The Last Letter (29 page)

Templeton nipped Jeanie’s lip. She dug her fingers through his hair, pulling him as close as was humanly possible. She wanted to feel his body on hers, as she had lain with Frank so many times before. She ignored every thought that told her to stop as the thrill was too great to resist. Then as quickly as it started, her unwilling subconscious took hold of her body even as her mind readily surrendered it.

She gasped and stopped kissing. She stiffened in Templeton’s embrace. He responded in kind, taking his lips from hers. Neither pulled away fully, gazes still locked, chests still meshed as Jeanie wiped her mouth with her palm then the back of her hand.

“Jeanie, please…” Templeton said.

She shook her head then raced down the slope of the dugout, rounded the side of the hill and tramped into the bleak tunnel she called home. Templeton screamed her name from above as she stood at her cook-stove, hovering over it, hair falling around her shoulders, brushing the cook area. She whipped it back, liking the way it felt for her hair to move as she did.

“Go away, Templeton!”
She yelled at the earthen ceiling. She wished to die for allowing her body free reign of its wants, especially after harboring and wielding anger at the Moores. She had no evidence Frank was anything more than the lazy man she’d known for over a decade, yet
she
behaved in the same way she had judged to be so wrong.

She gripped the cook-stove with both hands. Was she even breathing? Minutes passed before Jeanie shrugged and moved the coffee pot onto the cook-stove. She did not have time to fool with such things. That much she knew. She glanced over her shoulder. What was she looking for? The children? Templeton?

She refused to answer her own question, to mull over the great mash of emotion inside her. She wanted so much to enjoy Templeton’s gifts and comfort he would clearly offer her, but it could never be. She swallowed hard, willing the desire for something other than her marriage to Frank to go away.

Soon she heard the chatter of the children and Templeton outside the dugout. He was still there after what happened? Had it happened? She would make it so it never did. She started toward the door to tell him to go then thought again, that perhaps the best way for the kiss to go away was for them to pretend it never existed.

“Mama, what’s for—” Katherine stopped short then drew back. “Supper? Your hair.”

Jeanie waved her off. “The ride back on the horse, the wind, it blew it all to hell.” Jeanie slapped her hand over her mouth. “To pieces, I mean…” Katherine nodded, but her expression was as confused as it should have been given what had transpired over the past hour.

Katherine walked toward her mother then patted the bedstead for Jeanie to sit. Jeanie stared at Katherine’s hand.

“I’ll do your hair back up, Mama. I know you’re so tired with the baby sapping your strength. I know you must be so…well, just sit, Mama.” Katherine sat and held her open arms to Jeanie.

Jeanie’s head dipped with shame and contentment that her daughter was not only kind and loving, but she was observant enough to notice when another needed a moment to be loved with gentle hands and soothing touches.

Jeanie collapsed onto the bedstead beside Katherine and let her preening begin. Jeanie’s hair pulled her scalp giving her chills as Katherine worked the brown strands into braids then into a bun.

“The braids should keep it in the bun while we entertain this wind, Mama. I told Mr. Templeton that Father’s sick. I can help you make supper. That Mr. Templeton is
really
something else. Early back from the rails, he is.” Katherine said as though
she
were the one with the crush on Templeton.

“I’ll make sure everything’s ready for our meal.” Jeanie reached for Katherine’s hand and pulled it to her lips then nestled into her lap. “You’ve been so helpful already. I don’t know how I would live without you.” She kissed Katherine’s hand again.

“Just make sure the animals have water then go play.” Jeanie didn’t wait for a reply but pulled Katherine to standing as she heard Templeton and James nearing the dugout door again. She shuffled Katherine out and stood by the door, unseen, listening to her son and Templeton prattle on about warm air rising from the south, accompanied by wispy clouds, meant a rainstorm was coming. Jeanie couldn’t help but see them as father and son. When was the last time Frank and James spoke of anything other than who would go to the well and who would muck the horses’ waste or settle them under the falling down structure they called a barn?

Back at her cook-stove Jeanie ground chicory, seeds, and a touch of cocoa, using it as a barely tolerable replacement for coffee as the grounds from Yankton had long been used. James brought a load of buffalo chips into the house and Jeanie began the process of loading them into the stove, lighting them, washing her hands, making the buckwheat cakes, and then repeating the process. She knew it didn’t make sense that Templeton was here in their home while her husband lay in another woman’s bed across the plain.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve again, removing any trace of Templeton. She had no hard evidence Frank gave or even offered his heart or body to Lutie. Yet, Jeanie had plenty that she’d done so to Templeton. Frank was simply in his blackness, the shroud that paralyzed him as much as a disease or accident might. It was simply who he was when he wasn’t the man she married. For better or worse. For better or worse. Perhaps it wasn’t opium, just his moods, perhaps the cause of his actions didn’t really matter.

Jeanie told herself
her
strength was creating beauty from nothing, joining fabrics in surprising or delicate ways to create clothing that made people lose their breath upon seeing them. Or writing, communicating the beauty of homemaking to millions of other housewives. And with her marriage it was the same, she was the tailor of it, adding and removing details, coaxing unusual components together and in the end reaping beauty and function from nothing. Knowing this made her happy, settled her, gave her the peace with which she could carry on her duties as woman, mother and wife.

And with that final thought she wiped out every bit of Templeton, as anything but a neighbor, from her heart and mind. She couldn’t afford to let romantic thoughts of him inside her. It was that simple. Or so she would will it to be. She would have to consent to visions of Templeton, the feel of his arms around her, the sensation his mere gaze incited in her and she was strong enough to resist the temptation of all those memories.

As the brown of fall months collapsed grey into November, the rest of the men returned from the railroad and brought with them frigid weather and mounds of snow that often layered so high, the Arthurs couldn’t leave their dugout without tunneling out. The first of this weather brought another influx of vermin and creatures that Jeanie never felt comfortable killing, but always did because living with them seemed worse.

Frank had drawn a visible sigh of relief when the men returned with the Darlington Township cooperative funds in hand, when they divvied up the resources and planned for each family, to some degree, to withdraw into their own units during the winter months. Ruthie continued to offer her expertise, teaching, when the weather permitted the children to trek over the plains.

And, on the days when the children were studying with Ruthie and the chores were done early, Frank would crawl back into bed and pull the covers over his head or disappear into the horizon, returning with an emaciated pheasant or tiny prairie chicken for dinner. He rarely spoke to Jeanie, his nightly “Good Night Sweet Friend” being his sole verbal offering on many days. The scant words were always splashed with sarcasm and made Jeanie ache all the more for what she lacked in marriage.

Seeing him, his lost expressions and quiet whir of repetitive carving, reminded Jeanie so much of her father’s opium use that she pushed Frank on the topic. This line of questioning was the only thing that brought his face to life and animated him at all as he cursed her for not trusting him, for thinking he could have such a problem.

When Jeanie reminded him that even Quaker ministers fell prey to the substance, that knowing Abby Hunt had her own supply, would make obtaining it easy, understandable even when a person felt taken by hopelessness, Frank recognized the ploy for what it was—an attempted seduction for information.

This seduction would incite anger. Frank would throw anything fist-sized around the dugout, sending the children into the necessary where they sat out the storm, waiting to come out, ready to pretend nothing was going wrong in their lives. Jeanie was paralyzed by what she suspected, as though broaching it would only make life worse. Besides, due to the weather, he was around more. She could watch him and she’d seen no signs of him sneaking off to ply himself with drugs. Just his typical, ever-shifting moods.

The cramped lifestyle—tucked within the walls of the earth— was suffocating to Jeanie. From cooking with buffalo chips to the way dirt fell through the ceiling, stuffing the wagon sheet so full Jeanie had to empty and hang it twice in the fall. The stuffy quarters, in combination with Jeanie’s growing belly and the sluggishness pregnancy brought on, made bathing harder. Jeanie, daily, drew a whiff of herself, and her stomach would turn, that her body was so unclean. Though Jeanie accepted her former habits of cleanliness were in stark contrast to what could be achieved on the prairie, the desire for a fresh-smelling home, clean linens, hair, and body was fully present in Jeanie, making her fight back her own depression each day.

Jeanie worked hard to find some cheer inside the home, laughing and reading with the children, playing all manner of childish games to please the bored youngsters. At night when silence came she scooted to the edge of the bed as far from Frank as possible. She teetered there recalling her intimate moment with Templeton. She hugged herself and evoked the sensation of his lips on hers, the way her hair felt as he released it from its bun and it swooped down her back, his fingertips dancing down her spine as he worked his hand through the long brown strands.

That single collection of moments would have shamed her if she ever entertained any aspect of the fantasy during the day. For Jeanie the act never happened, it was merely a dream and therefore could be repeatedly explored in deep, private nighttime.

It had been decided that the five families of the Darlington Township cooperative would gather for Thanksgiving at Templeton’s home. When that day arrived, Jeanie’s spirits rose with the mere thought of seeing her sturdy Greta and reliable Ruthie. Jeanie hummed as she boiled water and prepared her stove for stew and cakes and squash pie as her contributions to Thanksgiving dinner. Every once in a while her mood would dampen with the sight of Frank, out of the corner of her eye, lying in bed so still he could be deemed a corpse.

If the dugout itself was undesirable for Jeanie, for its filth and lack of privacy, the sheer snugness of it threatened her mood as much as anything. If they had another bedroom, Frank could burrow into his nest and at least be out of sight and out of Jeanie’s mind.

It was times like this—when the thought of Thanksgiving, the gathering of her new friends, surrounded by warmth and food and hope and what should be joy—that little bits of hate for Frank, for his character flaws, threatened Jeanie’s soul. She couldn’t afford to hate him, to see him as only lazy or a failure or selfish for when she did see him that way she found her only recourse was to take to the bed herself.

So, in the presence of such kernels of discontent, Jeanie dug deeper into her mind, her heart and past to call up exactly what she felt for Frank when she fell in love with him twelve years before. And, each time she was able to access that place inside her, to see Frank through the compassionate eyes of love, she grew in strength and hope. From nothing came these things and that made her powerful.

And in the condition of strength grown from weakness, she felt content. She could care for her family, give them what they needed and in the process give Frank the space to finally find his path to satisfaction and wholeness.