The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (26 page)

“They’re coming,” Mary said finally from the parlor window.

Isaac and John were pushing the wheelbarrow out of the barn. It was covered with a tarp. “All right,” I said to the girls. “Go on. Emma, you’re staying here.”

At the corral, the girls sat on the fence watching Isaac and John push the tarp-covered wheelbarrow back and forth to a canyon about a quarter mile off. The wheelbarrow made a deep track in the soft damp soil as clouds of flies hovered. I saw how in a few days’ time the ground would dry and the track harden into place, reminding us always of this bad time.

Two-year-old Emma, with me on the porch, watched the wheelbarrow. I tried not to as I scrubbed clothes on the washboard. All I could think of was how time was passing.

“Last trip,” I heard Isaac tell the girls. “Come on.”

I knew what Isaac had in mind. He’d have the children stand near the rim of the canyon and say a prayer of thanks for all the good things Jerseybell had done for our family. He’d done this before when our first dog, Tracker, died after a fight with a coyote.

I scrubbed all the harder at the washboard. Overhead, turkey vultures glided, dipping into the canyon where Jerseybell was, some of them shrieking when driven off by the bolder ones. Emma pulled on my skirt. “Me too,” she said, poking out her lower lip and pointing at Isaac and the others. The children and Rounder were walking with Isaac as he pushed the wheelbarrow. It made me think of Louisiana and how we used to follow the dead to the cemetery as someone beat a drum, one step at a time. It made me hope that someone had followed my brother Johnny when he was taken to the potter’s field. I hoped someone had said a prayer over him.

Emma pulled at my skirt, her face tight. “Me,” she said. “Me too.”

I told her no. I couldn’t carry her the quarter mile to the canyon and Mary shouldn’t have to. Not today.

“Want to.”

“No.”

She stomped her foot.

“You’re trying me,” I said.

She stomped her foot again, harder.

“Get inside,” I said.

“No.”

I wiped my hands on my apron and reached for her hand that wasn’t burned. She jerked her arm away and frowned at me. I narrowed my eyes at her. Emma screwed up her face and screamed. The shrillness of it ran down my spine. Isaac and the children stopped and looked up at us. Gritting my teeth, I waved them on.

Emma screamed louder. I picked her up, her legs kicking at my belly. “Stop it,” I said, tightening my hold. I got her inside and to her bedroom and put her down. She shrieked. “Stop that,” I said.

She screamed even more, stretching my nerves tight.

She threw herself down. Flat on her back, Emma kicked the floor with her heels, screaming. My nerves on fire, I itched to throw something—anything—against the wall.

My jaw set, I hurried to the kitchen, got the soothing syrup, and went back to the bedroom. “Lookie, Emma,” I said, forcing my voice to be calm. I swung the brown bottle back and forth before her twisted face. “You like this; it’s good.” She gulped back a scream and lifted her head. Her eyes followed the bottle, trying to focus on the picture of the smiling white woman and her little boy. Frowning but curious, Emma sat up, sniffling, snot clotting her nose.

I said, “Get up, honey, and I’ll give you some.”

She bunched her eyebrows together, her face wet with tears. She got to her feet.

A few drops of syrup spilled on the wood floor as I poured out a tablespoon. I put the bottle on the dresser. I leaned down and carried the spoon to Emma’s open mouth. She shot me a sly look. Her hand flipped up. The spoon flew in the air, spattering syrup on my face and on her dress.

She laughed.

I raised my hand and slapped Emma on the side of her head. She fell back, landing on her bottom, her eyes going wide with fright.

“Honey,” I said, shocked by what I’d done. I’d hit her hard, harder than I’d ever hit any of our children. I reached out for her to make it right, and as I did, she drew herself up and rolled under the bed. The bandage on her burned hand came undone. She shrieked with pain. “You’re all right,” I said, coaxing. I got down on my hands and knees. “Now come on out.”

Emma whined, holding her hurt hand close to her chest. “Honey,” I said. She whined louder, making my skin crawl, my nerves bad all over again. “Come out from there,” I said. “Right now.” She started crying. A sudden wildness rose up inside of me. Jerseybell dead, winter coming, another baby on the way. I wanted to hit something. I glared at Emma. She flinched, whining all the more. “Stop it,” I hissed. Emma’s face froze.

Gripping the feather mattress, I pulled myself up. I grabbed the syrup bottle from the dresser and reared back, aiming to throw it against the wall.

Emma made a funny gurgling sound; I wanted to slap her. I pulled in some air, and all at once I saw Emma’s scared face and I saw what I was about to do.
Calm yourself,
I imagined my mother saying.
Calm yourself.
“Mama,” I whispered, “oh, Mama,” and I rushed out of the room, through the parlor, and out the front door, slamming it behind me. On the porch, I slumped against the door.

Emma shrieked. I started to cover my ears but stopped. The syrup bottle was still in my hand.

I held it up before me. The bottle sparkled in the sunlight. Calm yourself. Some of the syrup had spilled on my hand but there was a good three inches of it left. Maybe a little more. I licked my hand, liking the sweet, heavy syrup. Isaac and the children were on their way to the canyon. There was only Emma, and she was inside. There was no one to see. I put the bottle to my lips.

The heavy liquid coated my throat, and I felt the syrup slip down into my belly. It felt good. I drank the rest of it. I sat down in one of the rockers and waited for my nerves to settle as the syrup slid down my veins all the way to my ankles.

I pulled in some air and blew it out. My arms turned heavy like they weren’t part of me anymore. I watched the turkey vultures float. They were the prettiest things, riding the air that way with their wings outstretched. They tilted from side to side, making the silver in their wings shine in the sunlight. In a week’s time, there’d be nothing left of Jerseybell but her bones. I heard Emma crying, but she was far away. The vultures circled and dipped, swooping in and out of the canyon.

I leaned forward in my chair. Isaac and the children stood on the canyon’s rim. Isaac was probably saying something uplifting about Jerseybell.

I closed my eyes, liking the looseness in my arms and legs. The house was quiet. Everything was quiet. The baby wasn’t going to be born today or tonight, and Isaac had plenty of time to get to Al’s. My hand found the letter in my pocket that I was waiting to send to my mother. My mind was made up. I was taking the children to Chicago for the winter. Mary was going to go to a dance. Isaac didn’t know a thing about any of it, but that didn’t matter. I was doing it anyway.

After a while, I got up and looked in the bedroom window. Emma had come out from under the bed and laid on the middle of the floor, sucking her thumb. She’d worn herself out.

I walked behind the house and down the rise a short way to the trash heap. With my foot, I buried the syrup bottle under a pile of rusting tin cans. Taking my time, I walked back to the house. I was the first in my family to own a house. Dad and Mama always had a landlord; so did Sue and her husband, Paul. Johnny and Pearl rented a room in East St. Louis. I was the first to own anything that meant something.

Winter would go hard on our house with nobody here to care for it. I could hardly bear to think of it. Isaac said he’d get a hired hand in, but with me gone, it’d take at least another one. I didn’t know how I was going to work that all out, but no matter what, I wasn’t going to let anybody live in our house. Strangers weren’t going to use my things. I’d rather the house fall down than have strangers dirty it up. The hired hands would have to settle for the dugout.

I put my hand on the door latch, feeling the solid metal of it. The key was somewhere, I wasn’t sure where, but I’d look for it first thing. That way I could lock the door when me and the children left the Badlands.

After a while I went inside. Emma’s eyes were half closed. Maybe I hadn’t hit her as hard as I thought. Other than spanking their bottoms, I’d never hit any of our children before. It shamed me that I had done it now.

I remembered Peaches Orwell what lived behind Mrs. Du-Pree’s boardinghouse. Her baby screamed day and night, and Peaches always wore a stretched-out, tight look on her face. I put my hands to my face, surprised that my cheeks were wet. I rubbed them, not wanting to carry Peaches’s look.

“Honey,” I said to Emma, holding out my hand. “Let’s get your dolly and get that hand of yours fixed up.” She looked at me as if considering. I smiled at her. She got up and put her good hand in mine.

The syrup made me feel heavy and light all at the same time. “All better now,” I told Emma.

I
t’ll be after supper,” Isaac said as me and Mary cleared the noon dinner dishes later that day. “Don’t wait for us.”

Just like that, the good feeling brought on by the soothing syrup left me. My hand slid over my swollen belly and went to my apron pocket. I fingered the letter I’d written Mama, remembering each word.

 

 

 

 

The nerve of it made my knees wobbly. It wouldn’t take much for Isaac to figure out what I was planning. One careful look and he’d see it on my face. I turned away from him and steadied myself against the kitchen counter. “I’ll keep something warm,” I heard myself say.

“Obliged,” he said, and then, “Ready, son?”

John took one last gulp of water and was out the door, breathless with his good luck. Helping Isaac with Jerseybell that morning had taken the starch clean out of him, but just the idea of going to the McKees’ perked him up. John admired Al almost as much as he admired Isaac. Since coming home three days ago, John had talked about nothing but Al McKee.

“He’ll scare the Germans something big,” John had said to me just the day before. The two of us had been on the porch; I had clothes soaking in a tub. “He’s a mountain man,” John said, “a real mountain man.”

“That so?”

“Yeah, and he showed me his rifles. For grizzlies. Used to hunt them in the wilds of Canada. Him and his daddy, when he was my age. Showed me his gutting knife too.” He held his hands out, palms facing, and stretched them further and further apart. “It was this big, that knife was. Me and Daddy, we’re thinking about it.”

“That so?” The water in the tub turned muddy. I took the clothes out and put them in a dry one. “Help me empty this. I’m needing fresh.”

John picked up one of the handles; I got the other. He said, “Daddy said maybe before the first frost we could go hunting in the Black Hills, get ourselves a few bears. Make a good cover for the beds, Daddy said. Plenty of meat for the winter too.”

Halfway down the porch steps, the water sloshing, I stopped. “What’s that?”

“Daddy said bear hunting would be a fine adventure.”

My mouth went dry.

“Mama?” John said. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said and I got myself moving again. We went out into the yard, and I watched John from the corner of my eye. His tongue was poked out some as he held his end of the tub, careful to not flood the prairie grasses as we went from patch to patch. John was too thin, anybody could see that, but he was tall and wiry, the muscles showing in his arms as he tilted the tub. A few days of enough water and better eating showed too. His light skin had lost its dullness; it looked alive again. But it was the shine in John’s eyes that seized my heart with sadness. He was going bear hunting, one more fine adventure thought up by his daddy. I saw what would happen a few weeks after the hunting trip. “Take care of the ranch, son,” Isaac was going to tell John. “It’ll be an adventure; you’ll make me proud,” and John would want to believe that. He was only ten, but with those words behind him, he’d put his shoulders back, stand tall, and want to do it.

John was going to buck me. He wouldn’t want to go to Chicago, not for anything. I looked off toward Grindstone Butte. A ten-year-old boy could run off and hide there. In the canyons too. I wouldn’t know where to begin to look for him. I tightened my grip on the washtub handle. I was going to lose John.

Don’t think about it, not right now,
I told myself as me and the girls stood on the porch ready to see Isaac and John off to the McKees’ place. I handed John the cloth sack we used for carrying lunches. I said, “Give this to Mrs. McKee.” He squinted at me, the midafternoon sun in his face, his eyes only a few inches lower than mine. I wanted to put my arms around him and hold him close. Instead, I said, “It’s a few biscuits for their trip east.”

I took the letter from my right apron pocket and gave it to Isaac. “For Mindy. I had to say good-bye.”

“When’d you write this?” he said.

“Last night. Couldn’t sleep.”

The other letter, the one in my left pocket, was big and heavy. My nerve buckled. If Isaac knew what my words said, he’d see me for what I was: a woman what had gone against him. He wouldn’t do like most men. He wouldn’t hit me; he wouldn’t even yell all that much. What he’d do would be worse. He’d take on a hardness—it’d make me wither up inside. He’d turn his voice cold and tell me to go on, get out, if that was what I wanted. Go to your mama. Our bargain ended long ago. You got your year; I got my land.

I put my hand in my left pocket. My fingers froze up. Take the little girls while you’re at it, I imagined Isaac saying. But not John. Or Mary. I get them, not you. Understand?

I did. But I had to try. I couldn’t let our children freeze to death, I couldn’t let them starve, not without a fight. I was doing right even if it felt wrong, even if it made me sick. I drew in some air and pulled out the letter. I held it out to Isaac, wishing my hand wouldn’t shake so. “It’s to Mama,” I said. “Thought Mindy’d be willing.” I stopped, my mouth filled with cotton. I worked up some spit. “Maybe she could post it. Before getting on the train.”