The Last Letter (16 page)

It was that moment that Jeanie realized the degree to which prairie life altered their manner of living. She couldn’t afford to hate Lutie and her luring charms and lazy approach to life. She didn’t have the luxury. She had to access the part of her that trusted Frank implicitly, the part of her that built a bridge from her heart to his twelve years before. And Frank, whom she vowed to love and devote her life to, well, she simply had to trust him. To believe that God, whether he existed, with quiet illumination right inside Frank’s wiry body or up above in the heavens, would guide him to a principled and monogamous life. Surely he wouldn’t have the time to carry on with Lazy Lutie if Jeanie didn’t have the time to contemplate it.

By the time two days had passed and they’d fully inventoried the fire’s damages, the fear and want of what was lost, had passed. However, anxiety was in full throes of Jeanie’s body, keeping her from sleeping, as even a few hours of rest left her dreaming of fire or her family, faceless, though behaving as though perfectly normal. She woke in a sweat every time and then would spend the next eighteen hours or so, sewing, cleaning, cooking, reading, or anything that she thought might finally release her to real, sound sleep.

At least Jeanie could say her longing for comfortable life in Des Moines was replaced by the want for simpler things like their dining table and her birthday tablecloth. Jeanie had pulled one trunk outside to sort through while she waited for the stew to cook. It had burned with most of her fabrics and her precious family linens. And also gone were Frank’s commissioned work, Templeton’s lounge, a chair, the Zurchenko’s bedstead, and apparently, a slew of figurines Frank had fashioned while resting in between carving the larger items.

Frank moaned over on the bedstead and pushed the blankets off his legs. “Ah, Jeanie, my figurines, they’re ruined, ruined. I’ve got to start over, but I feel good about it, like we can do anything now that we survived that fire. We are invincible.”

Jeanie sighed deeply, lost in her thoughts only having to partially listen to the same tune Frank had been singing since the fire—that he’d found a oneness with the land, feeling as though he communed with the souls of those who tread there before, that the figurines, nearly shaped themselves right in the palm of his hand, that he only had to follow the knife around the wood more than tell it where to go. He was convinced that remaking everything that was lost would be no trouble and that the furniture and bedsteads would be even better than before. She sighed again, nearly taken by tears when she did.

“Don’t sigh like that Jeanie. I hear your disapproval in every blasted one.”

Jeanie didn’t respond to this, but continued to stir the eggs. She’d been lost in thought of ways they might be able to make a go of it back in Des Moines. Who cared that they were scandalized, poor, dirty and had lost nearly everything? At least it was safe there.

But Jeanie knew they’d never go back, and really, she found comfort in that because part of her wanted to make it in the west, prove that she was made from the same hearty stock her Scottish ancestors were. She kept telling herself the same words Frank had repeated constantly; that they survived the fire, everyone was safe, and according to the Zurchenkos who really
did
seem one with the land, they’d never heard of or experienced more than one fire in a year. She sighed again, but cut it off halfway when she realized she was doing it.

“Jeanie, my sweetness and sugar, are you all right?”

She shrugged, stirring her eggs. The wood shifted as Frank got up from the bedstead. “Jeanie? Did you hear that? I’m sure more than ever that we’ll make a successful go of this place, earn some money and then I’m thinking we can raise sheep or move to Texas where the cotton trade is shifting from the southeast to the southwest. I just have a really confident feeling about it all.”

Jeanie gritted her teeth, not wanting to argue with Frank while the children slept. If he would just walk away and do his chores she could stifle her curdling anger.

“I need that milk, Frank. And the cow and horses, they need their water.”

“I’ve had enough of the orders. You’re always angry and that makes me angry.”

Jeanie leaned forward, poking the spatula at him, keeping her voice controlled to a whisper. “You can’t be mad at me for being mad at you. That’s just life, that now that we live under such conditions that you need reminding what needs to be done. There’s no hand or help to do it for you when you overlook it.”

“Like that mess over there that you overlooked. Your books, and stacks of letters and journals and material and…I’m not the only one falling down on the job. And I never wrote the book on it!”

Jeanie ground her teeth together, afraid of what might come out of her mouth at that moment. She hated him, she shook with the feeling and she must have conveyed it silently because Frank, though not apologizing aloud, dropped his head in contrition.

“Okay.” Frank’s voice was limp and Jeanie was immediately swept with guilt. She stopped stirring the eggs and watched Frank disappear out the door, slow gait, shoulders slumping a bit. She felt like cracked china. Not the kind so compromised that it was unusable, but spidery lines creeping through it, foretold a future trip to the garbage. That cracking in her soul was loud in her ears, felt in every cell in her body.

“Blazes. Blame it.”

“We heard that, Mama.”

Jeanie jumped. “Oh, children, Katherine, you’ve always got your ear to the wall, don’t you?” Jeanie tried to joke. She replayed the swears through her mind startling herself at the casualness with which they fell from her lips. Not that she’d never sworn before, but never with such flourish.

“What wall? We have no walls,” James stood, went to the chamber room, winking at his mother.

“We sure don’t, do we.”

“I like it with no walls,” Tommy said. “I like knowing every little thing everyone’s doing and saying. And you’re giving Father some real grief, Mama. This fire wasn’t his doing. We’re gonna be fine, just fine. The Zurchenkos survived worse than this. Aleksey actually pulled Anna from a fire two years back. He’s the family hero.” Tommy picked eggs from the pan and Jeanie swatted his hand with the wooden spoon.

“Ask Katherine, he’s
her
hero,” Tommy said.

“Is not,” Katherine squealed as she pulled her bed covers up.

“Tommy, do like your sister and make your bed up,” Jeanie said. “And leave Katherine alone. She’s much too young to have any sort of hero worship for any sort of boy. Even those who yank siblings out of fires.”

Tommy lumbered to the bed he shared with James. “Sure would be nice if my big brother could make his side of the bed. Oooh, Mama, smell that? James is doing his heavy business in the chamber pot. He knows to use the outhouse for the heavy business. That’s grotesque.”

Tommy yanked his covers up and stumbled from the dugout as though halfway to his death.

Katherine was too ladylike to wretch and make comment about anyone’s bodily functions, but she left the dugout nearly as fast as Tommy, her prune-pinched face telling the tale her lips wouldn’t.

James whipped the curtain aside and shook his head, his face pale, greenish. Jeanie stepped toward him. “I’m okay, I’m sorry to do that in here. I couldn’t help it. Must have been something in that meal Ruthie Moore made us last night. I felt so great last night, nearly strong as I imagine an ox would, but this morning, my head feels heavy as an anvil. And I just, I’m sorry.”

“Let me help, you lay down, I’ll empty the pot,” Jeanie said.

“No, I need the air,” James said. He picked up the waste and gagged on his own stench as he carried it out of the house.

Of all the things that had gone wrong so far, the dugout instead of a real house, the fire, utter sense of disconnectedness from society, Jeanie hadn’t contemplated illness much. Had they been in Des Moines, her conversations would have been peppered with references to the possible seasonal illnesses, who most likely would spread them, succumb to them, surmount them. But, on the prairie, the sense of immediacy didn’t include the opportunity to wonder about whom was carrying what disease until it was upon them.

But, James bounced back fast, as though the emptying of the pot was all it took to rid his body of whatever toxin had taken him for a small time.

And in the same manner the earth followed suit. Just days after the fire—with the help of generous rains—the prairie shot back to green, and yellow and every color imaginable. What was lacking was the sight of beautiful corn, melons, wheat, and other garden items.

The balance of the damage their fellows incurred went as follows: Templeton’s house and barn were devoured by the flames, though he was alive and well having been in Yankton to purchase food-stuffs and more wood for Frank’s commissions and repairs on his own barn.

The Zurchenko’s crops were devastated, their sod home still stood as the flames found it unappetizing as they did the Arthur’s dugout. The Zurchenko’s cows, horses and oxen weathered the flames in the sod barn, though Greta insisted that spiritually, the livestock was clearly harmed as their natural inclinations to eat and produce milk or waste had been suppressed since the flames cleared.

The Moore’s frame home survived as resourceful Ruthie had learned from a book she read, to dig a trench about fifteen feet from her frame home. She had done so the prior year and then she watched as the fire fell into it and spread around her house like a miracle. Though, the Moore’s garden, corn and wheat were partially obliterated, some of it remained.

The Hunts managed nicely. Their property stood out of the fire line, having none of their garden sacrificed, their property bore odd recognition of what had happened around it as smoke had merely blackened the windows. The biggest problem with the Hunt’s property getting the least of the fire’s rage was that they offered the least in way of useful foods and animals.

And so, as Jeanie couldn’t have imagined before it happened, the fire didn’t plow across the land in a high long wall, but serpentined, winding over the land as though directed by a demented artist orchestrating how he’d like to best see the land revealed and destroyed.

As the sun settled above them and as though there wasn’t epic rebuilding to do, Jeanie’s neighbors began appearing at their dugout to see the bee tree, to fuss over the children, to mull over the fiery events as a group.

James had spent the morning, after his bout with illness, with Templeton, recording weather conditions, predicting what might be on the weather horizon. Katherine sat by Jeanie, as though afraid to wander. Jeanie couldn’t believe her luck, that she’d only dragged one hope chest outside the dugout, to show Lutie the fabrics. Though her most beautiful fabrics were destroyed, there was still much to choose from in her second chest.

Katherine insisted on Jeanie allowing her to sew Aleksey’s work shirt. And though Katherine’s stitches could be slow and uneven, Jeanie figured it was more important to finish the work and give Katherine the most opportunities to sew as possible. She’d tired of stitching napkins and practicing on samplers and embroidering wash towels that they rarely used any more due to how long the stretches between washes were going.

Jeanie washed a significant amount of clothing that morning and with her own hands, caught two prairie chickens and began cooking them for both dinner and soup for supper. And though that time, Jeanie didn’t wretch with each pluck of brown feathers, she began to wonder again if coming to the prairie had been smarter than staying to deal with her family scandal. It wasn’t as though
she
was the one who swindled friends, neighbors and strangers out of money leaving his daughter and her family to deal with it.

But that didn’t matter to the people she saw every day and it would matter less to those she only saw a few times a year. She was the daughter of the man who stole from Mr. Wannamaker, Mr. May and Mrs. McCall. And their association with Jeanie didn’t survive the acts of her father even if personally those powerful people knew Jeanie was as much a victim as they were. Scrubbing the filthy clothes over the metal washtub, Jeanie burst into tears as she admitted that to herself. She pushed and pulled the clothing, catching her knuckles from time to time, stopping to suck the blood off her skin.

She’d penned letters to the people who’d once clamored for her articles, awaiting her next book or column. She explained that she and Frank had been taken by prairie fever and wanted to try their hands at their own land. In her upbeat letter, she promised she’d communicate with them just as soon as she was established and fully inspired with a new perspective on homemaking.

And, even though she knew in her mind that when those old “friends” read the letters, they must have laughed hard, heads thrown back, mouths gaping at their ceilings, probably slobbering on their silk lapels, knowing how Jeanie lied, yet, in Jeanie’s heart was the surety of truth, that her words were not lies. For, she’d never been the lying type before, so she made up her mind to weave the story into the truth she needed to survive and if that meant a solid demarcation between the knowledge of her mind and that of her heart, well she could live with that.