Mattie

by Judy Alter

  Then there was Rastus Wolf, the old man who had teased me about river water cures, and Sally and Ralph Whittaker, young Mary Eberhardt, whose child I’d cared for during a siege of the croup soon after I arrived, and an endless list. I found that I knew the people, they knew me, and I felt a strong sense of community.

  Omaha was far from my thoughts in moments like that, but there were other times, especially when I was alone in my soddie with a long day stretched before me, that the thought of Omaha and the Dinsmores brought pain. Dr. Dinsmore had written only twice, both letters correct and distant, commenting on a case that I’d told him about and expressing concern about my possible rides alone on the prairie. They both missed me, he wrote, but said no more about my returning.

  Sara wrote more frequently, lamenting her lonely life, how bored she was, how strict Kate was, how unhappy her father was, how awful life in general was. I took none of it seriously except the portions about her father’s unhappiness, and then I felt guilt. He had been good to me, given me the chances my own mother could never arrange, and if it weren’t for him, I’d still be stuck in a shack in Missouri or maybe farming out here with Jim and Will Henry, like the many worn-down prairie women I cared for. Maybe my debt of gratitude was to be what he wanted me to, and yet I couldn’t make the switch in roles. I couldn’t go from being his pupil to being his lover.

  Then another voice would come out of my head, asking, Have you given up your only chance at romance? Are you destined to live alone the rest of your life? That thought scared me enough to consider the possibility of returning to Omaha.

  Yet a stubborn streak in me would not consider the possibility of Omaha. It was as though I felt I had to show my independence by carving out a life of my own in Benteen. And so, I stayed and made myself a home, found myself a community and, eventually, found myself a family.

  Chapter Three

  Folks wondered why I married Emory Jones. I knew it at the time, because they told me so. Some of them tried to discourage me, gently, of course, because I was grown and independent, but they tried nonetheless. My own brother, Will Henry, told me he wondered if I was doing the right thing but that he’d stand behind me, no matter what I decided.

  And I decided to marry him. Married him in 1895 and it lasted until 1910, fifteen long years. It seemed like forever at the time, but now when I think back on it, fifteen years is such a small chunk of my life. Still, it was an important chunk.

  I married Jones because he was the first man who really wanted me, who made me feel like a woman. Oh, Dr. Dinsmore thought he wanted me, but he really needed me, and there’s a big difference between the two. Emory Jones would have gotten along just fine without me, but he wanted me with him. He made me feel desirable and attractive and all those things that I thought I was not. For a girl who is plain, sensible and responsible, love, or infatuation, can be pretty heady stuff.

  Em was wild and crazy, too, a nice balance, so I thought, for my practicality. Not that he was wild and crazy in destructive ways or that he thought about being an outlaw or any of those things, though there was a strong streak of dishonesty in him, which I tried to overlook for years.

  But I am getting ahead of my story. I met Emory Jones in 1892, two years after I had come out to the plains. He had come to work in the mercantile store for the Whittakers, and the first time I ever laid eyes on him was when I went in to purchase some dry goods. A patient was going to cut me a blouse and skirt as payment for my services, and I was to pick some plain serge and good cotton for the blouse.

  Ralph Whittaker greeted me cordially, then called to the back: “Come take care of Dr. Armstrong.”

  And Em appeared through the curtained door that led to the small quarters behind the store. He was tall—taller than I, at least, and that was something—and darkly handsome, with hair that he tried to plaster down but which always escaped into curls. His smile was just a bit crooked, but it was his eyes that told you when he was laughing. They were dark brown and fairly danced when he was amused.

  Those eyes danced when he first took a look at me and then repeated, with disbelief, “Dr. Armstrong?”

  I was never poised and sophisticated around men, and now, strangely, I felt a fluttering uncertainty, an almost physical sensation deep within. Blushing, I replied, too formally in a tightly controlled voice, “Yes, I’m Dr. Armstrong.”

  “Em Jones,” he said, still grinning as he put out his hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you. Don’t know that I’ve rightly seen a woman doctor out here before. It’s a real pleasure to know you.”

  If I was disconcerted, he appeared completely at ease and sure of himself. Remembering his job, he became businesslike and helpful. Eventually he did talk me out of the sensible dark gray serge, coercing me instead into choosing a pinstripe, which, he said, had more “life” and suited my personality better. I left the store feeling dizzy, sure that his laughing eyes were following me.

  After that, I saw Em from time to time when I went into the store or once or twice at local parties when the neighbors all got together for a dance in the schoolhouse. And each time I saw him, I felt that strange flutter. I will say, though, that old saying, “Out of sight, out of mind,” applied. There were long stretches when I never saw nor thought about Em Jones.

  But then Em got the cholera, a bad case, and I was called to treat him. For two days he had a fever so high that he really didn’t know where he was or who was taking care of him. I wrung sheets out in milk to wrap him and try to get that fever down. Yes, milk! The things we did in those days without knowing better! Now I know the milk may well have carried bacteria and been sort of a double jeopardy to my patients, but at the time I thought it held the coolness better.

  Em lived in the small room behind the Whittakers’ store, a tiny, dark space without much fresh air, and I thought it an unhealthy spot for him to recuperate. Even after his fever broke, he was weak and needed much care for almost two weeks. So I had some men wrap him up good and put him in a wagon to bring him out to my place, where he could rest in my bedroom, which when needed was put to use as an infirmary, causing me to sleep on a pallet in the main room of the soddie.

  Of course, he protested. “I can’t be so much trouble to you,” he said while they were carrying him out to the wagon. “I’ll be just fine in my room if you’ll look in on me occasionally, and Mrs. Whittaker will bring me food. She does from time to time, anyway.”

  “You’ll tire yourself talking,” I told him, and got on my horse before he could say any more.

  Fortunately, it was spring and the weather was warm, so he didn’t suffer any from exposure. Even the five-mile trip from Whittaker’s out to my claim was tiring for him, though, and he slept most of the first day he was in my soddie. I’d go around to feel of his forehead and listen to his chest, but he barely waked at all, and I let him sleep.

  But as the days went by and he began to feel better, Em and I started to talk, trading stories of our childhoods, our hopes for the future, the reasons we were out on the prairie and everything about ourselves. My practice was slow and I spent a lot of time sitting in the rocking chair in the infirmary, keeping him company, even though there was much I could be doing outside.

  I did manage to keep the horses fed, and one day I plowed up my small vegetable garden, using Tony, my gelding chosen by Jim as a safe and stable horse, and a borrowed plow. My growing herd, six head of cattle, was turned out, and with the weather nice, the cattle rarely came up from the buffalo wallow.

  I learned a lot about Em in those long days. He grew up in St. Louis. “My father’s a newspaperman,” he said. “Owns the biggest paper in the city. Quite successful. And Mother, she’s a leader in St. Louis society. Knows all the right people, gives fashionable parties. They live in a big house with servants and everything.”

  “Why ever are you out here, then, instead of back there enjoying the life of luxury?” I rocked gently and stared, genuinely puzzled. My early life made it nearly impossible for me to believe
that anyone would walk away from a life like the one Em described. I forgot, I guess, that I had done almost the same thing, though not quite so drastically, in leaving Omaha.

  “Luxury isn’t everything, Mattie.” We had reached a first-name basis by then. “They had expectations for me that I just couldn’t meet. Matter of fact, they wanted me to be a lawyer. Then, of course, I’d have gone to work for the newspaper as their legal counsel, married a very rich and very proper and probably very boring girl from St. Louis society, raised a passel of spoiled kids and grown old and tired before my time. No, it wasn’t the life for me. I simply told them I had to be free to do what I felt was right, and then I came west.

  “I’ve worked several jobs. I can ride, I can do a cowman’s job, string fence, you name it. I’ve learned the way of life out here by doing it. I spent one harvest threshing, and another time I worked on a little newspaper in Kansas. Thought my father would have appreciated that, me sneaking into journalism through the back door, but when I wrote and told him, he apparently wasn’t amused. He never answered the letter.”

  Em stared lazily into space from time to time as we talked, as though remembering was painful. His hands lay out of the bedclothes, and occasionally he clutched them nervously. I remember now wondering why his hands were so delicate if he’d done all that, but I dismissed the thought.

  I told him we were like the prince and the pauper with our very different backgrounds, and I found myself telling him all about Mama and my miserable years in Princeton and how I had all these fantasies about who my father was, but I really didn’t know. He was the first person I’d poured all that out to since years ago when I’d hinted at it to Dr. Dinsmore. To my surprise, Em was neither shocked nor overly sympathetic.

  “Must have been rough,” he said matter-of-factly. “Of course, when everyone kowtows to your folks like they do mine, it’s hard for me to imagine being teased about my mother’s bad reputation. But I think I can see some of what you felt. You’re strong to have done all that you’ve done.”

  “No,” I said, self-conscious again and feeling a blush rise, “just determined to get out of Princeton.”

  He laughed then. “And is a soddie in western Nebraska any better than Princeton, Missouri?”

  “Yes it is,” I said fiercely. “It’s the beginning of a better way of life for me and a chance to practice medicine, which is all I want to do.”

  “All? Oh, Mattie, surely you want more from life than medicine.” His eyes were laughing, and I knew he was teasing me.

  The question made me both nervous and happy, and I excused myself to go and fix some supper. As I left the room, I could feel him laughing behind my back, and I knew his eyes would still be dancing.

  As Em got his strength back, he began to get out of bed some each day and, slowly, to do some chores for me. There were always things I needed a man to do around the house, and I used to lie in wait for poor Will Henry to come through. I’d have a list as long as my arm of things that needed repairing, from the sod roof to a window frame that wasn’t right to mending some bit of my harness. Em began to do some of those things, though I refused to let him do too much in any one day, and I would hound him to get back to bed and rest.

  But he did mend my bridle, and one day I caught him brushing both horses, which I thought was too hard for him. Then, just before he had recovered enough to move back to his own dingy little room, he dug me a bigger vegetable garden so I could plant a little more corn, beans, turnips and pumpkin.

  “Not, Dr. Armstrong, that you’re much of a cook,” he teased, leaning on the shovel. “If I have any complaint about my care while in your, ahem, hospital, it’s the quality of the food.”

  I tried to bluff as though it didn’t matter and take it in good grace, for he had no idea that I used to pride myself on the meals I prepared and supervised. It was just that out there, it was all different, and I had somehow lost the impetus to cook. “I’ll do all right with beans and turnips. Can’t do wrong just boiling them.” I tried to laugh lightly.

  “You’ll probably boil them too long,” he said.

  Em left my soddie, less because he was cured than because he got a roommate in the infirmary, a farm woman named Mrs. Coyne who had a brand-new baby I’d delivered some days earlier but who was suffering from fever and couldn’t nurse the baby. I couldn’t keep running eight or nine miles out to see both her and the baby, so I had them brought into the infirmary, where I could bottle-feed the baby frequently and watch the mother’s infection closely. Em left the day they arrived, and though he was lighthearted about it, I could tell he was a little put out.

  “You’re sure you’re all right?” My concern was more personal than professional. After the work he’d done around my place, I knew he was in good shape and probably should have gone back to work earlier. But personally, I was reluctant to pronounce him hale and hearty. I would miss him, and I knew it.

  “I’ll be fine, just a little weak. I will miss the company and, of course, the larger, brighter quarters.” Then, with a mock bow, he added, “It’s been a delightful stay, Dr. Armstrong.”

  Trying to match his bantering mood, I answered, “The pleasure was all mine, sir.”

  But as he climbed onto Tony, the horse he was to borrow for the ride home, Em gave me one of his long looks and said, “You know, I think I’ll have to marry you.”

  Then he was gone, before I could answer, and I was left standing there bewildered and excited. My thoughts were jumbled, but from that moment, I believed him. He would marry me.

  Em began to court me, and since I’d never been courted before, it was a wonderful time of my life. We’d go on picnics, far out on the prairie, spreading a blanket, eating cold roast and talking about the meaning of life. It reminded me a little of the picnics with Dr. Dinsmore and Sara, but better. Other times we’d go if neighbors got together; folks occasionally did at kind of a potluck supper where everybody brought something and had a chance to visit with other people and break what was an isolated life for many families. Some of those women went months and months without ever seeing anyone but their own family, so that they were even grateful when someone got sick, because it meant I’d come to visit.

  When the Literary and Debating Society met in the schoolhouse, Em always rode out from town to get me. And if there was a dance, we were there. Em was a wonderful dancer, light and sure on his feet, and when I was with him, I became almost a dancer myself, me who had always been awkward and unsure the few times I’d danced in Omaha. Poor Dr. Dinsmore, he never could teach me the steps. But with Em, I seemed to fairly fly across the floor. Sometimes, early in our courtship, I was still too shy or self-conscious to try some of the faster dances, those that I thought were kind of attention-getting, so Em would dance with someone else.

  I remember one night, at a dance in the schoolhouse, when they played a polka, and he danced with a neighbor girl, younger than me and prettier by far. I ached with jealousy as I watched them whirl across the floor, both laughing heartily. But the minute the dance was over, Em was back at my side.

  “Don’t come near me,” he warned. “I’m all sweaty and hot.” And then he swept me into his arms as the fiddler played a waltz, and I felt like the belle of the ball.

  Sometimes Em drove me on my calls, in the new spring-buggy that Ed Landman down to the stable had fixed for me. It had extra-strong springs to give a smoother ride and could be all closed up with isinglass in the winter so I didn’t have to freeze to death. It worked fine and was a big improvement over those lonely horseback rides across the prairie, except when the snow was so bad the buggy couldn’t get through. Then I’d have to leave it, tying one horse to the buggy and riding the other.

  By the time winter came that year, Em and I were a pretty constant couple. He seemed proud that I was the only doctor for sixty miles and never questioned when a patient came before my pleasure or before him.

  Once I was gone three days delivering a baby. Em was at my soddie, which he was a lot of
the time, a skinny young boy, maybe about twelve, rode up, frantically calling, “Doctor, Doctor!”

  “Whoa, son,” I said, coming out the door. “Calm down, now. I’m the doctor. What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Ma. She sent me for you. Says her time’s come. Please hurry. She . . . she looked awful scared when I left.”

  It was a procedure I was used to, and by now Em was, too. “Hitch up the buggy for me, would you, please, Em. Son, what’s your name?”

  “Ralph, ma’am, Ralph Grubbs.” He was a solemn child, pale with big brown eyes that stared at me uncertainly, as though not sure of my response. His clothes fitted him poorly, the pants too short, the jacket too big, and his shoes were obviously worn and old, perhaps too small.

  “All right, Ralph. While Mr. Jones hitches up the horses, you tie yours to the back of that buggy. That way you can ride with me.”

  We were on our way in minutes. I had gathered my bag, put on my long cowhide coat and an extra scarf against the cold and found a blanket to wrap Ralph in since the poor child looked half-frozen and poorly dressed for a winter afternoon. We took off across the prairie, in the direction Ralph pointed. Em had decided to stay behind this time, since I had company, but promised to wait for me and to check the chickens and my cattle, now up in a hay barn for the winter.

  “Is your father with your mother, Ralph?”

  “No, ma’am. He’s . . . well, he’s gone. He is a lot. I ain’t seen him for several days now.” The child avoided looking at me as he spoke. Somehow, as he mentioned his father, I could easily imagine fear in his eyes.

  “Is your mother alone?”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I got three sisters and a brother. I’m the oldest.”

  “That’s quite a family,” I said, and he missed my ironic tone completely.