The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (2 page)

It had taken me and Isaac all spring, summer, fall, and part of the winter to build our wood house. We did it between tending to the wheat crop and the garden and seeing to the cattle. When time allowed, Al McKee and Ned Walker, neighbor men, came by to help. That July, Emma was born. It was an easy birth, not like some of the others. Four days later I was back helping Isaac. I held the lumber steady as he sawed and hammered our house into place. Mary and John handed nails and held tools for us. We tied Liz and Alise to the cottonwood so they wouldn’t wander off and get hurt somehow. When baby Emma fussed long and hard, I sat under the cottonwood and gave her my breast. Sitting in the shade with my children, I watched Isaac and the other men, if they were there. It made me lift my chin. Our house was rising up at a place where once there had only been a rolling stretch of prairie grasses.

The fourth bucket came up and the fifth one went down. Dusty wind flapped our shirts, skirts, and pants, making hollow flat sounds. I pressed my bandanna close to my mouth. Grit vexed my eyes, but I wanted it to. I deserved far worse for doing this to Liz.

“Air,” I said to Isaac. “Is there enough down there?”

“She’s all right.”

It had to stink down there. Anything that deep in the ground always did.

When we were building our wood house, there was nothing better than the smell of the fresh-cut lumber. Isaac had gone all the way into the Black Hills, figuring lumber prices were better there than in Rapid City. I’d never smelled anything finer than that wood. Growing up in Louisiana, my family lived in the shack where my father had been born a slave. That shack lost its wood smell years back. When we moved to Chicago, there was nothing to smell but the sooty stink of the slaughterhouses. But our Black Hills wood was filled with a raw crispness that made a person think about the goodness of the earth. I used to put my nose right up to that lumber and fill my lungs with its smell.

The fifth bucket came up. It wasn’t even half full. “No more,” I said to Isaac. “Please. No more.”

“All right,” Isaac said.

Bearing down, him and Mary pushed the handle up, fighting to keep it steady when it turned down. Mary’s toes curled and gripped the earth. Isaac’s face glistened with sweat.

The top of Liz’s head showed, then her face—grayer than I had ever seen her—and finally the rest of her. There was a long, jagged rip in her left sleeve, and the hem of her pants dripped water. Her knuckles were scraped raw, and one of her toes was bleeding. Her eyes were squinted shut against the sun, but that didn’t stop the tears.

“Mama,” she said, the plank turning in the wind.

John and I reached out, caught the plank, and pulled Liz to us.

I worked at the harness’s knot, my fingers all thumbs. When at last it came loose, me and John got her off the plank and onto the ground. Isaac and Mary let go of the handle, and it spun wildly as the plank dropped to the bottom, making a cracking splash.

Liz pressed her face into my swelled-up belly and cried. I let her. I wondered if she was thinking how she’d done this thing for us—for Mary, for John, and for her two little sisters latched in their bedroom. I wondered if she knew there was a baby inside of me needing that water too. I wondered if she’d ever forgive us. I believed that she wouldn’t.

Isaac and Mary slumped on the ground, their backs against the well, their legs out before them. Isaac glanced up at me, then looked away.

“What?” I said.

He didn’t say anything. But I knew. He would do this again to Liz. We all would. Every day until the drought broke. Or until there was no water left to scoop.

I closed my eyes for a moment, wanting to put a stop to this, wanting to say, “Isaac. We’ve got to think of something better.” But I had to save it for later. It wasn’t our way to talk over worries when the children were listening.

I pulled out my handkerchief that I kept tucked in my dress sleeve. Liz blew her nose. When she was done, Isaac got to his feet and put out his arms to her. She ran to him, and he held her high.

“You’re a DuPree, Liz,” he said. “Through and through. You too, John and Mary.”

Liz’s arms were tight around Isaac’s neck, her face pressed into his shoulder.

“She’s bleeding,” I said. Isaac put his hand around her toes, the blood smearing on his fingers. Then he put her down.

“Let’s get you fixed up,” I said to Liz. “Get you out of those wet things.” I looked at Isaac. “How much is for us?” I said.

“Two buckets.”

The rest was for the four horses, the milk cow, and the one hen still living. I said, “Mary, you bring up one. John, get the other.” And then, I’m sorry to say, my voice turned hard. “And don’t you spill a drop, you hear me, young man?”

“Yes, ma’am.” John licked his lips and looked at the buckets, the question showing on his face.

I glanced at Isaac. He shook his head but said, “One finger. Stick one finger in and lick it. That’ll hold you till supper.” Mary, John, and Liz each put a finger in one of the buckets and then, their cheeks pulling, they sucked their fingers dry.

“All right now,” I said. “There’s dinner to get on.” What there was of it, I thought. I took Liz’s hand; she gripped it tight. I looked at Isaac, but he was heading off to the corral carrying two of the buckets. There the horses stood near the railing, their nostrils quivering like they knew water was coming.

“Come on,” I said to the children, and we began the climb up the rise to our wood house, Mary and John with the buckets, Liz holding on to me while Isaac went the other way.

I
t was later that day when Isaac came into the kitchen; he’d been out in the east pasture. His shirt, wet with sweat, stuck to his back. The heat had worked on my nerves, making my skin prickle and my feet swell up. I was peevish with the children. They kept asking for water and for something to eat. I told them to sit down, quit all that whining, supper was coming in due time. Then I swatted Emma’s bottom. She was two, and I was in no mood for her fussiness.

Putting Liz in the well was wrong. I should have stopped Isaac from doing it, I should have stood up to him. But I hadn’t, and that shamed me. The only time I’d ever stood up to him was before we were married. Now, when I believed he was wrong, when Liz needed me to stand my ground, I had forgotten how.

Isaac came into the kitchen and hung his wide-brimmed hat on a peg. My shame kept me from looking at him. “Six more dead,” he told me, his voice low. I gave him a rag to wipe the white dust from his face and hands. The children were just a step away, lined up on the benches along the table, napkins tucked into their collars. I had scared them into being quiet. They were peeking at me and Isaac, listening. “Pneumonia,” Isaac said.

I’d lost track of how many cows that made altogether. “Sixtyseven,” he said, like he had read my mind.

The first time we lost a cow to a sickness, I figured we’d butcher it and make steaks. It’d see us through for a good long time. But Isaac wouldn’t do it; he’d heard of people dying that way. He didn’t trust the meat, and I always went along with him. Today, I wasn’t so sure. Today, I would have been willing to chance it. The thought of steaks made my mouth water.

Steaks were for city folks, though, not for us. In the Badlands, a rancher what butchered a healthy cow for his own family was thought a foolish man. It didn’t matter if his children were hungry. Cows were that man’s livelihood, and to eat one was the same as eating dollar bills by the handful.

Breathing deep, Isaac looked into the iron pot simmering on the cookstove. There wasn’t much to look at, just stringy meat from the scrawny red and brown hen the children had called Miss Bossy up until then. That and a few brown-edged shreds of cabbage.

Isaac wiped his forehead with the rag, then looked into the pitcher. “Jerseybell’s not giving much milk.”

I stirred the stew, scraping the bottom of the pot where it was sticking some. “I know it,” I said.

“Still have a fair amount of tobacco saved,” he said. “Al McKee might be willing to swap for a can of milk.” Still stirring, I nodded to show I was listening. There was only one short row of tin cans on the cupboard shelf that hung off to the side of the cookstove. Isaac picked up one of the tins—pears, I thought it was. He ran his finger around the rim as he looked at the shelf. I hoped Isaac was seeing how bad things were in the kitchen. I hoped he was working out a plan that was bigger than a can of milk. He put the tin back. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go to town, see about getting in supplies.”

I’d been waiting to hear those words for a week. I said, “I’ll get a list together.”

“I’m not going to Interior,” Isaac said. “Last time Johnston’s prices were sky high. Hard times is no excuse to gouge honest people. I’d rather go to Scenic. Prices can’t be any worse there.”

That meant he’d be gone overnight, but I’d get by. The baby was probably two weeks off, give or take a day or so. But even if the baby was just a few days away, I wouldn’t have stopped him, not with supplies running out and five children to feed. I tied rags on the pot’s handles and said, “You’ll go tomorrow?”

“First thing.”

“I’ll cut your hair after supper then.” I tried not to think about all the money it would take to buy supplies. I carried the pot of stew to the head of the table where the children were quiet, still smarting, I figured, from my sharp tongue.

“Now come on and eat,” I said to Isaac.

He gave his neck one more wipe with the rag as he looked at the children. Then all at once, he pulled in a deep breath, put his shoulders back and his head up. He clicked his heels together and snapped a salute to me.

“Troops, supper’s being served. Bow your heads.”

They all giggled. Except for Liz.

 

 

 

It was still full light when supper was over, but most always you could count on the day’s work easing up after the dishes were washed and put up on the cupboard shelf. Out on the porch, Alise and Emma played on the floor with their rag dolls. Liz was there too, but she wasn’t playing. She just sat, her head down, her knees drawn up under her chin. Nearby, Isaac was on the kitchen stool he had carried out. I put a cloth around his broad shoulders and began combing his hair, working out the grit and knots. Usually, I took pleasure in cutting his hair; it wasn’t anything like mine. His was wavy and brown, and only his sideburns showed white. Mine was just the other way: springy, tight, and black with gray showing up in too many places. But tonight I couldn’t stop looking over at Liz. It was wrong what we’d done.

Isaac said, “Up there on the barn roof, over on the east corner. Looks like a few shingles are working loose. The wind catches them wrong and they’ll be gone. I’ll fix them as soon as I get back.”

“Always something,” I said, working the scissors around one of his ears, but in my mind I was seeing Liz tied to the plank, the wind blowing her over the open well. We needed the water, but that didn’t make it right. Still, we did it and there was no going back.

“Rachel,” Isaac said. “You all right?”

Put your mind to your work,
I told myself. “Yes,” I said. “It’s the light—it’s hard to see.”

I worked at the back of his neck. Mary took the girls—Liz, Alise, and Emma—to the outhouse, and when they got back, Mary went off to the barn to tend to the milk cow. Caring for Jerseybell was her favorite chore. Mary had been two when Isaac got Jerseybell. She liked the cow right off, and when she got bigger, Isaac told her the cow was hers to care for. Mary took that to heart. She was the one what did the milking and she was the one what fed and watered Jerseybell. When Jerseybell’s stall needed cleaning, Mary did that too.

I blew the cut hair off of Isaac’s neck and shook out the cloth I’d put around his shoulders. I gathered up the comb and scissors and took the girls inside. Liz and four-year-old Alise unhooked each other’s dresses, stepped out of them, and hung them up on the wall pegs. I undressed Emma, but I couldn’t keep from watching Liz. Her eyes were too wide, giving her a startled look. She was afraid to close them, I realized all at once. The well had made her scared of the dark.

I stood the girls in a row and dusted the grit from their hands and faces with a dry rag. They sat on the edge of their low bed and stuck out their legs so I could get to the bottoms of their calloused feet. That done, they stood and put their arms straight up. I pulled their white nightdresses down over their heads; they wrestled their arms through the openings.

In bed, the three little girls laid flat on their backs, Emma in the middle. Liz and Alise each had a leg over her to keep her in place. It was hot, but that was how they did, summer and winter. Most usually it made me smile, but that night I didn’t have a smile in me. Liz’s eyes were flat like she couldn’t see.

“Mama?” Alise said.

“What?”

“Our story.”

“Oh,” I said. It had slipped my mind. I could hardly think straight for worrying about Liz.

I lit a kerosene lamp and got the book of fairy tales from the parlor. I admired the feel of a book. The cover on this one was worn; Isaac’s mother sent it when our first son, Isaac Two, was born. That was eleven years this past February. I opened the book and held it to each girl’s nose. I always believed that smelling the pages of a book took a person into the story.

“Go on. Say it,” I said, figuring this would do Liz some good.

Alise and Emma wiggled a little, grinning with excitement. “Fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,” Alise sang with Emma a word or two behind her. Liz didn’t, though. She kept her mouth pressed.