The Last Letter (11 page)

Jeanie shifted her weight and shyly glanced at the others who were listening. In light of the current condition of her home and body, she couldn’t have been more self-conscious of the mess it put her in to have written those books and to be held to their standard. Lutie didn’t seem to notice the discomfort as she gushed on.

“And your Frank just about had a fit when he saw how we were mistreating our cows with improper milking technique. He said you were the fastest milk maid in Des Moines at one time,” she rambled on.

“Well now, Jeanie,” Greta said stepping into the conversation. “You didn’t mention one bit of this—your skill as a milker. A writer of all things gracious, I know you said you dreamt of writing again, but I assumed it was letters you spoke of. Well, that’s right wonderful seeing as Lutie and Ruthie neglect to milk at all half the time, why don’t you, Lutie, offer Jeanie the cow in return for milk every few days?”

“Oh, no, we couldn’t. We plan to buy livestock after we bring in the first crop or after Frank sells some of his furniture commissions,” Jeanie said.

“Oh, why, Greta,” Lutie said. “That’s right intelligent of you, for an unread woman to come up with that. Well, okay, that’ll give me a chance to see you Arthurs on a regular basis, and yes, well, yes. That’s a great idea. How about we trade. Our cow for your home-keeping knowledge. We can be your apprentices.” Lutie walked away, talking to herself, repeating those words, making a dead-line toward Ruthie.

“Greta, I can’t accept that. It’s not right.”

“S’not right what’s happening in that house of theirs. I call it the house of ill-repute.”

Jeanie’s jaw fell.

“No, no,” Greta said. “There’s not actually such devious acts taking place there, other than Lutie’s blood-boiling flirtation, but they abuse their resources. Well
that’s
a scandal if one were likely to see the world in that way. I have much less trouble with loose women than I do loose women with loose housekeeping.”

Jeanie covered her mouth and chortled into her hand. “Greta, you’re charming me right out of my blue mood. I have to thank you.”

“And,” Greta said, “Don’t worry about Ruthie, she rules the roost over there—they’d be dead if not for her—but she’s no more interested in milking than old Loopy Lutie.”

Templeton made his way to Nikolai and the boys to help with what now she could see was plowing. Frank had disappeared into the dugout while the other men cleared space for the Arthur’s garden. How could she let them do such back-breaking work while Frank entertained Darlington Township’s ladies of leisure?

“Mrs. Arthur, uh, Jeanie?” The sister called Ruthie had come up on Jeanie without her noticing. Jeanie spun around.

“Jeanie, please. Call me that.”

Ruthie bit her lower lip then sucked both into her mouth and clamped down, and averted her gaze. She seemed to nearly shake in Jeanie’s presence. Her face was pock-marked, pudgy, without the planes that exposed just the right hills and valleys in a face, the contours that make one beautiful. Sprigs of Ruthie’s hair jutted from under her bonnet like the grasses inside the dugout. Some were black and others were the color of the dirty foam that had gathered atop the pond that nearly swallowed Katherine and Jeanie whole the day before. It was wavy like Lutie’s with none of the shine.

Ruthie finally looked Jeanie in the eye. “I know what you’re thinking. What everyone does when they meet us. Are they really sisters? Well yes. Lutie’s always been the lucky one right down to when, by pure happenstance, she escorted our mother to tend our sickly grandmother and in the interim, small-pox knocked back seventy-five percent of our town.”

As Ruthie spoke her posture straightened and she transformed from a shy mouse into more of a Greta figure. Strong in her limitations.

Jeanie put her hand on Ruthie’s arm. “I didn’t think anything at all, Ruthie. I try not to put too many eggs in the attractiveness basket as I’ve found it guarantees nothing by way of happiness or honesty or loyalty.”

Ruthie didn’t say anything but instead whipped to her right and marched off toward Greta and Lutie as though Jeanie’d smacked her. Well, so far, Jeanie was one in three for finding an acquaintance that suited her. Perhaps the prairie would be even lonelier than she had guessed it could be.

Each time Jeanie tried to contribute to preparing the food, another neighbor arrived. The Hunts and their two sons Maxwell and Tobias were next. Mrs. Hunt was a minister of a Quaker Meeting and Mr. Hunt did his best to farm. That’s how they introduced themselves and quickly they ran through where the monthly meetings would be held and all the ways they hoped to bring literacy to the community while allowing each neighbor to find their inner light.

Jeanie didn’t know anything about Quakers except that they were unlikely to cause problems and so she didn’t give them much thought in terms of their religion. She was, however, mesmerized by the notion that it was Abby Hunt who was the minister. Not at all something she’d ever explored through her writing or thinking.

Frank had slipped into the conversation without Jeanie even realizing he was back from watering the horses or hiding in the dugout. “I like that notion, that Quakers hold as their guiding principle—finding the light within. Sort of how I make it my business to contemplate the beauties of nature. To really appreciate what beauty in that form means.”

Jeanie had no idea where Frank had become informed of the principles of Quaker beliefs, but that wasn’t the time to ask.

“Frank, darling,” Jeanie said putting her hand on his back. “Won’t you be a dear and bring in fresh water. I’d like some extra for the ladies as they may enjoy a fresh toilet before dinner.” Those words, the manner in which she delivered them felt good, normal, as though she could bring a little of the past into their present and in the future, perhaps, they could create the kind of society that demanded proper behavior and allowed for enjoyment of culture.

“Sure,” he said. His face drooped a bit, sorry definitely to be removed from the conversation. But compared to the Zurchenkos, none of them had done anything and that was humiliating to Jeanie. She didn’t have time to work with Frank’s limitations, push him to perform as he should have been innately inclined to do.

So, thanks to Ruthie, Greta and Abby Hunt, they enjoyed a rich dinner, conversation that revealed their little group as being slightly more intellectual than handy in nature and at that time Jeanie only gave that the label of interesting. It turned out Nikolai and Greta Zurchenko had only gone to school until sixth grade. And the current lot of Zurchenko children had barely attended at all. Ruthie had taught school for a year in Yankton before home-steading. Lutie had been promoted out of eighth grade, but showed no practical evidence of having done so. Ruthie had intimated that perhaps her parents thought Lutie had been secure in her beauty and standing, and hadn’t pushed her to do much more than revel in her own splendor.

But, the flu took them and upon burial, the sisters discovered they were penniless. Lutie did the only thing she could imagine doing, and that was to get married, to attempt to bring some income to her and Ruthie. Greta discreetly told Jeanie that Lutie’s divorce was solely her doing, that she couldn’t stand being stifled by rules and a man’s place in the home as superior to hers. She simply drew up papers with her husband’s lawyer and walked out, requesting nothing.

Had it been a different grouping, different circumstance, Jeanie might have offered her experience—her father’s death marked not only with typical grief, but laced with mind-numbing humiliation—as a means to bridging the enormous social gap, but Jeanie had never been the type to offer up weaknesses for conversational purposes. If she could pretend whatever was bad wasn’t there, then so could those around her.

Jeanie enjoyed listening to the others anyway, shaping who each person was and was not in her mind. Frank, though, was blustery, gushing forth with all method of dreams and his latest in air castle construction as he suggested all manner of ways they might make quick money. Jeanie shuddered thinking that Greta would suppose Jeanie kept the same silly dreams tucked inside her as Frank did. But Jeanie’d never dreamed of something she couldn’t achieve. She resisted the urge to tell Greta, she wasn’t
that
kind of dreamer. She was practical in her wishes.

Sheep and cotton were two of Frank’s latest areas of focus. He’d not yet researched each fully, but he pulled several stacks of literature from the bottom of the book trunk and shook the paper at everyone saying how the path to riches, though going through the township of Darlington, would not stop there.

Frank wielded his dreams as though he could spend them like cash—money to make people impressed. And this made Jeanie want to crawl into herself, made her grateful that get-togethers such as these would be limited by daily responsibilities. She wouldn’t have to either book-end Frank’s statements with impact softening verbal cotton, or shrink inside herself wishing she’d never met the man, then hating herself for not taking up residence inside each and every one of his very stately air castles.

“My dear Jeanie, here, disagrees with my plans, but that’s all right. All it takes is one half of a couple to see the dream and grab it.”

Jeanie felt attacked. “Now Frank, all I did was offer the information that flat prairie lands aren’t conducive to…“

“Ah, that’s my Jeanie,” Frank’s words bit her as his eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Jeanie drew back, unsure of what she’d done wrong. “Always has
all
the answers. Loves to offer them up for—”

Jeanie leaned across the table to get full view of Frank’s face. “I don’t have all the answers, darling Frank, I simply have ownership of all the
right
answers.” The guests hooted with the exchange, thinking it was all in fun. But Jeanie knew better. She sat back straight, busying herself with arranging the plates in front of her, horrified at the exchange. The Arthurs weren’t a screaming family, prone to dramatic histrionics. Jeanie understood, fully, that behind these simple, quietly delivered words were years of Frank’s resentment of her, feelings she never cared to worry about in the past. She never had to. Her life had been stable and in that security, she could handle anything, even a man who’d been taken by a love/hate existence with his very own wife.

“My, my, my.” Jeanie said at the sky, unaware she had spoken aloud until Greta nudged her with raised eyebrows and cocked head.

“Oh,” Jeanie said. “It’s nothing. Just…nothing.” And she rose from the table to clear away the trash.

The sun perched high in the sky for so long that the guests waited past the reasonable time to leave. When the yellow sphere finally sunk into the horizon it sucked the light over the edge of the earth with it. It left them in split second shadows and blinding darkness that rendered the glow of kerosene lamps, candles and the fire practically useless.

They bumped around trying to arrange blankets and sleeping quarters near the dugout so everyone would be moderately comfortable. The children were thrilled to have guests for the night. The only thing that would drag them from a competitive game of jacks was Frank.

He bore no shortage of funny and ghostly tales to tell the children. His animated expression, happy eyes and warm affection toward everyone brought Jeanie a long lost twinge of love, near infatuation—the kind of sensation that had turned her heart toward him years before.

And, when Frank finished his last tale, a sort of fairy tale in which he used all the children’s names and somehow had each child look like a hero in the story, Jeanie heard Lutie sigh. Jeanie studied the woman’s fine profile and saw, in the moonlight, the look of love sparkling in her eyes as she watched Frank entertain them all.

Jeanie shook her head and crossed her arms.

“I’m well certain that someday I’ll make the acquaintance of a man like Frank,” Lutie said. “Musn’t there be a Frank out there for each one of us, Jeanie? There must be, wouldn’t you admit so?”

Jeanie didn’t think Lutie really wanted a response but then Lutie turned to Jeanie, arching her eyebrows expectantly.

“I don’t know, Lutie.” Jeanie shrugged. A surge of disappointment reminded Jeanie that the Frank in front of her, the one charming the socks off everyone watching, was
not
the Frank she’d known the past few years. “I’m not sure you know a man’s worth until after matrimony. It’s then that the real man and woman are revealed to one another. And usually just to one another. Others will continue to tramp about the world harboring fantasies about each person and who they might really be inside their own skin, but really no one knows that husband except the wife.”

“That sounds precious. How could a woman be married and not happy? Why marry if it’s not the case that she will be?” Lutie said grinning, nearly licking her lips off.

“In the end, I believe it’s a woman’s own fault if she is not happy when she is married. I believe it to be the case. I’m happy and I make Frank happy because my love for him is true—”

Frank who must have been lurking yet again, inserted himself in the women’s conversation, squatting in front of Lutie and Jeanie, knees spread apart in that way men always seemed to position themselves, emitting an odor of an unbathed man. Lutie either didn’t notice it or the scent was love tonic to her olfactory system because she leaned toward Frank, mussing his hair before thanking him again for all his help.