Citizens Creek (38 page)

“I can’t keep him,” the woman said. “They’ll throw me out, and where would I go? You have plenty here.”

Angeli cried at this last, making no attempt to hold back. This young woman had walked to the ranch with her birth wounds still
fresh, and the math of the situation worked, coinciding with Jake’s road-time schedule. He had, indeed, passed through Cow Hollow last fall. Who could deny Angeli’s story?

Rose thought about Angeli’s words. It was true. She did have plenty. She had food and shelter and late-life babies of her own and a growing ranch with a husband she was bound to in ways she never expected. But what did this young thing know of the devastation of their very first crop nearly destroyed by hailstorm and the bank’s threat of default? Of Jake’s early scramblings for cash the year after they married, cutting rails for twelve hours a day on remote ranches farther and farther away while Rose tended cotton, corn, and children alone? Angeli saw the house now, but not as when first constructed, a twelve-by-fourteen-foot log cabin built on a foundation of borrowed money. What could she know of the harshness of the early years, before they made their first purchase of forty head of cattle and two horse teams, and their first hires to help bring in fifty-five acres of corn and ten of cotton?

Yes. Now was plenty. And she intended to keep it all. Children, husband, ranch. Her domain. She intended to claw out a life side by side with Jake, a bold cowman with a man’s strong nature, and he would come back to her, regardless of his doings on the road. Her heart might shred now, but she would keep it intact with the force of her mind.

“Leave the boy, then,” said Rose. “Leave him and go on your way. I’ll pack up food for your trip home.”

Angeli seemed taken aback, as if she hadn’t expected the exchange to go so quickly, so smoothly. “You’ll raise Jake?”

“Rest for awhile to get your strength, and then be on your way,” Rose repeated. “There’ll be no coming back for the boy later. Never.”

“No, ma’am.”

Rose left Angeli in the front room for a last moment with the child while she made her preparations from the larder. But Angeli waited no longer than it took Rose to fashion a basket with big
bean dumplings to take with her. The woman set out as abruptly as she appeared, a determined figure becoming smaller in the distance as Rose, from the front porch, watched her retreat down the path. Rose stood for a time, holding the baby, staring toward the copse of trees at the edge of the prairie, until she realized the front of her dress was wet, and her milk had come down.

“Kindred,” Rose whispered to the newest addition to the household, stroking his tiny face with her finger. Was this the only way to break the curse of no boy in the family line? “Your name is Kindred.”

He was fast asleep, peaceful, and Rose put him in the basket-bed she’d already fashioned for the new baby coming. Tomorrow, she’d construct another from the elm branches that grew behind the bunkhouse.

She rang the supper triangle, just one go-round. They’d know the time wrong for noonday dinner, and only one of the hands would come in from the pasture to see what she wanted. An old cowpunch came, and she sent him with a message for Gramma Amy’s place on the Canadian River, one half day’s trip going, and a half day back. Elizabeth would read the note to Gramma Amy.

She needed her sister. Elizabeth must come here to live, now, to help her. She wasn’t worried about the delivery, but what came after. Four babies less than four years old. She had support from the sister of a ranch hand, a recent widow living on the property, but the woman had given notice of her intent to move to Okmulgee, where more people passed through, and she might have more chance to build a life than on a remote ranch in the middle of nowhere.

Rose moved through the rest of the day slowly, her chores mechanical, but as soon as darkness fell across the prairie, she lay down. She cried quietly in her room, out of sight, her heart an alien enemy that raced one minute and went numb the next. The wind kicked up, rattling the roof shingles, so strong she worried how many might blow off. She brought Kindred into the bedroom with her, and for the second time, opened her top to feed him.

He took to her quickly, as if he knew no other way.

Chapter 53

IN THE NIGHT,
the pain bit into her, refusing to let go. Almost a relief, such physical pain that it sometimes drove out thoughts of Jake. Rose wrapped her hands around the bedpost and squeezed so tight her fingernails sank into her own flesh, carving deep half-moon craters of dark blood. She made herself calm, willing herself not to cry out. This delivery would be easier than the others, she decided. This baby wouldn’t fight her. She had endured much worse with the other two, and determined to stay on her feet and deliver Creek-style, squatting, half standing, letting gravity draw the baby out.

Her first, Laura, was physically perfect in every way when she finally appeared, but the girl had taken sixteen hours to come out into the light of the world, as if Rose’s womb was where she wanted to hide forever. Despite Rose’s early skill as a midwife, and all the birthing she witnessed or aided, the force of those stabbing pains still surprised her when the assault came to her own womanly parts. Her second, Lady, another girl, came quicker, but she was working in the orchard and couldn’t make it all the way back to the house. She delivered two miles from the ranch in a field of hay, using an upright pitchfork she anchored into the ground to steady herself as she squatted. But she knew her body now, she knew how and when to demand, and she knew what she was capable of. Everyone on the ranch accepted that she would shut herself in her room to deliver alone. Not once had she called for help and she wouldn’t for this one either.

With calm, Rose reassured herself that her tools were ready.
She’d held the pair of newly whetstone-sharpened scissors over the open flame and wiped them down with alcohol, and now they lay on the stand beside the bed on a pile of clean rags, in place and waiting. The widow would have to look after the babies, and cook for the hands, and bring Rose food and water if the birth dragged on too long. She considered letting the widow cut the cord when the time came, but in this one thing, Rose was selfish. She loved the cutting herself, that first separation of mother and child, and could boast, if she had been so inclined, at the perfection of the belly buttons of both her daughters. No ruptures, no protrusions. Kindred’s had been a sloppy cut. She’d inspected him for defect, and all save that seemed satisfactory.

She passed the night in fits and starts of waiting, with the contractions continuing to promise, falsely, an imminent birth, and she watched through the little glass window in their bedroom as the sun began to rise in the sky. When tempted to dwell on Jake’s betrayal, she shut those thoughts out as best she could, making plans for all that needed doing instead. She heard the familiar commotion of the ranch rumbling to life, the fires started, water pumped, the coffee set to boil, the grease spitting in the pan, the horses married to saddle, the ranch hands clanging dishes, doors banging. Finally, a moment of complete quiet passed, blessed quiet, but then Rose heard a baby’s sudden squeal somewhere in the house, an outrage of hurt, and the swift movement of a comforting rescue as someone picked her up. The widow was on task.

As the sun climbed higher, she knew the ranch hands were outdoors doing the daytime chores, tending the animals, mending fences, harvesting crops. But the babies were left behind, and Rose was confident the widow wouldn’t stray too far, hovering nearby the closed bedroom door, careful not to intrude, even as she prepared noon dinner for the hands and oversaw the girls. Only Kindred was allowed in the bedroom with her, and his mere presence comforted her, in ways she didn’t quite understand.

She gasped at the next sharp contraction, her time near, her
baby finally impatient. She suddenly remembered last night’s windstorm. Someone needed to ride out to the east gate to check the fencing. She didn’t want to risk her milk cow wandering off again beyond her protection. As soon as she finished here, she’d have the widow run the order to one of the ranch hands. She had to be on top of them every minute.

Rose bore down. She couldn’t hurry the process, but she still had a ranch to run. Their ranch. Hers and Jake’s. They built it, and they’d hold on despite drought or flood or rascals or soulless bankers or human weakness, their lives intertwined. She was still his scrawny chicken. He was still her cowboy. They would pass the ranch to their children and grandchildren, preserving and improving. Rose would make sure of that.

Once the pushing started, the baby came fast. He was a big boy, long, featured like her grandfather, like her, Africa-based, sturdy of body and broad of face. In this baby, she saw more of her than of Jake. His eyes were brown, his hair dark, thick, and frizzled, his skin the shade of caramelized sugar in the pan. Rose was exhausted, but she relished the first astonished cry, the chest-to-chest contact of skin on skin, the wiping of the body, the ceremony of cutting, the gentle wrapping of layered protection within the blanket she’d scrubbed clean in the washtub and dried in the sun, set aside for just this moment.

“Jacob. My Jacob,” said Rose.

The curse was broken. And now there were two sons to protect.

Kindred woke in his basket, hungry, searching for her, and as if in response, Jacob began rooting too, so quickly after birth.

It took some getting used to, positioning first one and then the other across her body at the proper angle, intertwined, each at rest on the other and dependent on Rose to support the heaviness of their heads, but Rose gave the first breast to Jacob, waiting for him to latch. Once he did so, she offered the other to Kindred.

Chapter 54

BEFORE LEAVING THE
ranch house to pick peaches in the east field for supper, Rose asked Elizabeth to make butter from the cream held back from the broker in Haskell. She put her oldest down for a nap in the front room, fed the two boys, and strapped the youngest girl to her back. She craved time, however brief, to be away from the close-in walls of the house. She could force her hands to busyness, dawn to dusk, but managing the perturbations of her mind was another matter entirely.

“Keep an eye out,” Rose reminded Elizabeth. Her sister had been a blessing to Rose the last three months, with Jake away. “I’m back to feed them again by the time they wake.”

Her sister returned a tolerant smile. “They’re safe with me,” she said.

Eager as she was to get gone, she lingered, watching Elizabeth lug a cream bucket from the larder, set up the wooden butter churn on the front porch, and pour the thick mass from one container to the other. Once done, her sister brought out Jacob and Kindred, placing their two baskets side by side on the stoop in easy view, and began to turn the crank until she got a rhythm going.

Rose checked one last time on both babies, fast asleep, the two sons Jake didn’t yet know he had. Kindred was the bigger of the two, Jacob the most active. Not even three months old, and already Jacob gurgled and chuckled often, smiling when she came into his line of vision. Kindred, older than his brother by two weeks, was more cautious, studying all around him with a seriousness that reminded Rose of herself, although he carried not one drop of her
blood in him. Kindred rationed his smiles, as if he wanted to figure everything out first before taking such a risk.

Rose set out at last across the meadow, more careful of step since twisting her ankle in a prairie-dog hole last month. She felt moodiness in the air, a beginning or an ending, she couldn’t tell which, but the day was alive with possibility. They were going to do well, she and Jake. She’d decided. The last few months had been difficult, full of reminders that she would need to think in new ways, but she considered her lot. Since Kindred arrived, she’d endured occasional, unexplained spells sometimes lasting an hour or more, when she could barely catch her breath and was forced to sit motionless until her heart and lungs unseized.

But their blessings were so many. Their acreage prospered. The herd increased each year, land improvements were more extensive, cultivated fields more productive, the mortgage always paid on time out of cattle or milk sales. And now Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was heaven-sent, arrived on Rose’s ranch just days after Jacob was born. Rose offered no explanation of Kindred, and her little sister didn’t push her to admit the words of his origin aloud as Rose struggled to prepare herself for Jake’s return. Elizabeth was lively company, and talked to people Rose didn’t care to spend time on. With four babies, Rose couldn’t imagine how she would have managed without her younger sister’s help, especially once the widow moved to Okmulgee. Elizabeth surprised Rose with her willingness to be of service and her eagerness to make herself a part of their ranch. Although Elizabeth too was born to dust and cattle and prairie, she’d always been sheltered from the worst, either being so young, or so timid, or so spoiled. She’d come of age after the horrors of Fort Gibson, and after the hardest work and uncertainty of building Grampa Cow Tom’s ranches were far behind.

Rose steadied the papoose, gathered her collection baskets, and continued on until she reached the orchard of peach trees, just started to come into their color for the picking.

Rose wasn’t sure what day Jake would return, but she sensed
the time near. Today, this week, maybe next, surely sometime this month. When he did come back to the ranch from the cattle drive, Rose was determined he find everything better than when he left. The field harvested, fences in good repair, the livestock groomed, corn, peas, beets planted, watermelon rind and okra canned, a season’s worth of wheat taken to the mill and ground for flour, the pig fat and ready for slaughter, tubs of excess milk sold to the buyer in Haskell, and the gold coins safely deposited in the cedar box below the floorboards. And upon Jake’s return, he would find a new balance to the household. Not one but two sons. She’d had to think long about how to introduce him to both. She’d been practicing.