The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (19 page)

I lowered my eyes again, sweat running down my sides. I gripped the knife in my apron pocket. The buckboard creaked and somebody tapped his foot. At last the driver said, “I’m looking for someone by the name of Isaac DuPree. You know him?”

I nodded. “My husband.”

“He a Negro too?”

What else would he be? “Yes.”

“How’d a Negro come by this kind of money?”

I didn’t know what he meant. A thick silence hung in the air. Then the driver spat again, his spit landing farther away from my feet this time. “Come on, boys,” he said. The men jumped down from the buckboard. I backed away, my hand searching for the dugout door, but they’d lost all interest in me. They sprang open the wagon’s tailgate and, using rope and muscles, they hauled two crates to the ground. Sweating, they took off their coats and tossed them onto the buckboard. The younger men got crowbars from the wagon bed, and then they all set upon one of the crates, the boards cracking and screeching as they pried it open.

“Lord,” I said, nearly forgetting how scared I was.

It was a cookstove, shining in the Dakota autumn sun. Not just any cookstove—it was a four-burner cookstove with a halo of raised ivy ringing the oven door.

The men tore open the other crate. Inside was a potbelly stove.

The driver said, “Where you want these?” I pointed to the dugout, and when I realized that he wanted to know exactly where, I hurried in and showed him the longest wall in the kitchen. “The cookstove goes right here,” I said. Then I pointed to the bedroom, not wanting to go in there with the white men. “And the potbelly,” I said. “It goes along the back wall in there.”

I waited outside in the sun as the men worked the cookstove and then the potbelly through the door.
Isaac,
I thought. He didn’t tell me; he kept this a secret. He wanted to surprise me. I wondered how he managed it. I always went to town with him on Saturdays. He must have placed the order at Len Anderson’s store when I was in the back admiring all the bolts of fabric.

“You there,” the driver called out to me. I went to the open doorway, my hand on the knife, scared all over again. He was rubbing the top of the cookstove with a clean rag. The other men stood off to the side. “Come here,” the driver said to me. I took one step into the dugout. Without looking at me, he got down on his knees, opened and closed the door. He nodded, looking satisfied. “It’s a Moore, same as the potbelly. Ain’t cheap but none better. A man does right when he buys the best.” He glanced over at the other two men. “Their mother’s got one of these. It’ll last you a lifetime. Probably your granddaughter’ll be browning her biscuits in it someday.”

He got up using the stove to help him. He turned to me. “You know anything about breaking in a new cookstove?”

I wanted to say that I did, just to keep from showing my ignorance. But I wanted the cookstove to work right. I wanted it to last for the granddaughter this man made mention of. I said, “No.”

“Didn’t think so.” He worked his mouth. The bulge that had been in one cheek disappeared and then showed up in the other cheek. He said, “Keep a low fire going a couple days before cooking. Burn the rawness out. Same with the potbelly. Before it gets any colder, make yourself a few easy fires, not too hot, mind you.”

“Yes,” I said. “All right.”

One of the sons along the wall crossed his arms. “Ma likes her stove as much as she likes us,” he said.

“More,” the other boy said, and they all three laughed loud and long like they had just told a joke. I smiled as if I understood, and then to my surprise, I found myself wanting to do something for these men what all at once looked to be better people than I first supposed. Without thinking I said, “You’re welcome to stay for noon dinner. I’ve got some stew going outside. My husband’ll be along any time.”

The men suddenly tensed. Their eyes darted to one another. Without a word they tossed around the idea of sitting down to dinner with Negroes. My mouth went dry. I wanted to take back the offer. I had never fed white men before; I didn’t know anything about how to do that. The driver shook his head slightly. The sons blew out some air. “Can’t,” the driver said. “Got to get over to Rapid by morning.”

“Well, then, help yourself to the well by the barn,” I said, much relieved. “There’s a trough for the oxen.”

“Appreciate that.” The driver gave the stove one last wipe and stuffed the rag in his back pocket. Then he looked at me and put his hand to the narrow brim of his slouch hat. He tugged it into place and as he did, I imagined that he tipped his head to me.

As I remembered that day, sitting in my parlor, a strange thought from out of the blue came to me. That driver had it wrong. It wouldn’t be my granddaughter baking biscuits in the cookstove. It’d be some white woman, somebody I didn’t know. I saw it as clear as day: a white woman and her husband in my house picking over our belongings. At first these people would claim they’d come for curiosity’s sake. They’d never want anything that once belonged to Negroes, especially the DuPrees, the Negroes what held themselves out as equal to whites. But after a while the man would note the sturdiness of our bed’s headboard, and his wife would take a notion to run her finger around the circle of ivy on the cookstove’s door. They’d see the potbelly stove; they’d admire its high shine. “It’d be a shame to let such things go to waste,” the woman would say to her husband, just like I had when Isaac bought somebody’s ranch.

Upset by the thought, I got up, opened the door to the porch, and breathed in the cool air to clear my head. It was still raining. Isaac, Mary, and John were out in this weather, cold, wet, and hungry.

Isaac would never let strangers have our ranch. Not unless he was dead. I closed the door, slamming it too hard.

Earlier I’d told myself that if it rained, everything would be all right. I’d said I’d forget about buffalo soldiers and Indian women. Now that it was raining, things would be better between me and Isaac. We’d pull together; we’d get through the coming winter. Supplies might be short, but I’d make them stretch. I’d feed our children. I’d stand up and make the best of things. Like I always had. Like Isaac expected.

I left one lantern burning in the parlor window. Taking the other one, I went into the bedroom.

It was raining too hard to use the outhouse, so I used the chamber pot. That was when I saw the blood. Not much, but enough to scare me. I stuffed a rag in my drawers. The baby, I realized with a shock, hadn’t kicked all evening.

I
t was still raining the next day, and Isaac, Mary, and John weren’t home. I thought the worst—they were lost, lightning had struck them dead, they had fallen in a wash and drowned in a fast-moving current. As the day wore on, I knew I had to go to Al McKee’s to get help, but I kept putting it off. The McKees were about three miles away, and by horse it didn’t take all that long. But Isaac had the horses and that meant walking. The girls couldn’t do it. The slimy mud pulled like quicksand; they’d never stay upright. I’d have to leave them home, and that wasn’t something I cared to think about.

I told myself that if Isaac and the older children weren’t home by the time I finished scrubbing the laundry, I’d go then. Once that was all done, I decided to wait until after I had the laundry hung to dry in the kitchen. When that was all done, I said I’d wait until after Emma’s afternoon nap.

She was still napping when Rounder, looking like someone else’s dog, showed up. His black and white coat dripped with mud the color of long-dead fallen leaves and his fur was so slicked down that his legs looked like knobby sticks. His muzzle was as pointed as a fox’s. Walking up the road were Isaac, Mary, and John. I nearly collapsed with relief.

If they hadn’t been wet clear through and coated from top to bottom with mud, I would have thrown my arms around the three of them. I met them on the porch with towels and slices of soap. “Lord,” I said, “look at you all.”

“We’re a sight, aren’t we?” Isaac said.

“For sore eyes.”

He had wiped the mud away from around his eyes. His skin there was drawn and bruised looking. Likely Isaac had half carried Mary and John home. All the same, he was smiling. The drought was over. He had been right all along. Things would work out.

“You two go wait in the dugout,” I said to Isaac and John. “I’ll heat up some water and Mary can wash up on the porch. Then it’ll be your turn. I’ve got fresh clothes for you.”

“Where’re the horses, Daddy?” Alise said. “And the wagon?”

“At the McKees’.”

The McKees’? At best, I had placed Isaac and the children at the deserted Walker place. “Go on, now,” I said, and they did.

A little later the three of them were as fresh scrubbed and as close to dry as a person could be when it was still raining. Everything had a damp feeling. Even the inside of the house was soggy, with the two rows of wet laundry that hung along the back wall of the kitchen.

John plunked down at the kitchen table. “I’m hungry, Mama.” Isaac and Mary sat down with him. So did Liz and Alise. Emma, just waking up from her nap, wandered out from the bedroom. Isaac patted his leg and then pulled her up. “What’s this?” he said, looking at her wrapped hand.

Emma held it up. “Burned it, Daddy. See.”

Isaac looked at me. “What happened?”

“It was an accident,” I said. “She touched the cookstove. She’s all right.”

What else could I say? That my mind had been on the past? That I’d been thinking about Ida B. Wells-Barnett so I wouldn’t have to think about the Indian woman and her half-breed boy?

“It was an accident,” I said again. I spooned out pinto beans onto three plates.

Isaac picked up Emma’s bandaged hand and studied it. “Well. That’ll teach you to stay away from hot stoves.”

I heard the blame in Isaac’s voice. I should have been minding Emma. I was always to blame when something bad happened to the children. Six and a half years ago, I was the reason Isaac Two slipped on the rocks. I should have been watching. Eight years ago, I was the reason Baby Henry lived only an hour. Baby Henry was born too soon, and even though Isaac never said it, I could tell what he thought by the way he looked at me when we buried our baby boy. He thought there was something I could’ve done to stop the bleeding that had started the week before Baby Henry’s birth. Maybe there was some kind of tea I could have drunk, or maybe I should’ve taken to my bed. But if there was such a tea, I didn’t know about it. And a woman didn’t rest for hours on end when she had three little children and no one else to mind them.

Like now. I was bleeding some—not nearly as much as with Baby Henry—but I couldn’t just take to my bed, not even with Mary to help out. That was why I’d decided to keep still about Jerseybell and how I’d fallen and landed on my belly. Isaac didn’t need to know.

I said, “You rode out the storm at the McKees’ place?”

Isaac had a bite of beans, smiled his appreciation, and just like that, I knew he had forgiven me for Emma’s hand. That was Isaac for you. He could, when it suited him, let go of something before it had a chance to turn into a hard grudge. Nothing, I understood, was going to get in the way of him being happy about the rain. I’d do the same. I smiled back at him.

He said, “It was Rounder that warned us early about the storm. He got skittish long before the wind picked up. Got to barking; he was nervous about getting home. Should have listened, but we still had some cows to move. By the time the clouds rolled in, it was too late. We were halfway between the McKees’ and the Walkers’ so we took a vote. The McKees won fair and square.”

Mary said, “We got the horses in their barn just when it started to pour.”

“I thought maybe you were out in that storm.”

“You weren’t worried, were you?” Isaac said.

I sat down at the table. “No.”

“It got real dark, Mama,” John said. “There was lightning everywhere. And thunder. Rained cats and dogs—that’s what Mr. McKee called it.”

Isaac said, “John and I expected to sleep out in their barn; their house is only the three rooms. But you know how Mindy is. There’s plenty of room, she said, though I didn’t see where. That is the most crowded house I’ve ever been in.”

“There’s a piano in the kitchen,” John said. “They just got it.”

“A piano?”

“Al won it in a poker game over in Deadwood,” Isaac said. “Mindy cleared a spot the width of a toothpick in front of the stove. That’s where she put me. Mary slept under the kitchen table, Rounder on one side of her, Al’s hound dog on the other. John bunked with their oldest boy.”

“He’s just a half-pint,” John said, “but at least he’s a boy.”

“Nothing but boys at that place,” Isaac said. “Good God, they’re a tumble.”

Mary rolled her eyes in agreement.

“Yeah,” John said. “And right before bedtime, there was a bunch of loud thunder, and we were all sitting in the kitchen when this ball of fire came down the stovepipe. It was this big.” His cupped hands showed the size of a popcorn ball. “It was shooting sparks clear across the room. You should’ve seen it. It went round and round the cookstove, sizzling and cracking just like this.” He filled up his cheeks and made exploding sounds.

“Lord, John,” I said.

“He’s telling the honest truth,” Mary said.

“You should have heard Rounder and Big Blue howl,” John said. “The fireball went back up the pipe, sizzling and popping, sparks flying everywhere, and then it was gone.”

“Gone?” Liz said.

“Gone.”

Pleased with his story, John sopped up the last of his beans with a piece of bread.

Isaac said, “When I was in the army I heard about those fireballs. It’s a bolt of lightning that runs down a piece of metal. I’ll tell you what, it took awhile getting the children settled down after that. It was something else.” He ran his fingers up and down one of Emma’s short braids. “Al, Mindy, and I sat up through the biggest part of the storm. Been so long since it’s rained, none of us wanted to miss it. It was a beaut of a storm.”