The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

Table of Contents

 

 

 

VIKING
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Copyright © Ann Weisgarber, 2008

All rights reserved

 

Publisher’s Note

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

 

Weisgarber, Ann.
The personal history of Rachel DuPree : a novel / Ann Weisgarber.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-19036-4

1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Ranchers—South Dakota—Fiction. 3. African American veterans—Fiction. 4. Badlands—South Dakota—Fiction. 5. South Dakota—History—20th century—

Fiction. I. Title.

PS3623.E4537P47 2010

813’.6—dc22 2010004713

 

 

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—MOTTO OF THE NINTH CAVALRY

—
OSCAR MICHEAUX,
SOUTH DAKOTA HOMESTEADER

I
still see her, our Liz, sitting on a plank, dangling over that well. She held on to the rope that hung from the pulley, her bare feet pressed together so tight that the points on her ankle bones were nearly white. She was six. She had on her brother’s cast-off pants, and earlier, when I’d given them to her, she’d asked if wearing pants made her a boy. I’d told her we’d wait and see, and that had made her giggle.

The plank Liz sat on swayed and twisted in a wind that blew stinging grit. Her bandanna covered her nose and mouth. The rope around her waist was knotted to the one that held the plank. Isaac, my husband, called it a harness. He said it’d keep her from falling off.

“We’re right here,” I said to her. “Daddy’s got you.”

She looked at me, her coppery face frozen up with fear. The wind gusted, and Liz flinched, her eyes slits. Isaac and our oldest girl, Mary, stood side by side as they gripped the well handle. They dug in their legs and pushed the handle up.

The rope jerked. Liz dropped a handful of inches. She sucked in some air and then let out a sharp, piercing cry.

My knees buckled, but I steadied myself against the well. “You’re our brave girl,” I called as she sank into it, her eyes closed.

The sunlight caught the top of her head. Her brown braids tied up with scrap rags went rusty red. Her shoulders shook. She made a gurgling sound and then she was gone.

I wasn’t one for calling on Jesus and asking for favors. But that day I did.
Merciful Jesus. Sweet merciful Jesus. Be in this well with my child.

Isaac and Mary held on to the well handle, turning it, keeping it steady as their neck and arm muscles bunched and shook. John, our ten-year-old son, did what I couldn’t bring myself to do. He leaned over the top of the well and watched Liz. Above him, hanging on a second pulley—a makeshift one that Isaac had put up that morning—was a bucket. Four others were on the ground by the base of the well.

I coughed and spit out some dust. I tightened the knot in the back of my hair kerchief and then pulled my bandanna back up to cover my mouth and nose. I’d pushed it down earlier; I wanted Liz to have a good look at my face. I didn’t want her thinking her mama was hiding behind a ragged piece of cloth.

Yesterday the water pump by the house blew nothing but air. Later, Isaac tried the well at the barn. The bucket came up empty, but the bottom was wet. When I saw Isaac knotting a plank to the well rope, my blood ran cold.

“Not that,” I told him. “Not that.”

“Have to,” he said.

“But the White River’s still running. Can’t you—”

“It’s down to a trickle.”

I looked at him.

“Liz,” he said as if I had asked.

“Lord.”

“She’ll be all right.”

“You could drop her.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t do this thing.”

Muscles pulled around his mouth. “I have to.”

“No,” I said, “no,” but there was nothing behind my words and Isaac knew it.

“At ease,” he said to Mary now, their hands still gripping the well handle. The rope was played out; Liz was at the bottom. Mary let go of the handle and shook out her hands and shoulders. She ran her palms down the sides of her skirt. She was almost thirteen and tall for her age. She took after Isaac that way, but like me, she was dark. When Isaac had told her that he couldn’t turn the handle without her, her back straightened and her chin went high. Isaac could do that to a person. He could give a person the worst chore and make that person feel honored to be chosen. I’d had fourteen years to try to understand this about Isaac, about how he made this happen. This was what I’d come up with. It was because his eyes admired you for bearing up, and when he looked at you that way, there was nothing finer. And there was this, too, about Isaac. He didn’t shy away from any chore. He knew what had to be done, and he did it.

Being Isaac’s wife, I knew this better than anybody.

“Send the bucket,” Isaac told John. “Slow. Call down, tell her it’s coming.”

John did and then, his cracked lips tight, began turning the makeshift handle. The wind tossed the bucket, sending it in circles. The metal cup inside the bucket clinked from side to side.

In the well, the rope holding Liz hung taut, turning some. Isaac, though I guessed that he didn’t need to, kept his hands on the handle. Off in the north pasturelands a dust devil whirled and skipped, picking up stray clumps of tumbleweed. Cows, knotted up by the barbwire fence, flattened their ears as the funnel blew past them. I watched all this but it was our Liz I saw in the darkness, ladling water into the bucket cup by cup.

But I did. It was my greed, my pride, my love of my wood house that drove us to do this. And land, that was part of this too. Land was everything to Isaac. Isaac. I was willing to do anything he wanted. Anything.

The dust devil buckled like a bedsheet on a clothesline, gathered itself, and made for the house. It blew up onto the roofless front porch and then petered out, tumbleweeds sticking to the windows and the door.

Tears burned the backs of my eyes. The South Dakota Badlands wore everything down, even children. But I had my wood house. Just two years old and already it was scraped raw. Sprouts of prairie grass grew on the roof where the tin plates shifted and dirt had blown in. Dust sifted through the edges of the glass windows and the door, and no matter how many times in a day I swept, I couldn’t keep the grit out. Now there was this tumbleweed mashed up against our house, making it look shabby, like nobody lived there.

Sweat ran from Isaac’s hair even though his hands were loose on the well handle. Dripping circles darkened the front of his shirt. It was so hot I was sure I felt the hard earth cracking under my feet. My mouth was swelled up as if I’d been eating grit. The cottonwood tree over by the dried-out wash swayed, most of its leaves already gone. My hand went to the back of my neck, knowing the ache that must be pinching Liz’s arms and shoulders as she scooped water.

A low-slung cloud, flat on the bottom and puffed at the top, slid under the sun. Its shadow spread out on the ground, darkening the house, the barn, and the well. The coolness brought by the shadow set my heart pounding even faster. It’d been over two months since it’d rained; we were long past due. I waited, hoping, knowing I was foolish to expect anything from this cloud. It passed on, opening up again the hard-edged glare of the sun.

“Dad-dy,” a faint voice called.

“Pull it up,” Isaac said to John. “Help him, Mary. Keep it steady.”

When the bucket was up, I willed the shaking out of my hands. I undid the knot and then tied the rope to the second bucket. John sent it down to his sister.

I let Rounder, our cattle dog, have a gulp before pushing him away. John said, “What about me? Don’t I get some?”

“No,” Isaac said. “Not yet.”

I turned away from the well and looked up at our house.

It had been the winter of 1915 when Isaac figured it was time to build us a wood house. For twelve years I had kept house, and before it was all over, I had birthed seven children—Isaac Two and Baby Henry were laid out in the cemetery—in a four-room dugout. Its walls were nothing but squares of sod. The ceilings sagged. The floors were dirt. Summers, grass grew on the inside walls and I’d take a match and burn the shoots to keep the prairie from staking a claim on the inside of our home.

Most folks in the Badlands that stayed longer than three years built themselves wood houses. These houses weren’t grand, far from it. Most of the houses were low to the ground and not all that much bigger than a dugout. But Isaac held off for twelve years, not wanting to spend money on lumber. I imagined that gave folks around here something to talk about. But likely they talked anyway. We were the only Negroes in these parts.

The second bucket came up out of the well, and John sent the third one down. That morning he had begged to go down in the well. He was the boy, he’d said to Isaac. No, Isaac said. You’re too big, son. I can’t hold you. And the rope might break.

Mary came over and stood beside me. She took my hand.