The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (5 page)

Mrs. DuPree pushed her eyeglasses back up and studied the letter like the words might say something new. She was a hard one to know, I thought. Most widows would be smiling with joy to see their only child. But that wasn’t Mrs. DuPree’s way, at least not in front of the help. But all the same, Mrs. DuPree was excited. Her heartbeat showed in her neck. I hoped my own heartbeat wasn’t so easy to read.

“I want this house shining,” Mrs. DuPree said, “every pot, every pan, every inch of it shining. Even behind the cookstove. He’s been out in the wilderness so long I’m afraid he’s forgotten how civilized people live.”

“Oh yes, ma’am.”

“And I want the food to be good. I’ll make up a list of his favorites.”

I smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

“See that you do.” She eyed me. My smile was too big to suit her. I made it go away. She said, “Start with the floors—get the marks up. And I want the silver polished and the sideboard waxed.” I nodded and she left.

I waited until I couldn’t hear her footsteps. Then I drew up my skirt, held it above my ankles, and did a little waltz around the kitchen.
Isaac DuPree,
I sang to myself.
Isaac DuPree was coming home. Coming home.

I
saac DuPree was a man set apart. Maybe it was because of his blue army uniform with the gold buttons on his collar and the broad yellow stripes on his left sleeve. Or maybe it was because he was tall and even fairer than his mother. But I thought it was more than all those things. Isaac carried himself with pride. When he met the boarders, he looked each man in the eye and shook their hands. When he saw me and Trudy, the housemaid, in the kitchen doorway, he gave a little bow like a gentleman would and that made us smile.

Isaac hadn’t been home but a handful of hours when he wheedled his mother into letting him eat dinner with the boarders. “I’m used to eating with my men,” I overheard him say. “Give me a couple days of civilian life and then we’ll eat in the parlor. Just the two of us. How about it, Mother?”

He had a way with Mrs. DuPree; anybody could see that. I set the platter of sliced roast beef before him on the dining-room table. Mrs. DuPree might have a rule about fraternizing—as she called it—with the men, but there she was, sitting at the same table with them, her at one end, Isaac at the other. She was all dressed up in her black satin skirt and her cream blouse that had so many pleats and layers of lace that it took Trudy a full hour to press it.

“Tell the boys about army life, Isaac,” Mrs. DuPree said as I went back into the kitchen. “Tell them where all you’ve served.”

“Mother,” Isaac said, a grin in his voice, “let the fellows eat in peace.”

“Come on, man,” one of the boarders said. Bill Miller. “Tell us about the army. Never seen a colored man in uniform before.”

This was new dining-room talk. I opened the kitchen door a little wider so I could hear while I heaped mashed potatoes into three serving bowls.

“Wyoming,” Isaac was saying. “Now that’s fine country. That’s where the Yellowstone flows. But it’s the Teton Mountains I’ll never forget, how they rise up out of the flats, bold and mean looking against the bluest sky I’ve ever seen.”

I admired his voice. It was smooth, and as I listened while getting dinner on the table, his voice carried me out of the kitchen so that I was someplace else altogether. I was a soldier with Isaac in the Ninth Cavalry. We were winding our way on horseback along the narrow rim of a Badlands canyon tracking a band of renegade Sioux. I was on the Powder River in Wyoming, then I was in Butte, Montana, keeping an eye out for union men wanting to break the railroads. I was on a naval ship sailing for Cuba, ready to back Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Never before had I met a man whose everyday life was filled with such fine adventures.

After I finished serving the coconut cream pie, I stood tucked in the kitchen doorway, taking care to avoid Mrs. DuPree’s eye.

“How long you been in the army?” Robert Bailey said. “You’ve got a mighty good show of stripes there.”

“Thirteen years.”

Mrs. DuPree said, “Isaac joined the day after he got his diploma. From high school. My son is an example for all of you.”

“Mother.”

“He’s the kind of Negro man who’d make Mr. Booker T. Washington and President Lincoln proud. My son is more than a soldier. He works at the army hospital, side by side with the doctor.”

“Mother.”

“No need to be so modest, son.” Mrs. DuPree’s back was ramrod straight, she was that proud. She looked at the men. “Isaac’s father was a physician—Isaac grew up in a house of medicine. A few years ago the fort didn’t have a doctor, but they didn’t need one. Not with Isaac there.” She paused. “He even delivered a baby.”

“Baby?” Bill Miller said. “There’s women out there?”

Isaac shifted his attention from his mother to Bill Miller. “Sure. Some of the soldiers are married.”

“But what about Indians?” Robert Bailey said. “Seen any?”

“Hell, yes,” and then Isaac held up his hands. “Sorry, Mother.” The men all laughed, but not too loud. Mrs. DuPree did not abide swearing, and if she caught anybody doing it, she always had something sharp to say. This time, though, she only pressed her lips.

“You ever seen any scalping?” Robert Bailey said.

“No, those days were before my time.”

“But there’s still Indians out there?”

“Plenty, but not like before. They’re dying off. But they were everywhere when I first got to Fort Robinson the fall of ’90. A few years later we moved them up to Pine Ridge, but before that, you couldn’t turn around without tripping over one.” He gave a short laugh. “Warriors. That’s what they call themselves, and maybe that’s true for the old ones. But now they’re nothing but agency Indians.”

“What’s that?” Bill Miller said.

“Just about the lowest kind of Indian, that’s what. Worthless drunks with their hands out. Every month the U.S. government passes out free food to them. Barrels of flour, sugar, meat on the hoof. Free. Every bit of it free. Not to mention all that reservation land. Free food, free land. Can you believe that, men?”

They couldn’t. They shook their heads.

“Allotment day,” Isaac said. “Now that’s a sight to sour your stomach. That’s when the squaws line up at the agency door waiting for their handouts. But it’s the men, they’re useless. Most of them stink of whiskey and on the days when the government gives them their livestock, they sit on their horses outside the stockyard waiting for the cattle to get turned loose, greasepaint all over their faces like it’s some kind of buffalo hunt. Or like they’re a war party.” He shook his head. “Half the time they end up shooting each other.”

“Dear me,” Mrs. DuPree said.

“After the men shoot up the cattle, the squaws show up, bloodthirsty, just itching to get on with the butchering. Damn. The agency smells for days. But those Indians, especially the squaws, they like the stink of blood.” The slaughterhouse men eyed each other. The benches squeaked and cracked as they shifted in their seats.

“The only thing Indians like better than blood is liquor,” Isaac said.

Just then, a train two blocks over rattled through, the conductor riding the horn. I thought about old newspaper accounts that told of red savages what drank the blood of little white children. That was after they’d scalped them, after they’d driven hatchets into the hearts of their fathers and ruined the honor of their mothers.

The train’s racket dimmed into the distance. Mrs. DuPree scooted her chair a few inches away from the table. That was her way of saying dinner was over. But Isaac wasn’t finished. He said, “It doesn’t sit well, not with me, all that reservation land, thousands of acres going to waste. Agency Indians don’t know anything about ranching. But men, there’s still a few acres left for the rest of us.”

“What d’you mean?” Henry Ossian said.

“I mean the Homestead Act. You men know about that?”

They shook their heads. I went to get the coffeepot warming on the stove, hoping there was enough for another serving. When I got back to the dining room, Isaac was pulling a newspaper clipping from his breast pocket.

I picked up his plate, clearing his place. Isaac smiled his thanks, and my heart gave a little leap. His plate in one hand, I poured his coffee, my hands a little unsteady from the pleasure of standing close to him.

He smoothed out the paper with his long fingers.

“Right here,” Isaac said, pointing to the words, “it talks about the Homestead Act that was passed by the United States Government. Back in 1862.”

Henry Ossian said, “Maybe I have heard something about that. Always figured there had to be some kind of catch.”

I poured Mrs. DuPree’s coffee.

“No, sir. Any man, even an unmarried woman, says so right here, can claim a hundred and sixty acres of public land.”

“That don’t mean it’s open to Negroes,” Henry Ossian said.

“That’s where you’ve been misled. There’s Negroes homesteading all over out west. The Homestead Act doesn’t care about the color of a man’s skin. A man’s a man in the West.”

“Come on, you’re pulling my leg.”

“Get me a stack of Baptist Bibles, Mother. This man doesn’t believe me.” Then Isaac’s face sobered. The boarders leaned forward. I stopped pouring the men’s coffee.

“It’s right here in black and white, men. Can’t get much truer than that. Here’s how it works. You stake out the one sixty, give them eighteen dollars at the nearest land office—they call that a filing fee—and then you put up a house and farm five acres. Live on it for three years and it’s all yours.”

Thomas Lee Patterson whistled low and soft. “I knew there was a reason why I was hanging on to my money.”

“None better,” Isaac said. He took a folded map from the same pocket as before and spread it out, smoothing the creases. A few of the men got up and stood around Isaac for a better look.

“This is South Dakota, just north of Nebraska. Some of the fellows and I have been cowboying at the fort—we’re taking care of the army’s livestock. Practicing, you might say. That Nebraska land’s good. Wish I could get my hands on a few acres of it, but it’s all claimed.” He gave his mother a quick look; she narrowed her eyes. Isaac ran his finger near the lowest crease in the map, stopped, and tapped his finger two times. “But this wasn’t, not this section right here.”

Mrs. DuPree sucked in air between her teeth.

“I’m ranching just as soon as I’m discharged come June.”

“No,” she said. “Not that.”

Nobody seemed to hear her but me. The boarders stared at Isaac, open mouthed. A Negro with a hundred and sixty acres of land, that’s what they were thinking. They had never heard of such. Then, all at once, the men recovered their senses and began talking, their words rushing and overlapping about what they would do if they had a homestead. Their wheat fields would stretch from here to the horizon. They’d have too many cattle to count. No hogs though, they hated hogs. With a hundred and sixty acres they could have big spread-out houses, room after room, and each would have a fireplace. And horses, why, they would drive pairs of high-stepping honey-colored mares and their buggies would be fit for President Theodore Roosevelt himself.

Isaac, his mouth tight, looked down the table at his mother.

“No,” she said above the talk. “Not farming, not that.”

“Ranching,” he said.

“I won’t have it.”

Isaac’s eyes cut away from hers. He looked at each of the men standing and sitting at the table, all of them talking over each other, their faces lit up with the excitement of going to South Dakota. “Corn,” I heard one of the men say. “Sweet corn, that’s what I’ll plant.” Someone else said, “What about tobacco?” and somebody laughed and said, “That’s Kentucky. We’re talking about South Dakota here.”

Isaac looked at Mrs. DuPree and held her hard stare. He didn’t care the least little bit, I saw, what his mother thought. He was a man made of determination; he was going to have his ranch, and that made me admire him all the more.

“Gentlemen,” Isaac said. “It’s been a pleasure. Now if you’ll excuse us, Mother and I have some catching up to do.” Only a few men looked his way—they were too busy with their hundred and sixty acres. He got up and pulled out Mrs. DuPree’s chair. As he did, he looked my way. I shook my head to warn him about his mother. She has a sharp tongue, I tried to tell him with my eyes. You’ve been gone a long time; likely you’ve forgotten.

Mrs. DuPree got up, her chin high, her eyes glittering. She stepped past Isaac, not looking at him, and left the dining room, her skirt crackling, the heels of her shoes telling her displeasure. Isaac’s mouth twitched; he put a finger above his top lip as if to keep from smiling. He looked again at me. I widened my eyes to show I knew he was in for it. But Isaac wasn’t worried. Instead, he winked—lazy-like—as if we shared a joke. Startled, I laughed right out loud, and that was when I fell hard in love with Sergeant DuPree.

 

 

 

From then on there was nobody for me but Isaac DuPree. I woke up thinking about him. I’d think about cooking eggs and bacon for him, I’d think about pleasing him at dinner with the best cuts of meat and the creamiest mashed potatoes ever. But it didn’t work out that way, not for dinner. Invitations came from Mrs. DuPree’s friends asking her and Sergeant DuPree to luncheons and dinners, all given in his honor. Every day the two of them went out together, Mrs. DuPree dressed in her Sunday best and Isaac in his uniform. Trudy, who lived in the boardinghouse cellar, said they never got home much before eleven at night, sometimes closer on to midnight.

The house was quiet when Trudy told me about Mrs. Du-Pree’s plans. It was the third day of Isaac’s leave, and I was sitting in the dining room having a little coffee before starting dinner for the boarders. The newspaper was spread out before me. I stared at the print, but I was thinking about Isaac’s smile that came so easy, and how his fingernails were always clean, and how his hair had a soft wave to it.