Fervent Charity (21 page)

“Lena, you are welcome here. Whether Gustie is here or not.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Jordis returned to her seat and picked up the halter. “Is there anything bothering you, Lena?”

“Oh, no. I just wanted to see how you were getting along and bring you this.” She pointed to the pillowcase.

Jordis said, “Do you want to go in the house and have some coffee?”

“No, I’ll have some water from the bucket.” Lena got up and helped herself. “It’s nice out here. And Gracia can’t hurt anything. I can let her be without fussing at her.”

She sat down again and with two fingers wiped away the water dribbling down the corners of her mouth. A whippoorwill called in the distance. Her eyes wandered the inside of the barn and rested on the memory bundle and its tripod in front of the south window. “What
is
that?”

“It used to belong to Dorcas.”

“Oh. I saw it in the barn at home… I just thought it was some of your things that you liked to keep off the floor. Why do you keep it out here?”

“I think Dorcas would like it out here.”

Lena thought for a minute. “Yes. She probably would. I like barns myself. Especially where there are horses. Before I got married, I always worked in houses where there was a baby, and I always liked visiting a barn where there’s a horse. The smell of horses makes me feel comforted. Safe, like. When I was a little girl, we had a horse that wouldn’t let anything happen to me. I didn’t have to be afraid of anything when Dolly was by. Too bad she didn’t fit in our kitchen! The only one I ever had to be afraid of was Ma.”

“Your mother?”

“Oh, yes. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ She believed in that like one of the commandments.”

Lena kept talking, keeping one eye on Gracia who was quietly amusing herself in a pile of straw. “I felt those whippings, I can tell you! My sisters, now...Ella and Ragna...they never got whipped. They were such goodie goodies. They never took my part in anything. Even when they knew I hadn’t done something, whatever it was, and that they’d been the ones to do a thing, they always stood by and let me get the whipping. I got my own back though, once. I was too young at the time to think it, but I sure have had a lot of satisfaction ever since. Ragna’s always been mad at me for it, too.” Lena chuckled.

“What did you do?” Jordis was genuinely curious.

“Bit her toe off.” Lena’s blue eyes snapped with glee. “We never had shoes to wear till there was snow on the ground. Ma and my sisters were sitting at the table. I was—oh, about four or five. I crawled under the table and bit Raggy’s big toe off. That was the only time I never got whipped because Ma was too busy. She slapped the toe back on with a wet towel and ice and took her to the doctor. We lived only a couple miles from town at that time. And Ma must have got it just right or that doctor did something just right, but that toe grew back together. It’s crooked and she can’t wiggle it. It’s kind of deformed looking.” Lena crooked her forefinger to illustrate. “But it’s there. Nobody sees her blame toe anyway, probably not even Pete, she’s such a priss. I don’t know how she ever got those children.” Lena laughed. “And every time it rains her toe hurts and she thinks of me and gets so blame mad.” They both laughed.

The gray cat, who had been lounging on a crossbeam leapt down gracefully and took after something only he saw. They watched him streak outside. Gracia tried to follow but gave up as soon as the cat disappeared from sight.

Lena gnawed the tip of her forefinger.

“So how have you been, Lena?”

“Oh, can’t complain.”

“How is Will?”

“He’s fine. Got a lot of work now, which is a blessing. So he’s gone before it’s light and back after dark. He just has time to eat and sleep and go again. But that’s the way the well business is in the summer, you know.” She paused and stared a moment at nothing, her mind had wandered. Then she came back. “Heard from Gustie?”

Jordis was so used to the charade by now that she didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I got a letter yesterday.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She is eager to come back. As soon as the baby is born and she sees Mary settled in, she’ll be back.”

“Well, that won’t be till the end of July, probably.”

“Yes, but Philadelphia is lovely in the spring and she will be able to leave before the worst heat of the summer.”

“You’ve been to Philadelphia, haven’t you.”

“Yes.”

“You went to school there. To college.”

“Near there.”

“Nnn hmm.” Changing the subject, Lena reached for her pillowcase. “I baked bread this morning.” She held out a loaf wrapped in a clean, flour-sack dish towel. “And I brought you some rhubarb sauce. You like rhubarb, don’t you?”

“If there is sugar on it.”

“Oh, my sauce is nice and sweet.” She held up a jar of sauce that glowed pink in the soft light of the barn. She put it back in the pillowcase. “You’ve got two loaves of bread here and three jars of sauce.” She closed up the bag and looked out the barn door. “Iver’s late today because he’s got the oxen pulling the cream wagon. They’re slower than molasses in January, but with all the rain we had yesterday, some of the roads are too muddy to get by on with his heavy wagon. The horses would have a heck of a time, but the oxen pull through anything.”

They stared down the empty road that lay flat and straight till it curved over the rim of the earth. Jordis asked, “Can you tell me why his oxen have women’s names?”

“Oh, that’s a good one!” The locals no longer thought anything of three of Iver’s oxen bearing feminine names unless a new arrival questioned it. Then they sometimes told the story, but more often did not. Old timers especially liked for people to wonder, like they wondered about snipes down south and jackalopes farther west, so they could wonder why Iver’s oxen, by definition male, were called Sally, Kate, and Daisy.

“Kind of a cute story...when I heard it, it made me like Iver a lot more. You know he’s quiet. I like a man that has something to say for himself so you know what he’s thinking, but Iver seldom says a word. Anyway, it was right after Ruby came to town and they weren’t married yet. Her family were distant cousins to Iver’s family. They lived in Chicago and were poor as dirt. They sent her out here hoping to marry her off to Iver. She wasn’t forced, as I understand it. She had a return ticket in her pocket if she didn’t like him. Lena paused to swat at a fly that buzzed too close to her face. “Well, she was a sweet little thing—just sixteen years old—had never been out of the city before. She was staying at Koenig’s... Iver paid for that...and he was kind of courting her. So, one day she went with him to the livestock auction at the fairgrounds because at that time he had only one yearling bull—that was Joe—and he was looking to build a good team. So he bid on some calves and bought three that he liked and when they went to get them, they looked so cute in their pen, and Ruby had never seen a calf before and let them suck on her fingers the way they do and was so tickled, she asked Iver if she could name them. Of course, he must have been happy to hear that, because everyone could tell he was head over heels for her but she hadn’t said much, so this kind of let him know that she might stay. So, he says sure you can name them...anything you want. And she says, well this one looks like a Kate, and she went down the line, naming them Kate, Sally, and Daisy, and the men standing around began to snicker. One mean old fool there said Iver better be careful of marrying a girl who couldn’t tell a bull calf from a heifer...he’d never get any children, and they all snickered and hooted and Ruby started to cry. But Iver said it made no difference...she’d named them what she wanted and that’s what they’d be called. And by jinx, don’t you know Ruby and Iver got married the next week, and she helped him hand raise those oxen so they are the best, gentlest team and will do anything for him. They’re still called by their maiden names as you might say, and Iver and Ruby have three nice boys so I guess it didn’t matter what she missed seeing on those calves.” Lena laughed.

“Lena, you tell a good story. Indians are good story tellers, so I know.”

Lena had to think a moment to accept this as a compliment. But she did and said with a smile, “Well, thank you. Iver’s really late today. I planned on riding back with him and not bothering you all day.”

“You don’t bother me, Lena. I like the company.”

“Really? I might take you up on that cup of coffee then.”

“If you don’t mind making it, you can go up to the house and I’ll just finish out here.”

“I don’t mind. I’ll open a jar of this sauce. It’ll go good.”

Lena left and Jordis hung up the leather tack she had finished. She took her knife out of her boot and cut the twine around a bale of hay and filled the mangers. She heard the horses in the corral snort, and then Skydog made a sound peculiar to him. A low-pitched whicker that held both anxiety and warning. It couldn’t be Iver. Skydog had gotten used to him and the familiar rattle of the cream wagon. He hadn’t made that sound for Iver in weeks.

She walked out into the sun and greeted Orville and Hank Ackerman. They had come to keep their promise to scythe down the tall grasses around Gustie’s house. Gustie liked Orville and didn’t seem to mind Hank. Jordis thought they were both dull-witted, mean-eyed white men. Maybe not Orville, not yet. Jordis knew a lot of white men. Only a few did she refer to as “white men.” The term encompassed all that was stereotypically bad about the European colonizers. Once she even referred to a full-blood Dakotah as a white man because she didn’t like him. She never spoke that part of her mind to anyone but Gustie and Little Bull.

Jordis greeted them with a smile and told them they were just in time for coffee and Lena’s good rhubarb sauce. The scything could wait a few minutes.

Hank was getting heavier and heavier. His middle had expanded to barrel proportions and yet he climbed down off the wagon with almost as much agility as his eighteen-year old son.

Orville, once he was on the ground, looked toward the corral where Skydog was pacing back and forth nervously. Moon stood quietly in the shade of the lean-to Jordis had put up since there were no trees in the pasture. “He’s lookin’ good, isn’t he?”

Jordis nodded.

Hank said, “Well, there’s that fella…Cloudhound…what is it you call him?”

Jordis said between her teeth, “Skydog.”

“Oh, that’s right.” Hank smiled mischievously at his son. “Why don’t you go over there and pet that horse?”

Orville grinned back, “Because I’m not tired of livin’.”

They both laughed.

“His staying behind that fence is just being polite.” Hank nodded to Jordis. “That crazy horse could sail over that top rail like nothing if he wanted to.”

“Then I guess you’d better not give him a reason. Go on up to the house. Lena’s making coffee. I’ll be right behind you.”

She turned to finish up in the barn and heard Hank tell Orville, “She better castrate that sonofabitch before somebody has to shoot him.”

Her thoughts about castration at that moment did not apply to her horse.

They had been more than two weeks at the Zimmerman place. It felt like two months. But it was finally over. Gleevie helped shut down the rig, hitched the team, and drove them back, silently—Oscar didn’t seem to notice—for several hours. They had started before sun-up and were met about noon at a crossroads some way from Charity by a pleasant enough fellow who introduced himself as Shorty Larson. He tied his horse to the side of the rig and changed places with Gleevie on the seat.

Oscar got down and walked out from the rig and fished in his pocket. There was no farewell glad-to-know you handshake. Not even a thank you. He handed him his pay, fifty cents short. “Where’s the rest?” Gleevie asked looking at the bills in his hand, a pitiful sum for the week he’d just spent, freezing and starving and being laughed at and kicked like a dog.

“You gotta pay for that screw driver,” said Oscar.

“But it was old. It had rust on it. It wadn’t worth no half dollar!”

“But now I still gotta buy me a new one and take an afternoon off to go get it. Take it or leave it.”

Gleeve just looked at the money in his hand, and Oscar turned his back on him.

Gleevie got on his horse and took the road north to Charity. The rig, with Oscar and Shorty, kept going east. Gleeve felt like he had never felt before. Oh, Jack Frye had gotten pissed and punched him a couple of times. But there was something man-to-man about that. A good square punch in the head. A punch you could return, or not, and no hard feelings. But this was a slow drip of sarcasm, of making you feel bad; the slow drip drip drip of disregard. He felt like a bug. No. Worse. He felt like a woman. That woman on the Arkansas border who he saw a couple of times. When she had served her purpose you threw your money on the table or the bed and left without a backward glance. Gleevie felt like that, and the feelings churned as he got closer to Charity. Maybe Oscar wasn’t afraid of Sully, but Gleevie didn’t want to get locked up or worse, so, even though the straightest shot to the road west and the easy pickings of the gold mine was up Main Street, he didn’t want to push his luck. The thought of Sully taking the side of that squaw only added to the fires burning in his gut. Gleeve angled around the town on the east side. The detour took him right past Gustie’s house.