The Last Letter (22 page)

“Mama?” James startled them. He stood there with the pail of water. He set it by his feet and went to his mother.

“I’m okay. Just a bad contraction.” Jeanie took Templeton’s hand from her belly and shook it with both her hands. “You and Mr. Templeton are going to work. I’m going to check on your father.”

“And rest, Mrs. Arthur,” Templeton said. “You’ll need to rest.”

“And rest. Yes, I’ll try some of that,” Jeanie said relishing in his attentions again. She should have been ashamed at James seeing such crudeness, seeing it perpetrated by his mother. But, she also knew she’d lived and taught a life where trust was utmost and as they weren’t lying people, James would have no reason to see the situation as anything other than okay.

In the few seconds of connection she only felt satisfaction. The small touch and complete enchantment spurred by the act was as pleasing as anything she’d ever experienced.

At the horse, James threaded his fingers together and let Jeanie step into his hands as she mounted the one called Summer. Named for its color—yes to the Arthurs, the summer had a golden glow like the hair on their horse—and for Jeanie and Frank’s love of the book
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Jeanie rubbed her belly and straightened against a contraction. They called their other horse Night, inspired by the same literature.

“Mama?” James said. He had one hand on the neck of Summer and the other on Jeanie’s leg. He squeezed it when she didn’t reply. She looked down, her face somehow flushed and losing color simultaneously, taking on a deathly pallor.

“Mama?”

“I’m all right.” She nodded and looked into the horizon. “I’ll stop at the well for water and once I’m home, preparing dinner, I’ll feel better. I’m fine. Don’t you worry.”

James bit his lip and squeezed his mother’s leg again. “As long as you’re sure. I won’t stay long with Mr. Templeton. Just long enough to learn how knowing the pressure coming up and down through the air can tell us what the coming indications are.” James shielded the sun with his hand as he looked up at his mother, his words tumbling out.

Jeanie reached down and cupped his chin with her hand. She smiled her close-lipped one that meant all was fine in her mind. My God, how had she and Frank created such a wonder as James? As she looked at her son’s animated face, the way it was framed by his hand and hat, an image of him as a newborn popped into her mind. She startled then ran her hand over his shoulder marveling at the juxtaposition of his childlike enthusiasm and mature concern for her wellbeing.

“No, I have to go with you, Mama.”

James tipped his hat then leapt onto Night, yelling out that he’d return once he saw his mother back to the dugout. Jeanie stopped protesting and took Summer to a trot, James beside her, looking as grown-up as he could be.

The motion of Summer trotting alleviated Jeanie’s contractions—the ones coming much too early for the stage of pregnancy she enjoyed—and she relaxed, letting the horse go to a full gallop. She passed the well, as she’d felt good enough to carry on past and she hummed as she dismounted, tied Summer to the wooden stake outside the barn then watered and fed her as James headed back to Templeton.

Jeanie’s clothes were still sopping with sweat and as she bent and stretched, tending to Summer, her own odors filled her nose making her cringe. She’d never been a woman who let circumstances dictate her cleanliness—the benefit of Templeton’s bath all but wiped away with one day’s work. She dismissed her desire for another bath. The prairie did indeed make use of a proper toilet difficult. Perhaps when the lathing and plastering were complete there’d be time for another bath. No, that would be…she growled at herself for entertaining frivolous thoughts.

She would have to settle for wiping her body down like a horse, as often as possible. Even inside the dugout, which was significantly cooler, it was not cool enough that she didn’t break into a sweat while simply brewing coffee. Maybe she’d try a little of the rose water Katherine had made at the Moore’s. Despite the scent that made Jeanie queasy, she thought it better than pure human stench.

Jeanie ticked off a mental list of things to do, accounting for where everyone was, what they were doing and when she’d need to have dinner ready. Cramps or not, meals needed to be cooked. And with everyone doing their part, she couldn’t very well beg off. She kept reminding herself of the miscarriages, that they occurred when she lay corpse-like in bed. This child was meant to be and she could feel it as sure as she could the heat.

Chapter 11

Jeanie headed to the dugout. Frank’s tapping of his hammer filled her ears. He would have constructed at least half of Templeton’s bedstead that afternoon. Frank was always at his best when he had concrete work behind him and she was sure this was a good thing, that creating would release whatever mood he was taken by earlier.

Jeanie stood atop the dugout, leaned over the edge and was about to say hello to Frank when the sight before her stole any words that had formed in her mouth. There, in front of the dugout, below Jeanie, lay Frank, on his back. One foot was crossed over his knee, his eyes were closed as he chomped on an unlit pipe. His arms lay out from his body, his one hand’s fingers lazily making circles in the dirt while the other held a hammer tapping a piece of wood beside him.

There wasn’t a constructed piece of anything in sight. Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek, holding back the flurry of confused words—reprimands that swam in her mouth, wanting to flood out, drowning Frank in a scolding that ought to have put him in his place. She kicked dirt at him from above. It sprayed over the ground below, landing near him, but apparently not close enough to jar him from his respite. He shifted on his back and snored.

Jeanie backed from the edge of the dugout to settle her stuttered breathing to organize what she’d say to Frank to not encourage him to forge a path into a blue mood. This could not be happening. Frank could not be losing his drive to survive already. Not
there
on the prairie where laziness and dreams without the grounding of practical action would mean starvation, calamity, death. If a person stopped moving a person would die, Jeanie had come to believe.

She pushed these thoughts from her mind, smoothed her skirts and walked down and around the dugout clearing her throat. She hoped that announcing her presence would allow Frank the opportunity to save his face, so
she
could save their lives in the process. Jeanie rounded the side of the dugout and when Frank came into view he was still reclined, though his hands were now crossed over his chest like a dead man in a coffin.

“Frank,”
Jeanie said. Her voice was tight, hissing.

“Oh, hello.” Frank rose to his elbows. “Oh, hey, you’ll never believe what I’ve come up with.”

Jeanie cocked her head. “I’d love to see.”

“Uh, well, no.” Frank tapped his temple with his forefinger. “It’s all upstairs, tucked away with the riches, the
real
treasure.”

Jeanie shifted her weight and ran her tongue over the roof of her dry mouth.

“Now,” Frank said looking off into nothing, “don’t set about fretting things that haven’t come to pass.”

Jeanie shook her head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means sheep.”

“Sheep? Sheep?” Holding back her anger had transformed it into frustration fueled tears. She began to cackle through them as it was clear he’d gone to his residence where air castles were built like a child’s toy.

“I got a letter from Jack today. He’s raising sheep in Tennessee.”

“Where’s Templeton’s bedstead?” Her voice rose over the plains, screeching in a way she’d not done in two decades. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. She wasn’t the crying type. Especially without even getting a full explanation, but she felt it in her bones that he’d been up to nothing of any promise or worth. While the rest of the cooperative broke their necks to survive, he’d been lounging like a brainless slug.

Frank stood, lifted and dropped his shoulders and wouldn’t make eye contact.

A crash in the dugout made Jeanie jump. She covered her mouth wondering what creatures had infiltrated the dugout this time.

“Come on out ladies!” Frank intoned like a sideshow master. “Jeanie’s home and I think she’ll be satisfied to see her work’s been halved at least.”

Lutie and Ruthie appeared from the dugout, wiping their hands on their aprons. Jeanie looked at Frank’s grin that swallowed his face as he seemed to admire the mere existence of the two single women. His eyes held and lost focus at the same time. Jeanie followed his gaze back to the women, to Lutie specifically.

Lutie’s thick yellow hair hung in loose ringlets down her back, her dress, an empire-waisted silk, draped her body. A sharp wind burst through the air and pushed the material against Lutie’s round breasts, displaying what was clearly an absence of proper undergarments.

The breeze lifted her hair and Jeanie’s mind registered the scene as though it were equipped with a camera. The picture of Lutie, like a painting in the Louvre, or the illustrations in Jeanie’s favorite book of fairytale princesses, seared into Jeanie’s consciousness.

She gazed back at Frank who nearly licked his lips at the view and her gut clenched as the imprint of Lutie in the wind had clearly marked Frank’s gray matter, too. Ruthie stepped from behind Lutie, clearing her throat. Ruthie’s hair yanked back, bun strangling any attractiveness from her cratered face, dripped with sweat and her face expressed exasperation in the way Frank’s did awe.

The two women stampeded toward Jeanie taking her by the hand, pulling her into the dugout, yammering about them having made dinner because they’d finished their work at home and couldn’t allow poor Frank to complete his commissions and tend to women’s work while Jeanie lathed Templeton’s home.

“Templeton should just build a soddie at this stage,” Ruthie said. “Money or not, building a frame home is simply foolish this summer.”

Jeanie shrugged, holding back her comment that she admired Templeton’s pursuit for finer things.

“Besides, he spent at least a month’s time in our soddie due to the wind tearing through the plaster in the walls. A frame house may look sturdier, but it’s not.”

Jeanie stopped short, yanked her hands out of the two women’s and did her best to apply a look of nonchalance to her face. “Mr. Templeton spent a month at your house over the winter?”

Ruthie nodded vigorously and stirred whatever was boiling in the pot.

“He did most of the cooking,” Lutie said. “We were afforded the opportunity to read and reflect on the path of our lives.”

Jeanie squinted as Lutie lowered herself onto her and Frank’s bedstead. She leaned back and threw her hand over her forehead and closed her eyes, burning yet another image of startling beauty into Jeanie’s mind.

Anger surged through Jeanie’s veins. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was more irritated by. “Well, I don’t think it looks nice to see men washing dishes. In fact it is a decided infringement of woman’s rights.” Jeanie said before she gently, but firmly edged Ruthie away from her stove with her hip.

“And you two, here in my kitchen, that’s similar, you know. An infringement.”

Ruthie moved aside but didn’t relinquish the spoon. “I quite agree with your assessment of the male position in the home, Jeanie, but I am, in a sense, your sister and in being that, it would mean my pride for you to allow me to honor you, a woman with child, with a meal. It’s not as though you’ve been lounging about all day,” Ruthie’s eyes shifted then met Jeanie’s again. She looked back into her stew and nudged Jeanie aside as had just been done to her.

“It’s wild rabbit,” Ruthie said. “I think you’ll like this recipe.” Jeanie suddenly felt grateful to Ruthie, exhausted and needing to rest. Jeanie glanced at Lutie and couldn’t then decide where the balance between manners and necessity lay. She wanted to tell Lutie to get the hell up from her bedstead, to allow
her
to rest, to get the hell off her prairie, but that would be impolite.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. “Please get up,” Jeanie said.

Lutie didn’t flinch, still sprawled as though being painted.

“Lutie Moore. I said get off my bed. Our marital bed. This abode is small and ugly and animal-like, but we have not fully abandoned—”

“Oh, oh, I’m sorry,” Lutie got up then swept her arm to the side, inviting Jeanie to lie on her own bed. Jeanie did. She ground her backside into the bed, trying to find comfort as though it were not her familiar bed.

She closed her eyes and sighed. She could not simply laze about while others worked. “Oh, go ahead.” Jeanie flew off the bed, smoothed it. She took Lutie by the arms and directed her right back onto the bedstead.

Lutie sat up on her elbows. “Well, I won’t have you pushing me around like I’m some child. I’m just as—”

Ruthie spun around pointing the stew-covered spoon at Lutie. “Go for water. That would be a fine bit of help.”

Lutie sighed and shrugged like ten-year-old Katherine might before tramping off, hair bouncing down her back, dress flowing like a princess.

Jeanie nodded to Ruthie who then turned back to the stew.

Jeanie sat on a small wooden, ladder-back chair and pulled her sewing onto her lap. It was a shirt she’d been fashioning out of the final spare wagon sheet for Nikolai.

Jeanie focused on her stitches, her fingers edging with machinelike accuracy and speed.

“Are you alright?”

Jeanie jumped at Ruthie’s voice having forgotten she was there and looked up for an instant cracking a smile before plunging back into her work. “Yes, fine. Fine,” Jeanie said.

“You look like you’re in pain. It’s not the baby, is it?” Ruthie walked to Jeanie and squatted in front of her. Jeanie stopped sewing and straightened away from Ruthie’s presence.

“I know I’ve never been a mother,” Ruthie said. She patted Jeanie’s hand and squeezed it. “But, I’ve seen my share of women carry babies and you seem to be caught by more than your portion of pains.”

Jeanie squeezed Ruthie’s hand in response, touched by her consideration. She felt suddenly rich to have two women in the nearly empty prairie that cared so much for her. Who needed dozens of women like those she worked with on the Des Moines Welcoming Committee, symphony and hospital boards when she had two good friends like Ruthie and Greta to call her own?