The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [42]
Mary smiled slightly. Could be she believed me.
8
INDIANS
Nothing was said about Indians during supper that night. Nothing was said about Mrs. Svenson, either. The canned meat and the peas and the pears were too good to ruin with such talk. “Slow down,” I told the children more than once. “Make it last.” But who could when we were so hungry? The only thing missing was milk. Jerseybell was as puny as ever.
Later, me and Isaac did like always. We sat on the porch watching night come to the ranch. Rounder rested near me with his chin on his front paws. To look at us, a stranger would think we didn’t have the first worry. Nobody’d know there were only four weeks’ worth of supplies in the cupboard or that in two or three days, Liz would have to go back into the well. Nobody’d know my belly was churning with dread. I had to tell Isaac about Mrs. Fills the Pipe, and I had to do it before the girls did.
We rocked back and forth, me waiting for just the right time to tell Isaac. Our chairs bumped unevenly over the wood planks. The wind blew—more than a breeze—but not enough to carry much dust. Isaac took a sip of his coffee and looked off toward Grindstone Butte. For a moment I thought he might say something about Mrs. Svenson. Instead, he held up his blue porcelain teacup. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
“I’ve lost my taste for it.”
“Must be the baby doing that to you.”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking that it wasn’t the baby even though it was restless. It was the short supplies that Isaac had brought home. It was Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s visit. A breeze ruffled his shirt and the hem of my skirt. “Last night in Scenic,” Isaac said, “it was hot and still, not a breath of air to be found.”
“That so?”
“John and I slept under the wagon behind Fred Schuling’s place. Fred offered us the attic, but Alice said no, we’d roast alive up there.”
I wondered about that. Isaac and Fred Schuling went back a long way, but that didn’t mean Alice Schuling wanted Negroes sleeping in her house. Isaac and Fred had both been posted at Fort Robinson, except that Fred was white and his Eighth Cavalry unit was quartered in a different part of the fort than Isaac’s Ninth Cavalry. The thing that made Isaac and Fred friends was baseball. At the fort they pitched for opposing teams, but as peculiar as it seemed to me, that made them friends. Isaac couldn’t help but respect a man with an arm like Fred’s, and Fred thought Isaac had a good eye for the strike zone. That admiration brought them together.
Isaac was the one what talked Fred into coming to the Badlands once his enlistment was up. Fred didn’t want a ranch, though. Instead, he came to Scenic and opened the only tannery in the area. He made a good living but stayed a bachelor until this past Christmas. That was when he surprised everyone by marrying Alice Ludlow, a widow from Interior with grown grandchildren.
“Fred’s business is a little slow,” Isaac said. “This drought’s pinching everybody.”
Now, I told myself, tell him now about Mrs. Fills the Pipe. I knew what to say. Earlier, when I was getting the little girls ready for bed, I had laid it out in my mind, but before I could get going on the words, Isaac said, “People in town are talking about the war. That and the drought.”
I hesitated, then, “What’re they saying?”
“That our troops are just now getting over there. Most are landing in France, some in England.” Isaac shook his head. “Trenches. That’s no way to fight a war. It was different in my day—we didn’t have this new kind of war with machines, airplanes, and tanks and such. And this business of mustard gas. God, that’s dirty. Our boys’ll be all right though. They’re fighters; they know what they’re about.”
“Isaac,” I said. “Some Indians came by yesterday.”
He tensed. “Was there trouble?”
“No. It was Mrs. Fills the Pipe and her family. You know who she is—she goes back and forth to the Rosebud.”
Isaac shrugged his shoulders as if to say that all Indians were alike to him.
I said, “It was real hot yesterday, like you said. She looked washed out; she looked bad.