The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [43]
“So?”
“It worried me. I had Mary bring her up to the porch.”
“The porch?”
“Her and her daughter. She looked so puny; it was so hot. Like you said. I gave her a little something—a biscuit—just a half of one. To revive her.”
He stood up. Rounder yelped, the back of Isaac’s rocker banging against the wall. “You let a squaw on my porch?”
I nodded.
“You fed her?”
I nodded.
“Goddamn it.”
I winced.
“I won’t have it. You hear me?”
My lips quivered.
“They’re nothing but thieves, stealing and begging. I won’t have it. I won’t have them on my porch. You hear me?”
I tried to swallow.
“Do you?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
He stepped away then, breathing hard. He went to the edge of the porch, his back to me. Rounder paced between the two of us, panting. Sickened, I sat still, hardly breathing, but my thoughts jumped and jittered. Forgive me, I wanted to say, please forgive me. I pinched back the words, though, keeping my lips pressed as he stood in the shadow. I heard him pulling air in through his nose. I imagined that I felt his anger—it was like a storm wrapped around him. I had let Indians on his porch. His porch. I had disobeyed him. He didn’t want to forgive me; he wanted me to suffer over it. And then I was thinking, Why, Isaac? Why do you hate them so much? The Indians were put down a long time ago. You have your land. They can’t take it from you.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“You should be. Our children are doing without and you’re feeding Indians.” He stepped down from the porch and walked off into the dark.
Sweat broke out on my forehead. Rounder whimpered, nosed my leg. A coyote—not all that far off—started up yipping and yowling. The baby kicked. I jerked and gripped the armrests. One by one, more coyotes joined in, their yammering echoing off the buttes, making it sound like there were hundreds of them.
I swore under my breath. I hated the Badlands. The words hissed through my mind. I hated it all—Indians, the ranch, the drought, what we’d done to Liz. I hated it. I wanted out.
The thought shocked me. Don’t think that way, I told myself. It wasn’t true. I didn’t mean it, and then I thought I heard a cry from inside the house. I hurried in, Rounder with me, afraid that the children had heard me and Isaac. I stood listening in the girls’ doorway and then in John’s. Their breathing was slow and easy. They were asleep; they hadn’t heard.
It is the drought, I told myself. It was wearing me down, Isaac too. He was forty-five years old; he wasn’t a young man anymore. Five children and one more coming. The worry of caring for us was playing on his nerves. Mine too. No one could be in their right mind with so many worries.
I went to the parlor and lit a lamp, meaning to leave it there for Isaac. Doing that showed that I wanted things to be all right between us. I turned up the light. It caught on the glass doors of the narrow bookcase. I stopped. Inside the bookcase was Isaac’s gold army insignia. A wash of sadness came over me. I put the lamp on top of the case.
We had been married a little over a week when Isaac unpinned the insignia from his army hat. It was July, but there was a nip in the air so we had a fair-sized fire going. We had just eaten supper and even though it was cloudy, it was still full light. Days were long in the Badlands, and dark didn’t come until late. We sat cross-legged on the ground across from one another, the fire in the middle. We were tired, but in a good way. The two of us had spent the day building the walls of the barn with stacks of sod bricks.
“Don’t want to lose it,” Isaac said as he held the insignia in the palm of his hand. Ridges of new calluses were forming along the pads below his fingers. He looked at the insignia for a moment before rocking forward onto his knees and reaching around the fire to give it to me.
“It’s so handsome,” I said. It was two swords that crossed to make an X. “Your hat hardly looks right without it. You sure you don’t want to wear it?”
“No. Those days are over.”
The sadness in his voice surprised me. He looked past me like he was thinking