by Amanda James
In the barn, Sarah nodded to Nellie. ‘See ya later, Nellie; I’ll make sure my hands are warm.’ And then she placed the bowl carefully into the heavy wooden wheelbarrow. Hopefully, when her next three chores were completed she’d be allowed back to the future.
She made a face as she manoeuvred the bulky contraption through the barn door and on to the prairie; the palms of her hands were already beginning to rub on the rough wooden handles, and the wind whipped her hair from under the stupid bonnet she’d been required to wear and into her eyes, up her nose and in her mouth. But don’t you have a scrunchie? Undoing the buttons on the dress, she stuck her fingers down her bra and pulled out the band and grips. They had survived time travel then. Sarah giggled, scraped her hair up and secured it tightly. How could such small everyday objects fill her with delight? She guessed it was because they represented the future and allowed her to feel a little more in control. Also, in a small way, she had triumphed over the powers that be.
Ten minutes or so later, Sarah’s dress was soaked in sweat and blisters were beginning to form on her palms. She stopped by a rocky outcrop; huge brown meatballs on a yellowing grassland of shredded wheat. Nice, but she couldn’t eat three, as the advert had it. These were the first rocks she’d come across and perhaps the only ones for miles around by the look of it.
Under the shade, Sarah lowered her bottom on to a smaller boulder. Phew, it felt good to escape the baking yellow ball up there. If it was as hot as this at after four in the afternoon, what must it be like at noon? Looking back the way she’d trudged, she could make out the homestead shimmering like a mirage in the heat. This was about as good a place as any to leave the placenta. It was far enough away to ensure animals didn’t come snooping round the house looking for more juicy morsels, and besides, Sarah couldn’t go any further; she was well and truly pooped.
Come on, Sarah, the sooner you get this done, the sooner you can collect the buffalo chips, push the barrow back in the baking heat, milk the cow, make the porridge, and then go home to John. Not such a bad to-do list … if you say it quick.
Standing up, Sarah stretched her hands high above her head, yawned and cracked her knuckles one at a time. One knuckle sounded very odd, it was more like a rattle than a crack. She rubbed her middle knuckle again and looked closely. Nope, nothing out of the ordinary. OK, get this damned placenta tipped out …
Sarah bent to pick up the bowl and froze. The rattle she’d heard earlier sounded again, but this time it lasted much longer. Slowly she straightened up again and raised her eyes. This noise had nothing to do with cracking her knuckles, but everything to do with the vibrating tail-end of a huge rattlesnake.
Blinking rapidly, she took in its diamond-shaped head and slowly undulating, dark, oval-blotched body, as it looked down at her from a sun-drenched boulder. Shit, it must have been having a sunbathe, and then you interrupted it by clicking your stupid knuckles right under its bloody nose.
Was the damned thing going to strike? Sarah thought they rattled to warn, so if she slowly backed away, she would show it that she meant it no harm. Didn’t those wildlife programmes say that dangerous animals were normally more scared of us than we were of them? Looking into its beady eyes and watching its forked tongue slither in and out inches in front of her face, Sarah doubted that the makers of those programmes had been in the position she was in right now.
As smoothly as she could manage it, in a long dress and heavy boots, Sarah put first her left foot slowly and carefully behind her and then brought the right to meet it. She repeated this twice and the snake ceased rattling. It still continued to smell her with its tongue and remained coiled, however. But the immediate danger had passed. There was no way she was in striking distance now, and she felt relief rippling through her heart like a fresh mountain stream.
She grabbed the handles of the wheelbarrow and backed it away over the short prairie grass. Unless the snake suddenly became turbo powered, it couldn’t get her, but there was no way she was turning her back on it for a while yet. The placenta still sat in the bowl, covered in a towel at the bottom of the snake’s boulder. Martha would have to buy another bowl.
On the way back, no buffalo were in evidence, but Sarah could definitely see evidence of them having been there. The dung was in no short supply, and by the time she’d walked a few hundred yards, she nearly had a barrow load. The chips, as the dung was called, were dry, smelled mostly of grass, and after a while, picking up the light, disc-shaped pats didn’t bother her too much. But she was bothered by the blisters on the palms of her hands and fingers. How was she going to milk Nellie properly with those?
At last back in the barn, she ladled water into a bucket from a barrel labelled Drinkin’ warder. The large messy chalked letters indicated Artie’s hand and perhaps the spelling too, but Sarah couldn’t be sure as many of the homesteaders were illiterate. Though her mouth felt as dry as the dirt at her feet, she was loath to take a sip and instead, sat on the floor and eased her sore and tender hands into the bucket. The stinging sensation quickly gave way to cool relief and she sighed and leaned her head on her arm.
Soft hoof falls and a horse blowing down its nostrils behind her made Sarah turn her head. Artie, the naughty wanderer, had returned. He slipped from the horse’s back and started to remove the saddle. He hadn’t spied her sitting on the ground in the corner and whistled as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
‘Now you stay and rest up, boy. I’ll git you some cool water to slake your thirst.’ Sarah noticed the animal was white with sweat; Artie must have ridden him like the wind to get back so quickly.
He wiped the sweat from the horse with a twist of straw and then picked up a bucket. Stepping round the horse’s stall to get to the barrel of water, he saw Sarah, and nearly jumped three feet off the ground. ‘Snakes alive, Ma, you scared the sh … life outta me!’
Despite her painful hands and the fact that she was supposed to be angry with her son, she threw back her head and laughed. She couldn’t believe that people really did say snakes alive! And she certainly thought the phrase was apt, considering her recent encounter with old ‘hissy fit’ out on the rocks.
‘Aren’t you angry with me, Ma?’ Artie asked, smiling with relief.
‘A little. You were told not to go out to Abe’s but you went anyways. But, life’s too short and too precious to waste it whuppin’ ya. Just milk Nellie for me and we’ll say no more.’
He nodded, a grin splitting his handsome face from ear to ear. ‘That’s what Abe’s daddy says. He don’t never whup Abe.’ He gently lifted one of Sarah’s hands out of the bucket. ‘What’s happened to your hands?’
Sarah nodded at the wheelbarrow full of buffalo chips.
‘But you fetch those chips all the time and your hands are OK.’ Artie ran his hands through his shock of blond hair.
‘Well, never mind that. Milk the cow, water the horse and then I have a surprise waiting indoors for ya.’
‘You do? What is it?’
Sarah put a wet finger to her lips and shook her head.
‘Well, I have one for you, too. Mrs Reiner sent us some bread and fresh churned butter. They got plenty up there.’ Artie ran back to the horse, grabbed the saddlebag and showed her what was inside. ‘Oh, and some jam, too. They said now Joe’s gone, we need all the help we can git. Ain’t that kind?’
‘It sure is, boy, it sure is,’ Sarah said, wishing that Joe would be friendlier to the Mennonites. Artie was certainly being influenced by their ways and that would bring a clash between uncle and nephew when Artie became a young man.
Later that evening, Sarah sat at the foot of Martha’s bed and smiled as she watched Artie holding his new cousin as if she were made of china. In the lamplight, the house looked more cosy and welcoming. Sarah had made the porridge with Nellie’s milk and though it was lumpy, it hadn’t tasted half-bad. Martha hadn’t raised the issue of Artie running off and seemed as pleased as punch as she looked fondly at her nephew cooing over her sleeping daug
hter.
Sarah sighed and felt that her mission was over. Every muscle in her body ached and her brain cried out for sleep. Perhaps tomorrow she’d wake up in her own bed … or even better, John’s.
Chapter Twenty
Four days later, Sarah still hadn’t woken up in her own bed at home, or John’s. She was still stuck in 1874 and was beginning to panic. She had saved little Elspeth, hadn’t she? She’d had hiccups so she must have been meant to save her. What if she was stuck here permanently? Perhaps the powers that be had decided she had to be punished because she’d said before that she was going to stop stitching, or because she’d had the audacity to smuggle a scrunchie.
Sarah could see them in her mind’s eye, pointing spindly fingers at her from their medievally sparkly sleeves. In Munchkin voices they’d say, ‘Sarah Yates, you will be doomed to collect buffalo shit, live in filth, suffer tornados, torrential rain, drought, grasshopper plagues, rattlesnake strikes, and lumpy porridge for the rest of your unnatural life!’
John had said that some reluctant Stitches had legged it and were brought back in disgrace. Others had just taken to their beds and refused to do the job once they were in the past. But Sarah hadn’t done any of these things; she’d accomplished her task and willingly, so why was she still here, for God’s sake? And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, was there? And what had happened about work? She could only hope that time had passed much slower in the present, like it had when she was in 1913.
So … day four. Artie had gone off to the Reiner’s again, this time with Sarah’s permission. They had done an hour of learning his letters and numbers together, he’d done a few chores, and then he’d been allowed out. It was as Sarah had expected. The nearest school was fifteen miles away, so Artie’s schooling was down to them.
Martha had insisted on getting on with things as normal and was making bread, and Sarah had cleaned the house as best she could and was now minding little Elspeth. She was a delight. She only cried when she was hungry or needed changing and she seemed to take a genuine interest in her surroundings.
‘Can you see if she needs changin’?’ Martha asked. Her lips were drawn into a tight pucker, the middle of her forehead folded to a frown. Sarah had noticed that she’d been in a foul temper all morning; she’d assumed it was down to discomfort from giving birth, but Martha had just shaken her head and tutted when Sarah had suggested this.
‘I just changed her about half an hour ago, Martha. What’s the matter with you anyways? You said you weren’t in no discomfort but something’s eatin’ you, just spit it out,’ Sarah snapped. She wasn’t in the best of moods either, trapped in another time, not knowing when, or if, she’d ever get home.
Martha dusted her hands of flour and put them on her hips. ‘I’ll tell ya what’s wrong. I don’t like the fact that Artie’s gettin’ all cosied up to them Mennonites. Joe’ll be crazy mad when he gits back.’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, they’re good folk. Didn’t they send us some vittles the other day?’
‘They just did that so they can git on our good side. We don’t want Artie gittin’ all yeller.’
Sarah shook her head. ‘If you think not killing other folk is cowardly, or “yeller” as you say, then I want my boy to be just like ’em. Don’t you think over half a million dead Americans are enough?’
A flicker in Martha’s chocolate brown eyes told Sarah that she had made sense, but she sniffed and said, ‘Well, all I’m sayin’ is, Joe won’t see it that way.’
‘Move your arse over a bit, Nellie,’ Sarah puffed, leaning into the cow’s flank. She grabbed the milking stool in one hand and the bucket in the other and prepared to do battle. Nellie had stood as meek as a kitten when Artie had milked her, but every time Sarah went near the beast, she kicked up her back leg, or twisted round on her rope, anything to make Sarah’s milking career a troubled one.
A dribble and a splash was all Sarah had collected five minutes later and she was getting hot and bothered. ‘Damn you then, you silly cow!’ She got up from the stool and walked over to the barn door for some air. That, like the milk, seemed in short supply. A hot breeze, hardly strong enough to blow an ant over, puffed intermittently, and the heat haze over the plains moved everything under it in a crazy dance. To Sarah’s eyes, every blade of grass, insect, and buffalo in the distance flickered and shimmered under the relentless July sun.
She took an iron bar leaning next to the Drinkin’ warder barrel and prised the wooden lid off the top. Quickly, before any dust or flies could enter, she dipped a short ladle in and drank deeply. Phew, that hit the spot. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand and wondered how long it would be before she had the luxury of just turning on a tap … or pulling a flush. The outside toilet here was unbelievably disgusting and Sarah had opted to use the bushes instead.
Fixing the lid back on the barrel, she turned to resume the fight with Nellie. As she did, her eye picked out a couple of dots drawing closer across the prairie. After a few minutes it became clear that there were three dots – horses and riders, and one of the figures took off his hat, waved it to and fro, and yelled. Sarah thought she caught the word ‘Ma!’ Walking out to meet them and shielding her eyes she could make out Artie, but the other two were strangers, of course.
The horses put on a bit of a spurt and soon they all trotted up to the barn. ‘Hey, Ma, this is Abe and a friend of the family, George. They come to visit and they brought seed for plantin’ and more vittles.’
They all dismounted and George strode towards her, removing his brown felt hat and clutching it to his chest. He was tall, muscular and, though he wasn’t John, did resemble him, especially around the eyes. ‘I am pleased very to meet you much,’ he said, and then turned bright pink.
Sarah nodded, shook his hand and tried not to laugh at his muddled sentence, though not in a derogatory way. She thought it was most endearing, and the way his eyes crinkled at the edges made her heart miss a beat. What the hell? Crinkly eyes, most endearing? Hang on, Sarah; don’t start getting gooey over another one.
‘Pleased to meet you too, Artie’s mother,’ Abe, a tall, gangly, red-haired youth stuck out his hand.
‘I am very pleased to meet you both, and thanks for our vittles the other day, and today,’ Sarah said, nodding towards the bulging saddlebags.
‘We got some sacks of seed too, Ma. Abe’s Pa said it’s tougher than the seed we git from back east. Where they come from in Russia the land is like arn, hot in summer and cold in winter,’ Artie said, dragging a sack in to show Sarah. ‘It’s wheat, not corn, and we gotta plant it in the fall but it won’t die through winter – ain’t that summin’?’
‘It sure is summin’ but it ain’t stayin’ here,’ Martha’s cold voice came from the other door across the barn.
Everyone gawped as Martha strode towards them with a hunting rifle over her arm. Her mouth was set into a thin line and she stomped the sack of seed hard with the heel of her hobnailed boot. The sacking ripped a little, releasing a trickle of reddish tinted seed.
Sarah put her hand to her head. Red seed … Doh! Of course! That’s why Sarah had heard of the Mennonites before. Yes, they were a religious group, pacifists, strict Christians, but the most important thing was that they had brought Turkey Red wheat seed with them from Russia. As Artie had explained, the wheat could survive extremes of weather and so did just fine on the plains. Reports said that the wheat saved many homesteaders’ lives and had helped turn Kansas into a top wheat-producing state, right up to the present time.
‘Git that sack back on the horse and then y’all git off my property,’ Martha spat, cocking the rifle.
‘Whoa, Martha, you don’t want to be doin’ that … Just let’s all calm down and talk this out,’ Sarah said, stepping towards the sack of precious seed.
‘Nothin’ to talk about as fer as I can see. These folk ain’t welcome and neither is their seed.’
George stepped towards the sack and twisted his hand around the neck
. ‘Looks like there’s no pleasin’ some, ma’am. Don’t worry, we’ll be outta your hair now.’
‘Wait a minute, George, I’m sure Martha will see sense,’ Sarah said, turning to Martha. She realised two things. One, she had to make Martha accept the seed, because that was obviously the key to their survival, and the reason that Sarah was still trapped there, and two, if Martha relented, Sarah could be home in a matter of hours or even less.
‘Why don’t you just accept it, Martha? What’s it gonna hurt?’
Martha looked at George. ‘You carry on, Mr Mennonite; I ain’t listening to my sister.’
George hoisted the sack over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at Martha. ‘For your information, ma’am, I ain’t Mennonite, but they have been real kind to me since my wife passed on and our crop failed. They gave me work and food in my belly, and they just wanna help you too, if you’ll let ’em.’
Martha snorted. ‘My husband ain’t passed on, unless you think Wichita is heaven.’ She took a step towards George. ‘Now this here rifle is loaded and cocked and if you don’t git, I swear I’ll part your hair with it, Mennonite or no.’
Just then, from the house, baby Elspeth sent up a plaintive wail. This gave Sarah a crazy idea. Crazy or not, that’s all she had. She marched past Martha towards the door of the barn. ‘You need to come with me back to the house now, Martha; I have something to tell you that’s strange but true.’ She stopped and turned to the others. ‘My sister and me got some talkin’ to do, just wait a minute till we come back, OK?’ She looked at George and he nodded.
Martha shook her head. ‘I ain’t goin’ nowhere till they’re gone.’
‘Oh, yes you are. I got a message from our poor Ma that’s for your ears only,’ Sarah whispered, stepped out of the barn and hurried back to the house.
That did the trick. Martha went after Sarah and walked into the bedroom just as Sarah was lifting Elspeth out of her cradle. ‘There, there, my sweetheart, did you wonder where we’d all got to, huh?’ Elspeth stopped crying, opened her mouth and pushed her head into Sarah’s chest. ‘She wants feedin’; now I suggest you tend to your baby instead of trying to kill the neighbours.’