The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

by Ann Weisgarber

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe ignored this. “The nurse at the clinic gave my sister-in-law cream for the dryness in her skin. It helps in the winter.”

  “That’d come in handy.” I ran the tip of my tongue over my cracked lips. “That reminds me. For Christmas my sister Sue—she lives in Chicago—she sent me a big bottle of something called aspirin. It’s a little white pill. It takes the heat out of a fever. Do you know it?”

  “Yes. Cures headaches too.”

  “Is that right?”

  “So many good medicines,” Mrs. Fills the Pipes said. “But . . . then there is my cousin, Margaret Two Bulls, old enough to know better, looking for the fountain of youth. Thinks it comes in a bottle. Keeps ordering tonics from big-city catalogs.”

  “The fountain of youth, mercy. Has she found it?”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe flapped her hand in the air. “A younger man, that is the fountain she needs.”

  Inez laughed, and then I did too. How good it was to talk woman talk.

  By the cottonwood, Mary was spinning the lariat now. She was a good roper and would practice for hours on end if it weren’t for chores. She threw the rope and caught Liz around the waist. Liz squealed, untangled herself, and then everyone took off running before Mary could rope the next person. It lightened my heart to see Liz play.

  “Please,” I said, holding out the china plate. “Have another biscuit.”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe shook her head no, but Inez helped herself to another piece. Mrs. Fills the Pipe shot her a warning look.

  I said, “The drought’s something else again, isn’t it?”

  “Bad,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

  “I miss the meadowlarks. Can’t hardly wake up without their singing.”

  “One of the elders claims they are all at the Missouri.”

  “Is that right? I wondered what happened to them. I was afraid they were all dead.”

  Franklin, the older boy, had the rope now. He spun it fast. It whipped through the air and lassoed Mary. Franklin reeled her in. Mary laughed.

  I said, “How’s the water table at your place?”

  “Low, but still filling the bucket.”

  I almost told Mrs. Fills the Pipe about our well and how two times now we’d had to send Liz down. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It wasn’t the kind of thing a person talked about. I said, “Sometimes I think about moving to the city.” I stopped, embarrassed by what I’d just said. “I mean to Interior. Or maybe Scenic.”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe glanced at my belly. “Neighbors,” she said.

  “I could stand a few.” Then, because that sounded like a complaint against my home, I said, “As soon as it rains, I’m doing my wash. I’m going to let my wash soak for days. Get all this grit out. Scrub down the house, my hair too.”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe agreed. “Half the Badlands is in my house.”

  “The wind never stops.”

  “This is a hard place. Hard to take, hard to like.”

  I looked at her in surprise. I said, “But aren’t you from here?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” I waited for her to tell me where she’d been born and bred. When she didn’t, I said, “I was born in Louisiana.”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe put her hand to her chest. “The Platte,” she said.

  “The Platte River?”

  “In Nebraska,” she said. “That’s my home.”

  “My goodness,” I said. “My husband soldiered there.”

  There was a small hesitation, then, “Did he?”

  “At Fort Robinson.”

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s rocker went still.

  “Mother,” Inez said. “Don’t.”

  Startled, I looked at the two of them. Mrs. Fills the Pipe stared straight ahead, her mouth set in a hard line. Inez’s hand was on her mother’s arm. Wind whipped around the house, making a shrieking sound. At the cottonwood, the children laughed as Rounder barked and pounced on the rope that Little Luther flicked back and forth in the dried grass. But on the porch a sudden heavy tension wrapped itself around the three of us.

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “This is the home of an army man?”

  “Well, yes, but he’s been out a long time.”

  “I was there. Fort Robinson.”

  “Mother.”

  I said, “Well, then, you—”

  “They rounded us up, held guns to us.”

  My breath caught.

  “Said the Platte was theirs now. Made us live at the fort. It stank. Then they moved us here. Good enough for Indians, they said. Nobody else would want this land.”

  Sweat broke out on my forehead. Mrs. Fills the Pipe was an agency Indian, the kind of Indian what Isaac hated. Agency Indians were worthless drunks; agency Indians were bloodthirsty. They stood in line, their palms up, all too willing to take government handouts. Agency Indians were the worst kind of Indians, and I had two of them sitting on my porch.

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “I remember those army men.”

  A chill ran up my spine. Bloodthirsty. I had to get rid of Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her daughter and those boys what were playing rope with my daughters. “My ironing,” I said, my nerves talking. “It just never goes away. That’s what I was doing. Even when there isn’t any washing, there’s always ironing.”

  She didn’t seem to hear me. She stared off toward the children what were running, laughing, tagging one another. From the corner of my eye I looked over at Inez. She watched her mother, a wary look on her face. She had uncrossed her ankles and had her feet square on the floor. She leaned forward slightly as if she were ready to leave.

  “Wounded Knee Creek,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

  My skin crawled. Soldiers had been killed there.

  “Buffalo soldiers,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said. “Saturdays around dark. I remember that too.”

  “Mother.”

  “It wasn’t enough that they killed us. They had to have our women too.”

  Her words pinned me to my chair. Hot liquid rose up from my chest, burning my throat. I swallowed. “No,” I said.

  She put her porcelain cup on the floor and stood up; Inez did too. I tried to get up but my belly held me down and my hands were filled up with my cup and the china plate with two half biscuits. By the time I scooted to the edge of the rocker, by the time I put my cup and plate on the floor, Mrs. Fills the Pipe and Inez were off the porch and halfway down the rise, the wind pulling at their skirts from all four directions.

  At the wagon, Mrs. Fills the Pipe whistled once, sharp and shrill. Little Luther, Liz, and Alise popped out of the low end of the wash, Rounder zigzagging around their legs.

  Inez pulled herself up onto the wagon’s side step, and once on the buckboard, she gave her mother a hand up. Little Luther climbed up behind her, and from the high buckboard he jumped flat-footed into the bed of the wagon, rocking it. His trick made Liz and Alise giggle. Mrs. Fills the Pipe whirled around and said something to him. He sat down.

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe whistled again. Inez put on her duster. Minutes passed before Franklin and Mary came running from the wash, Emma bouncing in Franklin’s arms. He shifted her to Mary and when he did, I saw how his hand stayed on Mary’s arm while he said something to her. Then he jumped up onto the wagon. He cracked the reins and the wagon jerked forward. The girls ran beside it, waving and calling good-bye.

  Mrs. Fills the Pipe and Inez did not wave back. Neither did they look up at me. All at once furious, I was on my feet, hollering, “And don’t you ever come around here again!” The wind blew my words back at me. They couldn’t hear, and that gave me courage. “You’re nothing but Indians! Agency Indians!” Suddenly spent, I sank back into the rocker.

  “Mama!” Liz and Alise had turned back from the wagon and were running up the rise, their dresses tangling around their knees, yelling about all the fun they’d had. I closed my eyes, cursing myself for inviting squaws to tea, cursing myself for giving them water and food. And Isaac. I didn’t want to think
what he was going to say about all this.

  The girls jumped up onto the porch steps, shaking the floor, jarring my nerves, and making my head hurt. “Hush up,” I snapped. “I hear you just fine.” They were too worked up to pay me any mind.

  “Luther was funny,” Liz said. “He was doing somersaults in the wash. You should’ve seen him. Grit was sticking all over his shirt. His hair too! He shook himself off like Rounder does after rolling.”

  On the porch, Alise crouched low and tucked her head between her knees, eager to try a somersault. Liz gave her push and Alise flopped on her side, giggling. I loosened my sun-hat ribbons, hoping that would ease the headache that had come up from nowhere. Just like the memory that flashed through my mind.

  Fourteen summers ago, I suddenly recalled, a squaw and her half-breed boy had showed up at our homestead. She had come looking for something. I tried to remember what it was, but as the memory began to take shape in my mind, I saw Mary coming up the rise. I leaned forward some. There was something new about her. She was all light and airy even though she carried Emma, squirming, on her hip.

  “Mary?” I said, when she came up onto the porch.

  She didn’t answer. She smiled in a loose kind of way like she had come across a secret that pleased her. Or like she had just been walking with a boy.

  “Mary.”

  “Ma’am?” There was a faraway look in her dark eyes.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing.” She kissed Emma on the forehead and giggled as she swung her to the ground.

  “What’d you and that boy talk about?”

  “Franklin? Oh, nothing much. Just about school, mainly. He’ll be going back in ten days. He goes to the same boarding school as Inez. Or where she used to go. Inez just graduated; smartest girl in her class. She’s so pretty, don’t you think, Mama?” Mary didn’t wait for my answer. “Franklin sleeps in a dormitory there with forty-nine other boys. In bunk beds. So does Luther. I think that would be so much fun, but he says it’s not, not really.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Fifteen. Just turned in July.”

  Isaac would have a fit.

  Just then the memory of the squaw and her half-breed boy came back to me. The boy’s face had chilled me. The squaw was swelled up with a baby. Isaac had run them off but they hadn’t gone far. They showed up the next day.

  “Mama, I’m hungry,” Alise said.

  “Me too, me too,” Liz said, Emma joining in with her, their high-pitched voices making me wince from the pain in my head.

  “Enough,” I snapped. The girls stopped, pressing their lips to swallow their whines. I rubbed my forehead. I never wanted to see Mrs. Fills the Pipe again. She had insulted me in my own home; she had brought up ugly memories.

  “Mary,” I said. “Go corral the horses.”

  She smiled, her eyes still far off. Her mind was on that boy, I thought, that Indian boy. I narrowed my eyes at her. “Enough of that,” I said, startling Mary, bringing her back to herself.

  At least empty bellies were a familiar worry.

  7

  ISAAC

  It was the next afternoon when another wagon—coming from the west—stirred up a dust cloud. This time it wasn’t Indians; it was Isaac and John.

  It should have been a homecoming to lift my heart. They were bringing water and supplies. But my nerves were in a knot. Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her ugly words about buffalo soldiers kept circling in my mind. So did the squaw what showed up at the homestead years back with her half-breed boy. But most of all, I thought about Isaac. He wasn’t going to like it when he heard about Indians sitting on our porch, and he wasn’t going to like it when he found out that I’d done the inviting.

  The girls and Rounder went to the barn to meet Isaac and John, and I followed, not moving near as fast. There, Isaac brought the wagon to a stop and he and John jumped down. “What’d you bring, Daddy?” Alise said. “Candy?” and that started the excitement and the clamor that was always part of a homecoming. Mary and Alise got to guessing about what was in the supply boxes, and I was glad for all the noise. Maybe nobody’d think to mention Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s visit.

  Liz clutched my leg. Her eyes were wide and stared at nothing. “Isaac,” I said, my hand going to the top of Liz’s head. John was standing near him. “Did you get water?”

  “Buckets of it,” Isaac said, directing his words to Liz. “More than enough to wet your whistle.”

  John grumbled something under his breath. I frowned at him. He frowned back. “Mind yourself,” I said, my voice low. John’s eyes darted to Isaac, and Isaac gave him a hard, steadying look. John ducked his head but he was angry. His fists were knotted up. A chill walked up my backbone.

  “How was town?” I said, not knowing what to make of any of this.

  “Like usual,” Isaac said. “For the most part.” He and John locked eyes for a moment before John turned away and went over by the hitched horses. Isaac said, “Folks aren’t themselves right now. This drought’s bringing out the worst in some.”

  Behind Isaac, Mary lifted Alise to the top of one of the wagon wheels. “Careful now,” I called out. Alise’s feet slipped. Mary caught her and pushed her up and over and into the wagon bed. At my side, Emma had a fistful of Liz’s skirt balled up in her hand as she tottered on the rocky ground.

  I turned back to Isaac. “What do you mean? Was it John? Did he misbehave?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “I told you. People aren’t themselves,” he said, his voice as low as mine.

  “Something happened. I can tell.”

  “Nothing did.” Then he said, “Mrs. Svenson.”

  “You had business at the post office?”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Svenson was the postmistress, and her husband was the ticket agent for the railroad. He wasn’t so bad, but Mrs. Svenson didn’t like us, and because we had never given her cause, I always figured it was because we were Negroes. When I used to go to Scenic with Isaac and needed postage to send a letter home, Mrs. Svenson sold it to me without speaking. Instead she stared at me, her blue eyes narrowed as if she expected me to try to steal the stamp. She had a way of curling her lips that showed her yellow teeth. I’d never seen her clean. The front of her dress was always soiled with spots of food. Mrs. DuPree, Isaac’s mother, would have called her poor white trash. My mother would have gone along with that.

  “What’d she do?” I said to Isaac.

  “Doesn’t matter. We got the water.”

  I glanced at John. He had his left hand up on Bucky’s withers, but his eyes were fixed on Mary and Alise what were in the wagon bed. He made like he was listening to all their chatter about the food supplies but I knew different. John was listening to me and Isaac.

  I lowered my voice even more. “Did she say something to John?”

  “No.” The muscles around his mouth were tight. “It was me, if you have to know. She and I had a few words. At the depot. That’s where they’re keeping the water brought by the train. It’s being rationed. You buy it from Anderson at his store, pick it up at the depot.”

  I waited.

  “She claimed all the water was spoken for.”

  My eyes flickered to the wagon’s bed. “But—”

  John said, “She called Daddy ‘boy.’”

  “Lord,” I said, putting my hand out toward Isaac.

  “Forget it,” he said. “I got the water.”

  I pictured the train depot, seeing in my mind a handful of townsmen and a few ranchers too, all there to get water. I imagined Isaac and John standing with them near the water tower, the tracks to their backs. The men talked about the drought, shaking their heads over all the families what had been driven out by the hard times. Isaac was a man with twenty-five hundred acres, and so far he had managed to hang on to every bit of it. In the Badlands—even in the best of times—that earned respect. I imagined how his easy manner with the other men riled Mrs. Svenson.<
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  “Trash,” I said. “She’s nothing but trash.”

  “I said forget it. I have.” Isaac turned around to the wagon. His back stiffened. Mary and Alise stood in the bed, quiet, their eyes wide, staring at us. They had heard, and I saw that they were puzzled, they didn’t understand. Isaac was a grown man, not a boy.

  “Move,” Isaac said to Mary and Alise. The harshness in his voice made them jump away and they stumbled as the wagon rocked. He reached over the side of the wagon and pulled a box to him. All at once, John looked ready to cry. He rubbed at his mouth, tugging at the corners. I wanted to spit out more ugly words about Mrs. Svenson but before I could, Isaac whistled out some air. He let go of the box that he’d pulled to him. He stepped away from the wagon, facing us. He forced a grin that came out lopsided, and then he cleared his throat. “John and I had ourselves quite an adventure on the road. Just a mile or so from here.”

  Nobody said anything. They all—even Liz—looked to be still turning over in their minds what had happened in town. “You did?” I finally said.

  “Yes, ma’am. We had ourselves an adventure.”

  “What happened?” Mary said.

  Isaac gave Mary a quick look of appreciation. “We were just minding our own business, heading home. John had the reins.” A sparkle worked its way into Isaac’s eyes. “I believe we were talking about how well he handled the horses when all of a sudden he said, ‘Look over there—it’s a tornado!’” Isaac had the children’s attention now; even Liz was listening. He let his voice turn serious. “It was a surprise, I’ll tell you. The sun’s shining and here comes a tornado. Right for us. Spinning faster and faster. ‘Take cover,’ John yelled, and you never saw two men move as fast as we did getting under the wagon. We covered our heads—we were ready. But girls, that tornado stopped right in front of our very eyes and turned into a—” He paused. “John, you tell them.”

  John frowned, shaking his head.

  “What was it?” Alise said.

  Isaac looked to the left, then he looked to the right. Alise hunched down in the flatbed. Liz tightened her hold on my leg. Isaac cleared his throat, shaking his head. “No, can’t tell you. It’s too scary. But I’ll say this. It had a tail that stretched from here to the house.”