Fervent Charity (3 page)

Chapter 3: June 1900

T
he prairie was in one
of its bad moods: the heavens grumbled and shot forth an occasional thin slice of lighting the way a cat flashes a claw. Gustie liked weather and preferred stormy to fair. It was more interesting. But she had learned not to challenge or take casually the prairie’s temperament. Dakota winters brought death to the careless, the unfortunate, and the foolhardy; lightning killed and started fires; summer storms spawned deadly tornadoes. As with capricious cats, one rarely knew if the weather would actually bite or slink off to reappear docile and caressing.

With Biddie tucked in at Koenig’s livery stable, Gustie relaxed in the cozy comfort of Olna’s Kitchen. The smells of baking rolls and pies, roasting chicken, and the continuously brewing coffee made Charity’s one cafe a pleasant place to be on a dark afternoon.

Gustie pulled aside the blue-checked window curtain. The sidewalk was deserted. Across the street a dim light glowed behind the window of the Stone County Gazette. The shadowy forms of Arnold and Janelle Prieb moved within. The train whistle announced the arrival of the east-bound freight train. Arnold and Janelle paused to listen. Moments later, a light flickered behind the smaller window next door. Emil Mundt, Charity’s postmaster, was getting ready for the first mailbag of the day.

Gustie sipped her coffee and waited. Jack Mohs came trotting up the street with the mailbag slung over his shoulder. He dropped it off with Emil, pausing for only a moment’s greeting as he did every morning but Sunday, and sprinted back to the depot for his next assignment.

The street was again deserted. The sound of the departing train whistle lingered, caught in the thickening storm-dark air.

Suddenly, Mary Kaiser filled the frame of the window. Head down against the rising wind, and staying close to the buildings, she made her way north. She stopped, startled to see eyes looking at her through the glass. Gustie smiled quickly and Mary’s face relaxed. She turned around and walked the few steps back to the door of the cafe. The bell on the door jingled as she came in. Cold and wind had heightened the color in her cheeks; the light rain beginning to fall had coated her skin, making her complexion dewy.

Mary Kaiser was remarkably beautiful. Gustie wondered if anyone else noticed. “Mary, what are you doing out on such a day?”

She pulled off her headscarf, sat down at Gustie’s table, and smoothed her black hair away from her face. Her dark eyes were bright. Beauty was seldom spoken of here, where people considered a clean house, a kind heart, and well behaved children greater assets in a woman. “I stopped by Lena’s this morning. She was up all night with the baby. I watched Gracia so she could rest awhile. I’m trying to get home before the storm hits.” She asked Gustie with some alarm, “You’re not going to try to make it home are you?”

“No, I’m waiting it out here.”

A crack of thunder made them both jump. Mary laughed shyly. “Maybe I’ll wait with you.”

“Good. You can join me for dinner. I haven’t ordered yet. Is Gracia all right?”

“Oh, she’s fine. A little restless. She was sleeping when I left.”

They made small talk over roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and carrots. Gustie and Mary had become friends when together they had cared for Lena during an illness that had been precipitated by a family tragedy. Mary had surprised Gustie with her efficiency and willingness to help in an almost unbearable situation, when neither of Lena’s sisters could help, or her other sister-in-law, Nyla, would. Gustie knew better than anyone the worth of the woman sitting across from her. While Mary possessed none of Lena’s confidence and seemed unaware of her appealing physical presence, her sweetness and beauty were disarming. Gustie could not fathom what she was doing married to Walter Kaiser, who, Gustie thought, resembled a creature crossed between a frog and a banty rooster.

“Mary, are you happy?” While Gustie had often turned the question over in her mind, she was appalled to hear it come out of her mouth.

Mary swallowed a mouthful of pie and looked at Gustie with laughing eyes. She reached across the table and took Gustie’s hand. “Oh, Gustie, I like you so much.”

“You do?” Gustie had been prepared for
Mind your own business.
“Why?”

“Because you asked, and not because you’re nosy. Nobody else has ever cared whether I’m happy or not. At least not enough to try to find out.”

“Well, are you?”

“I’m not miserable. And for me, that’s a blessing. Walter has...” Gustie sensed Mary had never put her feelings into words before. “Walter has...allowed me...to not live in misery.”

Mary described a childhood that was little else but wretchedness. Her parents had been unsuited to life on the frontier, cursed each year by bad luck and illness. Of six children, Mary was the sole survivor. “I still remember the smells of sickness and dirt. The barn was never kept clean.” Here she had paused for a long time. “There is nothing worse smelling than a dirty pig barn, Gustie, unless it’s a dying woman who hasn’t bathed in years.”

Gustie, deeply moved, wiped her mouth with a napkin and considered her friend, who was so unaware of how like a rose she really was, having sprouted from a dung heap.

Mary continued, “I was fifteen when Walter came to our place. He’d made some deal with my pa to drill us a well in exchange for some pigs. Then...let’s see... Walter was twenty. He was good-natured. Laughed and talked a lot. Didn’t bother him that nobody talked back. He didn’t seem to notice the squalor of our place. Although, by that time I was older and doing better at keeping things up. Babka was dead and so was my mother. So all I had to do for was my pa and me. But Pa didn’t care what I did, really. Walter came every day for a few weeks. He had a hard time getting to water. The old well was dried up and I was carrying water from the creek. Finally, he did find water, and after he finished the well, he told Pa that he’d take me instead of the pigs. So my pa said, ‘You willin’, Mary?’ I said I was. Pa was glad. He couldn’t spare the pigs.” Mary smiled ruefully and stirred cream and sugar into her coffee.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Without saying much Walter and I had a sort of agreement. I’d never seen many men besides my pa and some of the old farmers who came over once in awhile, mostly for a buryin’. Walter was the only young man I’d ever met. He had a good team of horses that were well fed. He had his equipment and a new buggy. He told me he’d build us a house anywhere I liked. I picked the place close to the church so I can go to Mass every day no matter what the weather. He told me I could have whatever I wanted. He needed a woman in his home to do for him because he didn’t want to live with his ma and pa anymore, and if the work was too hard for me, he said I could bring a girl in to help me. I never did. I like taking care of my own things.

“He has always been as good as his word. I have everything I want. My house is beautiful, Gustie. I have real lace curtains. I have two sets of china and crystal glasses that came all the way from St. Paul. He even moved Babka’s roses for me.” Her voice trembled. “I have flowers planted all around. Mostly roses, but some peonies, and tulips for the spring. Marigolds for the fall. Come and visit me sometime, Gustie.”

“I will, Mary. I certainly will.”

“Lena doesn’t like me. I know she doesn’t. Because I’m Polish and Catholic. Not a good combination if you marry into a German Lutheran family. Oh, it’s fine to marry a German if you’re Norwegian—like Lena did—but not if you’re Polish. But mostly she thinks I’m weak. She didn’t have it easy as a girl either, but Lena was strong. She got away and worked, went out on her own. Did you know that when she was fourteen, she rode the train Sunday evenings to Argus to work, and came back Saturday mornings? I could never do that. I could never do what you did, coming out here to a strange place on your own. You and Lena are both brave and strong. I’m not. I need Walter to take care of me. Lena looks down on me for that.”

“Why? She has Will.”

“That was a love match. From the first. They were crazy about each other. They still are when he’s not drinking.

“Walter is...he’s not a drinker. He’s not mean like Oscar. He is...” Mary lifted her eyebrows, smiled enigmatically, and sipped her sweet coffee.

Chapter 4: July 1900

O
wen Braaten, the new Indian
agent, had restored the Agency in Wheat Lake to a place where the Dakotah could not only get their fair share of annuities, but also buy or trade for food and goods. Gustie and Jordis had come in with Dorcas’s morning catch of fish to trade for coffee. Gustie also purchased sugar, flour, and canned goods for Dorcas to tide her over until the next disbursement of annuities.

Jordis was inside, in conversation with Owen, while Gustie loaded their parcels onto her wagon. In an effort to shield her horse from the July sun, she had left the mare and wagon in the alley in the L-shape formed by the back of the agency building and its storehouse.

In the heat of summer, Gustie made these trips back and forth between Charity and Crow Kills at night. On this day, she wanted to be on the road to Charity by sundown. She had to be there tomorrow, because she had promised to help Alvinia and Mary prepare for the open house after Gracia’s baptism. The baptism wasn’t till the end of the month, but they all agreed that Gertrude Kaiser’s house needed a lot of work. This was too important a day to just throw something together slap-dash. They wanted to do it right, in a way that Lena would have done herself if she’d been strong enough.

Tomorrow Gustie also had an appointment with Pard Batie, her lawyer, to finalize the purchase of her house. By the town’s good graces, she had been allowed to live on land abandoned by a homesteader, but it was time to make her position more secure.

She was about to lead Biddie and the wagon around to the front of the building when she heard a shuffling behind her. She turned to see Jack Frye in his usual state—drunk and dirty. In spite of his unfocused whiskey stare, his expression was menacing. He blocked her exit from the alley.

Gustie did not feel afraid even though Jack Frye had reason to wish her ill. “Mr. Frye, you are in my way.”

“Mr. Frye, you are in my way,” he mocked. “You’re in my way.”

My Christ, how I hate drunks.
She was impatient to be out of this alley and away from his stench. “Move aside, please, Mr. Frye.”

“Move aside, please, Mr. Frye.” He mimicked her again. “Move aside.” His spindly arms and legs bobbed in puppet-like motions. “I still have lots of friends in this town,” he slurred. “Lotsa friends.” His voice cracked. “Good friends, and nobody here likes what you did, taking the Indians’ part against me. You don’t have any friends here.” He pointed a grubby finger at her then swung his arm wide.

“No one has given you a job, then, among all your good friends?” The sun poured itself out, dry and hot, and Gustie felt itchy and irritable. “You’re still spending your days in the saloon?”

“I have something put by. I can afford to take my time,” he boasted.

“Yes, you must still have profits from the years you cheated the Indians out of what is rightfully theirs.”

“Nuthin is rightfully theirs! They didn’t work for nuthin!” He jerked and bobbed in emphasis. “Things is given to them for doin’ nuthin!”

Behind him, Jordis materialized. Like a cat who has, at long last, cornered a bug, her eyes gleamed, a smile twitched on her lips. Gustie thought of warning Jack Frye but too late.

Jordis grabbed the back of his collar and pulled as she kicked one leg out from under him. He landed hard on his back. Her right foot came down on his chest and she leaned in heavily on her knee. She had smoothly drawn the long blade from her boot, and he already felt the point of it in the hollow of his throat. His eyes bulged. Spittle drooled out the corners of his mouth.

Gustie could barely hear Jordis, but Jack Frye could most certainly hear, “I am going to kill you.” He croaked with fear. She continued, her voice velvet. “Nobody will miss you. I’ll give your body to Shoonkatoh to feed the hungry spirit.”

He cried, inarticulate whining.

Pure pleasure shone in Jordis’s eyes. She had told Gustie once that she wanted to kill Jack Frye. Only Chief Little Bull had prevented her from doing so, while he tried to get rid of Frye legally. As Indian agent, Frye had cheated and insulted the Dakotah for years. The fact that a few letters from a white woman to some influential friends back east had accomplished what the Indians themselves had been unable to do, rankled some of them. Others were simply relieved that he was gone and did not care how. Jordis, Gustie suspected, was one of the rankled.

Gustie recognized naked hatred on Jordis’ face. And cruelty. “Don’t, Jordis.” She said it quietly. Jordis was not hers to command, but she felt a need to diffuse what might be boiling over in the scene before her.

“She doesn’t want me to kill you.” Jordis played the point of her knife back and forth across Frye’s throat.

“Listen to her, Miss,” he blubbered.

“Be grateful to Miss Roemer. She has saved your filthy life—today.”

Jordis straightened up, sheathed her knife, and climbed into the wagon seat without another glance at Jack Frye. Whimpering, he rose part-way to his feet, and, like a tipsy spider, scrabbled away.

Not until they were on the road to Crow Kills did Gustie ask, “If I hadn’t been there, would you have killed him?”

“If you hadn’t been there, he would not have stopped in that alley.”

The sun floated high above the horizon in the late afternoon sky. Dark would be a long time coming. Usually, these lingering evenings of summer—these periods to leave taking—passed too quickly. But today, Gustie felt the need to be away, to be alone with the rhythm of Biddie’s hooves on the road and the less quaint throbbing of thoughts in her head.

Jack Frye was a pathetic, mean-spirited, but now harmless man. Stripped of his job at the agency he was just a poor snake with its fangs pulled out left writhing in the dust. The sight of Jordis playing with him had disturbed Gustie.

Gustie wished she had brought a hat. Lena was forever telling her she had to wear a hat in the sun. When she left Philadelphia, she had also left her three aunts behind—three women who had tried in vain to dress her in corsets and lace and teach her the ways of a society lady. Now, she had Lena who tried to teach her the ways of a woman who wished to keep the trappings, at least, of a civilized life in the middle of what really seemed at times to be nowhere. Lena’s advice often had more to do with life, death, and health than with appearance. This time she wished she had listened. Her skin felt scorched.

The hum of insects, the occasional chirp of a lazy, sun-soaked bird, and the muffled rolling of wheels on the dirt trail were the only sounds for about half a mile until Jordis spoke.

“What?” Gustie stared at her.

“Tell me about your father,” Jordis repeated.

Gustie was taken by surprise. At that moment, her father was far from her thoughts.

“He must be a powerful man to persuade the United States government to do so quickly what we could not get them to do at all. Father Flagstad and a number of other whites around here even wrote on our behalf. They got nowhere.”

“He’s not powerful. He’s...influential. He knows powerful people.”

“Same thing.”

“He’s a judge—I told you that. He’s retired now. I told you that too...”

“That is all you told me. I did not know you had a father till he wrote to you last May.”

“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up in case he wasn’t able to help. Dorcas knew I wrote.” Gustie brushed an insect away from her hair. “My father and I aren’t close.”

“What is he like?”

“He’s...” Gustie thought how to describe her father in a word or two. “Self-possessed.”

“What was he like with you?”

Gustie tilted her head in a dismissive gesture. She had no words for that.

“Was he unkind to you?”

“Unkind?”

“Some white men hit their children. Did he beat you?”

“No! He never beat me! What an idea! He indulged me. I had whatever I wanted. Did as I pleased.”

The wagon rolled along the dirt track with a subtle rattle of its old parts. Gustie felt Jordis’s waiting like a soft but strong hand pushing her forward. “It’s just that, I couldn’t…
see
him.”

Jordis cocked her head and waited.

“When I was a child, I thought of him as a kind of magus, a wizard who could summon a fine mist around himself. I could never quite see through it. I could never really see
him
. When I was fifteen I went to court and slipped in the back and watched him preside over the case of a man who had robbed a store. It was a revelation. The shadow, or the mist that hung around him as my father wasn’t there. As a judge he was clear, distinct. I could feel that everyone in the courtroom respected him. The lawyers seemed to be afraid of him, in fact. He ran a strict court, but he was merciful. I went back to watch him many times. After the verdict and before sentencing, he always asked the accused person to come to the bench and tell him why he had done what he had just been convicted of. What was interesting is that sometimes the stories they told him were different from what they had said in the witness box. I remember the case of a robber—he’d been hungry. That’s all. Just hungry. My father sentenced him to some prison time, mostly I suspected, because there he would be fed regularly. One of the clerks told me that Judge Roemer would probably see to it that the fellow found some kind of work when he got out. I realized then that my father was a good man. We weren’t Quakers, but behind his back, people referred to him, fondly, I think, as the Quaker Judge. I don’t know if he ever knew about that.”

“What did he say when he saw you in his courtroom?” asked Jordis.

“He never saw me.”

Jordis remained still.

Gustie continued. “After I had seen him in court, I had this fancy that I should go out and break a law, get myself arrested and tried in his court. Then he would have to see me. I staged it all in my mind, very dramatically. The accused will please rise, he would say at my sentencing. And I would rise and step forward. And then he would ask as he asked every person, ‘Explain to me sir, explain to me madam, why you did what you did.’ And I would say—‘in order to see my father, Your Honor.’ Well, I could be ridiculous in my own head, sometimes.”

“You were not ridiculous, Gustie.”

All at once Gustie felt defensive of her father. “He was better on paper.” An unreadable expression took over Jordis’s face. “He used to travel—when I was a girl—and he would write to me. In his letters, he was almost warm. Sometimes, even witty.” The trail passed slowly beneath them. “I used to think it was because he had wanted a son and that in letters he could forget that the child he was writing to was a daughter. Then, at times I thought maybe he would have been happier with the sort of daughter he could have covered in ribbons and lace—I was never that. But when he was with me, he didn’t...” Gustie trailed off. “...I really don’t know why...”

“Did you ever ask him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Gustie answered, articulating something as certain and unchangeable as the law of gravity. “I could never have asked him such a question. I doubt if I could even now.”

Jordis looked straight ahead. An “mmm” sounded in the back of her throat, reminding Gustie of Dorcas. All she lacked was the old woman’s squint that signaled she had just figured something out.

“Mmm...what?”

Jordis replied, “It explains why, when you are not happy with me, you do not say so.”

Gustie was getting more and more annoyed. She didn’t know why. “I’m not unhappy with you very often.”

“You were just now.”

Gustie shifted the reins into her left hand and rubbed her right palm on her skirt.

“You did not like what I did to Jack Frye,” Jordis persisted.

“It’s not for me to tell you how to treat him. He cheated you, not me.”

“No, but you can say you did not like it. You did not like what I did.”

“No,” Gustie admitted.

Jordis nodded.

A muskrat waddled onto the road ahead of them. Gustie reined Biddie to a stop. They sat for a while, unmindful that the animal had already disappeared into the weeds on the other side of the road. The black mare tossed her head to rid herself of a fly. Gustie felt like something was about to burst inside her. She tapped the horse’s rump with the reins and they once again moved forward.

“Why did you not like it?”

Gustie exhaled in audible irritation, “Because it was unbecoming!”

Jordis remained still. Only her eyes shifted sideways to look at Gustie. A smile began to take over her face until she laughed out loud. “You are a true Philadelphian, Augusta!”

“I’m not,” Gustie said, still irritated and more so with Jordis’s laughter.

“Oh, you are.” Jordis’s laughter subsided into a chuckle. She lightly caressed Gustie’s cheek with the back of her hand. “You are a lady. A fine lady at that.” She was no longer teasing.

“I’m sorry,” Gustie was embarrassed, but now smiling herself, still feeling strangely disturbed.

Jordis asked, “Tell me more about your father.”

“Why do you want to know about him?”

“Because I think he is important to you. I want to know about the things that are important to you.”

Gustie had never gotten used to Jordis’s directness.

“What did he do to make you leave Philadelphia?”

“Nothing. He just didn’t do anything to make me stay.” The hot breath of the prairie now carried the cooler scent of Crow Kills—its fishy, intensely green smell. Gustie thought with relief how they would soon be at Dorcas’s cabin where she could have a dip in the lake before supper and then take her solitary night ride back to Charity. But Jordis took the reins from Gustie and gently drew them back. The horse stopped. Gustie, aware of the endless patience in this woman and knowing they would sit there all day if she didn’t say something, began, “Clare’s brother, Peter, was making her life miserable. She needed to get away from him. He would never have given her any peace. He made our association known to everyone in the most lurid and obscene terms. He stirred up a scandal that had social repercussions for my aunts and, possibly—I never really knew—professional ones for my father. At the least, my family must have been disappointed in me, and at the worst—humiliated. But no one
said
anything. Not to me or in my defense. Clare and I decided to leave Philadelphia. It was the only way for her to escape her brother and for me to get out from under all that stifling politeness.