The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (33 page)

“Cold enough for you?” he said, giving a small smile as he pulled out a drawer from his side of the counter. There were rough patches of flaky skin on his cheeks and the end of his nose was red like he had a head cold. He found a stamp and put it on the counter.

“Yes,” I said.

“Folks say it’s going to be a bad winter.”

A shiver ran through me. Charlie Johnston rang up the one-cent key on his cash register and put the penny in the drawer. I loosened the drawstrings that held my cloth handbag shut. I pulled out a letter. My hands fumbling some, I licked the stamp and put it on the right-hand corner of the envelope. I pressed the stamp into place and then slid the envelope across the counter to Charlie Johnston.

He looked at the address. “I’d heard about this, how Isaac’s working the mine in Lead.”

“Yes.”

“A letter from home. A man always appreciates that.”

“I expect so.”
But not this one,
I thought. I had written it the night before after the children were in bed. It had taken all evening, each word harder to write than the one before, but I had to do it. It was only right that Isaac knew I’d done what I said I would do. I pictured him opening the letter as he sat in a miner’s tent late at night, holding it close to a lantern, squinting, wishing for his magnifying glass.

 

 

 

 

A sudden clutch of fear seized my heart.
Get it back,
I thought. I put out my hand, but by then Charlie Johnston had dropped the letter into a small canvas bag that hung from a peg. There was black lettering on it—U.S. MAIL—the print a little faded around the edges. I let my hand drop.
Isaac left us,
I told myself.
You had to do this thing.

Charlie Johnston turned to the open cabinet that hung on the back wall behind him. It had narrow rows of pigeonholes, some with mail in them. He said, “It’s the oddest thing about letter writing. Something I’ve noticed. Folks go months, even years sometimes, without getting one. Or writing one, for that matter. Then the letters start flying back and forth. Like with you and Isaac.” I looked at him; I didn’t know his meaning. He pulled out a letter from one of the pigeonholes. “Here’s another one for you folks. Came Monday, I believe it was. Or maybe Tuesday.”

All at once the store was too hot, like the stove along the side wall had fired up a blaze too big for the room. I pulled at my neck scarf, but loosening it didn’t help. When I had written my mother in September, I told her she didn’t have to write back if she agreed to take me and the children. Since then, I’d been uneasy every time Isaac went to town, worried sick there’d be word from her.

Charlie Johnston put the letter on the counter. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it; I fixed my eyes on the cabinet behind him. The letter, I knew, carried bad news. It was from my mother, saying it was wrong to leave the ranch. She was warning me about race riots; she was telling me she didn’t have room for five children and me. Or maybe it was from Sue, my sister, telling me that something had happened to Mama. But it was too late. I’d sold my wedding band. We had to come; my children needed to. It was only for a few months.

“You all right?” Charlie Johnston said.

Not wanting to, I glanced at the letter. It was to Isaac, not me.

“Mrs. DuPree?”

Relieved, I put the letter in my handbag. “Yes,” I said, stepping away from the counter. “Good-bye.”

“That’s it?” he said. “You’ve come clear to town just to post that letter of yours? The weather being what it is?”

“No,” I said. “There’s this and that,” and then I turned and hurried out of the store before he could say anything.

Outside, the wind gusted, pulling at my coat and skirt. Across the street, the children waited for me, holding hands like I had told them. They stood close to the wall of the barbershop but held themselves tight pressed to each other as if that could break the wind. Mary held Emma, and the carpetbag was at John’s feet. The supper basket was between Liz and Alise. They wore their hats pulled low, and their neck scarves were wound tight across their mouths and knotted under their chins. Their coats were buttoned high. Mary’s and John’s were tight across their chests, though, and I knew their knobby wrists that showed above their gloves were raw from the cold. Their boots were tight, not that either of them complained, but I had seen how they winced when they walked.
Nobody in Chicago,
I thought,
will believe that their father was a rancher.
Our children looked like orphans from the poorhouse.

Low snowdrifts lined the south side of the street. Jumping some, I got over the drift and made my way across the dirt street that was mostly blown clear of the snow. Wind, trapped between the two rows of buildings that made Interior, whipped my clothes. I couldn’t imagine who had written Isaac. My coat and skirt caught around my legs, pulling me. I staggered, stumbling, sure that I would fall, the wind bigger than me.
Put the letter behind you,
I told myself. There were enough worries without taking on another one. I steadied myself and kept going, stepping around the street’s ruts that were covered with ice.

I stepped up onto the plank walk where the children waited. “Mama?” Mary said as I came near. “What’re we doing?”

I ignored her as I took Emma. “Come on,” I said, settling Emma on my hip.

John pulled my arm. “Where’re we going?”

“Home,” I said. That was what I had told them that morning when they heard me tell Manny Franks to hitch the wagon. That was what I said after I told Manny Franks he was taking me and the children to town.

John said, “But you sent Manny back home, back without us.”

“Never mind that. Come on.” I started walking, the children hurrying to catch up. Our boots clattered on the wooden walk as we went past the Lutheran church, the bank, and the empty lot where the Interior Hotel stood before it burned down. We were the only people out. We walked past the Interior Saloon, and as we did, I put my hand to Emma’s head and tucked her face against the wool of my coat’s collar. I thought about our wood house, about how for the last three days I had worked harder than I ever had before, washing, polishing, and cleaning, getting it ready for the winter. Carrying Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s words about the dead in my mind, I had gotten the cradle from the barn and put it by my bed. I put the baby quilt in it, tucking in the corners. Feeling foolish but willing to do it anyway, I took a scrap piece of paper and wrote “Chicago” in big letters. I put it on top of the baby quilt. “That’s where I’ll be,” I had whispered, “should you come looking.”

Me and the children were at the depot office by then. “John,” I said, nodding my head toward the door, my way of telling him to open it.

He looked at me. “What’re we doing?”

“Mama,” Mary said. “Tell us. Please tell us.”

I couldn’t. There were no words for what I was doing.

“The door,” I said. John hesitated, working up an argument. I gave him my hardest look. Wincing some, he opened the door; it nearly flew when a gust of wind caught it. I put my spare hand to it and we went inside.

A man with yellow hair stood by the open stove. He held a bucket under one arm. I didn’t know him. I nodded a greeting. He nodded back, then reached into the bucket, getting a handful of cow chips. “Well,” he said, “you must be DuPree’s family.” He threw the chips into the stove. Small red flames jumped and crackled. “You meeting up in Lead?”

For a moment it startled me that this stranger knew about Isaac, but then I remembered that Isaac had been to the depot five days before us.

“No,” I said. The children pulled in their breaths; I didn’t look at them. Instead I looked at the chalkboard behind the counter. The train to Sioux Falls left at 1:19 P.M. A wash of memories came over me. Sioux Falls was where Zeb and Iris Butler lived. Sioux Falls was where me and Isaac first came to know each other. It was where I had my first chance at pleasing him.

I pulled in some air, willing myself to study the prices printed on the chalkboard. A ticket to Chicago was thirty cents more than Manny Franks had said. I worked out the arithmetic, my mind almost too jumpy to hold on to the figures. I did the arithmetic again and went weak with relief. I had enough money.

I kept my eyes fixed on the chalkboard, needing next to work out the trip. From Sioux Falls me and the children would get the Chicago-bound train. I said, “Six tickets, please.”

“Where to?” the depot man said, coming around to the back side of the counter.

“Chicago.”

One of the little girls giggled. “Mama,” I heard Mary whisper. “Mama.”

“It ain’t cheap,” the man said.

Heat rose to my cheeks. This white man, the corners of his mouth lifted in a narrow grin, was taking in our rough, ill-fitting clothes. This man was thinking that Isaac DuPree was land rich and cash poor, so poor he had to leave his ranch and work a gold mine. Isaac DuPree’s wife couldn’t have money for train tickets clear to Chicago. I flushed with anger. This man was taking pleasure in the idea that Isaac DuPree had fallen on hard times.

Without looking at Mary, I handed Emma to her. I took off my gloves and opened my handbag, seeing the letter that Charlie Johnston had given me. Keeping my hands in my bag so nobody could see, I counted out the dollar bills and some change. Like Mrs. Clay had done a few days before, I laid the bills out on the counter, and as I did, I saw the emptiness of my left hand.

The bills were worn and thin. I didn’t let myself think about how Mrs. Clay had earned that money. Or how I had.

The depot man looked at the bills on the counter, and I saw his surprise. He turned to the ticket cabinet on the wall beside the chalkboard, the key in the lock.

“Rounder?” John said. “What about Rounder?”

The depot man turned the key; the lock made a clicking sound. Inside the cabinet, stacks of tickets showed in the rows of pigeonholes. He studied the rows and then pulled out some tickets.

“Mama!” John said, his hand on my arm. “Who’s going to see to Rounder?”

“Manny Franks and Pete Klegberg,” I said.

The depot man flicked the tickets with his thumb as if counting. He laid them beside my money and stamped each ticket, the sound of it as loud as the heartbeat in my ears.

“They won’t know how,” John said. “They don’t know anything about Rounder.”

“That’s enough,” I said, my voice low.

The depot man gave me a few coins in change, and then he slid the train tickets across the counter to me. I put them in my cloth handbag so that they rested beside the letter Charlie Johnston had given me. The train was twenty minutes away. “Come on,” I said to the children, heading for the door.

“Hold up,” the depot man said. I turned back. He said, “It’s all right by me if you wait here.” He inclined his head toward the stove. “It’s a tad breezy out there.”

“Obliged,” I said. “But outside is just fine.”

“Suit yourself.”

I saw what he was thinking: that Negro woman was a hard one, making her children stand out on such a bitter day. My lips pressed tight, I nodded good-bye to him as I took Emma from Mary. The depot man already knew enough of our business; I didn’t want him knowing more.

Outside, we stood close to the clapboard depot office wall, trying to stay out of the wind. It had begun to snow a little but it didn’t stick. It just skittered in the wind, sometimes getting trapped for a few moments against the rough-cut depot wall before being lifted up and carried on. We stood there, Mary and John saying, “But Mama? But Mama?” I hung my head, thinking what to say. “A visit,” I managed. “A short visit.”

“But Mama,” John said, standing in front of me, his eyes nearly level with mine. He pulled his scarf down below his chin. “Daddy told me to see to the ranch; that’s what he said. Daddy didn’t say anything about going to Chicago. I promised him.”

I shook my head.

“Mama! I promised! I can’t go, I don’t want to!”

A knot tightened my throat so I couldn’t hardly swallow. Mary said, “Where are we going to sleep, Mama, when we get there?”

“Family,” I said. “We’ll stay with family.”

“Grandma Reeves?” she said.

“Yes.”

John said, “And Grandma DuPree?” I started to shake my head but saw that the troubled look in John’s eyes had changed to excitement. This was the grandmother what sent a book after the birth of each baby. This was the one what owned property. This was his daddy’s mother.

“Her too,” I said, not meeting his eyes.

Then all at once, Liz and Alise got excited about getting on a train, and everybody was talking too loud and I told them, my voice harsh, “That’s enough!” They backed away from me, stung, and I thought of the letter I had written Isaac and how that meant I couldn’t back out now. And what about the letter Charlie Johnston gave me? I put Emma down and drew open the drawstrings to my handbag. Making sure the children couldn’t see, I pulled the letter out a few inches. I didn’t know the hand. I angled the letter a little. The postmark was blurry.

I tucked the letter back in my handbag and drew the strings. I cocked my head; I didn’t hear the train. I didn’t know what to make of the letter, but I did know that it wasn’t mine to keep. I would have Charlie Johnston send it on to Isaac in Lead. There was time, the train was still minutes away.

“Wait here,” I told the children. “Don’t any of you move. I’ll be back.”

“Mama!” Liz said.

“I’ll be back,” and I walked away from them, heading back to the dry-goods store, my eyes straight ahead, pretending the saloon wasn’t there, pretending that people weren’t watching me from their windows. With each step I thought about how I was leaving, how I was doing right by my children, how I was giving them a chance to see that there was something bigger than the Badlands. I thought about the six tickets in my handbag and how they were next to the letter somebody had written Isaac. The letter couldn’t be from his mother; she never answered Isaac’s letters. She only sent a book when a child was born, and Baby Ralph had been born dead. I couldn’t begin to think who had written Isaac. Charlie Johnston had said something about letters flying back and forth. All at once that struck me as peculiar.