“Home,” I said. That was what I had told them that morning when they heard me tell Manny Franks to hitch the wagon. That was what I said after I told Manny Franks he was taking me and the children to town.
John said, “But you sent Manny back home, back without us.”
“Never mind that. Come on.” I started walking, the children hurrying to catch up. Our boots clattered on the wooden walk as we went past the Lutheran church, the bank, and the empty lot where the Interior Hotel stood before it burned down. We were the only people out. We walked past the Interior Saloon, and as we did, I put my hand to Emma’s head and tucked her face against the wool of my coat’s collar. I thought about our wood house, about how for the last three days I had worked harder than I ever had before, washing, polishing, and cleaning, getting it ready for the winter. Carrying Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s words about the dead in my mind, I had gotten the cradle from the barn and put it by my bed. I put the baby quilt in it, tucking in the corners. Feeling foolish but willing to do it anyway, I took a scrap piece of paper and wrote “Chicago” in big letters. I put it on top of the baby quilt. “That’s where I’ll be,” I had whispered, “should you come looking.”
Me and the children were at the depot office by then. “John,” I said, nodding my head toward the door, my way of telling him to open it.
He looked at me. “What’re we doing?”
“Mama,” Mary said. “Tell us. Please tell us.”
I couldn’t. There were no words for what I was doing.
“The door,” I said. John hesitated, working up an argument. I gave him my hardest look. Wincing some, he opened the door; it nearly flew when a gust of wind caught it. I put my spare hand to it and we went inside.
A man with yellow hair stood by the open stove. He held a bucket under one arm. I didn’t know him. I nodded a greeting. He nodded back, then reached into the bucket, getting a handful of cow chips. “Well,” he said, “you must be DuPree’s family.” He threw the chips into the stove. Small red flames jumped and crackled. “You meeting up in Lead?”
For a moment it startled me that this stranger knew about Isaac, but then I remembered that Isaac had been to the depot five days before us.
“No,” I said. The children pulled in their breaths; I didn’t look at them. Instead I looked at the chalkboard behind the counter. The train to Sioux Falls left at 1:19 P.M. A wash of memories came over me. Sioux Falls was where Zeb and Iris Butler lived. Sioux Falls was where me and Isaac first came to know each other. It was where I had my first chance at pleasing him.
I pulled in some air, willing myself to study the prices printed on the chalkboard. A ticket to Chicago was thirty cents more than Manny Franks had said. I worked out the arithmetic, my mind almost too jumpy to hold on to the figures. I did the arithmetic again and went weak with relief. I had enough money.
I kept my eyes fixed on the chalkboard, needing next to work out the trip. From Sioux Falls me and the children would get the Chicago-bound train. I said, “Six tickets, please.”
“Where to?” the depot man said, coming around to the back side of the counter.
“Chicago.”
One of the little girls giggled. “Mama,” I heard Mary whisper. “Mama.”
“It ain’t cheap,” the man said.
Heat rose to my cheeks. This white man, the corners of his mouth lifted in a narrow grin, was taking in our rough, ill-fitting clothes. This man was thinking that Isaac DuPree was land rich and cash poor, so poor he had to leave his ranch and work a gold mine. Isaac DuPree’s wife couldn’t have money for train tickets clear to Chicago. I flushed with anger. This man was taking pleasure in the idea that Isaac DuPree had fallen on hard times.
Without looking at Mary, I handed Emma to her. I took off my gloves and opened my handbag, seeing the letter that Charlie Johnston had given me. Keeping my hands in my bag so nobody could see, I counted out the dollar bills and some change. Like Mrs. Clay had done a few days before, I laid the bills out on the counter, and as I did, I saw the emptiness of my left hand.
The bills were worn and thin. I didn’t let myself think about how Mrs. Clay had earned that money. Or how I had.
The depot man looked at the bills on the counter, and I saw his surprise. He turned to the ticket cabinet on the wall beside the chalkboard, the key in the lock.
“Rounder?” John said. “What about Rounder?”
The depot man turned the key; the lock made a clicking sound. Inside the cabinet, stacks of tickets showed in the rows of pigeonholes. He studied the rows and then pulled out some tickets.
“Mama!” John said, his hand on my arm. “Who’s going to see to Rounder?”
“Manny Franks and Pete Klegberg,” I said.
The depot man flicked the tickets with his thumb as if counting. He laid them beside my money and stamped each ticket, the sound of it as loud as the heartbeat in my ears.
“They won’t know how,” John said. “They don’t know anything about Rounder.”
“That’s enough,” I said, my voice low.
The depot man gave me a few coins in change, and then he slid the train tickets across the counter to me. I put them in my cloth handbag so that they rested beside the letter Charlie Johnston had given me. The train was twenty minutes away. “Come on,” I said to the children, heading for the door.
“Hold up,” the depot man said. I turned back. He said, “It’s all right by me if you wait here.” He inclined his head toward the stove. “It’s a tad breezy out there.”
“Obliged,” I said. “But outside is just fine.”
“Suit yourself.”
I saw what he was thinking: that Negro woman was a hard one, making her children stand out on such a bitter day. My lips pressed tight, I nodded good-bye to him as I took Emma from Mary. The depot man already knew enough of our business; I didn’t want him knowing more.
Outside, we stood close to the clapboard depot office wall, trying to stay out of the wind. It had begun to snow a little but it didn’t stick. It just skittered in the wind, sometimes getting trapped for a few moments against the rough-cut depot wall before being lifted up and carried on. We stood there, Mary and John saying, “But Mama? But Mama?” I hung my head, thinking what to say. “A visit,” I managed. “A short visit.”
“But Mama,” John said, standing in front of me, his eyes nearly level with mine. He pulled his scarf down below his chin. “Daddy told me to see to the ranch; that’s what he said. Daddy didn’t say anything about going to Chicago. I promised him.”
I shook my head.
“Mama! I promised! I can’t go, I don’t want to!”
A knot tightened my throat so I couldn’t hardly swallow. Mary said, “Where are we going to sleep, Mama, when we get there?”
“Family,” I said. “We’ll stay with family.”
“Grandma Reeves?” she said.
“Yes.”
John said, “And Grandma DuPree?” I started to shake my head but saw that the troubled look in John’s eyes had changed to excitement. This was the grandmother what sent a book after the birth of each baby. This was the one what owned property. This was his daddy’s mother.
“Her too,” I said, not meeting his eyes.
Then all at once, Liz and Alise got excited about getting on a train, and everybody was talking too loud and I told them, my voice harsh, “That’s enough!” They backed away from me, stung, and I thought of the letter I had written Isaac and how that meant I couldn’t back out now. And what about the letter Charlie Johnston gave me? I put Emma down and drew open the drawstrings to my handbag. Making sure the children couldn’t see, I pulled the letter out a few inches. I didn’t know the hand. I angled the letter a little. The postmark was blurry.
I tucked the letter back in my handbag and drew the strings. I cocked my head; I didn’t hear the train. I didn’t know what to make of the letter, but I did know that it wasn’t mine to keep. I would have Charlie Johnston send it on to Isaac in Lead. There was time, the train w
as still minutes away.
“Wait here,” I told the children. “Don’t any of you move. I’ll be back.”
“Mama!” Liz said.
“I’ll be back,” and I walked away from them, heading back to the dry-goods store, my eyes straight ahead, pretending the saloon wasn’t there, pretending that people weren’t watching me from their windows. With each step I thought about how I was leaving, how I was doing right by my children, how I was giving them a chance to see that there was something bigger than the Badlands. I thought about the six tickets in my handbag and how they were next to the letter somebody had written Isaac. The letter couldn’t be from his mother; she never answered Isaac’s letters. She only sent a book when a child was born, and Baby Ralph had been born dead. I couldn’t begin to think who had written Isaac. Charlie Johnston had said something about letters flying back and forth. All at once that struck me as peculiar.
Just before getting to the dry-goods store, I stepped into the tight alley that ran between it and the bank. There was something odd about the letter. The wind, trapped between the low buildings, blew all the harder. My dress and coat flapped; the brim of my hat lifted. I put my back to the wind. I tightened the hat strings under my chin and inched off my gloves and put them in my pocket, afraid they might blow away. The letter wasn’t my business; I shouldn’t be doing this, I told myself as I carefully opened my handbag, scared the wind might catch the tickets. I got out the letter, gripping it hard, and drew the bag’s strings tight. The letter wasn’t mine to read. Isaac wouldn’t like it. I almost laughed. Reading Isaac’s letter was a small thing when put alongside of me selling my wedding band and using that money to take the children to Chicago.
The sky was gray and low, and the light was dim in the alley. I ran my fingernail under the flap of the envelope, thinking that I could open it and then reseal it. I worked the flap loose, tearing it just a little on one end. With both hands, I held out the letter. I skipped down to the signature. Zeb Butler. My heart pounded. Zeb Butler in Sioux Falls what rented rooms, Zeb Butler what knew most of the Negroes in the Dakotas and beyond.
Isaac DuPree
It is nevr to soon. Lincoln Phillips in N.Dakota is willing to meet you. He has no wife living. Two dautrs but no sons.
Has better luck with land. Nearly 900 acrs. Says he can come mid sumr to see about your girl.
Zeb Butler
I leaned against the side of the dry-goods store, dizzy with disbelief. I read the letter again, the words spinning. I turned my face to the wind to clear my mind.
My hands folded the letter and put it in the envelope. Isaac had taken it to heart when on the night that Jerseybell died, I told him Mary was noticing boys, white boys. My hands tucked the flap inside the envelope. Isaac had said she was too young for such things. But he must have thought that over; it must have worried him to think of her admiring white boys. Like it had worried me. Only we had both seen it different. I wanted Mary to go to dances with Negro boys. Isaac wanted her married.
Mary had just turned thirteen. It was all I could think of. She was hardly thirteen. I put the letter in the bottom of my handbag. Come spring, I’d need it to prop up my courage.
I found my children where I’d left them by the depot office. Ignoring their questions, I picked up the carpetbag. “Come on,” I said, my voice hollow in my ears.
“Mama?” Mary said, holding Emma close to her. “What’s wrong?”
I waved her off and started walking, my footsteps loud on the planked boards. We went around the corner of the office and to the back where the tracks ran and where the water tank stood. There, on the backside of Interior, the whistling wind blew face-on with nothing for miles to break it.
I had written Mama and made it a secret. Isaac had written Zeb Butler and done the same.
“I’m cold,” Alise whined above the wind. “My feet are cold, Mama.”
Remember this, I thought but did not say. All of you, remember the cold of the Badlands, how it’s a lonesome cold, one that you can’t get away from. Feel the ache in your lungs, feel how that ache turns into a burn. Feel your toes, your ears, and your fingers, feel how they sting with the cold. Feel how the cold turns you brittle.
And remember how it was when your bellies were empty, when your mouths were dry, how you cried from it. But don’t remember the well. Don’t remember what we did to Liz.
“Stomp your feet,” I said. “That’ll warm you some.” Alise did and Liz did too. But not Mary and John. They were looking at me, their eyes puzzled and worried.
Likely they thought me cruel, making them stand out in the cold that way. But I had to. That way when the train showed up, blowing its black smoke, they’d be glad. That way in the spring when they started thinking about coming back to the Badlands, their last memory would be of the cold. And the wind.
“Mama,” Mary said, coming close to me, Emma’s face tucked into Mary’s neck scarf. “You’re crying.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s the wind.” Married at thirteen, fourteen at best. Married to a man come down from North Dakota to look her over. Married to a man what needed someone to raise his children. Married to a man what didn’t care anything for her, what just needed another pair of hands to work his ranch. Married to a man what might not ever smile at her or touch her in a way to make her glad. I couldn’t bear to think of how it would be for Mary. I looked past her.
Spread out before me was the Badlands. When I was new to it, its bigness scared me. There wasn’t any end to it. There was nothing but canyons that cut the earth, knee-high prairie grasses that rippled and swayed like they were alive, and ranges of buttes rising sharp against the sky. The Badlands scared me, but as long as I was with Isaac, I was where I wanted to be. When the Indian squaw showed up with her boy and her swollen belly, I believed those children were Isaac’s but I had looked away from it. I forgave all things because I loved him. But not this.
If Isaac wanted to marry Mary off next summer, he was going to have to come to Chicago to get her. He was going to have to face me. And if Mary went back to the Badlands with him, she had to go knowing his plans for her. But I wasn’t leading her to it; I wasn’t leading any of my children to that.
I felt the train before hearing or seeing it. I felt it in my feet. There will be dances for my children, I told myself. I gathered myself and pinched the corners of my eyes with my gloved fingers. Then I straightened my shoulders as best I could and looked west, a trail of black smoke starting to show in the gray sky.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Few people write a novel alone. I certainly didn’t.
I am indebted to Judithe Little, Julie C. Kemper, Lloyd E. Elliott, Pam Barton, Laura Siller, Lois F. Stark, and Bryan Jamison for their careful readings, meaningful suggestions, and for pushing me to do better; to Marianne Mills with the U.S. National Park Service for granting me a writing residency at the Badlands National Park; to the staff and instructors at Houston’s Inprint, Salt Lake City’s Writers @ Work, and San Antonio’s Gemini Ink for their belief in writers; and to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference for its community of writers.
I am grateful to Margaret Halton for her support and counsel and to all the people at Viking who worked so hard to make this book shine. And last, my heartfelt thanks go to John Siciliano, my savvy editor, whose guidance and enthusiasm were invaluable.
The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Page 26