The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (13 page)

I did. I heard him pat his clothes.

“Well,” he said, “could’ve sworn I had one more thing.” He patted a pocket again. “Well, well. What do you know?”

All at once, a rich, dark smell filled the kitchen, the kind of smell that made me light-headed with pleasure. Keeping my eyes closed, I filled my lungs with it, and just that quick, I was grinding coffee beans in Mrs. DuPree’s boardinghouse kitchen. Mrs. DuPree considered coffee one of life’s great pleasures. Me too. Every Friday morning, Samuel, the delivery boy from Telly’s Market, brought two five-pound sacks of dark beans to the kitchen door. Those beans, Samuel told me once, had traveled all the way from South America. I tried to picture South America from my geography lessons, but I couldn’t place it. I’d been out of school too long. So one Saturday afternoon, after I’d finished for the day at Mrs. DuPree’s, I took the streetcar and went to the free library. There, I rounded up my courage and asked the white man behind the counter if he could tell me where South America was. For a minute he looked at me over his eyeglasses like he wasn’t sure he had heard right. Likely he wasn’t used to twenty-year-old Negro women asking about South America. He tapped his forefinger twice on the counter. Then the library man got up, nodded for me to come, and without a word, he led me past the rows and rows of tall shelves filled with books. He stopped at a table where there was a big globe of the world. He tipped it and gave it a little twist. With a nod, he indicated a continent that was wide in the middle and then thinned down to a narrow point at the bottom. The countries were different colors: brown, and blue, and green, and a few were pink.

“This where coffee comes from?” I whispered.

He moved his finger to one of the countries. Brazil.

I looked closer. “Is Chicago on here?” I said.

The library man tipped the globe and pointed. “Here.”

With my eye, I traveled the distance from Brazil to Chicago. After that I took extra pleasure in grinding those Brazil beans, scoops and scoops of them, into coffee as fine as the sand that trickled in the three-minute hourglass I kept by the stove. The smell of those beans, I once told Trudy the housemaid, was even better than the taste of coffee.

Isaac was waiting for me to say something. I opened my eyes. A small burlap bag of coffee beans dangled right before my eyes. As good as it smelled, as good as the memory was, I didn’t like it. “What’d it cost?” I said.

“It’s a small bag,” he said. “It’s been weeks.” He took my left hand and when he saw my wrapped finger, the one I’d hurt in the outhouse when Liz was hiding in the dry wash, he raised an eyebrow.

“Caught my nail,” I said.

He put the bag of beans in my palm. “There’s rain coming. I believe that calls for a cup of coffee.”

“But the cost.”

“Can’t go to town for supplies and not get coffee.” Isaac put his hand on the small of my back and pulled me as close to him as my belly allowed. I turned my face away from him, gripping the coffee sack, crushing it, making my torn fingernail throb all the more. He’d bought it to keep people from talking, to keep them from seeing that we were having hard times. He had bought it to remind Mrs. Svenson that he owned the Circle D, a twenty-five-hundred acre spread.

Isaac kneaded his fingers along my backbone, working out the ache, aiming, I knew, to tear down my anger. Stop it, I wanted to say to him. We’re broke and pride made you buy coffee.

His fingers rubbed the knobs on my spine. My good sense began to drift. His fingers felt so good working out the aches. I was so tired. My knees began to give way; so did my anger. I leaned my big belly against him, wanting him to take the weight of it, wanting Isaac to make me a young woman again, when everything was good and easy.

He picked up my free hand, and even though Alise and Emma were underfoot, he pressed the palm of my hand to his lips. My fingers curved around his cheek, feeling how he hadn’t shaved that morning. It was then that I saw he was tired. The skin around his eyes sagged. The drought was taking its toll, and that made me feel bad for him. I breathed Isaac in, smelling the sweat of hard work. What difference did a small bag of coffee make?

Emma pulled on my skirt. I dropped my hand from his cheek. “Isaac,” I whispered, “I’ve got supper to get on.”

He stepped away, shifting the baby’s weight back to me. “That’s my girl.”

And with that, I understood. The coffee wasn’t just to buck up his pride. It was meant to make me forget about putting Liz in the well; it was meant to make me think we’d get through the coming winter just fine.

I could have shaken him. The root cellar was empty; the garden had quit on me a month ago. Jerseybell was puny. The scrawny cattle wouldn’t be worth a thing come time for market this fall. And what about the cattle we didn’t sell? The grass that Isaac had been cutting for feed was little better than straw. The cattle’d starve by Christmas. All those worries but Isaac figured a little bag of coffee would make me forget. Did he think I could be fooled that easy?

But Isaac didn’t see any of what I was thinking—he had other things on his mind. “Come on, John,” he was saying, “the day’s not over yet. Liz, you come help brush down the horses. The dust is this thick.” He measured out a couple of inches with his fingers. “You too, Alise. Your mama and Mary have supper to get on.”

“But Daddy, I’m hungry,” Liz said, looking at the food supplies on the kitchen table.

“You’ve got chores to do first.”

“But I’m hungry now.”

“Me too,” Alise said, whining.

Irritation crossed his face. He studied Liz and Alise. Their little arms and legs were nothing but knobby sticks. He looked at me, his eyebrows raised as if to say, Can’t you give them something? I shook my head, fighting back the urge to snap,
Not if you expect me to make these groceries last.

“Tell you what, Liz,” Isaac said. “Put a pebble under your tongue.”

“But that’s for when you’re thirsty. I’m more hungry than thirsty.”

“That’s where you’ve been misled. A pebble’s good for both.”

“It is?”

He shooed the girls and John out of the kitchen. “Sure is,” he said, and then they were through the parlor, out the door, and on their way to the barn. I went to the table and took a tin can of peas from one of the boxes.

“Mama?” Mary said.

Just holding the can made my mouth water. I couldn’t remember when we’d last had peas. “What?” I said to Mary.

“Mrs. Svenson—” She stopped.

“She’s ignorant,” I said, my words snapping. That was what my mother always said about mean-spirited people. “Mrs. Svenson doesn’t know better, and we should feel sorry for her. Put your head up and straighten your back when you’re around people like her, people what are ignorant. Don’t give them cause to think little of you. Show them that you’re quality.”

Mary cocked her head.

“Your granddaddy was a doctor and your daddy is a rancher. That’s quality. Blood matters. Never forget what you come from.”

“We’re Negroes.”

“And we’re proud to be.”

“Franklin’s proud.”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s visit rushed back at me.

Mary said, “Franklin’s granddaddy is an elder. So’s his uncle.”

Liz and Alise were going to tell Isaac about the Indian boys. They were going to do it before I had the chance.

Mary said, “So that means Franklin’s quality too. Like us.”

“No,” I said. “They’re nothing like us. They’re Indians, agency Indians. It’s not the same. Quality people raise themselves up.” I remembered how Inez Fills the Pipe was going east to be a nurse. “You do it by yourself; you don’t take handouts. Now let’s get these groceries put up.” I put the canned peas on the shelf.
Maybe,
I thought,
Liz and Alise won’t think to say anything to Isaac.

“Mama?”

“What is it?”

“Me and Franklin were just taking a walk. I was just being polite. So was he.”

“I know it.”

“Are you going to tell Daddy?”

“That’s between me and him.”

“I don’t want Daddy to be put out with me.”

“I know it.” Maybe Liz and Alise had forgotten all about yesterday’s visit. Children were like that. Children forgot things in a hurry, especially when there had been a story about a dragon and then chores and supper to think about.

I said, “Let’s get supper on. Let’s get a loaf of bread going.”

“What about Daddy?”

“It’ll be all right.”

Mary smiled slightly. Could be she believed me.

N
othing was said about Indians during supper that night. Nothing was said about Mrs. Svenson, either. The canned meat and the peas and the pears were too good to ruin with such talk. “Slow down,” I told the children more than once. “Make it last.” But who could when we were so hungry? The only thing missing was milk. Jerseybell was as puny as ever.

Later, me and Isaac did like always. We sat on the porch watching night come to the ranch. Rounder rested near me with his chin on his front paws. To look at us, a stranger would think we didn’t have the first worry. Nobody’d know there were only four weeks’ worth of supplies in the cupboard or that in two or three days, Liz would have to go back into the well. Nobody’d know my belly was churning with dread. I had to tell Isaac about Mrs. Fills the Pipe, and I had to do it before the girls did.

We rocked back and forth, me waiting for just the right time to tell Isaac. Our chairs bumped unevenly over the wood planks. The wind blew—more than a breeze—but not enough to carry much dust. Isaac took a sip of his coffee and looked off toward Grindstone Butte. For a moment I thought he might say something about Mrs. Svenson. Instead, he held up his blue porcelain teacup. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’ve lost my taste for it.”

“Must be the baby doing that to you.”

“Maybe,” I said, thinking that it wasn’t the baby even though it was restless. It was the short supplies that Isaac had brought home. It was Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s visit. A breeze ruffled his shirt and the hem of my skirt. “Last night in Scenic,” Isaac said, “it was hot and still, not a breath of air to be found.”

“That so?”

“John and I slept under the wagon behind Fred Schuling’s place. Fred offered us the attic, but Alice said no, we’d roast alive up there.”

I wondered about that. Isaac and Fred Schuling went back a long way, but that didn’t mean Alice Schuling wanted Negroes sleeping in her house. Isaac and Fred had both been posted at Fort Robinson, except that Fred was white and his Eighth Cavalry unit was quartered in a different part of the fort than Isaac’s Ninth Cavalry. The thing that made Isaac and Fred friends was baseball. At the fort they pitched for opposing teams, but as peculiar as it seemed to me, that made them friends. Isaac couldn’t help but respect a man with an arm like Fred’s, and Fred thought Isaac had a good eye for the strike zone. That admiration brought them together.

Isaac was the one what talked Fred into coming to the Badlands once his enlistment was up. Fred didn’t want a ranch, though. Instead, he came to Scenic and opened the only tannery in the area. He made a good living but stayed a bachelor until this past Christmas. That was when he surprised everyone by marrying Alice Ludlow, a widow from Interior with grown grandchildren.

“Fred’s business is a little slow,” Isaac said. “This drought’s pinching everybody.”

Now,
I told myself,
tell him now about Mrs. Fills the Pipe.
I knew what to say. Earlier, when I was getting the little girls ready for bed, I had laid it out in my mind, but before I could get going on the words, Isaac said, “People in town are talking about the war. That and the drought.”

I hesitated, then, “What’re they saying?”

“That our troops are just now getting over there. Most are landing in France, some in England.” Isaac shook his head. “Trenches. That’s no way to fight a war. It was different in my day—we didn’t have this new kind of war with machines, airplanes, and tanks and such. And this business of mustard gas. God, that’s dirty. Our boys’ll be all right though. They’re fighters; they know what they’re about.”

“Isaac,” I said. “Some Indians came by yesterday.”

He tensed. “Was there trouble?”

“No. It was Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her family. You know who she is—she goes back and forth to the Rosebud.”

Isaac shrugged his shoulders as if to say that all Indians were alike to him.

I said, “It was real hot yesterday, like you said. She looked washed out; she looked bad.”

“So?”

“It worried me. I had Mary bring her up to the porch.”

“The porch?”

“Her and her daughter. She looked so puny; it was so hot. Like you said. I gave her a little something—a biscuit—just a half of one. To revive her.”

He stood up. Rounder yelped, the back of Isaac’s rocker banging against the wall. “You let a squaw on my porch?”

I nodded.

“You fed her?”

I nodded.

“Goddamn it.”

I winced.

“I won’t have it. You hear me?”

My lips quivered.

“They’re nothing but thieves, stealing and begging. I won’t have it. I won’t have them on my porch. You hear me?”

I tried to swallow.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He stepped away then, breathing hard. He went to the edge of the porch, his back to me. Rounder paced between the two of us, panting. Sickened, I sat still, hardly breathing, but my thoughts jumped and jittered. Forgive me, I wanted to say, please forgive me. I pinched back the words, though, keeping my lips pressed as he stood in the shadow. I heard him pulling air in through his nose. I imagined that I felt his anger—it was like a storm wrapped around him. I had let Indians on his porch. His porch. I had disobeyed him. He didn’t want to forgive me; he wanted me to suffer over it. And then I was thinking,
Why, Isaac? Why do you hate them so much? The Indians were put down a long time ago. You have your land. They can’t take it from you.