“We better get to dinner,” Jeanie said.
They scoured the house for food and cooking tools.
Not that there was much space to search. Templeton’s home consisted of one large room. Off to the left, in the back, there was an alcove. Jeanie, limping again, went to it and peered inside the space. “Well, sweet heaven and hell,” Jeanie said.
Templeton’s urine sat in a ceramic chamber pot, nearly filling it up. She sandwiched the sides of the pot between her palms, picked it up, trying not to wrap her fingers around the rim, while trying not to slosh any liquid from the vessel. “Mercy heavens, damn and hell.” Jeanie whispered the curses.
Katherine’s head whipped toward Jeanie.
“You didn’t hear that, Sweet Pea,” Jeanie said. Once they’d scrubbed down the cook-stove and washed their hands as best they could, trying to limit the wasted water, they worked fast, though not prettily. Out behind the house, they set up for preparing dinner—something Jeanie had never done herself. Not like this.
Jeanie wanted to cry at what she was doing. “We’re not crying people. There’s no room for self-pity. We’re not crying people.” Jeanie repeated the mantra to herself as she clenched her jaw and used a dull knife to skin the jackrabbits. The ripping sound as she separated the rabbit’s coat from his muscle and fat made her skin prickly, chilling her. The sweet and sour odor of blood filled her nose and seemed to settle in her mouth as though she were eating the creature raw.
Jeanie’s eyes watered and she gagged, turning to throw up her empty stomach.
“I can do this, Mama,” Katherine rubbed her mother’s back and took the knife from Jeanie’s hand. Jeanie straightened.
“Nonsense, my Sweet Pea. No.” Jeanie took the knife back. She held her breath and started to skin the second animal. Gagging again, she finally let Katherine finish the dirty work while she chopped the carrots and onions she’d found in a storage space above the bedstead.
Jeanie wanted to make Katherine stop, tell her that she just needed to settle her stomach, that she was pregnant and that must be getting the best of her. But she hadn’t told Frank of the baby yet, and though Jeanie couldn’t admit she was only partly capable of taking a meal from beginning to end, that splattering blood from one end of the back of the house to the other was something she’d never done, Katherine already knew it and Jeanie was sure she’d keep her secret. They were mother and daughter after all and Jeanie had never felt so fortunate to be able to say that.
Jeanie concocted a stew that only partly thickened. Nothing was available to make biscuits or cakes, so Jeanie hoped the company itself would do. It certainly wasn’t a dandy-good supper. That much Jeanie knew.
She and Katherine spread some raggedy linens, loosely described as such, on the floor and used the small table to set the stew to be served to everyone. Jeanie sent Katherine out to gather everyone into the house.
Frank appeared in the doorway first. “Here. Water. Templeton’s working with the boys. Apparently he’s a whiz with the weather indications and even had a post with the Army until three years ago. James has taken an interest in predicting the weather.”
“Predicting the weather?”
“I know,” Frank said. “What good is something like that? Doesn’t matter much what the weather might or might not be in the future, just what it is at the time you’re wondering. I mean since there’s no way to know what’s going to happen.” He tapped his leg, causing Jeanie to worry, knowing he was insecure about something—perhaps it was that James was taking an interest in another man’s hobby—no matter what made him feel insecure it never lead to anything good for Jeanie. But, it was only their recent losses that made it such a problem that he may be an unstable man.
“What Frank?” She threw her hands up to the sky. “What in damn hell is the matter?”
Frank bit down so hard Jeanie could feel it in her bones across the room. She dropped her hands as though burdened with sacks of rocks.
“Nothing, Jeanie. Nothing you could help me with.” And he left the room, shouting to the others that dinner was ready.
The meal was a disaster. The man Jeanie was beginning to think of as “sweet Templeton,” had gobbled up three steaming bowls of the disastrous, somehow bitter, stew while her own family barely managed one slurp. The children and Frank were still operating with visions of one-inch steak, buttery biscuits, thick mashed potatoes, sweet peas, and towering chocolate cake in their minds and on their taste buds, and not yet hungry enough to eat rancid stew.
She knew Templeton was only being kind as he sopped up every last drop with his finger at the end, saying “dandy-good eats” every three minutes, acting as though it tasted scrumptious not just edible. Not that it was any of that.
All night Templeton passed back and forth by the bedstead where he allowed the Arthurs to sleep that night. He groaned as his bowels emptied repeatedly, slopping into one bowl and then another he’d dug out of God knew where. The children gagged at the sound and odor and Jeanie spent the night kicking the children under the covers so they wouldn’t humiliate a man for emptying his body of the poison their mother had fed him.
Waking the next morning, Jeanie was relieved to see Templeton had cleared the pots and acted as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during the night.
She couldn’t look him in the eye, even as he searched out her gaze, and even went so far as to reassure her that she would make a fine prairie wife.
“You’re clearly too smart to be anything but a blazing success,” Templeton had said tipping his hat to her. Jeanie hadn’t known how to respond, so she just let the heavy failure she’d felt turn steely, inside her, inspiring her to be a better person, wife than she’d clearly been when she’d had a army of servants and cooks to assist her in being the Quintessential Housewife as she’d come to be known in Des Moines.
The Arthurs left Templeton’s home about nine a.m. Frank seemed back in good spirits. In the wagon, he was taken by his peppy, happy personality. He rambled like a train roaring down the track, ticking off the list of things they needed to do in order to claim the Henderson’s homestead as theirs. Two trips to Yankton. One to file papers, one to pick up the wood he’d agreed to work into furniture for some men they’d met when they stopped over there.
“You all right?” Frank put his hand on her back as she curved forward, head on knees. Gripped by cramps so tight, Jeanie would have sworn she was in labor or miscarrying, she couldn’t even speak. She nodded into her lap then sat back up hoping that stretching her body would release the tension inside her womb. She’d desperately wanted more children, but considering the extensive work ahead of them, perhaps if nature stole her baby as it had the others since Tommy and Katherine were born, they’d be better off.
“You eat some rabbit stew for breakfast?” Frank chuckled. “Man that Templeton’s not too bright, is he? Slurping down that stew as though the old cooks in Des Moines had actually done the work. It must feel good, though, to finally put all that advice you’ve doled out over the years to use, right?”
Jeanie couldn’t respond as she bent into the pain tearing at her insides.
“I’m joshing; just poking fun…you know after all, we need to laugh a little, right?”
Jeanie groaned, trying to keep it quiet so the kids in the back wouldn’t hear. She forced herself to straighten reducing some of the pain.
Frank clicked his tongue and slowed the horses. She stared into the great land, which looked much the same as Templeton’s had, except over the night, tinges of brown had taken the tips of the grasses muting the contrast of jade grass joining the cobalt sky.
“Keep going.” Jeanie rubbed her belly.
“We’re officially, here. On our very own homestead. Our very own land, the place where dreams live.”
Without waiting for responses from anyone, Frank hopped from the wagon, dragged water and the horses’ feed bags out from the back of the wagon and signaled the kids to get out, unbridle the horses, and tie the
m to the railing that stood near a three-walled structure that could be used as a door-less barn.
Jeanie stood and waited for a fresh wave of cramping. Nothing came and as quickly as the pains had gripped her, they were gone, leaving her wondering if they were as bad as her memory said they were.
She couldn’t be sure how far along she was, but it was early— due sometime after Christmas, she guessed. Most women might not have realized such a subtle change in their body, such a quickening in their womb long before she would actually feel her baby stretch and kick. But, Jeanie’s body worked like a fine clock and any missed tick like her painful, monthly visitor, was noticed as clearly as a clock missing every other second.
Jeanie braced herself to hop out of the wagon. As she began to disembark, the toe of the too-large boot brushed the wooden side, making her trip.
“Whoa.” Frank caught Jeanie as she fell flat out from above.
He set her down and she smoothed her skirts. Damn, ugly shoes. She lifted her skirts staring at the beastly shoes, the toes curling upward, further searing the family’s bad turn into Jeanie’s mind.
Frank lifted his arms and dropped his head back, face upward at the sun, grinning. “Home. We’re home and it feels magnificent.”
Jeanie shook her head. “There’s nothing here. There’s that barely a barn over there but…“
Frank pointed into the empty expanse. “See that bank of trees there, below there, a little ways, take a look,” Frank said. He pulled her hand and they craned their necks peering around the wagon. “Templeton told me those are olive trees—straight from Russia. The Zurchenko’s—their homestead starts on the north end of ours—brought them straight from Russia when they set up here three years ago.”
His excitement was baffling. Jeanie couldn’t make sense of her strange husband, whose oddball tendencies had been so nicely camouflaged by their former, privileged existence. Without thinking, for no good reason Jeanie blurted out her news.
“I’m pregnant.”
He stared at her and scratched his head. Jeanie could see the children over Frank’s shoulder, leaping, chasing prairie chickens, laughing, yelling, their voices cutting holes through the grownup’s conversation.
“Frank?”
“Hey kids! Water those damn horses!”
Jeanie grabbed his arm. “Don’t be so harsh with them. They’ve a lot to adjust to.”
“Ready to see our new home, our path to unimagined riches?” Frank hopped up and pulled Jeanie to her feet.
“Did you hear me? I’m pregnant.”
“Don’t make me be mean to you, Jeanie. Things are hard enough right now.”
“Don’t make me deal with your black moods, then. How about that?” Jeanie said. She bit her lip, afraid of the anger pushing words out of her mouth, thoughts she’d always kept inside, sentiments that couldn’t be snatched back once free and embedded in his mind.
He crossed his arms and sighed. “I’m always thrilled to hear you’re pregnant, Jeanie.”
They stared at each other. Jeanie crossed her arms back at him, trying to soothe her anger. “But, you don’t think this baby will live, so it doesn’t matter?”
“I didn’t say that.”
James stepped into their locked gaze, breaking it. “I think it might rain. Templeton said—”
“Well, old Templeton’s something else, now isn’t he?” Frank said. Spit flew from his lips as he turned his black mood on James. “How about we let old Mama set up house, James, my boy. She’s pregnant, you know.”
“I thought so. You looked tired, Mama,” James said. “Like the last two times.” James stepped into Jeanie and she hugged him into her side and kissed his forehead. She didn’t know what she would do without him.
“The house? Frank? You’re right. We need to set up. Take me to my home.”
Frank stomped his foot. But didn’t go anywhere.
Jeanie could ignore Frank’s meanness if it meant turning his ire away from her James and focusing her energy on life and death—setting up house.
“Frank? The house? Which way?” Jeanie held her hands open to the sky.
She couldn’t see anything but the skeletal tree she’d seen the day before, the bank of olive trees slightly below them, the makeshift barn, and the red fabric they’d tied to a single wooden stake in the ground that marked the way to the well in the distance.
“We’re here.” Frank grinned and stomped again.
Jeanie jerked her head in one direction then the other, peering into the distance in every direction. “I’m sure,” Jeanie said, “Templeton indicated the Henderson’s homesteaded for three years and I don’t see hide nor hair of a pretty white frame house like his. I mean, those falling down sod walls over there were clearly just a place to tie the animals against the wind. The Hendersons can’t have lived inside that. I can smell animal from here, they couldn’t have…even a dirty frame house would be easy to clean up and make ready for our—”
“You’re right. They did tie their horses over there.” Frank slung his arm around Jeanie’s shoulder with a jolt. He stomped his foot again. “You’re standing on it,” Frank said.
“Standing on what?” Jeanie stamped her foot back at Frank.
He grabbed her hand and yanked her so hard that she stopped forming thoughts or words. He guided her down the shallow bank and around the front of where they had been standing above. There, dug into the hill was a hole with a door.
“No,” she said. She knew what she was staring at, but she wouldn’t accept it. She would not live there.
A wooden plank door clearly marked the space as a home. But she couldn’t get her mind to make sense of what that meant. She’d heard of dugouts, a step down from building a sod home, but she never entertained the chance they might inhabit one.
It looked like and essentially was a giant mud-ball into which someone had carved a hole. Spiky grass—not even the soft, pretty stuff that waved in the wind, grew from the top of the hill. Above the front door, marching across the top like soldiers, the Hendersons had created a foyer, of sod bricks, and nailed to the bricks was a sign painted with what looked like tar. “Help Yourself to Hell—the Hendersons. 1885-1887!”
Frank couldn’t be serious. Jeanie grabbed her skirts and dug into the material to steady herself, to stave off her inclination to tumble to the ground and melt into the earth at hearing such news.
“We can’t live here,” Jeanie said. “Like animals. You’re mocking me again? We’re a lot of things, but animals, we’re not,” she said. Her voice rose to a childish squeal. She hated him with her whole body, the blood rushing through her, carrying poisonous distaste. Clearly he felt the same to do this to her, to suggest she ought to live inside the edges of the earth.
“Just for a while,” Frank said. “Why should we waste energy building a new home when we need to dig into the land, plant some corn? It’ll afford us the chance to save time and money and you’ll be back in silk, in no time, fast. In the end it’ll be worth it.”
Jeanie paced back and forth. “Darling. This is a shack burrowed out of earth to suit maybe one person. One. The kids’ tree house in Des Moines held more luxuries than this. This rat-trap. Not to be ungrateful considering the state of our lives, but this is utterly unacceptable.”
“Your sense of entitlement is showing,” Frank tore a piece of grass from the ground and chomped on it.
“Two, darling Frank, there’s something wrong with jumping a claim, not paying someone for their trouble. My greediness got the best of me when Templeton entertained us in his home. I allowed my mind to wander to material comforts that will come later rather than using the time to deal with particular things we need now.”
Jeanie splayed her fingers in front of her, feeling all of her tension center in the tips. “I’ll just put away the notions that came alive in that twelve-hour time period and get back to where we started—building a 20x24 free standing soddie until we turn enough profit on corn, your carpentry…and I’ll sew! Someon
e around here must need curtains or dresses…”
She turned around, palms upward as though an entire neighborhood would drop down around them, full of people needing the services of a woman with expert sewing skills.
She couldn’t do this. She balled her fists around her skirt again, so hard she could feel each nail through the fabric digging into palm, but she wouldn’t look Frank in the eye. “Please. I’m begging you. And until a month ago, I think you know I went twenty-seven years of life never begging anything. Please. Don’t make me beg you.”
Frank took her chin between his thumb and finger. One corner of his mouth climbed higher than the other as though he might see things her way or that he was about to burst out laughing. Laffin’ was the way he always said the word.
“You,” Frank said. He unlatched her fingers from around her skirts and held her balled fists in his hands. “You could turn a heap of mud into a showcase any old day.”
A month ago, she might have agreed.
“That’s really not the point.” She flinched and stared past him, out over the land. Was Frank pulling a kernel of sincerity from the depths of artificiality trying to make it seem like the biggest truth in the world? For that moment, she wanted to believe that truth. What choice did she have? What choice had she ever had?
Right then, she realized like no other time in her life that they were stuck together and as much as they disliked each other, their life on that prairie teetered on the cusp of death and they would have to work as one just to get by.
“Come on. You’ll see.” Frank nudged her toward the opening of the dugout. He pushed the wooden door—its hinges screeched.
Jeanie looked back to see the kids standing behind her, their faces appearing shocked at the sight of their new home.
“Just stay there,” Jeanie said. She didn’t want the kids to see the place until she was sure they were staying there. She held a morsel of hope that she could talk Frank out of this nightmare.
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