The Last Letter (35 page)

“I agree. Let’s get the cow handled and then you’re free to get some air and create some art. I miss seeing you do that, seeing you find joy in the environment.”

Jeanie and Katherine were trudging toward the horses when animal-like squalling made them turn northwest. Coming over the land were the Zurchenko’s horses attached to the wagon, bearing down like a train.

“What is she
doing?”
Katherine said. She grabbed Jeanie’s hand and moved into her side. Jeanie squeezed her tight.

“Oh, my, oh my. I’ve never seen anything like that,” Jeanie said.

Tommy stopped shoveling and after staring at the oncoming wagon he dove off the top of the dugout, out of the way in time for the horses to turn sharply left, saving themselves from falling over the edge of the dugout. The wagon spun around, the back right wheel nearly dangling off the edge.

Jeanie raced to the wagon. There, buckled over in the front seat, reigns tangled in her hands and draped up her forearms was Greta. Naked. Or nearly so. Her skin shouted wildly as its ruddy flush tore off the mask of this faux warm day. It may have been forty degrees warmer than the day before, but it was still only in the high twenties. Greta had stripped down to scant underthings, even her bloomers had been tossed aside before or during perhaps, her tear across the land.

“Get my coat Katherine, check to make sure Tommy is all right.”

Jeanie bounded to the wagon and climbed into it, her breath catching at the sight of Greta’s eyes, bloodshot, her hair braided but out of its bun. Her skin shivered on her bones as though no connective tissue joined the two systems. Jeanie smoothed her hair back from her face.

“Greta, Greta, what, oh how can I, oh Greta, What’s wrong? Where are your clothes?” Jeanie said. She scrunched in beside Greta and pulled her upper body onto her lap.

“Anzhela. I can’t…I’m looking for her. She has to be here. I hear her calling to me. She needs her Ma, that’s what she says every time.” Greta grasped the sides of her head as though trying to keep voices or objects from entering her ears.

Jeanie rocked her. Every time she opened her mouth to say something that might be remotely reassuring she shut it because she knew there was nothing to say to salve the wounds caused by a lost child.

“I’ve been looking. The first break in the weather. Not one day let up snow until today and this weather bestowed upon us told me to take every corner of our cooperative’s property searching for Anzhela. I just know she’s burrowed into a drift and is just waiting for me, my arrival. Children don’t give up hope for their parents. I can
hear
her, Jeanie.”

Jeanie closed her grip around Greta, trying to cradle her, to give her the comfort she wanted for Anzhela but would never be able to give. They’d buried Anzhela. Greta had lost her senses and no talk of facts would be comforting, Jeanie could see.

“Greta, why didn’t you send word? I didn’t realize. You’re so stalwart, so strong, I knew I’d be incapacitated, but you seemed… your clothes, where are your clothes?”

Greta moaned into Jeanie’s body, slobbering as she sobbed for what Jeanie thought was the first time. Jeanie had heard of people lost in the cold, disrobing just before dying as their bodies tricked them into thinking they’re hot instead of nearly iced to the bone.

Maybe that’s what’s happening to Greta. But she wasn’t that cold. Could grief have done this? Knowing there was no way to comfort Greta or elicit a response, Jeanie dug around the wagon, under a blanket, for signs of Greta’s clothing. She yanked the wool blanket up and drew it around her throat, tucking it around her legs.

Jeanie rocked Greta and hummed to her as though a baby. Feelings of grief swept through Jeanie, as though they were leaching from Greta’s heart into her own. But, Jeanie pushed them away. The surge of pain frightened her and she didn’t have to feel those feelings and it wouldn’t help for both of them to puddle to tears. She’d find a way to help Greta. There must be some way to help her find comfort.

Tommy huffed to the top of the wagon and held the coat up in triumph.

They stuffed Greta into it, taking turns holding her bobbing head and liquid-like neck. Her eyes were glassy. Jeanie leaned in to smell Greta’s breath, thinking she looked drunk as much as grieved. But there were no signs of drink. Tommy and Jeanie dragged Greta into the back of the wagon and knifed the edges of Greta’s blanket around her body and added a pair of Frank’s wool socks to her exposed feet. Jeanie should have known Greta couldn’t be dealing with the death of her daughter as well as she’d appeared to be—that grief could make one stupid, transform them into someone unrecognizable.

“Now Tommy,” Jeanie said. “This isn’t a game. You’ve got a woman in the back of this wagon, you’re not the best driver, I’ve seen, so be careful. The ground will be disjointed with a mix of frozen earth, melted sections, possibly rutty where the wagon trails are melting—”

“Mama, I can do this. I’m a man like James. I won’t let you down. For once trust
me.”

Jeanie felt her chest thump, hearing Tommy’s words but not being able to take the time to argue. “Just be careful. I love you.”

Tommy nodded, his eyes shining with the pride of responsibility. It was ten a.m. and Jeanie hadn’t accomplished any of what she’d set out to and Yale was screeching for her mid-morning snack.

“And hurry back, Tommy. I don’t trust this weather. It’s too fine a day to be true.” Jeanie hugged Tommy hard, kissed his forehead and hopped from the wagon.

“I’m riding with the Lord, Mama. I’m safe.” Tommy shook the reigns and clicked his tongue at the horses before sloshing onto the prairie, Greta splayed in the back.

Riding with the Lord? Well, that’s better than riding alone, Jeanie suspected. She bound around the front of the dugout, sweating from the heat spurred from distress as well as from her body having not adjusted back to thinking twenty-three degrees is cold.

Katherine had already picked up Yale and was comforting her as best she could a hungry baby who wanted nothing more than her mother. Katherine hummed a down tempo version of Marie Antoinette’s song, waltzing around the dugout, gaze locked with Yale’s, both of them enjoying their closeness, their dance.

Jeanie unbuttoned her blouse and watched the two of them from the wooden chair. “You will be a wonderful mother someday,” Jeanie said.

“You think so?” Katherine said.

“My, yes, look at you. She calms at your touch. That’s unusual for grumpy Yale, you know that.”

Katherine did a deep plié forward and then in every direction after that. “I don’t know if I will ever be a mother,” Katherine said.

“Of course—”

“No, I’m not sure I
want
to be a mother. To feel what Mrs. Zurchenko feels. I think I’d die. I know I would.”

Jeanie put her hand to her throat, then waved to Katherine to hand her Yale. Jeanie pulled back Yale’s blanket to let some air circulate inside her wrap.

“Motherhood is not about loss. It’s about greatness. Even in the small things, there is greatness.”

“Oh, shuckles. That presents a problem.”

“What?”

“Besides the pain I see in Mrs. Zurchenko. Even knowing mamas love their babies more than themselves, there’s the matter of marriage.”

“You find marriage problematic?” Jeanie said.

“Very.”
Katherine began to pace the space, her hands going up and down for emphasis. “You brought a book with us by Catherine Beecher. She essentially says women find equality in society by being
given
the opportunity to select her own master—her husband. That’s freedom? That wrings my gut just thinking of it. I can’t imagine if I ever got to meet her. Even the sisters Moore have a copy of the text that grew from the Women’s Rights Convention of 1848.”

“How fascinating of them. I believe Beecher is deceased. But then again, I’m not sure. You do realize I formulated many of
my
ideas at the pages of Catherine Beecher.”

Katherine sighed and gave Jeanie a look that indicated her thinking was errant whether supported by Beecher or not.

“I’ll start the water for lunchtime coffee, Mama,” Katherine pirouetted to the stove. “Then, if it’s okay, can I steal that minute for my painting? I can’t rid the sight of Mrs. Zurchenko from my head. I have to put it on paper to get it out of the sight of my mind.”

“You think that will do it?”

“I think it will.”

Katherine clanged the water jug against the coffee pot. “Mama, why do you have that Beecher woman’s writings, anyway?”

“Well, though you are of a younger, more liberated mind, I see, your mother is more traditional, I suppose. I guess I see the organization Beecher’s thoughts lend to marital relationships. If a couple spent all their time grappling over who makes the decisions and has the power, well, that would be entirely disagreeable. As a lifestyle, I can’t subscribe to that for the benefit of just saying ‘we are equal.'” Jeanie said the words as though rehearsed for a play. Did she actually believe them? She shook her head at herself.

“Well,” Katherine ground the seeds in the grinder, “I think you and Father have things reversed a bit. You are definitely his mas—”

“Bite your tongue, young miss.” Jeanie leaned forward causing Yale to unlatch and prepare herself to belt out a cry. Jeanie settled back in the chair and Yale reorganized herself.

Katherine turned away and shrugged, pouring the grounds into the filter. “Well, I can say for sure that I want my own land. Like the Moores. Imagine them, they are so contented simply to be alive, to enjoy life in their own skins without tending to anyone but themselves.”

Jeanie stiffened at Katherine’s observations, clearly those of a girl whose eyes were half closed and brain half off when she was around the Moores. This stiffening caused Yale to unlatch again. Jeanie bit her tongue to stop herself from telling Katherine that although the Moores claimed themselves independent, they in fact, depended on everyone in their vicinity, in ways that weren’t appropriate.

But, then she’d have to explain Frank’s weaknesses, his part in their dependence and though part of Jeanie would love to do just that, she knew what it was like to have the image of one’s father smashed—that it destroyed part of the daughter as much as the memory of the father. She wouldn’t do that to any of her children.

If Jeanie didn’t finish with Yale there would be no time to get some laundry done and head to the well. She ignored the fact that the water would be frigid, not subjected to the relativity of warmth that they all were.

“Thanks for putting the water on, Katherine. Why don’t you paint now? Then you can help me with the laundry. Just a few things while the weather’s broken.”

“You’re welcome, Mama.” Katherine bound to the chest that held their books, paper, and her art supplies. “But just to set to verification, Mama, you are a women’s rights supporter. You just don’t know it.”

“Well, I don’t like that phrase a bit. And I fear I’m not that at all. I simply make do with what I’m given—circumstances and material-wise—and that does not pronounce one a women’s advocate in any circle.”

“Hmph.” Katherine embraced her paints and canvas across her chest, leaned on one hip and raised her eyebrows as her lips folded into her mouth and she bit on the side of her mouth. “Well, I think my lady doth protest too much.”

“No, I’m insistent, not full of defensive assertion as you suggest and you’re treading mighty close to disrespect. In some homes you’d have been banished to the outhouse for just the first exchange.”

Katherine playfully bugged out her eyes and headed toward the door. “Well, lucky me, I’m in the home of progressive, indulgent parents.”

Jeanie laid her head back against the wood and smiled at their playfulness. “Keep the door open,” Jeanie said, “we want to absorb every bit of outside before we’re forced to close back up.”

“Righto, Mama,” Katherine said in an English accent for some unknown reason as she opened the dugout door and let a gust of warm fresh air blow in bringing the scents of lovely, teasing spring.

As much as something inside Jeanie told her not to let the weather inject her with too much lightness—the mild weather would last, probably just two days before the air crept back into negative numbers, snapping the lightness out before they knew it—she couldn’t help but move faster, see the best in their small abode and revel in the progress Yale had made over the past six weeks. While holed up inside the side of the earth, one’s thoughts either went to global, philosophical things, or to the second to minute to hourly duties that were required just to live to the next morning. The angry winter and the resulting mole-like existence didn’t allow for much reflection regarding how far they’ve gone in any manner of speaking.

But as Jeanie scraped her underthings over the ridged metal, she now hummed Marie Antoinette’s song and without even realizing it, her eyes would go into the dugout, searching out the cradle, seeing its stillness knowing Yale had passed the worst of her young existence. Things would be easy for her after such a plodding start. Though she tried not to bestow any sort of idolatry upon the baby or see any special grace inside her, she couldn’t help thinking Yale was intended for great things. How could she not be after her nearly fatal, early life? She was
special.