The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (10 page)

Alise and Emma rested on the blanket, their dolls hugged to their chests. Likely they were too thirsty to play much. Off to my left, Rounder laid on his side, his eyes half closed so that the whites showed. It wasn’t my way to sit idle in the afternoons, but for once I didn’t care about my chores. I wanted to rest. I wanted to step away from the hard feeling I had about the Badlands. I wanted to not think.

The southern wind blew hot. There was so much grit in the air that from a distance Grindstone Butte’s sharp points had faded into a hazy white. In a month or so, when the weather shifted, we’d wish for that southern wind. Usually I didn’t mind winter all that much. Chores changed in the winter. That was when I quilted; that was when I sewed a new dress for Mary and for me, and new shirts for Isaac and John. But on that hot September day, the thought of winter chilled me. The garden had dried up weeks ago, and I didn’t have the first thing canned for winter.

Don’t think about it, I told myself. Isaac was bringing water. Him and John would be coming on home tomorrow. I put my head on the back of the rocker and let my legs go out before me.

The two porch rockers came from Mabel Walker. When she sold her ranch to us in the spring, she told Isaac it came with the rockers. She couldn’t bear the chairs anymore, she said. She couldn’t sit in one without her husband Ned in the other. He had died without warning. On Christmas Day morning, Ned had sighted a deer and meant to get it for winter provisions. Mabel said she knew something bad had happened when he didn’t show up for Christmas dinner. She and her daughter Norma didn’t find him until the next afternoon. He had fallen in a heap on the ground; there wasn’t the first sign of wounds or blood. A thin layer of snow had drifted over him, and the coat he was wearing was frozen to the ground. Norma came to us for help, saying it looked like Ned’s heart had quit on him. Isaac chopped Ned free and brought him to our barn so Mabel and Norma wouldn’t have to look at him while they waited for a spring thaw to loosen the ground.

I felt sorry for Mabel losing Ned that way. He was a good enough man. But in some ways she was lucky. She’d gone back to Missouri, the place where she had family. She got out before the drought, and she had our money.

Our money.

Gliding shadows of turkey vultures crisscrossed the earth.
Put it behind you,
I told myself. Buying the Walker ranch looked like the smart thing to do. That was how Isaac saw it. Nearby, a vulture swooped close to the ground, its black eyes hard and unblinking. I hated those birds and what they meant. But I’d always given them their due. No others rode the breezes in such grand style, their black wings spread, the silver in them flashing as they dipped and banked and soared.

When Mabel Walker sold off, I didn’t know if I could do like her and let people have our belongings. But if it meant earning a little money, I guessed that I could. Some things would hurt more than others, like our bed’s headboard with the oak leaves carved into it. Isaac got that nearly ten years ago when Carl Bergson’s bride took one look at the Badlands and turned right around and went back home to Sioux Falls. It’d be just as hard to give up the two red upholstered parlor chairs that we got when we bought the Peterson place seven years back. Those chairs still made me proud; I never figured on having anything so pretty.

All at once, Rounder barked, sharp and shrill. Startled, I jumped. Mary and Liz were running up the rise, their skirts held high above their bare knees, pointing and yelling about somebody coming. I squinted. Shimmers of heat, wavy, rose from the earth. I pushed myself up out of my rocker and went to the edge of the porch to look eastward. A fair-sized dust cloud was rounding a bend in the road near a row of low boulders. I couldn’t make out a thing, not even a wagon. Couldn’t be Isaac and John. They’d be coming from the west, and anyway, I wasn’t looking for them until tomorrow.

Alise and Emma sat up and watched the dust cloud. It made my nerves jumpy. I didn’t like it when people, especially men, came by when Isaac was gone. But maybe these travelers were in a hurry. Maybe they were just passing through and wouldn’t stop any longer than to say, “Any rain these parts?” Maybe they wouldn’t expect to stay for supper. It shamed me that I didn’t have anything better to fix than snake meat. I hoped they wouldn’t stop at all. I hoped they’d just wave and keep going.

I put my hand on Rounder’s neck, felt the standing fur. I was glad he was here.

Mary and Liz were on the porch now, and the five of us waited, straining our eyes. We heard the wagon before we saw it, the wheels creaking, the wagon cracking as it likely swayed from side to side. We heard the horses, their slow, heavy hooves on the dirt road, and I imagined that I heard them tossing their heads, snorting, blowing grit from their noses. Shapes of people riding on the wagon began to appear.

“Mary?” I said. She had the best eyes in the family. Isaac liked to say she could spot a stilled rabbit a half mile off.

She stood on her tiptoes, her eyes almost squeezed shut. “Mrs. Fills the Pipe,” she said, her words coming slow. “Those are her horses. Three people up front, and I think maybe one’s a boy. Somebody’s in the back. He’s leaning over the side.”

“You sure it’s Mrs. Fills the Pipe?” I said.

“I’m sure.”

A woman. And one what wouldn’t expect to stay for supper. Indians never did.

“Been awhile since she’s been by,” I said. “Don’t know when.”

“This spring,” Mary said. “The cottonwood was just leafing.”

“That’s right, it was.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe lived at Pine Ridge Reservation, a two-day journey southwest of our ranch. I recalled how on that day when the cottonwood leaves were a fresh green, Mrs. Fills the Pipe had been on her way northeast. She was going to her brother’s at the Rosebud Reservation to care for her sister-in-law sick with tuberculosis. Since then I hadn’t given her a thought; Indians came and went along the road every week or so. Before the drought, when Indians stopped to rest under the cottonwood, I’d go down, or send Mary or John, and tell them they were welcome to drink from the well behind the barn. But it wasn’t always that way. When I first came to the Badlands, the Indians scared me silly. When I saw them on the road, I hid in the dugout and latched the door.

“They’re harmless,” Isaac had told me then, “but keep a sharp eye. If there’s a pebble on the ground they think you might want, it’ll be in their back pocket.”

“Where’re they going?” I asked him. “All this traveling.”

“Who knows? Probably to another reservation. They’re all related to each other in some complicated way. Only God knows how. Clans and tribes and bands.”

“Why don’t they all live on the same reservation then? That’s what I’d do.”

“Army split them up awhile back,” Isaac said. “Keeps them docile.”

Isaac was right. The Indians were harmless. I had even gotten to know the names of some of them.

Mary rocked up on the balls of her feet. “Think that’s Inez with her, but I don’t know the boys.” She stretched her neck. “But that’s Inez and her mama all right. Maybe the others are kin.”

Kin. The word was like a spark. Excitement rose in my chest, covering up my tiredness. Mrs. Fills the Pipe wasn’t kin, far from it. But she was a woman, and all at once, I wanted in the worst way to be in the company of a woman. I longed for a visit. I longed for a chance to talk and to share worries. Mrs. Fills the Pipe was a squaw, but she was a woman and she was handy.

“Liz,” I said. My skin nearly tingled, I was that perked up. “Get Rounder in the barn; his barking’ll scare them off. Alise, you stay with me. Mary, go meet them on the road. Ask them up for a visit.”

Mary looked at me, her eyebrows puckered. I knew what she was thinking: Daddy wasn’t going to like this.

“Never mind that,” I said. “Go on now.”

She gave me one last doubting look before turning to go. Then I thought of something. “Wait,” I said. “You too, Liz.” They turned back, Liz’s hand on Rounder’s collar. “Don’t—” I stopped. I could hardly find the words for what I had to say. The girls looked at me, puzzled. I couldn’t meet their eyes. “Don’t ask for anything,” I said.

“Like what?” Alise said.

“I’m talking about refreshments. Like how folks do in Chicago.”

“Refreshments?” Mary said, and I felt foolish. This was not Chicago.

I said, “Like how we always do when company comes. Something to eat and drink.” There was no easy way to put it. “There’s not enough for everybody. You can have a little water, but that’s all. Don’t ask, and don’t take even when others are having. Company’s served first.”

“Water?” Liz said. “You’re giving them our water?”

“They’re company.”

“That’s our water.”

“Liz. That’s enough.”

“But Indians?” Mary said.

I ignored her. Nothing was going to stop me from having my visit. My longing had turned into desperation. I needed to talk to a woman what understood about children getting lost, what understood how hard it was to make food stretch, and what might even know something about living with a man with a stubborn streak.

“Hurry up,” I said. “Go meet Mrs. Fills the Pipe and get Rounder in the barn.” I turned to Alise and Emma and made them come inside with me.

In the kitchen, excitement rose up again in my chest. Thank goodness yesterday there had been enough flour to make a half batch of soda biscuits. I carefully wiped the dust off my china plate with the hand-painted pink roses. I laid out four soda biscuits, one each for my guests. Four biscuits looked skimpy, but I couldn’t spare any more. I broke the four into halves, making eight. Likely nobody’d be fooled, but a person had to at least try to keep up appearances. Once you stopped caring about that, you might as well quit living.

There were a couple of pinches of chokeberry tea in the bottom of the canister. It was just enough to make a few cups if nobody minded it thin. I blew on the smoldering cow chips in the cookstove, stoking the fire. I put a little water in the teakettle. Guilt twisted my heart.
I wasn’t using all that much water,
I told myself.
Isaac would be back tomorrow with plenty more. It was all right.

I looked out the parlor window. Mary was on her way to meet the wagon, and Liz was hurrying to catch up. Pushing my guilt to the side, I got out two of our good blue porcelain cups. Tea. All at once I felt like singing. I was serving tea.

The wagon, I saw now, was stopping under the cottonwood. I pulled off my hair kerchief, licked my palms, and patted my hair into place. I got my straw sun hat from the bedroom and checked myself in the parlor mirror as I tied the ribbons. I looked out the window.

The boy on the buckboard jumped down. He was tall and his shoulders had breadth to them. He wasn’t full grown but close. He put his hands around Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s waist as she backed one foot onto the high side step, and he lifted her like she was a child. Once on solid ground, she shook out her shoulders and stomped her feet to bring the life back to them.

The boy helped Inez down. On the ground, Inez took off her duster, folded it, and gave it to the boy to put in a basket on the floorboard. The child in the back of the wagon jumped—flying, more like—over the tailboard but landed on his feet, his knees bent and his arms out before him to hold himself steady like he was daring the wind to push him over.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was this pleased to see company.

I hurried and put away my ironing board. I glanced into the parlor, thinking how Mrs. Fills the Pipe had probably never been in such a fine room. Not that I had any intention of inviting her inside; Isaac would never stand for that. I brushed the grit off the front of my dress, and then me, Alise, and Emma went out on the porch to wait for our company.

I put my hand up in greeting as the Indians and the girls walked up the rise. Mrs. Fills the Pipe raised her hand to me. She looked older and slower than she had in the spring. Her back was bent with a little hump, reminding me how women folded in on themselves when their childbearing years had passed. I straightened my own shoulders.

Air caught in my throat. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Inez looked like a young lady—a white lady—the kind you see in catalog advertisements. She was fresh and clean as if the wind was not full of grit. Her dress was cream colored, and there was a wide pink sash gathered around her narrow waist. The dress was short, a good six inches above her ankles, showing off her white stockings. Her sheer pink head scarf was tied with a big bow angled to one side of her chin.

Was this,
I thought,
what the government was passing out to Indians while hardworking, honest ranchers were making do on next to nothing?

At least Mrs. Fills the Pipe looked the way an Indian should; that took some of the sting out of Inez’s city dress. Like always, she wore a patched-over cotton dress and beaded ankle-high moccasins. Her butternut headscarf, knotted by a firm hand, covered her hair, but all the same, strands of gray blew loose from her long braid. The skin around her black eyes was wrinkled and thin.

Except for their hair, the boys could be sons of ranchers in their blue cotton shirts, the hems fraying some in their too-short pants. The older boy, the one what was almost grown up, had a ponytail pulled back with a strip of leather. The little boy’s hair was cut so close that it stood up in peaks. He looked to be about John’s age.

“Mrs. Fills the Pipe,” I said, smiling. “Hello.”

“Mrs. DuPree.” She wasn’t smiling.

“Please sit down. I just happened to put some tea on. You can stay, can’t you?”

“Tea?”

My smile froze. Water from the well was all I had ever offered Mrs. Fills the Pipe. Tea? At the house? Lord, what had I done? No wonder she was frowning, Inez too.
You’re right, Mrs. Fills the Pipe,
I wanted to say.
Why don’t you just turn around and go on home.
Ranchers and Indians don’t mix. Everybody knows that.