The Last Letter (12 page)

“My Jeanie,” Frank said, “She chases my dull worries and cares away and makes me forget there’s trouble and sorrow in the world.”

“There’s trouble and sorrow in the world?” Lutie grabbed at her chest and fluttered her eyes at Frank.

“Well, not if you’re lucky enough to call Jeanie Arthur your wife or mother.”

Lutie shut her eyes and dropped her head back exposing her neck to the prairie. “Just three more winters and we’ll prove up and I’ll find a man like you, Frank Arthur,” Lutie said to the sky. She looked back up and gazed directly at Frank and he back at her. Jeanie felt as though she’d entered a cocoon which had been constructed for the purposes of transforming Frank and Lutie from a larval stage of infatuation to full-fledged love.

Jeanie may have been a good wife but she was not stupid and she would not allow herself to be made to look dumb, not after looking right slow-headed in the case of her father and their family business. She stood then dragged Lutie to her feet. “Now Lutie Moore, I’m going to put you and your sister in your bed sacks. Two women homesteading as you are, need all the rest you can get I imagine. You’re closest to the wagon, near all the children. I’ve arranged a toilet there with fresh rags and the most delicate of hand towels. The bed sacks came right out of my trunks, still pristine clean with the scent of lavender to assist you in your slumber. You shouldn’t need anything in the night so you can be assured of good unbroken sleep away from the snoring men.”

Jeanie pushed Lutie along, gripping her arms so tight that she expected Lutie to dig in her heels and ask her where Jeanie found the inclination to act as though her mother. That’s what Jeanie would have done, but Jeanie harbored no rat-like tendencies and knew she’d never bat her lashes or any other of her assets at another woman’s husband.

And so, when everyone was nestled into their sacks and only an occasional spark of children’s laughter lit the quiet, Frank sat inside the dugout doorway, playing their song, Marie’s song. He’d taken the tune and stretched it into a moody, dark version of the original upbeat version. It worried Jeanie that he’d taken to that version so heartily.

It nearly always signaled the beginning of one of his blue moods, but Jeanie told herself there was no time for him to indulge such states of mind for they were carving out his dream just as sure as this dugout carved out the hill.

“Good night, sweet friend,” Frank said from the doorway, still sitting in the moonlight, “thy love ne’er alters till thy sweet life end.”

“Good night, sweet friend,” Jeanie said barely above a whisper. And she fell into a short, but heavy sleep. Jeanie set her internal clock for before dawn and was determined to offer their guests a breakfast as bloated with grace as sweetness. For, if there was anything Jeanie could do it was make a home and it was time she showed her new friends just what her strengths on this earth were.

Jeanie shot up to sitting, sweat drenched, breathing heavy. Jeanie’s abdomen tightened with a cramp, making her think she’d be miscarrying by noon if her past was any indication. Her stomach released and she fell back on the pillow, then was struck by an image of Frank, a dream she’d had about him. That’s what had wakened her as much as the cramps.

“I had that dream,” she shook Frank’s shoulder.

“Wha…the what? What dream?”

Jeanie whispered in his ear, feeling as though a normal conversational volume would carry out the door and into the ears of their sleeping guests. “The dream, where I know it’s you, but I can’t see your face and you’re telling me you’re leaving me…that dream.”

“Ahhh, my Jeanie, that’s just a dream. You know I could never leave you.”

“But your face, my not being able to see it, that must mean something.”

“You’ve been dreaming that since we were fifteen. I think it means nothing at all.”

Jeanie was beginning to shake the odd, real feeling of abandonment that always accompanied the dream. “Okay, okay, There’s breakfast to get anyway. I’ll start things.” Jeanie climbed over Frank to get out of bed then kissed his forehead.

“I’m making flapjacks,” Jeanie said.

“That sounds superb,” Frank said. Jeanie expected him to rise out of bed to help, to at least get water, but he rolled to his side and before Jeanie had even squatted over the chamber pot, she could hear him snoring.

Jeanie didn’t have time to succumb to the twinge of disappointment that he would shirk his duties because as she emerged from behind the curtain to the chamber room, Aleksey Zurchenko and Katherine stood across the room, near the stove, with two water buckets, full to sloshing.

“Katherine? You went to the well?” Jeanie felt a surge of fear that after only one day on the prairie Katherine would be so brave as to go to the well by herself.

“I went with her, Ma’am. I woke to find her stepping over the rest of us slumbering kids and although she insisted I not go with her, she’s a stubborn mule you know, I followed her and then escorted her back.”

Jeanie was taken by a gust of laughter at Aleksey’s characterization of Katherine. Katherine stood, making faces at Aleksey as he spoke.

“I think I can handle the retrieval of water from a silly old well, Mama. Aleksey didn’t need to butt his way…“

“Language young lady,” Jeanie said. “We aren’t throwing all conventions of polite society under the wagon.”

“Well, sometimes it’s just better to make your point than wrap in pretty words that leave the listener confused and only hours later, do they determine what you really meant with your statement.”

Jeanie scowled at Katherine. Clearly she was showing off for Aleksey and though Jeanie wanted to rap her on the back of the head for her sass, she didn’t want to start down the road of defiance for defiance’s sake.

“Well, darling, my sweet Katherine, if you’re in such a strong state as to light out alone across the prairie, then you dump that water into the bucket and just head right back for more. Then have Aleksey show you how to milk the cow and how about you gather some more cow-chips. We’re running low and we can’t very well serve raw flapjacks to our guests.”

“Well, that’s just what I intended to do. Come on Aleksey, keep me company. Because you know, I already know very well how to milk a cow.”

“Do you now?” Aleksey said.

“I fetched the old stone boat, Mrs. Arthur,” Aleksey said.

“Stone boat?”

“We drag it ‘cross the land, makes collecting cow-chips, corn cobs, even water a lot easier.”

“My, my, my, a stone boat. Who would have thought.”

Katherine blustered past Aleksey who followed her out like a puppy. Jeanie smiled at the sight, the idea that ten-year-old Katherine had such a hold on Aleksey and she was impressed by Aleksey’s protective nature, something that was very similar to the way James treated his siblings.

Before starting breakfast, Jeanie poked her head outside to see if anyone else had risen. It was silent, with varying snores ripping through the peace. And James and Templeton were missing. Jeanie shook her head then stuffed away the rising fear that her children so quickly took to neighbors and the land that seemed so frightening to her.

She suspected they’d gone to the flag station Templeton had fashioned in order to collect information about the weather. James took an instant liking to the scientific processes involved in weather, trying to read it as though it were words needing to be decoded to unlock its secrets.

Jeanie drew a deep breath and headed to what she thought of as her dirty work. She used iron tongs to grip dried cow waste chunks, to lay them in the stove belly. Cooking over the chips was dirty as the fast burning cow-chips quickly burnt away, causing her to wash her hands every time she put more chips into the stove, rubbing them raw, wasting water, making trips to the well more frequent. How had that become her life? The thought still shocked her.

Breakfast was lively, leaving Jeanie feeling as though she’d known her guests for much longer than she had. After cleaning up, the Hunts decided it was the perfect time to introduce everyone to a Quaker meeting. Jeanie was fine with this as in Des Moines, Sunday was always a day of restful nothingness. And from what the Zurchenkos, Templeton, and the Moores said, Sunday was rarely marked by rest and contemplation of Jesus and his legacy.

So, they all sat and attempted to let the light within them— God—make an appearance and hopefully move one of them to speak with proper weight and depth. Jeanie supposed she could say that if Jesus had a robust interest in the role of fabric in pioneer life, then she was indeed visited by the Lord himself. But, the service was quiet and in the end, no one apparently was lit from within with enough of God to tell anyone about it.

The next order of business was to detail the various ways they could help each other make life as bearable as possible. Jeanie and Greta agreed to exchange a portion of the Zurchenko’s vegetables and berries for Jeanie’s graceful construction of work shirts for the men and dresses for the women and girls.

“I could teach the children, come fall, in exchange for a new dress and bonnet,” Ruthie said, “I mean, if that’s okay with everyone.”

Everyone nodded. “Lutie and I can preserve our gooseberries and share our pumpkins, too.”

“And Frank here,” Templeton said, “Is going to build me a lounge and the Zurchenko’s a bedstead. In between his commissions from Yankton, that is.”

Despite the planning that took place, the Zurchenkos did very little talking. Except for Greta, the rest of them were nearly mute. A lot of nodding and serious expressions made their approval clear. They worked together as a single unit, knowing with a glance who was about to set off to plow more field and who was going to milk the cow.

Jeanie felt excitement grow inside her, the discussion, the idea of being useful, that it felt bigger than she imagined it would. And she watched the afternoon speed by with the creation of a web of interdependence that somehow gave Jeanie the feeling of freedom rather than dependence. Within the support system they were building, she thought she’d find time for reading, writing, thinking, inspiring her children to be more than people who could only see to the next chore that needed to be done. That was no way to live.

And so, when the Zurchenkos, Templeton, and the Moores set off for their homes around noon, Jeanie watched as they started as one big group and splintered apart as each took to the path that would lead them home. The sense of calm that told her the world was right and she was powerful in it lasted just long enough for her to walk into the dugout and find Abby Hunt, Quaker minister, nibbling grains of morphine from a box labeled “Dover Powders.” The bell-shaped Mr. Hunt stood beside Abby, his hand on his head as he shook it, saying “Please dearest Abby, please, stop poisoning yourself, we need you here, not drugged or dead.”

Jeanie slipped back out of the dugout, running back atop it, stunned at what she saw, shaken by the fact the scene wasn’t unfamiliar to her. Though, in her case, it was her mother always begging her father to stop. Jeanie could imagine the exact conversation happening below her, as she ran dialogue through her mind. How could the Hunts have secured the Dovers?

There was no doctor in Yankton, and though it were possible for poppies to grow on the prairie, was it probable? Jeanie clenched her jaw. She hoped not, the sole positive in them being thrust into nothingness, was that there would be a lack of drugs and other mind-altering substances. Or so she’d hoped.

The Hunt children wrestled behind their wagon. Piercing screeches and a cloud of dust startled Jeanie out of her thoughts.

“Be careful, boys.” Jeanie choked on her sympathies for them, knowing how behind the curtain of normalcy and religious faςade, they must be living in an earthly hell. Or, their mother’s addiction hadn’t taken hold of her in any big way, yet. Her father, apparently, had been eating opium for well over a decade before the addiction drove him to lose his morals, values and ability to maintain at least a faςade of an honest existence.

“Why don’t you get into the wagon, Max? That way you’ll be ready when your parents are ready. Hop up there, won’t you?” Jeanie was struck by her desire to have the family ready to go, to ensure there was no turmoil to upset Mrs. Hunt, just as she’d always paved the way for her father’s wishes to be met instantly. She’d never realized that she’d lived that way. That she’d worked so hard to keep normalcy that wasn’t even really there.