Prairie Widow (15 page)

The ink was barely dry when Jennifer sealed up the letter and rode into town to leave it at Pearson's Inn. There it was put in a sack with letters from her neighbors, some of which were already a month old, awaiting travelers passing through town, in any direction, to take them away.

Meanwhile, the season was slowly beginning to change. Before long, her students were leaving to help their families with the harvesting. Every day, it seemed the wind blew just a bit cooler and harder. Soon, wriggling skeins of geese appeared in the sky, honking their way south. The noon sun no longer reached so high, nor the days lasted so long.

Then Lucy said it was time. Jennifer and her children loaded up the buggy and rode to the Baker homestead. And there they stayed as the wind turned still colder, the days shorter, and as, at last, the first dusting of snow settled on the soddy's roof, the solitary elm, the harvested field, and, like a poultice, the burnt prairie.

Early in the season those first snows continued to fall only lightly. Whatever lay on the ground was either melted away by the noon sun or blown away by the wind.

But, before long, the winter began in earnest, and snow flaked off the great grey dome almost unceasingly, so that the ground was covered in white and stayed that way. Sometimes the snow fell straight down, but, more often, it fell in lashing winds. Only occasionally did the winter take a breath, when the sky blushed blue, and critters punched out of the snow from their buried burrows to forage.

Then everyone in the Baker soddy likewise hurried outside to get some elbow room. The children rolled around, threw snowballs, dug tunnels, built snowmen, and took turns sledding down the embankment formed on the lee side of the soddy. During some weeks, it was possible to go out nearly every day, which the adults appreciated as much as the children. Nothing was more refreshing than to step outside in the morning, feel the slap of cold on the cheek, and see the brilliant white landscape sprawling in every direction to meet the deep blue sky at the horizon. The clear, brisk air seemed to crystalize everything and sharpened even the most distant objects.

But always the sky eventually darkened, and the snows returned, layering the prairie with an even thicker, seamless white blanket. Then, each morning, with shovels in hands, Seth and the boys sallied forth from the soddy to make sure there were clear paths to the stable, well, and outhouse. As the winter wore on, these paths became ever more deeply etched in the rising snow so that the shovelers had to heft the snow higher and higher to clear the way.

When there was no digging to do, Seth and the boys tried to occupy themselves with other endeavors, like making bullets, waterproofing their boots with hog lard, sharpening tools for the spring, or, when weather permitted, hunting. Once, Seth dashed breathlessly into the soddy. “Buffalo!” he shouted as he tied on his snowshoes. Everyone crowded through the door to see—half way to the horizon was a small herd of buffalo, trudging in four, long, brown files through haunch-high snow. Seth grabbed his rifle and hurried after them. Unfortuately, the buffalo were moving away from the soddy and Seth couldn't get close enough for a good shot. He gave it a try, but the rifle report only scared the animals into running, plowing the snow before them. Seth watched them move off, his rifle dangling at his side, his chest heaving. Everyone was disappointed as they watched him return, but Lucy said, “It was not meant to be.”

When, by and by, they couldn't find work for themselves, or when the weather forbade them from leaving the soddy, Seth and the boys were impressed into woman's work. “There's no sense being idle,” said Lucy. “If you want to eat tonight, you must help with the cooking.”

“It happens every winter,” explained Seth to Peter, his hand on the boy's shoulder. “I can put it off only so long.”

Peter smiled and gave a quick shrug. It lifted Jennifer's heart to see her son behave so congenially, and she was grateful to Seth. She thought, He's being a father to Peter. He's a good man.

Indeed, at times, Jennifer found herself a little jealous of Lucy for having such a good husband. He seemed so even-tempered—yet so strong—and surprisingly talented! Sometimes, in the evening, Seth would take out an autoharp, rest it on his lap, and strum the few chords he could read out of a music book. Everyone else sang, even Peter. Perhaps it was due to Seth, or perhaps it was due to living with all the doughty Bakers, but Peter seemed more and more strengthened. And, to no small degree, it was also true for Jennifer. Walter's death, though it remained painful, was less devastating.

Meanwhile, outside, blizzards repeatedly swept across the unimpeded prairie. So furious could the winds be, and so blinding the snow, that Seth strung clothes lines along the deeply etched paths from the soddy to his outbuildings to help him find his way. He told stories of people who lost their way in such storms and froze to death only yards from their houses.

Of course, it was best not to challenge a blizzard to begin with but to wait it out indoors, where the thick earthen walls of the soddy did much to keep the cold out and the heat in. But on the bitterest days, the cold didn't stay politely outside—it seeped in through the door and shutters, squeezing everyone inside closer and closer to the fireplace, which wasn't nearly as efficient as a good cookstove. It was the main job of the children, each taking a turn, to keep the fire stoked. For this they used the large, platter-like buffalo chips, twists of hay, com cobs, and the dead, woody stalks of sunflowers.

During particularly brutal blizzards, with the wind howling and the snow banked high against the walls, slowly entombing the soddy, Jennifer hugged her children close, regretting that she had ever let herself be talked into staying the winter. She wasn't frightened for herself as much as for her children, who, with their father gone, counted on her decisions for their welfare. Jennifer feared she had blundered this time. Morbid thoughts entered her head. She only hoped that, come the spring, her own and her children's bodies might be discovered by people and not wolves. No one else in the soddy knew she was thinking such things, or noticed when a tear rolled down her cheek.

But Jennifer never became totally bereft of hope. She remembered her resolve to withstand each ordeal and see it as temporary, survivable, and even strengthening. And when she was especially hard-pressed, she need only to observe Lucy Baker, who never looked worried. Even as ice began to creep under the door across the hard floor, and the frosty air penetrated farther in from the shuttered windows, tightening ever more around the huddled people, Lucy—as well as Seth—retained a calm that reassured everyone else. Jennifer marvelled at the woman's stoicism— but she also wondered how much of it was facade.

You are not fooling me entirely! thought Jennifer as she observed Lucy's performance. I know your game! And I can feign strength as well as you!

And she tried. Yet she could not quite succeed at this as well as Lucy. Much to her chagrin, Jennifer found that she was looking up more and more to her hostess. Indeed, Jennifer soon found that she wanted only to please her, like some little girl trying to please a parent. She felt a warm glow whenever she received a compliment from her. “Oh, these are such tasty com cakes!” said Lucy one day when Jennifer was baking. Jennifer couldn't help it. She was very proud.

It was only the presence of her own children that reminded her that she herself was a grownup and ought not to be looking up to Lucy so much, or to be taking so many orders from her. It was then she thought, as she had done countless times before, “Who does she think she is?” And she kept wishing the winter would hurry and be over so she could leave—and not just the soddy but Kansas.

But the winter would not hurry. It seemed only to entrench itself more firmly upon the prairie, and Jennifer didn't think anything could ever again pry it loose. When Seth went to the chickencoop one morning, he found that some of the chickens had frozen to death upright on their roosts during the night. In the stable, he found the horses and cows had their muzzles stuck to the railing in front of them by ice blocks formed of their own vapor. Seth had to knock the ice away so that the animals could move their heads and breath freely.

The temperature had now dropped so low, and the frigid air had infiltrated into the soddy so far, that the heat from the fireplace was compacted into a small bubble. Those who faced the fire warmed only their fronts. Their rears remained chilly. This was responsible for many sniffles among the children. Lucy treated them all with hot teas and plasters, and they seemed better for it.

But Jennifer, already annoyed at herself for playing the little girl to Lucy, insisted she herself tend to Peter, who was laid up in bed. She practically had to press Lucy out of the way, but she sat near her son to take over the nursing duties. She wished she could just wrap him up, and Emma too, and run away with them lest they forget who their mother was.

But that would have to wait. The winter was still fastened to the prairie, howling across the rooftop and pounding on the shutters. All Jennifer could do—all anyone could do— was stoke the fire, huddle with the others, and pray that it didn't get colder.

For a while, it almost seemed as if the prayers worked, for the bubble of heat around the fireplace had grown. Jennifer could now step back from the hearth and feel the warmth halfway to the white-washed walls. The next morning, she was able to stand right up against the walls and still feel the warmth. At long last! The cold had been pressed back out of the soddy! The temperature outside must have been rising!

But when Jennifer, standing in the middle of the room, joyfully announced this, Seth, who was holding Mary on his knee and drawing on a slate with her, said, “I wouldn't count on that just yet, Jenny. Sorry, but the house is just banked up with snow. The snow's warmer than the air, and it protects us from the wind.”

Jennifer's spirits sank. She shuffled over to a chair and plopped down into it. She was ready to go mad.

It was now three months that she was in the soddy, three months of breathing stale cold air, seeing mostly by the smoky light of lanterns and candles, forever crowded into this or that corner by children who were always under foot, and— for the benefit of her own children—all the while trying not to play the little girl. This required vigilance.

It was only at night, when she was in bed and surrounded by pitch blackness, that Jennifer felt most comfortable, for then she could at least imagine herself back in Ohio. Unfortunately, there was the occasional night when even this escape was denied her, for she would hear, not several yards from her, the discrete but clearly amorous exertions of Lucy and Seth. Jennifer sadly remembered her own, quieter lovemaking with Walter. “I love you,” Lucy whispered to Seth, their blanket rustling.

The next morning, Jennifer inevitably felt her cheeks blush when she greeted her hosts, and she had trouble looking them in the eye.

And so, still more days and nights passed, and Jennifer was entertaining gloomy thoughts more and more, until one day in mid-March it was Seth himself who felt a slight change in the temperature. When he went outside to check on the animals, he noticed that the cloud of steam from his mouth was smaller and disappeared more quickly. Also, the air didn't sting his cheeks so much. When he went back into the soddy a little later, he made sure to tell all this to Jennifer.

“Thank God,” she murmured.

Sure enough, with the passing of each week, then each day, the air outside—despite disheartening bouts of returning cold—was getting mostly warmer. Under the gaze of a bright yellow sun, the top layer of snow began to melt. It froze again at night, forming a smooth sheet of ice that crunched underfoot, but then it melted some more the next day. It went on like that for a week or so, freezing and melting, freezing and melting, until it kept on melting even through the night. The shoveled paths got shallower and shallower, until the gentle, mostly flat contour of the land could once again be detected beneath the smooth, white surface.

Jennifer was tantalized. She longed for the day when she could once more see the brown earth buried below. Each morning, when Seth returned from his chores, she asked him if the snow anywhere had at last melted down to the ground. Each time, however, even after spring had officially begun, he could only tell her, “Sorry, not that I could see.” Sometimes, even, he reported that it had snowed again.

But on one particularly clear morning in early April, Seth went out to do his chores and didn't return for quite a while. Lucy couldn't imagine what was taking him so long and was about to send Todd out after him. But then Seth did return, a great big smile on his face. And, like the dove who returned to give Noah the olive branch, he approached Jennifer, who was sitting forlornly near the hearth, and he gave her a bouquet of fragrant, short-stemmed, lavender flowers.

Jennifer stood beneath the Baker's leafless elm. At her feet were tracks in the snow, Seth's, that led from the soddy out into the distance where, all up and down the prairie, brown patches of sod showed through the tattered white blanket of winter. Huddled within these patches were blossoming pasqueflowers, like those Jennifer held in her hands, and white-petaled mats of flowers that Seth called cat's-foot.

“I said I would be leaving in the spring,” she said, her eyes fixed on the welcomed reemerging land. “It's now spring.”

“No,” said Lucy, standing a few feet behind her, holding her shawl about her narrow shoulders. “You said you would wait until the railroad arrived.”

Jennifer turned towards Lucy. She didn't care what she had promised. But the idea of a train whisking her home made her chest swell with anticipation. “Yes,” she said, reconsidering and returning her attention to the distant flowers. “I did say that.”

Jennifer stayed at the Bakers another few days while the snow melted. Then she loaded up the buggy and, with her children, left for her dugout. The snow was almost gone, leaving only some beard-like remnants along some northern sides of the rises. The once blackened land that had become white had now turned pale green as the down of new grass sprouted from horizon to horizon, punctuated here and there with those purple-and-white flower clusters. Both grass and flowers were so short that they only just quivered in the wind.