldn’t let herself think the worst. “We’ll go to Mary’s. We’ll go to Mary’s.”

  She grabbed a rag and wiped Clara’s face, her own, and her bloodied hands. Rain pelted them. “We’ll go to Mary’s.” She repeated the mantra, a promise of an action she could take. It brought her strange resolve.

  The three miles to her in-laws took what seemed like hours through the mud. When she saw Ben’s horse and Little Toot’s at the trough, she started to cry. They were all right.

  She cried out, “Ben! Ben! Oh, you’re safe.”

  Her husband stepped out onto the porch, beginning to welcome her with a question on his face. Then she saw him race toward her, taking two porch steps at a time, catching her as she collapsed. She was so weak, but she had protected Clara Belle. That was all that mattered.

  Ben pulled his daughter from Jenny, ran his big hands over the child before handing the crying Clara Belle to Little Toot, who stood behind him. Bruises had formed on the back of the child’s palms. “What’s happened?”

  “I did the best I could. The farm is gone. It’s all gone. Wind. Hail. No roof.”

  “It’s barely raining here.” Ben sounded confused.

  “Hail, the size of river rocks. I tried to cover us.”

  Her in-laws came out onto the porch, heard her.

  “Shh, shh. Hush now.” Ben held her in his arms, his warmth a comfort as he helped her forward. Clara had quieted as Mary held her.

  “You’re bleeding,” Ben said.

  “You won’t recognize . . .” Jenny’s words drifted.

  “Bring them inside. Goodness. You poor thing.” Ben’s sister helped her stand.

  “It can’t be as bad as all that,” Ben said, helping her up the porch steps. “You’re here in front of me. You’re safe and Clara is too. Everything will be all right.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Did you walk down the creek? You’re muddy as the pig sty.” He tried to make a joke.

  She collapsed on Mary Gibson’s bed, and the men were shooed out so she could be stripped of the wet clothes by her sister-in-law.

  “They’ll dry out. You rest now,” Mary said. Little Josie had followed them in. “You’ve had quite a scare, I can see.”

  “I couldn’t make it stop. I tried to cover Clara Belle, but her hands are bruised.” Tears welled. She couldn’t stop shaking.

  “Don’t you worry.” Mary directed her daughter to get Clara Belle a little hat and her brother’s night shirt. “They’ll be big on ’er.” To Jenny she said. “You’re safe now. You’re through the worst.”

  “I’ll ride home and check on things,” Ben shouted behind the closed door.

  “No! Wait. Don’t go.” She felt exposed as a newborn kitten. She rose, pulled open the door. “Please. Stay. We’ll go back together.”

  Ben patted her shoulder.

  And so they did. Theirs was the only farm in the area that had been hit, the destruction stunning. “We can re-roof the barn easiest, live there until the cabin can be readied.”

  The rebuilding will take months. Jenny watched Ben wander through the debris. “I was so scared,” she said, holding her fussing daughter close. She felt herself shiver, made herself calm for Clara’s sake.

  “But you did everything right. Looked after Clara and yourself. I wish I’d been here to help.
But no matter. You took care of things. Everything will be alright.” He patted her shoulder as they surveyed the wreckage.

  Ben’s brother-in-law and neighbors, her father and Harvey and her sisters would come to help with rebuilding, the days of work and sharing food a blend of sorrow and delight. And during it, Jenny began her push for them to sell the farm, to find a place closer to their neighbors where a woman could have a cup of tea now and again to ease the troubled times of women’s lives.

  “It’s a campaign, Ben,” she told him. “To get you to change your mind about this acreage. Let’s sell it to a man with sons who can run it while we find a place more suitable.”

  “But we’ve put so much work into it.”

  “I miss being closer to my sisters. Let’s find a place where Clara Belle can one day go to school. Let’s consider it at least.”

  “We’ll get more for the farm if we rebuild.”

  “And be further from where we want to be because we took the time. Let someone else replant it as they’d want. Re-roof the house so it’s livable, but then let’s find a place we can both love.”

  “Sometimes one has to cut one’s losses. Is that what you’re saying?” Ben said.

  “Yes.” Was it a failure to leave a challenge? Or wisdom to face another? Was that the reason her father had moved west, even against her mother’s wishes?

  SEVEN

  A Clearing in the Fog

  1856

  _______

  Ben patted his hat down, mounted his big bay gelding, and rode into the fog. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go for the doctor. It was that doing so meant leaving Jenny in a bad place. He trusted his sister and the women who had arrived for the birth of this second child, but ever since the tornado, he’d been worried about her. She was more fragile than he’d seen her be, jumping at small sounds, jerking away when he touched her shoulder from behind without first announcing his presence. She was short with Clara Belle too, snapped or sighed in frustration. He hoped it was the child-carrying attitude of easy annoyance and impatience. He didn’t want to think her irritation was because they still lived at Hardscrabble Farm and, now with a second child, might find it even harder to afford to leave it, even if he did find a good place for them.