The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [30]
Don’t think about it, I told myself. Isaac was bringing water. Him and John would be coming on home tomorrow. I put my head on the back of the rocker and let my legs go out before me.
The two porch rockers came from Mabel Walker. When she sold her ranch to us in the spring, she told Isaac it came with the rockers. She couldn’t bear the chairs anymore, she said. She couldn’t sit in one without her husband Ned in the other. He had died without warning. On Christmas Day morning, Ned had sighted a deer and meant to get it for winter provisions. Mabel said she knew something bad had happened when he didn’t show up for Christmas dinner. She and her daughter Norma didn’t find him until the next afternoon. He had fallen in a heap on the ground; there wasn’t the first sign of wounds or blood. A thin layer of snow had drifted over him, and the coat he was wearing was frozen to the ground. Norma came to us for help, saying it looked like Ned’s heart had quit on him. Isaac chopped Ned free and brought him to our barn so Mabel and Norma wouldn’t have to look at him while they waited for a spring thaw to loosen the ground.
I felt sorry for Mabel losing Ned that way. He was a good enough man. But in some ways she was lucky. She’d gone back to Missouri, the place where she had family. She got out before the drought, and she had our money.
Our money.
Gliding shadows of turkey vultures crisscrossed the earth. Put it behind you, I told myself. Buying the Walker ranch looked like the smart thing to do. That was how Isaac saw it. Nearby, a vulture swooped close to the ground, its black eyes hard and unblinking. I hated those birds and what they meant. But I’d always given them their due. No others rode the breezes in such grand style, their black wings spread, the silver in them flashing as they dipped and banked and soared.
When Mabel Walker sold off, I didn’t know if I could do like her and let people have our belongings. But if it meant earning a little money, I guessed that I could. Some things would hurt more than others, like our bed’s headboard with the oak leaves carved into it. Isaac got that nearly ten years ago when Carl Bergson’s bride took one look at the Badlands and turned right around and went back home to Sioux Falls. It’d be just as hard to give up the two red upholstered parlor chairs that we got when we bought the Peterson place seven years back. Those chairs still made me proud; I never figured on having anything so pretty.
All at once, Rounder barked, sharp and shrill. Startled, I jumped. Mary and Liz were running up the rise, their skirts held high above their bare knees, pointing and yelling about somebody coming. I squinted. Shimmers of heat, wavy, rose from the earth. I pushed myself up out of my rocker and went to the edge of the porch to look eastward. A fair-sized dust cloud was rounding a bend in the road near a row of low boulders. I couldn’t make out a thing, not even a wagon. Couldn’t be Isaac and John. They’d be coming from the west, and anyway, I wasn’t looking for them until tomorrow.
Alise and Emma sat up and watched the dust cloud. It made my nerves jumpy. I didn’t like it when people, especially men, came by when Isaac was gone. But maybe these travelers were in a hurry. Maybe they were just passing through and wouldn’t stop any longer than to say, “Any rain these parts?” Maybe they wouldn’t expect to stay for supper. It shamed me that I didn’t have anything better to fix than snake meat. I hoped they wouldn’t stop at all. I hoped they’d just wave and keep going.
I put my hand on Rounder’s neck, felt the standing fur. I was glad he was here.
Mary and Liz were on the porch now, and the five of us waited, straining our eyes. We heard the wagon before we saw it, the wheels creaking, the wagon