Read The Last Letter Online

Authors: Kathleen Shoop

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Westerns, #Historical Fiction, #United States

The Last Letter (30 page)

BOOK: The Last Letter
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James removed his wet boots and peeled off the rest of his outer clothing revealing his red long johns. Jeanie stopped stirring and turned to see James stand over his father, hands on hips, as though determining whether Frank was alive or dead or silently daring Frank to wake and interact with his family. He shook his head and without looking at Jeanie sat in front of the fire and pulled his legs to his chest, staring into the red and orange jumping flames. Jeanie turned back to her stew then began to grind the coffee.

“I know you hate this dugout, Mama,” James said.

“Oh, James. I didn’t know you were there.” She didn’t want to discuss gloomy topics in front of Frank.

“I know that every time one of us kids or a cow or horse runs overtop, causing the roof to shudder like a salt shaker, releasing dirt onto your scalp, settling in like some sort of perverse fairy dust, that your stomach turns in disgust.” James paused. He removed his hat and hung it on a hook inside the door.

“But really, I just left Templeton’s and his place is frigid. He’s excited to host Thanksgiving and all, but I couldn’t help but notice that even with the thick layers of plaster we set, there are spots where the air sails through like wind off the ocean. For as hard as this winter will be, I think we have the prize home, the smallest, most insulated, being that we are basically one with the earth and thus one with God and how could we go wrong? We’re essentially living in the womb of God. If he had a womb, I mean.”

Jeanie turned from the coffee she was grinding. James shivered so hard his body jerked. Jeanie pulled a blanket from the chair and set it around his back, smoothing it over his shoulders several times. James grabbed her hand.

“We’re going to be all right, Mama. I have this feeling in my gut. I don’t know where it comes from—maybe the Hunts are right about the Lord living right inside each of us, because I feel it, that sort of Grace they talk about. All the talk of sin we heard at church in Des Moines, that never struck me as pertaining to me at all. I never felt particularly sinful but never holy either. Now, out here, on the prairie, it’s as though I was born here.”

“James, my sweet, you are profound this morning. Is it simply thoughts of Thanksgiving on this special day that has you so full of this Grace?”

James shook his head and shrugged before turning his face up at his mother. “I don’t know, Mama. This swell of hope and near glee has been building in me. Every time Templeton teaches me a new way of thinking about weather, patterns, stuff that barely exists in terms of schooling but is so obviously true in this environment, I feel powerful, like I can do anything. And with each problem we encounter and surmount, I feel as though we are imbued with strength that can’t lead to anything but success.”

“Well, then all I can imagine is that you will indeed find nothing but success because in your hopes and dreams is purposeful action, James. And that is what matters.”

When James didn’t respond, Jeanie turned. James had stood and now towered over his father, peering down on him as though he were the parent, awaiting his lazy child’s wakening.

“That is the difference,” James said not moving. “I see that as clear as the wind blusters right through the seemingly sturdy walls of Templeton’s frame house. Sometimes, what things look like is not at all what they are.”

Jeanie watched as James’s posture straightened with each word as though saying them, their full weight, was realized in his bones and made him into the man his father would never be. Jeanie buckled at the picture of the two of them, grasped her chest, surprised at the pain she felt and in the next breath she took, felt the grip of contractions.

Chapter 14

 

Jeanie had fought through Thanksgiving morning’s contractions by sipping tea and sitting quietly whenever her duties would allow.

The weather was odd for November. In the morning it had been frigid, the ground blanketed with snow. But by noon it had warmed enough to obliterate the whiteness and create a pleasurable day. James, Tommy and Katherine rode to the Zurchenko’s to see what they needed in terms of hauling food or preparing it for Thanksgiving.

And, as though the mild weather seeped into Frank’s blood, he rose at noon and with no more than six words reported that he would stop by the Moore’s to see what they needed in terms of chores and hauling food and supplies to Templeton’s. Jeanie, who had been resting for a moment on the edge of the bed rose at this pronouncement.

“No,” Jeanie said.

Frank turned his hands palm up and smirked.

“I mean it.”

“I heard you.”

Jeanie shifted her weight not knowing what he meant. He buttoned his work shirt, a dirty one.

“Wear this one.” Jeanie held up a clean shirt.

“I’m working, I don’t need a clean shirt.”

“You’re going to the well?”

“Yep.” He raised his hand over his head in that way he always did to signify he was moving on. He headed to the door.

“You’re going to the well for
us,
right?” Jeanie hated that her statement came out as a question.

“After I tend to the neighbors. You’re always saying to be neighborly, manners and such, so I’m doing that. Just for you.”

Jeanie nearly doubled over from the pain that sentiment caused, the way he used her words against her, made her into a vixenish woman, deserving to be resented. As though
her
actions pushed them into a prairie life.

She ran after him. “Frank. We need you here. We need you to laugh in the house, talk with us, help us, to be the man you used to be.”

Frank’s eyes widened then a cold smile came over his face. “I’m not sure I’m the one who needs fixing. You’ve been riding me since we arrived on this great land. Nothing I do is good enough for you. And instead of giving me a few seconds to catch my breath and scratch my ass, you do my work for me then you seethe over the cook-stove, angry because you’re doing everyone’s work. Well, my sweet Jeanie, if you don’t want to do everyone’s work, then just stop doing it. Simple as that.”

Jeanie processed his words and realized she’d folded into herself, pushing back at the contractions that wracked her, taking the verbal blows, partly feeling like he was right, but knowing he was wrong.

“And you
hit
me,” Frank said. Jeanie thought she saw his lip quiver.

“I will never forgive myself for hitting you, Frank. When I thought you were using opium, I lost all sense. That’s no excuse, but
we
are your family, Frank.” Jeanie shouted. She took deep, fast breaths to bring her voice back to normal, so her words wouldn’t careen into the air, carry over the plains into their neighbor’s ears.

Jeanie bent into another contraction. “Like it or not. You are stuck with us and you better ride tall and satisfied from now on. We are your
life.”
Jeanie’s voice was thin, barely full of the zeal enough to get them out of her mouth let alone convey strength. Frank sauntered to his horse, Night, and mounted it with the ease of a teenager. Nothing in his body communicated the blackness that clearly lived in his soul and nothing seemed to show he cared for his wife in the least.

She watched him disappear, dragging her soul behind him, pitting her heart with his callousness, leaving what was already a hobbled marriage, further crippled. She cleared her throat. There were mouths to feed and chores to be done. She returned to the stew. For some time she fussed with the dishes she was to prepare. Her anger grew though she didn’t want it to. She stirred the stew, nearly punishing it. The spoon flew from her hand and clanked against the pot, spewing meaty broth against the wagon sheet. “Blame-it!” Jeanie said. She spun around looking for a rag. She dipped it into the water and rubbed at the stain as though her life depended upon its removal.

Frank came back into the house, stood beside her, trying to look busy, searching for something. Jeanie huffed and puffed, hoping he’d just do what she needed him to. But instead of him agreeing to do what was his responsibility anyway, he began picking his nose. Jeanie tried not to watch out of the corner of her eye, to give him the space to do what he needed to without embarrassing him, by telling him it was grotesque and she’d had enough of such things. The act of plowing through his nose with one finger then the other would be, she was sure, the thing that would in the end make her hate him. She shuddered and turned her back fully toward him.

“It’s okay, Jeanie. I love you and everything will be okay. I just need to get out of this mood. You know how these moods take me and I can’t, I just, well, I love you and I promised the Moores, you know, Ruthie especially, she’s been a big help to us and I just want to repay… “

Jeanie
wanted
to soften into his arms, to understand how one minute he was hard and the next he was loving. She searched his face for an answer. Nothing was telling. She called up portions of his letters to her, the way they made her feel. Nothing came. She tried to love him right. He was right, she told herself, Ruthie had done a lot for their family, even if Lutie had done nearly nothing for them and the cooperative.

“Ruthie said she’d understand if I couldn’t help them load up their wagon, if you needed me. She knows…”

“No, go.” Jeanie shrugged his hand off her shoulder. “Ruthie doesn’t deserve to carry the weight of two people with nothing in return. James already loaded the wagon with our knapsacks and linens and—” Jeanie wiggled away from Frank and disappeared behind the necessary curtain to use the chamber pot. The only thing Jeanie could figure was that Frank was indeed using opium. How else could she account for such sweeping moods?

She’d yanked her skirts up and pulled down her netherthings. Squatting there, Frank pulled the curtain aside. Jeanie should have been swept by humility and embarrassment that her husband was watching her relieve herself, but none of that came. And as she finished up her business, she stood, resituated her clothes and washed her hands while Frank watched every move she made. Jeanie couldn’t decide what it all meant, that neither of them flamed red as they would have, as they’d done, just months before.

Back at the stew that didn’t need stirring, Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek. “Just go on, Frank. It’s fine. We’re all set. We’ll see you at Templeton’s.”

Frank pulled on his outer clothes and boots and hesitated at the door as though wanting to say something.

“You’re not eating that opium, are you Frank?” Jeanie cringed away at her words as they floated off into the air. He snorted and shrugged his shoulders and in the end he roughly yanked open the door and disappeared into the blinding sun leaving Jeanie to consider how she’d allowed her feelings to tangle as they had.

How had they come to this point where circumstances dictated their feelings for each other, making her daydream of how it might make things easier if he were dead, if they were divorced, if that kind of thing were possible to do and continue to live. Yes, she wanted him gone, but there could be no divorce, no way of making him disappear, to stop him from influencing their lives one way or another. They would die without him, it was impossible for a woman to keep a family once she’d been divorced.

So, it was clear that she needed to harden herself to anything sweet or sentimental because there was nothing more wasteful of energy than the constant rumination of one’s feelings. She would be the one to hold their family together. She’d known that for some time, yet every time she thought it, the realization felt stunningly new.

 

At Templeton’s Jeanie and Greta laid the pheasant in the middle of the Thanksgiving table and draped their arms around one another. Anna held her mother’s hand, clearly having regressed to role of baby since Anzhela died.

Jeanie’s children had always been independent, never latching on past the point when they could walk themselves. They had been curious to the point of dangerous, but in Des Moines, between Jeanie, her mother and the nurses Jeanie’s mother always provided, the children never wandered too far into trouble. Jeanie squeezed Greta’s waist and smoothed Anna’s yellow hair down her back, cooing at her, hoping that the baby in her belly might be like Anzhela, clingy.

“Well, the table is perfect. The linens, the pumpkin color, it’s stunning and the perfect complement to the real thing,” Greta said.

Jeanie dropped her embrace and looked at the table. “All that’s missing are Katherine’s candles. She worked days creating what she deems a masterpiece—or several masterpieces. My little artist.”

“She is talented,” Greta said. “Not that I really know, I mean, formally I have no education in the arts, I have no education period, but I know what looks pretty and that Katherine has a way of seeing the world that’s beyond her years.”

“She does,” Jeanie said. “I agree.”

“Maybe she’ll be famous, painting’s hanging all over the best walls in the world someday.”

“Oh, I don’t know. “Jeanie flushed, not wanting to boast about her daughter. She walked to Templeton’s front window.

“Greta, is it me or is it impossible to keep a window clean around here? Have you noticed?”

BOOK: The Last Letter
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