Prairie Widow (7 page)

But none of Walter's schemes—not the one for raising sheep in a nearby field, not the one to start up a “much-needed” magazine, “Scions of Holland”—ever transgressed into the realm of action.

And when, early in 1862, Walter volunteered to join the Union Army, Jennifer was convinced it was for no other reason than to avoid family responsibility.

Perhaps it was. But Walter was not quite so cavalier about his station in life as Jennifer thought. Based in Ohio and confronted by precious little fighting (until, that is, Confederate General John Morgan invaded the state), Walter apparently had much time to think about what he would be doing when the war ended.

One day, Jennifer received a letter from him, written in highly excitable script: “Dear Jenny,” it read, “Have you read about the Homestead Act? It gives veterans 160 acres of Kansas land for only ten dollars! And all the homesteader has to do to keep the land is live on it for five years! And I'll be a veteran!…”

So now, of all things, Walter wanted to be a fanner. Well, Jennifer was glad to receive that letter because now when her husband arrived home on leave, busting with with his usual enthusiasm about his plans, she would be ready for him.

And, indeed, she told him, “Walter, I see no point in discussing such a ludicrous idea. You don't know anything about farming.”

“It's a desert out there,” added Jennifer's father, for once not taking his son-in-law's side. “And Kansas got naked savages running around…”

Walter was taken aback by, and not a little disappointed in, his father-in-law's reaction. Still, Walter was adamant. “Now, look,” he said as calmly as he could, “I've studied the matter thoroughly, and Kansas is not a desert. It's grassland. And the mad Indians are much farther out on the plains, which isn't where we're going. And, finally, I'm not so ignorant about farming—I once worked on one. So all I need is fourteen hundred dollars to outfit the family.”

Jennifer's father shook his head. “I'm sorry Walt, not for this…”

“Twelve hundred…”

“No, no, I can't.”

“A thousand! Lend me a thousand dollars…”

“Walter, I just won't do it.”

Jennifer let the two men talk on. Her father seemed firm and, besides, there was no reason to assume Walter would pursue this plan any more strenuously than he pursued the others.

Indeed, when Walter returned home from the army for good, and to a new baby girl, he talked a lot on the subject but did little else. Years passed that way.

But then, shortly before his fortieth birthday, Walter took a serious turn. While cleaning the house, Jennifer came across several books in a chest. One, with the profile of a buffalo on it, was entitled,
The National Wagon Road Guide.
And there were several others, all guidebooks for the would-be settler.

Once more, Jennifer felt obligated to challenge Walter, this time rallying her two small children to her side by filling their heads with all sorts of ideas.

“I don't like Indians!” Peter cried to his father.

“I don't like the desert!” wailed Emma.

Walter, glaring at his smug wife, took his children aside and told them not to worry. He even bribed them with stories of his own; that there were no schools out that way, that they'd have plenty of friends to play with, and that they'd each have a horse.

All this did the trick. “Hooray for Kansas!” shouted Peter.

“Horray for Kansas!” repeated his little sister.

This left Jennifer virtually speechless, but she was still convinced that Walter would take no further action.

But he did. Week after week, Walter went about his preparations for leaving Ohio. He added to his meager savings by working constantly at various jobs, mostly as a handyman, and as he made his money, he purchased and stacked in the corner of the parlor those things he would need for the journey: a shovel, hoe, campstool, blankets, ropes, bandages, tool box, and so forth—including even his wife's own baggage, which he had taken the liberty to pack.

And, if there was still any doubt about his intentions, he soon put that to rest. One warm spring morning, he rode up to the house in an honest-to-God prairie schooner pulled by two yokes of oxen, just like the wagons Jennifer had seen in her
Harper's Weekly.
The schooner's arching top scraped the lane's overhanging tulip tree branches. The children from the neighborhood came running and climbed all over the wagon. Peter and Emma were very proud.

“Walter, I can't believe you actually …” started Jennifer as she emerged from the house and stood on the porch.

Walter just sat way up there on the seat, reins in hand, and glared silently down at his wife as if to say, “Believe it.”

Jennifer descended the two planks from the porch and slowly walked around the wagon to inspect it. Soon, neighbors were stepping outside their houses for a look. A few approached the wagon. “Say, Walt, I guess you're serious about leaving,” said one of them, puffing on a long, slender pipe while standing back and sizing up the schooner.

“I guess I am, Charley,” said Walter, following Jennifer with his eyes as she walked around the front of the oxen, who were snorting through black, runny nostrils. “We're heading out in a couple of weeks.”

Upon hearing this, Jennifer headed for the porch again, quickening her pace to reach the house before she burst into tears.

From that night on, Jennifer pleaded with her husband to change his mind. Her father, too, sat down with Walter several times to discuss the matter. Jennifer counted on her father. At least he wouldn't start crying if he became too frustrated. And Walter respected his opinion.

Unfortunately, Walter, this time, was resolute. He often stormed out of the house rather than listen. Still, Jennifer didn't give up hope. She had faith in her father's persuasive efforts—until, that is, one terrible, rainy night.

It was late, past midnight, and Jennifer had gone to bed, leaving the two men in the parlor before a fire to discuss the move, which was only one week away at that point. But Jennifer couldn't sleep, and she tiptoed down the creaky stairs to listen to her father and husband talking in the parlor, just as she used to tiptoe down to listen to her parents talk when her mother was alive.

The two men spoke quietly so as not awaken anyone, and Jennifer had to press her head close to the glass-paned doors.

“Look, Walter, won't you reconsider?”

“Fred, I've told you a million times that there's nothing to reconsider. I'm going.”

“But she's my only daughter, my only child. I don't think I can bear the thought of her out there in the wilds of Kansas. I don't care what you say about the Indians. They like white women.”

“Look, do you think I would do anything to hurt her? I tell you, this is all for the best. I've got to make something of my life. People talk.”

“Is that the reason you're going? Hell, let them talk. What do you care, suddenly?”

“I care because they're right. Fred, my children are getting older and smarter, and I don't want them to grow up thinking their father's a no-account.”

There was a pause.

“You're a strange man, Walt. I never knew you felt such things.”

“I do.”

“Still, isn't there any way to dissuade you?”

“No, I'm afraid not.”

Another pause.

“Well, you should've come right out and told me all this sooner. I can understand how you feel—mind you, I still don't like the idea—but I can understand.”

“That's good enough.”

“Hell, I guess even, well, I guess even I'm a little proud of you.”

“Thanks, Fred. That means a lot to me.”

There was a long silence. “Then go, Walt. God be with you.”

Jennifer still shuddered when she recalled those words, “God be with you.” A wave of fury came over her as she sat before Walter's grave. She had always counted on her father to protect her, to speak out for her—but just when she needed him most…

The sun was now slipping into the grass on the western horizon. The sky, however, was flat and grey and didn't blush with the usual color. Jennifer rose to her feet and brushed her skirt. It was best to go before it got too dark to see. She looked toward the wagon and ox. Beyond was the inviting East. She closed her eyes a moment and followed the wagon wheel ruts back over the eastern horizon…

Dipping here, rising there, crinkling, flattening out, treeless but for those rare clefts of sheltered streambeds lined with willows, the prairie she had crossed in her bone-jarring wagon journey rolled back before her shut lids like a magic lantern show. Once more she saw that miserable highway, posted with the grave markers of would-be settlers and strewn with the discarded relics of civilization: a table here, a chair there, even a harmonium at one spot. She remembered painfully how some of her own furniture—her embroidered ottoman, her dresser, porch chairs—had to be jettisoned during a heavy rain so that the oxen, led by Walter, who often went on foot to further lighten the beasts' burden, could haul the wagon through the mud.

Once more she came to the spot where Walter, again on foot, led the oxen and wagon off the path to let by a creaky and dilapidated prairie schooner returning eastward. The driver, unshaven and drawn, didn't stop to talk, but nodded blankly as he passed. When the wagons had cleared each other, Jennifer, sitting alone on the seat, looked back into the rear of the receding schooner and saw a cluster of silent, hollow-eyed children staring back at her. Where was their mother?

Jennifer shook off that terrible memory and quickened her return journey. Farther east, the prairie was more lush, and the grasses grew so tall that they had nearly swallowed up Jennifer's prairie schooner, but for its arching cloth covering. Standing on the ground and looking up at the swaying grass tops, she had felt as if she were a tiny insect in a giant's backyard, and she almost expected to see on the horizon a monstrously large, white, picket fence rising up into the heavens. How painfully slow had been the wagon's progress through those grasses! The days came and went, the wagon's wheels turned and turned, but always the same grass-scape and big sky made it seem as if the Vandermeers hadn't progressed at all; that no matter how far they went, they remained in the same spot.

Now, however, in her mind's eye, Jennifer could fly as fast as she wished: back past the rolling Missouri hills, swaths of furrowed fields, farm houses and windmills, across the barge-filled Mississippi to the Illinois side, whereupon she dashed through better rooted prairie communities of schoolhouses and church spires, until the trail brought her back to a border of tall sunflowers, whose bright, orange faces signaled the end of the grasslands. Behind them was the tangled screen of gnarly crabapple and sumac, and behind them at last the great eastern forest, which cloaked the vast sky with a leafy canopy all the way to the Wabash River and the awaiting Indiana shore, where macadamized roads and ever more villages prompted Jennifer on to her Ohio…

But before Jennifer could find her own bosky lane, her reverie was broken. The ox had lowed fretfully. Jennifer opened her eyes. The air was darker. The ox stamped its hooves, tossed its head, and snorted as it tried to back up, fighting the wagon wheel break. Jennifer spun and looked about. She gasped.

Trotting in the gloom among the infringing grasses and tilted headstones were the grey, shadowy forms of wolves.

Her eyes wide and darting from one shadowy form to another, Jennifer backed slowly toward the wagon. She dared not make any sudden move. Walter had once told her and the children, “If wolves ever come upon you in the open, don't run. It'll only trigger them to attack.”

For now, the wolves seemed calm. Indeed, they hardly acknowledged Jennifer or the ox. They sniffed around the headstones, a few pawed at the fresh dirt over Walter's grave, and one wolf, its tail held high, urinated on an inscribed plank. Other wolves disappeared and reappeared in the tall grasses, which were beginning to wave in a growing wind, unveiling previously hidden grave markers at the edges of the cemetery.

Standing beside the wagon now, Jennifer counted the wolves—two, three, four, five—But each time she thought she counted the whole pack, other wolves appeared—eight, nine, ten—

The ox lowed fitfully and shoved the wagon backward, the unyielding wagon wheel skidding a foot along the ground. Jennifer grabbed the wagon and pulled herself up onto the seat. From her higher vantage point, she could see, to her horror, still more wolf heads threading through the blowing grasses around the cemetery. One wolf rolled around on its back, then rose to its feet and sniffed the flattened spot. Two others chased and growled at each other. Yet another, its ears perked, its eyes locked onto the ground, seemed to be stalking something small, like a rodent.

The sun had now nearly set, and everything was fading into a dark greyness. Jennifer reached down into the jockey box at her feet. As a homesteader, Walter always tried to be prepared, and she prayed he had his old Army .45 down there. Though she had never fired a gun, she was prepared to do so now. Perhaps even the mere sound of a shot would scare the pack away.

She rummaged through the box. Its contents were still visible. There was a hammer, some beef jerkey, a tin of tobacco, bullets even, but no gun. There was, however, a coal oil lantern and matches. Jennifer removed the lantern and lit it. The glow spread slowly out, recasting pale light upon the ground. Headstones reemerged from the gloom. Some of the near wolves, their attention caught by the lantern, lowered their heads, as if trying to see under the light. Their eyes glowed eerily. Jennifer hung the lantern on a bent nail embedded in the jockey box. But as she lifted the reins and raised her eyes, terror gripped her. She couldn't believe what she saw. Swarming in the grasses outside the cemetery were still more glowing pairs of eyes, almost like fireflies in the summer evening. It seemed to Jennifer she was surrounded by at least fifty or sixty wolves.