“Yes, ma’am.” John licked his lips and looked at the buckets, the question showing on his face.
I glanced at Isaac. He shook his head but said, “One finger. Stick one finger in and lick it. That’ll hold you till supper.” Mary, John, and Liz each put a finger in one of the buckets and then, their cheeks pulling, they sucked their fingers dry.
“All right now,” I said. “There’s dinner to get on.” What there was of it, I thought. I took Liz’s hand; she gripped it tight. I looked at Isaac, but he was heading off to the corral carrying two of the buckets. There the horses stood near the railing, their nostrils quivering like they knew water was coming.
“Come on,” I said to the children, and we began the climb up the rise to our wood house, Mary and John with the buckets, Liz holding on to me while Isaac went the other way.
2
LIZ
It was later that day when Isaac came into the kitchen; he’d been out in the east pasture. His shirt, wet with sweat, stuck to his back. The heat had worked on my nerves, making my skin prickle and my feet swell up. I was peevish with the children. They kept asking for water and for something to eat. I told them to sit down, quit all that whining, supper was coming in due time. Then I swatted Emma’s bottom. She was two, and I was in no mood for her fussiness.
Putting Liz in the well was wrong. I should have stopped Isaac from doing it, I should have stood up to him. But I hadn’t, and that shamed me. The only time I’d ever stood up to him was before we were married. Now, when I believed he was wrong, when Liz needed me to stand my ground, I had forgotten how.
Isaac came into the kitchen and hung his wide-brimmed hat on a peg. My shame kept me from looking at him. “Six more dead,” he told me, his voice low. I gave him a rag to wipe the white dust from his face and hands. The children were just a step away, lined up on the benches along the table, napkins tucked into their collars. I had scared them into being quiet. They were peeking at me and Isaac, listening. “Pneumonia,” Isaac said.
I’d lost track of how many cows that made altogether. “Sixtyseven,” he said, like he had read my mind.
The first time we lost a cow to a sickness, I figured we’d butcher it and make steaks. It’d see us through for a good long time. But Isaac wouldn’t do it; he’d heard of people dying that way. He didn’t trust the meat, and I always went along with him. Today, I wasn’t so sure. Today, I would have been willing to chance it. The thought of steaks made my mouth water.
Steaks were for city folks, though, not for us. In the Badlands, a rancher what butchered a healthy cow for his own family was thought a foolish man. It didn’t matter if his children were hungry. Cows were that man’s livelihood, and to eat one was the same as eating dollar bills by the handful.
Breathing deep, Isaac looked into the iron pot simmering on the cookstove. There wasn’t much to look at, just stringy meat from the scrawny red and brown hen the children had called Miss Bossy up until then. That and a few brown-edged shreds of cabbage.
Isaac wiped his forehead with the rag, then looked into the pitcher. “Jerseybell’s not giving much milk.”
I stirred the stew, scraping the bottom of the pot where it was sticking some. “I know it,” I said.
“Still have a fair amount of tobacco saved,” he said. “Al McKee might be willing to swap for a can of milk.” Still stirring, I nodded to show I was listening. There was only one short row of tin cans on the cupboard shelf that hung off to the side of the cookstove. Isaac picked up one of the tins—pears, I thought it was. He ran his finger around the rim as he looked at the shelf. I hoped Isaac was seeing how bad things were in the kitchen. I hoped he was working out a plan that was bigger than a can of milk. He put the tin back. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go to town, see about getting in supplies.”
I’d been waiting to hear those words for a week. I said, “I’ll get a list together.”
“I’m not going to Interior,” Isaac said. “Last time Johnston’s prices were sky high. Hard times is no excuse to gouge honest people. I’d rather go to Scenic. Prices can’t be any worse there.”
That meant he’d be gone overnight, but I’d get by. The baby was probably two weeks off, give or take a day or so. But even if the baby was just a few days away, I wouldn’t have stopped him, not with supplies running out and five children to feed. I tied rags on the pot’s handles and said, “You’ll go tomorrow?”
“First thing.”
“I’ll cut your hair after supper then.” I tried not to think about all the money it would take to buy supplies. I carried the pot of stew to the head of the table where the children were quiet, still smarting, I figured, from my sharp tongue.
“Now come on and eat,” I said to Isaac.
He gave his neck one more wipe with the rag as he looked at the children. Then all at once, he pulled in a deep breath, put his shoulders back and his head up. He clicked his heels together and snapped a salute to me.
“Troops, supper’s being served. Bow your heads.”
They all giggled. Except for Liz.
It was still full light when supper was over, but most always you could count on the day’s work easing up after the dishes were washed and put up on the cupboard shelf. Out on the porch, Alise and Emma played on the floor with their rag dolls. Liz was there too, but she wasn’t playing. She just sat, her head down, her knees drawn up under her chin. Nearby, Isaac was on the kitchen stool he had carried out. I put a cloth around his broad shoulders and began combing his hair, working out the grit and knots. Usually, I took pleasure in cutting his hair; it wasn’t anything like mine. His was wavy and brown, and only his sideburns showed white. Mine was just the other way: springy, tight, and black with gray showing up in too many places. But tonight I couldn’t stop looking over at Liz. It was wrong what we’d done.
Isaac said, “Up there on the barn roof, over on the east corner. Looks like a few shingles are working loose. The wind catches them wrong and they’ll be gone. I’ll fix them as soon as I get back.”
“Always something,” I said, working the scissors around one of his ears, but in my mind I was seeing Liz tied to the plank, the wind blowing her over the open well. We needed the water, but that didn’t make it right. Still, we did it and there was no going back.
“Rachel,” Isaac said. “You all right?”
Put your mind to your work, I told myself. “Yes,” I said. “It’s the light—it’s hard to see.”
I worked at the back of his neck. Mary took the girls—Liz, Alise, and Emma—to the outhouse, and when they got back, Mary went off to the barn to tend to the milk cow. Caring for Jerseybell was her favorite chore. Mary had been two when Isaac got Jerseybell. She liked the cow right off, and when she got bigger, Isaac told her the cow was hers to care for. Mary took that to heart. She was the one what did the milking and she was the one what fed and watered Jerseybell. When Jerseybell’s stall needed cleaning, Mary did that too.
I blew the cut hair off of Isaac’s neck and shook out the cloth I’d put around his shoulders. I gathered up the comb and scissors and took the girls inside. Liz and four-year-old Alise unhooked each other’s dresses, stepped out of them, and hung them up on the wall pegs. I undressed Emma, but I couldn’t keep from watching Liz. Her eyes were too wide, giving her a startled look. She was afraid to close them, I realized all at once. The well had made her scared of the dark.
I stood the girls in a row and dusted the grit from their hands and faces with a dry rag. They sat on the edge of their low bed and stuck out their legs so I could get to the bottoms of their calloused feet. That done, they stood and put their arms straight up. I pulled their white nightdresses down over their heads; they wrestled their arms through the openings.
In bed, the three little girls laid flat on their backs, Emma in the middle. Liz and Alise each had a leg over her to keep her in place. It was hot, but that was how they did, summer and winter. Most usually it made me smile, but that night I didn’t have a smile in me. Liz’s eyes were
flat like she couldn’t see.
“Mama?” Alise said.
“What?”
“Our story.”
“Oh,” I said. It had slipped my mind. I could hardly think straight for worrying about Liz.
I lit a kerosene lamp and got the book of fairy tales from the parlor. I admired the feel of a book. The cover on this one was worn; Isaac’s mother sent it when our first son, Isaac Two, was born. That was eleven years this past February. I opened the book and held it to each girl’s nose. I always believed that smelling the pages of a book took a person into the story.
“Go on. Say it,” I said, figuring this would do Liz some good.
Alise and Emma wiggled a little, grinning with excitement. “Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” Alise sang with Emma a word or two behind her. Liz didn’t, though. She kept her mouth pressed.
Alise turned her head on the pillow. “What’s the matter, Liz?”
Liz stuck out her bottom lip.
I shuffled through the book, page after page of make-believe about kings wanting sons, poor men seeking gold, and beautiful young women waiting to be rescued by princes.
“Honey,” I said, looking at Liz, “you got a story you’d like to hear?”
She shook her head but said, “Rapunzel.”
I found the story and held the book as close to the lamp as I could. My reading eyes were fading on me. Isaac used a magnifying glass to read by, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it. I already felt like an old woman. I’d rather guess at the words. I knew the stories well enough to do that.
Squinting some, I read. The girls listened as if the story might be different this time or as if they had never heard of Rapunzel, the girl with the long fine hair like spun gold who lived locked in a tower pining for her handsome prince.
“Prayers,” I said when the story ended, and together we thanked Jesus for looking after us and keeping us safe. “Sleep tight,” I told them and kissed each one on the cheek. I picked up the lamp.
“Mama?” Liz said.
I turned back.
“Mama, there was a snake. In the well.”
Alise and Emma looked at Liz, then looked at me. I put the lamp on the dresser and felt Liz’s forehead. I said to her, “You aren’t scared of snakes, are you? You’ve never been before.”
Liz gripped my hand. “It was in the well and it came at me.”
“Did it hurt you, honey?”
“It tried to. I kicked it and it hissed me.”
Alise and Emma sucked in their cheeks.
I said, “But you got it?”
Liz shook her head. “It went behind a rock but I saw its eyes. They were red. It’s waiting to get me, Mama.”
Emma’s face screwed up. I put my fingertips on her lips and patted them, hoping to keep her from crying. “A red-eyed snake, why, that’s the best kind,” I said. “That’s a good snake, just surprised to see you, Liz, that’s all. Not used to seeing a child in the well. Probably just curious.”
Liz puckered her forehead. She wanted to believe me, I thought, but was finding it hard to do.
“A friendly snake?” Alise said.
“Like a bull snake,” I said. “Now go on to sleep.”
I pried Liz’s hand from mine and kissed the back of it. I wanted to take away her fear. I did. But that wasn’t how it worked. She had to carry it all by herself. Like we all had to. But looking at her in her bed, I knew I had to stop that fear from getting bigger.
I said, “Think about Rapunzel with all that yellow hair.”
Liz nodded.
“I’ll leave the lamp.”
Isaac was outside on the porch in his rocking chair. His pencil was behind his ear and his accounts book was on the plank floor by his left-hand side. Like always in the evening, he’d been recording the day. It was his way to keep a constant tally on the cattle, the weather, and any money spent and any money earned. I wondered if he had made mention of Liz in the well. I wondered if he recorded that I didn’t like it, and that it took Mary to help him. I figured I’d never know. The book was Isaac’s. It wasn’t mine to read.
The wind had settled into a breeze, and we didn’t need our bandannas. I sat down beside him in the other rocker and put my mending basket on the floor. Isaac put his head back to study the sky. When we built the house, I had hoped for a porch with a roof, but we ran out of wood. “Next year,” Isaac had said at the time. Over my knees, I flattened the shirt that Liz had worn and studied the rip, wanting to set it right.
Liz was a lot like Isaac. She could take on a shine like something funny had just crossed her mind, and like Isaac, she could take the most everyday thing and turn it into a story worth hearing. But she didn’t look the least bit like him even though she was almost as light as him. Like me, she was little-boned and short.
Squinting, I jabbed the thread at the needle’s eye a few times.
Isaac said, “Look there.” He pointed northward across a stretch of prairie land that swelled up into small hills and dipped into easy valleys. Just past was a craggy string of sandstone buttes. Their stony points were stark against the softening sky. I knotted the thread and poked the needle back into the pincushion. The biggest butte, the one close to the middle of the range, was called Grindstone Butte. The western sun had caught it just right—it shimmered like a storybook castle of gold with handfuls of diamonds tossed here and there.
“Still something, isn’t it?” Isaac said.
I pushed together the sides of the tear in the shirt and pinned it with my straight pins. The baby gave a little kick; I shifted some in my chair. I said, “What we did today was bad.”
“I didn’t take any pleasure in it either.”
“Liz is scared.”
“She’s all right.”
“She’s gone all quiet. Her eyes have a bad look.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“We can’t do it to her again. We can’t.”
“Damn it. What do you want me to do?”
“I—”
“Snap my fingers? Do some kind of rain dance? Is that what you have in mind?”
I winced. “No.”
“Lose the horses? Jerseybell? Let the children go without?”
My resolve crumbled.
“What then?”
“I don’t know.” I stared off at the Grindstone without really seeing it. Years back I had learned this. Isaac was smart; he knew what to do. Then there was this. A man and his wife fell apart when they fought. Even when they didn’t see eye to eye, they had to put their shoulders together and push in the same direction. Folks who didn’t, didn’t stand a chance. Not in the Badlands.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re doing what you have to, I know that. Just wish there was another way.”
He didn’t say anything. He sat in his rocker, stiff and unmoving as he stared off to where the sun was meeting up with the horizon. Grindstone and the other buttes were orange by then, and their long shadows darkened the pastureland. The dried stalks of prairie grasses swished in the breeze. Far off, cattle bellowed their hunger and thirst. It was a sound I had come to hate. It was the kind of sound that made my chest tighten. It was the kind of sound that made me want to put my hands over my ears.
Isaac stood up, put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled.
“Coming,” John called back. His voice was far away—he must be behind the barn. Then Mary called back too, sounding just as far off. I wanted Isaac to say something to me. I wanted him to say he forgave me for questioning his judgment. But he didn’t say it. He just stared off, watching Mary and John climb the rise, Rounder lagging behind as he nosed through the grass.
Mary and John were halfway up the rise by then, the dried-out grasses crackling under their feet. Strangers might say that Mary and John didn’t look to be related—the girl so dark and the boy a mild shade of brown. But the dimples on their left cheeks were the same; all our children carried that gift. It came from me.
“Nothing
,” John said when he got closer. Like every night, he’d been checking his rabbit traps.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Isaac said.
“Daddy,” Mary said, “Jerseybell’s puny. She’s got the runs.”
“I know it.”
Mary and John stepped back, the sudden sharpness in Isaac’s voice surprising them. “Now go on to bed,” he said to them, “and stop worrying me about that cow.”
“Five pages, Mary,” I said to ease the hurt showing in their eyes. “No more. And just two sips of water. Sips. Understand, both of you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After they went inside, Isaac leaned forward in his rocker, his arms on his legs. He crossed his wrists and let his hands dangle over the sides of his knees. There was a small tear in the knee of his left pant leg. That was one more thing that needed fixing. I’d do it after Isaac went to bed. I folded my mending and closed my sewing basket. I wished he’d say something—anything. From the corner of my eye, I saw him studying the country spread out all around us. He looked tired, the lines around his eyes deep. A wash of tenderness came over me. It was hard on a man when his family had to go without. I wished I could reach out and smooth his worries away.
Until this summer, we had had good luck. Our wheat was suited to the Badlands, and we didn’t have much trouble with grasshoppers. Isaac had an eye for buying cattle that bred easily and stood the winters. Our first spring here, he bought a threshing machine from a homesteader what was selling out. Isaac rented it to other ranchers, and in two years, it paid for itself. As for me, I knew a little something about gardening. On Saturdays, before we had so many children, we got up in the dark and took our produce, eggs too, into Interior and sold them to homesteaders on their way west to Wyoming. There were times we were so worn out we were asleep before dark. But we had twenty-five hundred acres to show for all the work.
“There’s all kinds of ways to earn respect,” Isaac was given to saying. “Owning land’s one of them. A man can’t ever have too much. Especially if that man’s black.”
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Page 2