I turned, checking the fire. Five people stamped the last of the flames, kicking the ground to kill any stray embers. My folks were among them. Mom looked as if she could do the whole thing again, then chop down a tree for good measure. She was built, it seemed, for the life of perpetual labor. Thick, with broad shoulders. Most of her children, myself included, inherited her squat, solid torso, and her bowed legs. George Jr. and Jack were the only ones built more like Dad—lithe, sinewy bodies that were strong in their own right but much less durable.
So Dad trudged forward, matching Mom’s resolve. But his stride was not as steady. Most of the crew stretched out on damp burlap, quietly resting. Wisps of smoke drifted along the ground, like fog, its smell saturating our clothes and hair.
I finally tried walking, tilting from one side to another, like a baby, tottering slowly down the slope. My legs held me from memory, my arms dangling at my side. I fell once, rolling headfirst back onto my feet in a fluid motion that felt unremarkable, even practiced, as if that was how one goes down a hill. I crawled into the wagon bed, rolling my burlap bag into a pillow.
But to my surprise, I could not fall asleep. I was so tired my eyelids twitched. Images raced around behind my lids like moths in a jar, bumping together and circling each other. I clenched my eyes tight, trying to stop the flickering pictures, but it did no good.
I remembered George’s last birthday, just months before. Katie, the eight-year-old, had just learned about surprise birthday parties, and she insisted on throwing one for George. The only problem was that she didn’t quite grasp the surprise aspect of a surprise party. So she did all the planning, folding little paper hats out of pages from a Sears catalogue, inviting everyone we happened to see, regardless of whether George was around or not. We all watched with amusement while she pursued this plan, and none of us was more amused than the guest of honor. George smiled, his blue eyes twinkling, while Katie made a chocolate birthday cake the evening before, and arranged all the chairs in the house.
On George’s birthday, which was a Saturday, it became clear that Katie still expected to surprise George. She pulled me aside and instructed me to ask George to go down to the river and plant some willow fishing poles. So we did, catching a few nice frogs and baiting some hooks, then burying the poles as deeply as we could in the mud. We chuckled every time we thought about what would happen when we got home.
“If I ever find another girl that puts this much effort into my birthday, I’ll marry her on the spot,” George said.
A half hour later, we rode back to the house, where there were several vehicles parked out front. And when we walked in the door, and the lights were off, and when everyone jumped out, yelling “Surprise,” George clutched a hand to his heart. His mouth dropped open, and he fell straight back, landing flat on the hardwood floor. Katie squealed, and my brother had made one eight-year-old girl very, very happy.
I was just about to give up trying to sleep and get up to see where everyone was. But thankfully, the rest of the family came along. I heard the thump of barrels being loaded, feeling guilty about not giving them a hand, and I wondered whether someone had helped Dad and Jack carry the barrels. This question was answered when I heard Gary Glasser’s voice.
“Thanks for coming, all of you,” he said. “Especially at a time like this.”
“Well, we know you’d do the same,” Mom said.
“It’s appreciated anyway,” Gary answered. “You know we’ll be at the service. You’ll let us know when it is, right?”
“Of course.” Mom’s dismissive tone surprised me. She wasn’t generally so short with people unless she was upset. And I could tell that Gary felt it, too, as he said another quick thanks, then I heard the crunch of his boots against the ground.
“Now what sense is there in not telling him there’s not going to be a service, Mother?” Dad asked softly.
“He’ll find out soon enough,” she said.
I opened my eyes and twisted toward the front. “No service?”
An awkward silence followed, and I was confused.
“There’s no service…” Dad hesitated, his head tipping from side to side.
“We haven’t found the body,” Mom finished.
I frowned, looking from one parent to the other. I pictured George floating in the water somewhere, or hung up along the shore. I pushed the thought from my mind. And then I wondered how they knew for sure that he’d drowned. My voice was high, thin, when I spoke again. “Can’t we have a service anyway?”
“No,” Mom answered emphatically. “We will not have a service without a body.”
“Easy, Mother,” Dad said.
“Well, now he knows.”
“It’s all right,” I said. Although my mother’s blunt manner sometimes put people off, and was often misinterpreted, I found it comforting somehow to know exactly where I stood with her, even at that age.
Dad set the team in motion, and we moved forward in silence as the facts settled into my mind. But there wasn’t enough. I wanted to know more.
“Where did he go down?” I asked.
Mom and Dad glanced at Jack, who was staring off across the prairie. Then they exchanged a silent look. Dad spoke. “They had a real gully washer up in the Little Missouri Buttes a few days ago, so the river was high….”
Mom turned sideways on the bench. “George and Jack were moving some cattle, and George went to water his horse. He was gone for a while, so Jack went to check on him, and he found George’s horse along the bank. We found his hat later, downstream….” Mom paused, raising her chin, sucking air in through her nose.
I looked at Jack. His felt cowboy hat was pulled down just an inch above his small eyes, which were still aimed directly out, across the prairie, away from us.
I didn’t understand Jack—never have, never will. He seemed to be the unhappiest person I ever met. And the reasons for this unhappiness, just like the reasons for most of his actions, were a complete mystery to us all. Because he rarely spoke. And he had an air about him that gave you the strong message that he had no desire to speak. So I sat looking at him, and wanting to ask him things, wanting to find out whether he knew more about what happened. But he was so far away, I knew any question would go unanswered.
The wagon lurched, dipping through a gully. Dad yelled at the team. “Come on, Pint. Ed.”
“He could still be alive,” Bob said.
A long silence followed, and I felt a small sense of panic at the thought, of how frightening it would be to see someone you thought was dead suddenly walk into the house. Yet it did seem possible.
“You never know,” Dad muttered, voicing my thoughts.
“I don’t see much use thinking like that,” Mom said. “We’ve all suffered enough. No sense having him die twice.”
At first, I felt myself obey this suggestion, surrendering to years of conditioning. After all, logically, it was best to assume George was dead, and be surprised if we were wrong. But a voice somewhere inside me protested loudly, not wanting to give up hope.
I pulled myself to one elbow, and looked around to see how much further we had to go. I groaned when I saw the tiny house in the distance. I turned back, looking in the direction we’d come, at the buttes. There was still a faint hint of smoke drifting just above the tablet ops. And the sun, moving higher into the sky, floated in the smoke like a giant orange balloon.
“Tired, Blake?” Dad asked.
“Mm-hm.”
“When did you get in? I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Don’t know. Way after midnight.”
“It was five,” Mom answered. “You only slept about a half hour before Annie came back and told us about the fire.”
I groaned again. And laid back into the jerking, rolling motion of the wagon.
But any thoughts of rushing into the house and falling into bed died the minute the wagon came to a halt. Mom had to cook breakfast. Bob went to feed and water the team, and Dad and Jack had to get the horses ready for
their day in the fields. Which left the milking to me.
If not for the swishing tail of our old milk cow, and the mewing of our mousers rubbing against my legs, I’m sure they would have found me sound asleep against that old cow’s ribs. As it was, I milked her dry, although the teats kept slipping from my weary fingers. And as I milked, I thought about the day, about how much work I’d done in the hours since I’d returned home, and how if I hadn’t been there to do the small things I did, someone else would have had to take the time to do them. Time they didn’t have. And I knew that they needed me. That the ranch was my master now. My teacher. It was time to stay.
I carried two full buckets into the house, where I was so hungry that I gladly delayed sleep for another half hour when I smelled bacon, eggs, and fried potatoes. I realized that I hadn’t eaten dinner the night before. I devoured my first helping, then filled my plate again.
“Hi, Blake.” My sister Katie greeted me as she came from her room and sat up to the table. She rubbed her eyes, which were red. Her cheeks were moist.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I’m fine. I was a little scared when I woke up, because I didn’t know where anybody was. Muriel was the only one here.”
I tousled her curly head. “You’re okay now, though?”
Again she nodded, but she was clearly putting on a brave face. I imagined that Mom had told her to stop her crying, that we had enough to think about without someone crying. I could see she was still scared.
“Are you going to work on your garden today?” I asked her.
This made her face light up. Katie was the worst gardener in the county, but to her credit, she was the only one who didn’t realize it. She was fiercely proud of her tiny formation of drooping, dried plants, and she tended them—digging, weeding, and dumping buckets of water over them—with a devotion we all admired with some degree of amusement.
“I’m gonna see if there’s any potatoes today,” she announced.
“Great,” I said, shoveling food. “Maybe we can go out to the little house later this afternoon.”
Katie’s eyes grew. “Really?” she asked.
I nodded.
Katie bounced in her chair.
A few years before, Katie and I had been rummaging through the old deserted shed behind the original homestead house that Dad had built in 1898. Katie suggested that we pretend that the little structure was our own house, and that we were pioneers. It had become her favorite game. She used whatever knickknacks she could find to set up a tiny household, with a table, and two old tin plates. She adopted Mom’s personality, instructing me to do the same chores she heard Mom give our father. I took an old hammer and pounded on the walls, pretending to put up pictures, and do repairs. We pretended to paint, and Katie set up an old orange crate, using it as a fake stove. As I got older, I had lost interest in the game. But any time Katie needed cheering up, I knew what would do it.
We all ate with ferocious, focused energy, as we usually did after a hard day of work. One chair, next to Dad, stood empty.
“When are you going to go back to school, Blake?” Katie asked.
I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t think I’m going back,” I said.
All heads rose, and my mom’s hand fell, her fork clanging against her plate. “What?” she asked.
I finished chewing a mouthful of food, and swallowed. “I’m not going back. I’m going to stay.”
Although I could see the confusion in my mother’s face, she looked down at her plate, took a deep breath, and resumed eating.
“He’s right, Mother. We’re going to need him now,” Dad said.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Of course.” She took a bite of eggs and chewed, but her dream of having one child finish high school had been dashed one more time. George had never even considered the possibility, leaving school when he was twelve. And although Jack would have liked to stay in school because it was easier than working, by the time he was fifteen, they needed the extra back. He was barely passing anyway.
“I don’t want to go to Belle Fourche, either,” Katie announced. “I want to stay here, too.”
“Well, you’ve got a few years to think about that, honey,” Dad said.
“I don’t have to think about it,” Katie said. “I already know.”
“I bet you’ll think twice when Audrey goes,” I said, and although Katie said nothing, I could see the wheels turn at the mention of her best friend.
“You’re going, and there will be no more talk about it,” Mom said.
Katie rolled her eyes.
After breakfast, I stumbled to my room, where I stretched my tired limbs and dropped my clothes. The fall air chilled my skin, and I wrapped my arms around my chest. Standing in the middle of the room, I gazed down at George’s bed for the second time that morning.
Just then, a figure swept past the window, swearing. It was Jack, who walked over to dip some water from the well. He had cut his thumb, and he muttered to himself as he washed it off, then studied it. After washing his thumb, Jack shook it in the air, then he suddenly stooped down, grabbed a dirt clod, and flung it with all his strength into the well. Then he stopped, and with his back to me, raised his hands to his head. Both hands landed palm down on top of his head, and rested there for a moment. Then they clamped down, clasping the hair on his head. He raised his eyes toward the sky and stood there like that for a long time, his hands tangled in his hair.
Because my head was still foggy, and because I simply didn’t think about these things much at the time, it didn’t occur to me then that Jack was now next in line to take over the ranch. I’d heard stories through the years of battles for land among siblings. But I thought that would never happen in our family. We were a family first and foremost. Little did I realize that the history of my father’s family was anything but harmonious.
I turned away from the window, and sank onto my bed, where I spotted George’s baseball cradled in a hollow among the blankets. And I struggled to accept the standard practice of my family and the people around me—the pragmatic, realistic approach to death, where you move on and do what’s in front of you, recognizing that there’s little time for mooning around thinking about things you have no control over.
I circled George’s ball with my fingers and laid down, falling immediately into a deep sleep, and when I woke up hours later, still lying in exactly the same position, the ball had fallen from my hand and rolled across the floor, resting against the bedroom door.
2
summer 1917
“Blake, take me fishing tonight.” Katie stood next to my chair, bouncing up and down, her sausage curls unfurling with each bend of the knee. “Pleeeeease.”
I slowly scooped fried potatoes into my mouth. My hands were so stiff and blistered that I could barely hold my fork. I had spent all of the previous day clearing a pasture of sagebrush, using a grub hoe. Today would be more of the same. It was a tedious, grueling job, not one I enjoyed, and for the first time in months, I was regretting my decision to leave school.
“Nah, Katie. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to take you tonight.” I poked another bite of potatoes. “I won’t be home until dark. Besides, I’m going to be pretty worn out.”
Katie clenched her fists and punched downward, stomping one foot. She had just come off a week-long bout with the flu, and although she was still weak, and chalk-white, she had never been patient with inactivity. Mom came in from the barn, lugging two full milk buckets. She kicked the door shut.
“Mom, Blake won’t take me fishing tonight.”
Mom stood up, sighing, and looked at me with a raised brow. I ignored her, going back to my breakfast.
“You really shouldn’t be going out yet anyway, Katie,” Mom said, but it was clear that she knew that this line of reasoning would not work with her headstrong young daughter. “Maybe you ought to wait and ask him again when he gets home,” she added, to my relief. I hoped that by evening, Jack and Dad woul
d be back from Belle Fourche, where they had taken a load of grain the afternoon before. Then she could pester one of them.
“We’ll see how I’m feeling when I get back,” I said, which barely pacified my sister. But Katie was soon occupied with something else, and as I prepared to leave, she was filling a bucket from the well to go water her garden. I carried the bucket for her, and studied the twisted, withered plants that bent with their own weight. Katie began pouring the water, holding the bucket awkwardly in her tiny hands. The water poured unevenly, but she didn’t seem bothered by this, moving down the line.
“Everything looks great, Katie. Looks like you’re going to have a good crop this year.”
She blushed.
As was usually true, I felt better about the job ahead of me once I got out into the open air. It wasn’t as hot as usual for July. I rode at a leisurely pace, studying the thick grass. We’d had a fairly cold, snowy winter, which meant a big spring runoff. The country had not looked this good for several years, with bright green grass and fat, healthy livestock.
My horse Ahab and I wandered along the river, following a two-rut dirt road until we came to the crossing, where the ruts descended at an angle down the slope into the muddy waters of the Little Missouri. I had to coax Ahab down the bank, as the black mud was moist, and slippery. He eased into the river, which just washed his belly. He hesitated midstream, and I found myself kicking him, harder than necessary.
George’s body had still not been found. And each time I crossed the river, I was well aware of the possibility that my brother was probably hung up beneath that rush of muddy water somewhere. The image gnawed at me whenever I crossed. And although I always glanced quickly to each side, my heart would rise into my throat, hoping that I wouldn’t catch sight of a bobbing foot, or a patch of hair poking from the water.
In Open Spaces Page 3