The Last Letter (26 page)

Jeanie stopped heaving and the sensation of arms circling her from behind, made her jump. Greta helped Jeanie stand straight and together, their gazes slid across the land. As far as they could see, russet, naked land stretched. In the way that one would imagine bright, bold colors giving a person a jolt, the nothingness of bland earth tones, in the abrupt
absence
of the green, gold, and blues that had been present the day before made Jeanie’s breath leave her. She leaned further into Greta’s embrace.

Jeanie stole a look at Greta whose expression was blank except for the twitch at the side of her mouth, one that Jeanie thought was the precursor to tears, the sign of the frustration that they’d again lost everything. And this time, there wouldn’t be a replanting and subsequent harvest. This time, it was completely lost for the year. Greta cleared her throat and clenched her eyes shut, but no tears came. Perhaps there was no point.

Jeanie made her way to the space behind the hill where the Zurchenkos had designated a necessary. The sound of horse hooves clopped over the land, growing louder, made her hurry to see who was coming.

Jeanie came from around the hill and in front of her stood the entirety of their Darlington Township cooperative. Everyone was safe and sound, but bearing the looks of people who’ve been pushed to the ground and trodden upon for the extent of their existences. Tommy and James ran to her and attacked her with hugs, hiding their faces in her chest and shoulder, forgetting their ages. She clutched them, making them choke on her desperate embrace.

Once the boys had sheepishly moved on to the other children, they began comparing notes on the events of the day past, re-enacting the unbelievable grasshopper descent.

Ruthie came out of the home and held the dress Jeanie had made her. Only some snarled fabric remained, dangling from the collar. She bowed her chin into her chest and sobbed. Jeanie went to Ruthie and wrapped her arms around her. Ruthie jerked away with a violent shrug of her shoulders.

Frank, his face stricken, watched his wife as she failed to soothe the anxious Ruthie. She snarled and ran back toward her home. Frank stepped forward then backed up, clearly understanding if Jeanie couldn’t help her friend, he certainly couldn’t either. He began to recount the state of their home, to describe how he had been working at Templeton’s when the grasshoppers arrived. They had retrieved some of his tools, but many had remained on the plains, open to the gnawing insects. Their exploratory bites may not have rendered the tools completely unusable, but Frank, the scars from their little mouths, seemed enough to render him unusable, Jeanie feared.

Likewise, five of the chairs he’d begun to make were ruined. Some of the animals had been nipped at here and there, but mostly they were safe, though now, facing a shortage of food. Even Tommy and James looked sorrowful, their gazes drilling holes into the ravaged soil.

Frank’s posture was sunken, his face gray. Jeanie’s heart nearly shrunk to a pea at the thought of what this might do to him, that it would send him to that black place that handicapped his ability to function like a responsible husband and father. They did not have the luxury on the prairie, for Frank to fall into his darkness.

Standing there, clumped together like lost children, Nikolai methodically reported the inventory of crops they’d seen so far. The Moore’s garden was decimated, the Hunt’s vegetables were so badly destroyed that the ground itself looked as though large fist-sized rocks had fallen from the sky, pitting their land. The only thing they managed to save was hay stored in a shed that had survived the fire.

The Zurchenkos accepted this information with stiff posture and nods of the head, as though they were being told it was going to be sunny and breezy that day. The Hunts were quiet, but slouched in much the same way as Frank. Jeanie dismissed it as them possibly coming to realize that housing God inside one’s skin, might not be the most useful place to keep him. Or maybe it was the realization that the poppy crop was annihilated. Jeanie knew all too well what an opium-eater faced when he was out of crop.

Jeanie was unable to read Templeton’s expression—his stance was relaxed, leaning on one hip. He turned his hat by the brim, but something in his lounge made Jeanie want him to hold her. In Frank she only found disgust and the aversion was amplified by her adulterous mind. How could she seek even mental comfort in another man? Even if that man was unaware of her longings, even if she was always unaware of them too, until they sprang to mind, ceasing her heart in the process.

Jeanie was about to succumb to the despair she saw in Frank, to join the Moores in their pity party for no one beside the Zurchenkos had lost as much as she in the last months. If anyone should be blubbering, contemplating her suicide, it should be Jeanie. But a flutter in her belly reminded her that she wasn’t just responsible for her own mood, but that her mood might flavor the personality of the baby inside.

She grabbed her belly and straightened as though she’d never been aware of the pregnancy until that instant. Her mind flashed to the near future, the way nurturing an infant could be precarious anywhere, and the way conditions needed to be at least adequate to ensure her baby’s early health. A baby due to be born on the prairie in February would be dangerous in itself, let alone if they hadn’t feasible housing and nourishment.

She edged closer to the men who had heads bowed in problem-solving discussion.

“We’ll just have to go to the railroad until December at least,” Nikolai said.

“The railroad?” Templeton nearly spit. “I can’t yield to some mumble-mouth railroad superintendent and his henchmen. We aren’t the kind of men who take orders and bow to others. We wouldn’t have lit out for the prairie if we were. We’d already be at the railroad if that was who we were.”

Frank nodded to Templeton. Nikolai rubbed his neck. “I will go to the railroad. If I don’t, my family, this cooperative of Darlington Township, won’t make it through the winter.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true, Nikolai. Why I have another stash—” Templeton said.

Nikolai raised his arthritic looking hand. “Now, I won’t have you digging into your monetary stores to help us survive while we do nothing but sit around reading and dreaming about the land…“

“Nothing wrong with contemplating the beauties of nature,” Frank said.

Nikolai turned his shoulders away from Frank, focusing fully on Templeton. “But, if there’s a way for us to not borrow from Templeton, to build up stores for all of us, then we should do it,” Nikolai said. “We never know what’s next on the prairie and spending money when there’s a way to save it, is foolish at best. And, I say that having never lifted a book in my life. But something tells me that within the pages of the tomes you folks inhale as though it were food itself, are the exact same sentiments I’ve expressed. We men need to do what’s right for the group and we need to do it now.”

“We can’t just leave the women alone with the children. How will they survive?” Frank said.

Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek to hold in her thoughts— the notion that she might survive just fine without Frank. The men yammered on about how to ensure they had the necessary provisions for winter and Jeanie mulled over that niggling thought that had pounced into her consciousness—that she might not need Frank, that she might feel relief if he were gone.

She stretched her heart, back to when she first met Frank and he turned her foolish. There, in that memory was a strand of love and generosity toward him. And she pulled that strand into the present-time making her heart disagree with the idea she could live without Frank. It was with that sliver of love that she battered back her intellect and its pursuit of autonomy. It wasn’t right to house such thoughts and in doing so, only trouble could come. “And trouble comes soon enough without courting it.”

Abrupt silence startled Jeanie. The group stared at her. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. When conversation didn’t take up again, she pushed her shoulders down and back as she always did when filled with confidence.

“Well, as I can see, the elements hold quite enough surprise for us to go on ruminating and mulling over what might be or not be or whatever. Let’s just say,” Jeanie spread her hands in front of her, “we’ve lost nearly everything, so the answer to getting back enough to subsist through the winter is the men going to the railroad until Thanksgiving.

“By then we’ll have enough money—to purchase the items we need to make it through winter. Do we even know if anything survived the grasshoppers? Did they stay localized or is the entire county wiped clean of greenery? Berries? Hay? Did the ugly creatures even eat the cow dung we use for fuel? These are the questions that need answered. Whether you men go to the railroad or not is easy. Yes, you go. We’ll be fine.”

Jeanie’s gaze shifted among the men. Though she wouldn’t be wounded emotionally if they brushed her off, she knew it was a possibility they would and if so, she would be forced to forge another path to solve the problem. She was growing ever more convinced that she’d been right about gender stations in America. It wasn’t feasible for women to do everything men did. Though she was feeling at that time that it was she who could and would keep her family alive, not her very male husband.

“Well,” Nikolai said. He put his hands in his pockets. “I think Jeanie is correct. We need to make a quick assessment at just what has survived, at what the women and children can do to preserve what’s left. Then quick as night snaps to day, we need to head to the railroads. Much as I hate it.”

The men grumbled agreement. Greta embraced her husband.

“Yes, you must go,” Greta said. Nikolai laid his forehead on Greta’s, closing his eyes as though in prayer in the first display of affection Jeanie’d ever seen between the two. Nikolai put his hands over top of Greta’s then kissed them.

“I think one of us men should stay,” Mr. Hunt said. He stepped closer to the center of the group. “Frank or I could stay. We need one man to tend to, well, whatever might be needed.”

Jeanie burst with a spray of laughter then covered it with a cough, turning away. What was happening to her, her sense of manners and compassion for a man who may be lacking but was still her husband? An image of Mr. Hunt and Frank arm wrestling for the privilege of being superintendent of coffee boiling jumped to mind.

She swallowed another snort then coughed again. She turned to see Frank boring a hole into her with his gaze. She casually looked away, coughing again. She couldn’t believe the thread of thoughts she’d been entertaining of late—divorce, infatuation of another man, the idea that she’d be pleased for Frank to take to the railway. The thoughts and desires seemed so familiar to her body, yet new to her mind. Where had all the impure desires been born?

She didn’t want Frank to stay if the other men left. She wanted to be sure any money that was to be shared with the group was a direct result of Frank’s work. Her mind ran quickly over how things might occur if Frank stayed, the lone man on the prairie. He might do the minimum while the others broke their backs at the railroad. Jeanie wouldn’t be able to accept money from the others if Frank had spent the equal amount of time lounging about, tending to his violin and air castles built of sheep fleece.

“Why doesn’t Templeton stay,” Jeanie said. “The sisters Moore have no male in their home and the rest of us have young men, at least, to help us with some of the more difficult duties.”

“Frank could help us,” Ruthie said. “He’s done a fine job… well I assume it’s destroyed now, but he did a fine job tending our garden, weeding. Any way you divide up the men, leaving one in Darlington Township to attend to things here should be suitable enough. Lutie and I have done well so far without a man in our house. We’ve done just fine.”

“I’m sorry, Ruthie. I didn’t mean to suggest that, well, with winter coming, I just assumed that duties would be more strenuous in some ways. I didn’t mean to overstep, to offend,” Jeanie said. Poor Ruthie. She worked so hard to make her life successful, yet there was always a challenge for her that didn’t seem quite fair. Jeanie went to her and squeezed her hand.

“There’s no room for offense here,” Greta said. “Think of Frank’s injured hand. He’s barely past infection. We can’t send him off only to have him returned with greater infection or have him drop dead on the line.” Anna climbed up her mother’s body taking the place where Anzhela used to inhabit. “As I’ve said a million times, we can’t afford to tenderfoot around one another. It could mean loss or death or great inconvenience.”

“I agree,” Mr. Hunt said. “So, where does this put us? Frank or me? Who stays behind?”

Nikolai shifted his stance, his wide frame absorbing even more space as he spread his legs and crossed his arms over his chest. “Frank. Frank stays behind.”

Mr. Hunt began to protest, but Nikolai stalked away to his horse and mounted it. “Let’s go. We need to find exactly what is left behind and what will be useful over the winter. We’ll leave for the railroad morning after next. What’s past is past.”

And with that, the men followed suit, none of them revealing in words or expression what they thought of Nikolai making the final decision regarding who would leave and who would stay. But Frank’s expression said it all for his part—his gaze slid into the horizon, face slack as though someone had written a death warrant with his name on it.

Jeanie thought it appeared as though tears were forming in Frank’s eyes before he turned away.
We are not crying people, Frank Arthur,
she said in her mind. Jeanie hoped her face didn’t bear the same look of unhappiness that Frank’s had. That she might not have to explain her fear that he would be the sole, adult male left behind and that might be like having no man at all.

Chapter 12

1905
Des Moines

Katherine climbed into the dusty attic and ignored the feeling she was being watched by armies of mice and spiders. She wandered around the space, searching for the trunk—the book trunk—it was there she’d stashed the letters her mother had intended to burn. Katherine felt as though her mind had been stolen and transported back 17 years.