The Last Letter (5 page)

“This place is filthy. Poor Templeton is batching-it. We can’t expect a man to do everything around the house. He’s got crops to sow and bring in.”

“Hmm,” Katherine said.

“This is a prime example of why a woman’s place in the world is firmly…“ Jeanie took the bucket from Katherine and shrugged, unable to finish the nonsense she once so happily dispensed to anyone who would listen.

“Well, we women,” Katherine said, standing rod straight, imitating her mother’s stance and pursed lips, “are having a day of it. This home expressing exactly why women are obliged to tend the homes of men.” Katherine swooped her hand outward as though putting the house on display. “There are no more pressing circumstances for a woman in the home, than in an uncivilized place like this,” Katherine said.

Jeanie playfully pulled a section of Katherine’s hair making them both giggle.

Jeanie would have told Katherine she rethought her position on women’s rights, but one—she wasn’t sure she had, and two— she didn’t have time to discuss such things anymore.

“We better get to dinner,” Jeanie said.

They scoured the house for food and cooking tools.

Not that there was much space to search. Templeton’s home consisted of one large room. Off to the left, in the back, there was an alcove. Jeanie, limping again, went to it and peered inside the space. “Well, sweet heaven and hell,” Jeanie said.

Templeton’s urine sat in a ceramic chamber pot, nearly filling it up. She sandwiched the sides of the pot between her palms, picked it up, trying not to wrap her fingers around the rim, while trying not to slosh any liquid from the vessel. “Mercy heavens, damn and hell.” Jeanie whispered the curses.

Katherine’s head whipped toward Jeanie.

“You didn’t hear that, Sweet Pea,” Jeanie said. Once they’d scrubbed down the cook-stove and washed their hands as best they could, trying to limit the wasted water, they worked fast, though not prettily. Out behind the house, they set up for preparing dinner—something Jeanie had never done herself. Not like this.

Jeanie wanted to cry at what she was doing. “We’re not crying people. There’s no room for self-pity. We’re not crying people.” Jeanie repeated the mantra to herself as she clenched her jaw and used a dull knife to skin the jackrabbits. The ripping sound as she separated the rabbit’s coat from his muscle and fat made her skin prickly, chilling her. The sweet and sour odor of blood filled her nose and seemed to settle in her mouth as though she were eating the creature raw.

Jeanie’s eyes watered and she gagged, turning to throw up her empty stomach.

“I can do this, Mama,” Katherine rubbed her mother’s back and took the knife from Jeanie’s hand. Jeanie straightened.

“Nonsense, my Sweet Pea. No.” Jeanie took the knife back. She held her breath and started to skin the second animal. Gagging again, she finally let Katherine finish the dirty work while she chopped the carrots and onions she’d found in a storage space above the bedstead.

Jeanie wanted to make Katherine stop, tell her that she just needed to settle her stomach, that she was pregnant and that must be getting the best of her. But she hadn’t told Frank of the baby yet, and though Jeanie couldn’t admit she was only partly capable of taking a meal from beginning to end, that splattering blood from one end of the back of the house to the other was something she’d never done, Katherine already knew it and Jeanie was sure she’d keep her secret. They were mother and daughter after all and Jeanie had never felt so fortunate to be able to say that.

Jeanie concocted a stew that only partly thickened. Nothing was available to make biscuits or cakes, so Jeanie hoped the company itself would do. It certainly wasn’t a dandy-good supper. That much Jeanie knew.

She and Katherine spread some raggedy linens, loosely described as such, on the floor and used the small table to set the stew to be served to everyone. Jeanie sent Katherine out to gather everyone into the house.

Frank appeared in the doorway first. “Here. Water. Templeton’s working with the boys. Apparently he’s a whiz with the weather indications and even had a post with the Army until three years ago. James has taken an interest in predicting the weather.”

“Predicting the weather?”

“I know,” Frank said. “What good is something like that? Doesn’t matter much what the weather might or might not be in the future, just what it is at the time you’re wondering. I mean since there’s no way to know what’s going to happen.” He tapped his leg, causing Jeanie to worry, knowing he was insecure about something—perhaps it was that James was taking an interest in another man’s hobby—no matter what made him feel insecure it never lead to anything good for Jeanie. But, it was only their recent losses that made it such a problem that he may be an unstable man.

“What Frank?” She threw her hands up to the sky. “What in damn hell is the matter?”

Frank bit down so hard Jeanie could feel it in her bones across the room. She dropped her hands as though burdened with sacks of rocks.

“Nothing, Jeanie. Nothing you could help me with.” And he left the room, shouting to the others that dinner was ready.

The meal was a disaster. The man Jeanie was beginning to think of as “sweet Templeton,” had gobbled up three steaming bowls of the disastrous, somehow bitter, stew while her own family barely managed one slurp. The children and Frank were still operating with visions of one-inch steak, buttery biscuits, thick mashed potatoes, sweet peas, and towering chocolate cake in their minds and on their taste buds, and not yet hungry enough to eat rancid stew.

She knew Templeton was only being kind as he sopped up every last drop with his finger at the end, saying “dandy-good eats” every three minutes, acting as though it tasted scrumptious not just edible. Not that it was any of that.

All night Templeton passed back and forth by the bedstead where he allowed the Arthurs to sleep that night. He groaned as his bowels emptied repeatedly, slopping into one bowl and then another he’d dug out of God knew where. The children gagged at the sound and odor and Jeanie spent the night kicking the children under the covers so they wouldn’t humiliate a man for emptying his body of the poison their mother had fed him.

Waking the next morning, Jeanie was relieved to see Templeton had cleared the pots and acted as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred during the night.

She couldn’t look him in the eye, even as he searched out her gaze, and even went so far as to reassure her that she would make a fine prairie wife.

“You’re clearly too smart to be anything but a blazing success,” Templeton had said tipping his hat to her. Jeanie hadn’t known how to respond, so she just let the heavy failure she’d felt turn steely, inside her, inspiring her to be a better person, wife than she’d clearly been when she’d had a army of servants and cooks to assist her in being the Quintessential Housewife as she’d come to be known in Des Moines.

The Arthurs left Templeton’s home about nine a.m. Frank seemed back in good spirits. In the wagon, he was taken by his peppy, happy personality. He rambled like a train roaring down the track, ticking off the list of things they needed to do in order to claim the Henderson’s homestead as theirs. Two trips to Yankton. One to file papers, one to pick up the wood he’d agreed to work into furniture for some men they’d met when they stopped over there.

“You all right?” Frank put his hand on her back as she curved forward, head on knees. Gripped by cramps so tight, Jeanie would have sworn she was in labor or miscarrying, she couldn’t even speak. She nodded into her lap then sat back up hoping that stretching her body would release the tension inside her womb. She’d desperately wanted more children, but considering the extensive work ahead of them, perhaps if nature stole her baby as it had the others since Tommy and Katherine were born, they’d be better off.

“You eat some rabbit stew for breakfast?” Frank chuckled. “Man that Templeton’s not too bright, is he? Slurping down that stew as though the old cooks in Des Moines had actually done the work. It must feel good, though, to finally put all that advice you’ve doled out over the years to use, right?”

Jeanie couldn’t respond as she bent into the pain tearing at her insides.

“I’m joshing; just poking fun…you know after all, we need to laugh a little, right?”

Jeanie groaned, trying to keep it quiet so the kids in the back wouldn’t hear. She forced herself to straighten reducing some of the pain.

Frank clicked his tongue and slowed the horses. She stared into the great land, which looked much the same as Templeton’s had, except over the night, tinges of brown had taken the tips of the grasses muting the contrast of jade grass joining the cobalt sky.

“Keep going.” Jeanie rubbed her belly.

“We’re officially, here. On our very own homestead. Our very own land, the place where dreams live.”

Without waiting for responses from anyone, Frank hopped from the wagon, dragged water and the horses’ feed bags out from the back of the wagon and signaled the kids to get out, unbridle the horses, and tie them to the railing that stood near a three-walled structure that could be used as a door-less barn.

Jeanie stood and waited for a fresh wave of cramping. Nothing came and as quickly as the pains had gripped her, they were gone, leaving her wondering if they were as bad as her memory said they were.

She couldn’t be sure how far along she was, but it was early— due sometime after Christmas, she guessed. Most women might not have realized such a subtle change in their body, such a quickening in their womb long before she would actually feel her baby stretch and kick. But, Jeanie’s body worked like a fine clock and any missed tick like her painful, monthly visitor, was noticed as clearly as a clock missing every other second.

Jeanie braced herself to hop out of the wagon. As she began to disembark, the toe of the too-large boot brushed the wooden side, making her trip.

“Whoa.” Frank caught Jeanie as she fell flat out from above.

He set her down and she smoothed her skirts.
Damn, ugly shoes.
She lifted her skirts staring at the beastly shoes, the toes curling upward, further searing the family’s bad turn into Jeanie’s mind.

Frank lifted his arms and dropped his head back, face upward at the sun, grinning. “Home. We’re home and it feels magnificent.”

Jeanie shook her head. “There’s nothing here. There’s that barely a barn over there but…“

Frank pointed into the empty expanse. “See that bank of trees there, below there, a little ways, take a look,” Frank said. He pulled her hand and they craned their necks peering around the wagon. “Templeton told me those are olive trees—straight from Russia. The Zurchenko’s—their homestead starts on the north end of ours—brought them straight from Russia when they set up here three years ago.”

His excitement was baffling. Jeanie couldn’t make sense of her strange husband, whose oddball tendencies had been so nicely camouflaged by their former, privileged existence. Without thinking, for no good reason Jeanie blurted out her news.

“I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her and scratched his head. Jeanie could see the children over Frank’s shoulder, leaping, chasing prairie chickens, laughing, yelling, their voices cutting holes through the grownup’s conversation.

“Frank?”

“Hey kids! Water those damn horses!”

Jeanie grabbed his arm. “Don’t be so harsh with them. They’ve a lot to adjust to.”

“Ready to see our new home, our path to unimagined riches?” Frank hopped up and pulled Jeanie to her feet.

“Did you hear me? I’m pregnant.”

“Don’t make me be mean to you, Jeanie. Things are hard enough right now.”

“Don’t make me deal with your black moods, then. How about that?” Jeanie said. She bit her lip, afraid of the anger pushing words out of her mouth, thoughts she’d always kept inside, sentiments that couldn’t be snatched back once free and embedded in his mind.

He crossed his arms and sighed. “I’m always thrilled to hear you’re pregnant, Jeanie.”

They stared at each other. Jeanie crossed her arms back at him, trying to soothe her anger. “But, you don’t think this baby will live, so it doesn’t matter?”

“I didn’t say that.”

James stepped into their locked gaze, breaking it. “I think it might rain. Templeton said—”

“Well, old Templeton’s something else, now isn’t he?” Frank said. Spit flew from his lips as he turned his black mood on James. “How about we let old Mama set up house, James, my boy. She’s pregnant, you know.”

“I thought so. You looked tired, Mama,” James said. “Like the last two times.” James stepped into Jeanie and she hugged him into her side and kissed his forehead. She didn’t know what she would do without him.

“The house? Frank? You’re right. We need to set up. Take me to my home.”

Frank stomped his foot. But didn’t go anywhere.

Jeanie could ignore Frank’s meanness if it meant turning his ire away from her James and focusing her energy on life and death—setting up house.

“Frank? The house? Which way?” Jeanie held her hands open to the sky.

She couldn’t see anything but the skeletal tree she’d seen the day before, the bank of olive trees slightly below them, the makeshift barn, and the red fabric they’d tied to a single wooden stake in the ground that marked the way to the well in the distance.