Prairie Widow

by Harold Bakst

  “… We beseech you to take kindly to Walter’s wife, Jennifer, and his two children, Peter and Emma, and that you, um, show mercy, amen.”

  And everyone repeated, “Amen.”

  At that, two neighbors—middle-aged brothers who shared a homestead—stepped forward and began to shovel dirt into the hole, covering Walter Vandermeer, who was wrapped in canvass only, wood being too scarce and too precious to use for coffins. Behind the two brothers, waiting to be put in place, lay a headstone from Franz Hoffmann’s store, its inscription facing the sky.

  Lucy Baker gave Jennifer a stoic hug around the shoulder with one arm.

  “I hate to leave him here,” said Jennifer weakly. “He ought to be home.”

  “He is home,” assured Lucy. “Look eastward. This ground is one with Ohio.”

  The other neighbors approached Jennifer, mostly a couple at a time, to say how sorry they were and to hold her hands in theirs. Then, on the way to their wagons, some of them stopped by other graves to pay respects to loved ones, and cut back any grasses that had sprouted around the marker. It was only in this desultory manner that the cemetery was kept up, and there was a comer or two that had been rein-vaded by the prairie grasses, which swallowed up entire headstones.

  With most of the neighbors now dispersing back across the prairie, Lucy said to Jennifer, “You come home with Seth and me.” She still gripped Jennifer’s children, both of whom stared glassy-eyed at the slowly filling hole. “I’ve already told everyone you’ll be there tonight, should they wish to pay their respects.”

  “Thank you,” said Jennifer, watching her children. “But, you know, I think I’d like to be alone—for just a while.”

  “Of course. But let me take Peter and Emma along with me. You’ll join us later.”

  Lucy began to escort the two away, but Emma stopped and looked back at her mother. She began to cry, and Jennifer dashed over, crouching and drawing Emma close. Peter tried to hold back tears, but then he, too, began to cry, and Jennifer pulled him close so that the three were in each other’s arms.

  Lucy turned to Seth. “Put ours in the wagon,” she said softly. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  Seth nodded and herded his own three children into the back of his wagon.

  “Shh, shhh,” whispered Jennifer in her children’s ears.

  “I want Poppa,” choked Emma.

  “I know,” said Jennifer.

  “I wish we never left home,” said Peter.

  “But we did,” said Jennifer, rising to her feet, angry with Walter again. She pressed her children toward Lucy, who reached out to take them. “Go with Mrs. Baker,” said Jennifer.

  “Why aren’t you coming?” peeped Emma, wiping her tears.

  “I will.”

  Lucy took Peter and Emma to her wagon, and they climbed onto the back with the Baker children. Then Lucy climbed onto the seat next to her husband. “You remember the way to my place?” called Lucy as Seth flicked the reins, starting up his black mare.

  “I remember,” answered Jennifer, returning her gaze to her husband’s grave. The hole was finally filled, and the headstone was in place. It read:

  Here Lies

  Walter Vandermeer

  Beloved Husband

  and Father

  at Peace

  in God’s Embrace

  1834-1873

  Shovels in hand, the two brothers walked over to Jennifer. “The Lord wanted ’im,” was all the older one mumbled, not so much as looking at Jennifer as he walked past. The other seemed to want to offer his own condolences, but he only lowered his eyes and continued on to the buckboard, which was drawn by two mules.

  The brothers’ wagon was the last to rattle down the shallow hill, and Jennifer was left standing alone among the sprinkling of headstones and mingling grasses. The meadowlark was back and caught Jennifer’s attention, perched as it was on a tiny cross, one of two tiny crosses set side-by-side. Jennifer noted the inscriptions. Both were Baker children, neither of whom had survived infancy. Then the meadowlark flitted over to another headstone, this one belonging to a Herman Whittaker. Then the bird flitted to yet another, as if it were showing Jennifer all the people who once lived on this prairie.

  “Oh, Walter,” whispered Jennifer, barely hearing herself above the wind. “Do you see what you’ve done? Do you see where you’ve left your wife and children?” Jennifer dropped to her knees. She brushed her hand over the dark loamy soil that covered her husband. She felt her throat tighten. She didn’t care what Lucy said. This was a strange land, and she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Walter buried in it while she and the children returned to her clapboard house and her own Poppa.

  Jennifer’s eyes glazed over as she wondered what her father, a widower, was doing that very moment. She looked at the sky. The sun was low. It was past the dinner hour, later back in Ohio. Her father was probably sitting in his heavy, cushioned chair and reading the Gazette. It had been his ritual for as long as Jennifer could remember. All through her childhood, each evening, he retired to the parlor and his chair to read while she, his only child, cleared the kitchen table and washed the dishes. Afterward, she would join him in the parlor and listen to him gripe about something in the paper—in those days, the Southern secessionists—while she would sit in her mother’s rocker and read a book or do her needlepoint. Sometimes, her father would look up from his paper to comment on something he had just read, and she and he would discuss it though, really, Jennifer mostly listened.

  That’s the way it had been for so very long, and though she had fancied that she’d like to marry one day—and had spent a good deal of time imagining what the man would be like—Jennifer remained quite content to be the little housewife to her father, even as she turned nineteen, an age when a young lady ought to be married, as, indeed, all her childhood friends were.

  But Jennifer’s father was not so content. He complained to Jennifer often about her withdrawn ways, and every time he discovered an eligible bachelor—like the coalman or a fellow town clerk—he’d point him out to Jennifer and say, “Now, he would make a fine son-in-law!” But, to his never-ending frustration, either Jennifer proved to be too shy, or the young men had eyes for someone else, someone, perhaps, more fun.

  Eventually, Jennifer’s father grew so annoyed at his daughter’s complacency that he took matters into his own hands. One evening, he arrived home after work with a dinner guest: a big, ruddy-faced man with blonde hair and blue eyes—someone, as Jennifer judged it, about ten years her senior.

  “Jenny, I would like you to meet Mr. Walter Vandermeer,” her father said, tottering at the doorway, for he almost always made a stop at O’Reilly’s Tavern on his way home. “…a fine, upstanding citizen, and a Dutchman to boot.”

  “Miss Schuyler, it is my great pleasure to meet with you,” said Walter, himself a mite unsteady on his feet, for it was at O’Reilly’s the two men had met. “Your father has told me so much about you.”

  Jennifer remembered that meeting very well, as if it were much more recent than thirteen years ago. A polite enough evening ensued, but it didn’t bode well for serious courting. The two men were clearly more entertained by each other’s bawdy company than by anything that Jennifer could contribute.

  “And what do you do for a living, Mr. Vandermeer?” she offered from her rocker.

  Walter suppressed his high spirits and tried to respond seriously. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I’m what you call a Jack-of-all-trades.”

  “The man is going places!” declared her father, lest there be any doubt.

  But there was doubt. Jennifer’s first impression of Walter was that he was nothing more than a braggart, a tippler and, worst of all, a ne’er-do-well, something to which her father apparently had decided to turn a blind eye.

  Indeed, how angry he used to get with her when she showed no interest in her would-be gentleman friend. “You’d better not be so independent!” he had scolded her on a number of occasions. “O
ther women—prettier women—have their eyes on him! They know a good man when they see one.”

  As it happened, though, Jennifer was not quite as independent as her father thought. She had no other man in her life, aside from the grocer, whom, actually, she only spoke to when she went shopping. And she was going to be twenty soon. If the truth were known, she liked it when Walter came calling, as he generally did on Sunday afternoons, equipped with flowers for her and cigars for her father. The two men inevitably shared the cigars, along with some brandy, later in the evening.

  By and by, after enough of such Sundays, Jennifer even allowed herself to take a liking to this Mr. Vandermeer. He was, after all, a rather chivalrous sort, cheerful, and a brawny handsome man.

  And so, one Sunday afternoon, while her father discreetly excused himself from their company, Walter finally asked for her hand, and Jennifer responded, “Why, that would be very nice. Yes.”

  And so they were married.

  Her father was so happy that he immediately bought Jennifer a slender book entitled Bridal Greetings, by the Reverend Daniel Wise in which, as the author wrote, “The mutual duties of husband and wife are familiarly illustrated and enforced.” Jennifer was grateful to her father for this gift, for the sweet, little book explained the various problems that couples were subject to in the areas of money, family, friends, the home, and so on, and so forth. She eagerly read a new chapter each night in bed before going to sleep, ever more sure that her marriage would be a happy one.

  But Walter Vandermeer, as a husband, was to prove a sore test for even the most patient and prepared woman. After a brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, which was Jennifer’s first time away from home, and which occasioned her first intimate pleasures with a man, the two newlyweds moved right back in with Poppa Schuyler. Jennifer never could figure out why her father, who was supporting the two of them, wasn’t outraged by the arrangement. A man ought to support his wife, no? But her father didn’t seem to mind footing the bills, not even after Peter was born. Walter earned money now and then as a handyman and part-time laborer, but mostly he got along by his winning ways with his father-in-law. To Jennifer’s constant exasperation, her father and her husband would often go out drinking together, leaving her home with her infant son. Or, if they stayed home, they’d talk mostly to each other, often about Walter’s plans for acquiring great wealth. Jennifer’s father loved to hear these plans and usually expressed interest in “staking” him.

  But none of Walter’s schemes—not the one for raising sheep in a nearby field, not the one to start up a “much-needed” magazine, “Scions of Holland”—ever transgressed into the realm of action.

  And when, early in 1862, Walter volunteered to join the Union Army, Jennifer was convinced it was for no other reason than to avoid family responsibility.

  Perhaps it was. But Walter was not quite so cavalier about his station in life as Jennifer thought. Based in Ohio and confronted by precious little fighting (until, that is, Confederate General John Morgan invaded the state), Walter apparently had much time to think about what he would be doing when the war ended.

  One day, Jennifer received a letter from him, written in highly excitable script: “Dear Jenny,” it read, “Have you read about the Homestead Act? It gives veterans 160 acres of Kansas land for only ten dollars! And all the homesteader has to do to keep the land is live on it for five years! And I’ll be a veteran!…”

  So now, of all things, Walter wanted to be a fanner. Well, Jennifer was glad to receive that letter because now when her husband arrived home on leave, busting with with his usual enthusiasm about his plans, she would be ready for him.

  And, indeed, she told him, “Walter, I see no point in discussing such a ludicrous idea. You don’t know anything about farming.”

  “It’s a desert out there,” added Jennifer’s father, for once not taking his son-in-law’s side. “And Kansas got naked savages running around…”

  Walter was taken aback by, and not a little disappointed in, his father-in-law’s reaction. Still, Walter was adamant. “Now, look,” he said as calmly as he could, “I’ve studied the matter thoroughly, and Kansas is not a desert. It’s grassland. And the mad Indians are much farther out on the plains, which isn’t where we’re going. And, finally, I’m not so ignorant about farming—I once worked on one. So all I need is fourteen hundred dollars to outfit the family.”

  Jennifer’s father shook his head. “I’m sorry Walt, not for this…”

  “Twelve hundred…”

  “No, no, I can’t.”

  “A thousand! Lend me a thousand dollars…”

  “Walter, I just won’t do it.”

  Jennifer let the two men talk on. Her father seemed firm and, besides, there was no reason to assume Walter would pursue this plan any more strenuously than he pursued the others.

  Indeed, when Walter returned home from the army for good, and to a new baby girl, he talked a lot on the subject but did little else. Years passed that way.

  But then, shortly before his fortieth birthday, Walter took a serious turn. While cleaning the house, Jennifer came across several books in a chest. One, with the profile of a buffalo on it, was entitled, The National Wagon Road Guide. And there were several others, all guidebooks for the would-be settler.

  Once more, Jennifer felt obligated to challenge Walter, this time rallying her two small children to her side by filling their heads with all sorts of ideas.

  “I don’t like Indians!” Peter cried to his father.

  “I don’t like the desert!” wailed Emma.

  Walter, glaring at his smug wife, took his children aside and told them not to worry. He even bribed them with stories of his own; that there were no schools out that way, that they’d have plenty of friends to play with, and that they’d each have a horse.

  All this did the trick. “Hooray for Kansas!” shouted Peter.

  “Horray for Kansas!” repeated his little sister.

  This left Jennifer virtually speechless, but she was still convinced that Walter would take no further action.

  But he did. Week after week, Walter went about his preparations for leaving Ohio. He added to his meager savings by working constantly at various jobs, mostly as a handyman, and as he made his money, he purchased and stacked in the corner of the parlor those things he would need for the journey: a shovel, hoe, campstool, blankets, ropes, bandages, tool box, and so forth—including even his wife’s own baggage, which he had taken the liberty to pack.

  And, if there was still any doubt about his intentions, he soon put that to rest. One warm spring morning, he rode up to the house in an honest-to-God prairie schooner pulled by two yokes of oxen, just like the wagons Jennifer had seen in her Harper’s Weekly. The schooner’s arching top scraped the lane’s overhanging tulip tree branches. The children from the neighborhood came running and climbed all over the wagon. Peter and Emma were very proud.

  “Walter, I can’t believe you actually …” started Jennifer as she emerged from the house and stood on the porch.

  Walter just sat way up there on the seat, reins in hand, and glared silently down at his wife as if to say, “Believe it.”

  Jennifer descended the two planks from the porch and slowly walked around the wagon to inspect it. Soon, neighbors were stepping outside their houses for a look. A few approached the wagon. “Say, Walt, I guess you’re serious about leaving,” said one of them, puffing on a long, slender pipe while standing back and sizing up the schooner.

  “I guess I am, Charley,” said Walter, following Jennifer with his eyes as she walked around the front of the oxen, who were snorting through black, runny nostrils. “We’re heading out in a couple of weeks.”

  Upon hearing this, Jennifer headed for the porch again, quickening her pace to reach the house before she burst into tears.

  From that night on, Jennifer pleaded with her husband to change his mind. Her father, too, sat down with Walter several times to discuss the matter. Jennifer counted on her father.
At least he wouldn’t start crying if he became too frustrated. And Walter respected his opinion.

  Unfortunately, Walter, this time, was resolute. He often stormed out of the house rather than listen. Still, Jennifer didn’t give up hope. She had faith in her father’s persuasive efforts—until, that is, one terrible, rainy night.

  It was late, past midnight, and Jennifer had gone to bed, leaving the two men in the parlor before a fire to discuss the move, which was only one week away at that point. But Jennifer couldn’t sleep, and she tiptoed down the creaky stairs to listen to her father and husband talking in the parlor, just as she used to tiptoe down to listen to her parents talk when her mother was alive.

  The two men spoke quietly so as not awaken anyone, and Jennifer had to press her head close to the glass-paned doors.

  “Look, Walter, won’t you reconsider?”

  “Fred, I’ve told you a million times that there’s nothing to reconsider. I’m going.”

  “But she’s my only daughter, my only child. I don’t think I can bear the thought of her out there in the wilds of Kansas. I don’t care what you say about the Indians. They like white women.”

  “Look, do you think I would do anything to hurt her? I tell you, this is all for the best. I’ve got to make something of my life. People talk.”

  “Is that the reason you’re going? Hell, let them talk. What do you care, suddenly?”

  “I care because they’re right. Fred, my children are getting older and smarter, and I don’t want them to grow up thinking their father’s a no-account.”

  There was a pause.

  “You’re a strange man, Walt. I never knew you felt such things.”

  “I do.”

  “Still, isn’t there any way to dissuade you?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Another pause.

  “Well, you should’ve come right out and told me all this sooner. I can understand how you feel—mind you, I still don’t like the idea—but I can understand.”

  “That’s good enough.”

  “Hell, I guess even, well, I guess even I’m a little proud of you.”