Hope on the Plains

by Linda Byler

  Jerry left that day with no idea that Hannah was in need of a horse. Hannah was so angry she decided to walk to the café in Pine if she had to. She’d never ask that arrogant man for so much as a stick.

  Manny took it on himself to ride over to the Jenkinses to ask for a horse, telling them of Hannah’s need. Of course, Hod provided.

  A brown horse with a black mane and tail, an evil glint in his bulging eyes, large yellow teeth he bared repeatedly, as if the sight of them would buy him instant control over any human being.

  He took a strong dislike to Hannah, who promptly named him Buck, knowing half of North Dakota’s wild-eyed, half-broke mustangs were called Buck.

  Hannah was as determined to ride him as Buck was determined she wouldn’t. Dust flew from the area surrounding the barn as he shied, crow hopped, and kicked his way across the dead grass and dirt.

  After one especially bad hopping, he arched his back and leaped like a grasshopper, unseating Hannah, who slid sideways off the saddle, landing on one shoulder, her legs folding like a piece of fabric beneath her.

  She got to her feet, grasped her stomach and gasped in pain, every gulping breath a shooting pain in her ribs.

  Manny caught Buck, then came to stand by her, watching quietly, knowing his sister well. Any word of condolence would be batted to the ground like a whining insect, her pride so thoroughly battered that no could help.

  She was bent over, taking small painful breaths, her eyes wide as if she was astonished. After a while, she straightened slowly, ran a hand across her left side, grimaced, flopped a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed. She gave a small laugh, almost a sob.

  “Give me the reins.”

  “You can’t, Hannah. You can’t.”

  “I can, and I will.”

  Manny stood helplessly, as Hannah, white-faced, her mouth contorted with pain, grabbed the reins, swung herself into the saddle with obvious effort, and kept her seat as the horse immediately began his maneuvers to unseat her.

  Sarah came from the house, shouting, waving her arms. This was too much for her, so she tried to put a stop to the horrible spectacle of Hannah’s life being in danger.

  “Manny, you must stop this!” she pleaded.

  “You know she won’t stop, Mam.”

  They watched as she kept her seat, a firm hand on the reins. She goaded the unruly horse with the stirrups, kicking her legs to the side to bring them crashing against his sides, which only served the purpose of antagonizing him further.

  The horse hunched his back, hopped, kicked, and shied sideways, but Hannah remained seated, grim with pain and single-mindedness. She was staying on this cranky horse, there were no two ways to look at it.

  Unseated again, she landed hard on her backside. Her chin flopped onto her chest, and her teeth gouged a formidable hole in her tongue, blood pouring from the wound and forming a grotesque appearance of serious injury, when in truth, the worse abuse was to her pride.

  Sarah cried out, grabbed Hannah’s arm, her face terrible with fear and outrage. “Hannah! You must stop! You have to stop this nonsense and come to the house. That horse will do you serious harm.”

  Hannah took up her skirt hem to staunch the flow of blood, refused her mother’s pleading, grabbed the reins from Manny, and got back on the horse, who eyed her with belligerence, and began his antics all over again.

  When she flew through the air a third time, coming down hard on one knee, her head flopping forward like a rag doll, Sarah cried out and ran to her, crying in earnest as she tried to pick her daughter up.

  This time, Hannah followed her mother to the house, hobbling on one good leg, dragging the other, blood running from her mouth, splattered with dust and dirt, sniffing back the blood and mucus that poured from her nose.

  She was spitting and gagging on the porch, so Sarah stayed with her, watching to make sure she wouldn’t be sick, or faint from the pain.

  They went inside as Eli and Mary watched wide-eyed, their pencils poised above the tablets they were writing on.

  “What happened?” Mary quavered.

  “Oh my, children. Weren’t you watching from the window?” Sarah asked, applying a cold washcloth to Hannah’s mouth.

  “Ouch!” Hannah yelled, flinging the washcloth across the room.

  “She was trying to ride a new horse,” Sarah called back over her shoulder as she bent to retrieve the washcloth.

  So be it, then, she thought. Let her suffer. She rinsed the cloth, put in the washtub with the other soiled laundry, and set to punching down her bread dough.

  Hannah hobbled to the bathroom, bent to peer into the mirror. The painful throbbing in her mouth had to be more than a cut in her tongue. It was. She’d knocked a tooth out, a bleeding black spot where the tooth should have been. At least it was on the bottom. No one would notice. Must have gone clear through her tongue.

  No cold washcloth was going to do a bit of good. She’d have pain for days, so she may as well get used to it. She opened a drawer, got out a clean rag, and applied it, then sat on the wooden rocking chair and closed her eyes.

  The sound of Sarah punching bread dough, working it, kneading with her hands, was strangely comforting. It told Hannah that her mother would let her alone to handle her wounds in her own way, that she was capable of doing just that, and life would go on the way it had before.

  The scratch of the children’s pencils on paper, Abby’s soft guttural baby talk, the crackle of the fire in the firebox of the kitchen range, were all comforting, normal sounds of everyday life. She’d heal. No use telling anyone she had a missing tooth. It was no one’s business.

  But her knee was on fire, shooting pains that went from her ankle to her thigh. Tentatively, she moved her foot from left to right. Then she lifted her heel off the floor, resulting in more stinging pain. She could bend it all right, so nothing was broken. Her ribs, she couldn’t say. There was a tender spot so sore she could barely place the tip of one finger on it. Likely she had cracked or broken ribs, but that wasn’t anyone’s business either. She could hide that, as well.

  But that night when she went to lie down, she cried out with the sharp sensation in her back, bringing Sarah to the door of her bedroom. Hannah told her she believed there was a mouse under her dresser; it had scared her, running over her foot.

  “We’ll have to set a trap,” Sarah said, and left the room.

  There was only one way Hannah could rest, and that was gently rolling on her left side, drawing her knees up to help balance the weight on what she now believed to be a broken rib. Probably more than one.

  Luckily, her job at the café started the following Tuesday, which allowed her almost a week to heal. There was no question of getting back on that unruly horse’s back until she had healed.

  As it was, she rode painfully into Pine on Goat, white-faced, perspiring beneath her layer of heavy coats, the pain almost more than she could bear. Her family needed to eat, so she had to do this. There was no turning back, no self-pity. It was an obstacle that she needed to face, and she did.

  Betsy greeted her at the back door with words that were less than kind or caring. “You look washed out, girl. Like you seen a ghost. Well, come on. Git going here. We’re on behind. Got a special going. Seems like folks are dirt poor, but these men can come up with a dollar for a cup of coffee and eggs and home fries.

  She yelled at Bernice, the sallow, pimply-faced young woman who was shoving a mound of fried potatoes into a huge, black, cast iron skillet.

  “Show this one around. Name’s Hannah. And watch yer mouth. She ain’t used to the kind of language comes from your mouth.”

  Bernice didn’t say hello, offer a hand, not even a nod. “Call me Bernie. This here’s the egg pan. Lard up here on the shelf. Them’s the eggs. We got sausage, bacon, or steak, but don’t use a lot. Folks ain’t got the money. Sometimes, the judge from the courthouse comes by and he gits steak. Eats the bloody thing half raw.

  “This here’s the deep fryer, potato cutter. Hamb
urgers made in the same pan as the potatoes. Fry ’em hot and crispy. Bread here on the shelf. We hafta make the soups yet. Bean soup, vegetable soup, and rivvel soup with milk. Saltines on a plate. I’m the cook. You’re the helper. You do whatever I say, and we’ll git along great.”

  Hannah nodded and thought Bernice was like Buck, all eyes and yellow teeth. Hannah disliked Betsy, Bernice, and every customer she was forced to serve. She hated the way the men ogled her way of dressing, waiting quietly without saying a friendly word while she set down platters of potatoes and eggs, filled coffee cups, her mouth throbbing, her ribs stinging with pain.

  If Betsy or Bernice brought their food, there was instant banter, loud laughter, jokes thrown across the room, but the minute Hannah appeared, the silence was stifling.

  Well, nothing to do for it. Her mouth hurt too much to talk anyway, so let them gawk at her Amish dress and the dichly pinned to her head.

  Bernice said her appearance at least shut them up. “Can’t stand that Roger Atkins,” she said. “He thinks he can come in here and eat like a …” She caught herself, then continued, “Like a hog, then leave me or Betsy no tip. Not a penny. Complains about the price of a dollar for his coffee and eggs. I told him the other day if he don’t wanna pay it, he can go home to his old lady and eat hers. That made him mad!”

  Hannah moved fast, learned what needed to be done, and went ahead and did it without asking. Weak with pain and hunger, she almost cried when Bernice told her they were allowed a half-hour break after the lunch rush.

  They were only allowed to eat breakfast leftovers, soup, or bread. Meat was too expensive, and it cost too much to drink the sodas, but they were allowed one cup of coffee or a glass of tea.

  Hannah sank gratefully into a rickety old chair in the corner, balanced a bowl of bean soup with one hand and two thick slices of buttered toast on the other. She ate carefully, out of anyone’s sight, soaking the toast in the hot broth, eating and savoring every mouthful in spite of the pain.

  Surely she had never been so grateful for a hot bowl of soup. Her outlook and energy revived, her cheeks blooming with an attractive blush, she carried out the legendary steak to the judge from the courthouse, the one Bernice had mentioned.

  Gray hair lined his temples, but he was younger and far more attractive than Bernice had let on. The judge looked up from the paper he was reading, his brown eyes kindly taking in the strange appearance of this tall girl who brought him breakfast.

  The courthouse was in Dorchester, but there was a small, squalid room behind the garage in Pine that served as a sheriff’s office. When he came to the dusty little town of Pine with paperwork, or he needed to pick up reports, he liked to stop at Betsy’s café for a steak with his eggs.

  No one could fire up a grill as hot as Betsy, producing legendary steaks, perfect eggs every time, and biscuits as big as saucers with the consistency of a pillow. Spread with homemade plum jam, it kept him coming back at least once a week.

  He had no interest in any of the women who worked at Betsy’s, but he enjoyed the easy banter with which he could joust verbally, always giving Betsy a good argument. She knew he was smart—all judges were brilliant—so it was a challenge to voice her strong opinions on any subject. All these farmers and ranchers knew in these parts was the weather, hay, and cows, always in that order.

  His name was Dale Jones, in his forties, more or less, never married, never met a girl he couldn’t live without. He enjoyed his work, kept a neat house on Ridge Street in Dorchester with the help of the Widow Mary Billing, who was at least sixty and as thin and wrinkled as a strip of beef jerky.

  Dale Jones’s life was predictable and well-ordered. He presided over the small country courthouse, sending mischief-makers and miscreants to jail, sentencing thieves and drunks and murderers, which were rare but frequent enough to keep him riffling through the occasional law book.

  Hannah walked out as if she owned the place, tall, thin, and disdainful, carrying the tray as if she was queen for the day. She placed it in front of him with the long, tapered fingers on her well-shaped hands, stepped back, and glared at him, then turned on her heel and left.

  Dale Jones blinked twice. He felt an ill-timed flush suffuse his face, the need to follow her to apologize for being here at the café, in fact, to make amends for his existence, and for the fact that it didn’t snow this winter. He watched the swinging door until it was still, then shivered with the sensation of a cold winter wind swirling over his table.

  He picked up his fork, broke the yolk of an egg, lifted his head to look at the swinging door to the kitchen again. He was afraid she would return; afraid she would not.

  The judge picked up his serrated steak knife, proceeded with his usual sawing motion, severing a nice mouthful, the crispy outer edge falling away as he worked. He used his fork to spike a piece and thrust it into his mouth.

  Back in the kitchen, Betsy ordered Hannah back out to his table. “The first rule is, serve the food, let him eat, then go see if he needs a refill of his drink, or if he wants anything else.”

  Hannah eyed her boss, cold-eyed, her arms crossed, fingers gripping her elbows. “He can ask.”

  Betsy stepped closer, shoved her face into Hannah’s startled one. “You wanna work for me, you do as you’re told. I run the show here. You don’t. Go!”

  Hannah went. She had never felt so silly, so unnecessary. How do you ask someone if their meal is to their liking? What if it wasn’t? What if he didn’t want a refill? What if he wished she didn’t exist?

  She reached his table. He looked up.

  Hannah arched a perfect eyebrow, decided to tell it like it is. “Look, I’m not comfortable asking you if your food is good, or if you need more water. I’m new at this, so if you want something, you’ll have to ask.”

  Dale Jones sat back in his chair, arched an eyebrow back at her, and asked what she meant by that?

  “I don’t like to serve someone.”

  “Then you had better look for another job.”

  “There is none.”

  “Hard times?”

  Hannah nodded and left.

  Betsy returned, immediately began her garrulous queries, whereupon Dale immediately changed the subject, asking who the new girl was, with just the right amount of nonchalance.

  “Oh, they’re homesteaders. Buncha Amish came out here thinkin’ to git rich with horses and windmills and whatever else they got goin’. This Detweiler family’s been here awhile. The old man was killed by a crazy cow, wife and kids hangin’ on. This is the oldest daughter. Tough as nails. The only reason they stay here. Don’t look fer any of ’em to outlast the drought, if it keeps on.”

  “How do they make a living?” he asked.

  “Cows. A herd they started. Gardening. The mother’s old man back wherever they come from helps ’em out. S’ what folks is sayin’, although I can’t rightly tell.”

  Dale Jones nodded, chewed, contemplated the word “Amish.” He slanted a look at Betsy.

  “What’s Amish mean?”

  “Beats me. They dress weird. Sloppy-lookin’ homemade stuff. Supposed ta be better’n normal folks, but I kin tell you right off, this Hannah ain’t. I know lotsa people behave better’n her.”

  “That’s her name? Hannah?”

  “Yep.”

  Betsy changed the subject to the drought, the awful, bone-chilling cold, and if it didn’t rain until spring it would fix the ranchers.

  “This area’s gonna be like the Dead Sea. No life, if’n it don’t rain. You think it wouldn’t affect you, huh? Sittin’ in that courthouse, rakin’ in the money. Who’s gonna go to court if there ain’t nobody around to thieve and carry on?”

  Dale Jones ate his steak and shrugged his shoulders. He wished Betsy would go back to the kitchen and allow him to finish in peace. He was not in the mood to listen to more of her gloomy prophesies.

  But, of course, she drew back a chair and settled herself into it, leaned back and searched his face.

&nbs
p; “You hear about the hardware?”

  Dale Jones shook his head.

  “They say he’s sellin’ out. To who, I couldn’t say. Wife’s crazy in the head. Fred Bird says they’re moving east. Back to Baltimore. Harry come in here the other day, looked sick, fish out of water, eyes buggin’ outta his head. Shoulda seen him. You know Harry? He’s a good man. Good man. You watch, she’ll take him back to wherever they come from, he’ll leave his heart and soul out here on the plains. He won’t last long, you mark my words.”

  “Who’s Fred Bird?”

  “You know Fred. Tall and skinny. Ranches out your way. Runs a few cattle, some sheep. He owns part of the feed mill.”

  Dale Jones nodded, pushed his chair back and reached for a toothpick. His eyes slid to the kitchen door. Betsy noticed. A hot jealousy swelled in her chest.

  When the door swung open and Hannah appeared with a tray of clean glass tumblers, Betsy saw Hannah through Dale’s eyes.

  Creamy, tanned skin, huge dark eyes surrounded by long black lashes. How could anyone have lashes like that if they had no cosmetics available? That tall, easy grace. The small straight nose. Her shoulders held high, her head on the slim neck.

  Ah, Betsy knew the confidence of youth. She knew too that hers had dissipated over the years. A once-firm waistline had developed soft rolls, like the black rubber tube of a tire. Jowls, a heavy neck.

  Betsy sighed, was suddenly grateful for the ebb and flow of her regular customers, the life she lived in her café, serving ordinary folks in ordinary ways. She didn’t need Dale Jones.

  CHAPTER 23

  April came and went. The cold blew itself out and a warm, dry wind took its place. The grass bent and rustled, broken and battered by the winds of winter. Some yellow-green color appeared at the base of the buffalo grass, the sedges, and switch grass, all native grasses that made up the tough, hardy winter pastures.

  Some of the ranchers, like the Klassermans, had introduced bromegrass, also crested wheat grass that was better for hay. No new growth showed on any of it, only the rattling of hollow stems, bent by the endless gale, covered by the gray brown dust and sand-like grit.