The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [63]
Emma held it up. “Burned it, Daddy. See.”
Isaac looked at me. “What happened?”
“It was an accident,” I said. “She touched the cookstove. She’s all right.”
What else could I say? That my mind had been on the past? That I’d been thinking about Ida B. Wells-Barnett so I wouldn’t have to think about the Indian woman and her half-breed boy?
“It was an accident,” I said again. I spooned out pinto beans onto three plates.
Isaac picked up Emma’s bandaged hand and studied it. “Well. That’ll teach you to stay away from hot stoves.”
I heard the blame in Isaac’s voice. I should have been minding Emma. I was always to blame when something bad happened to the children. Six and a half years ago, I was the reason Isaac Two slipped on the rocks. I should have been watching. Eight years ago, I was the reason Baby Henry lived only an hour. Baby Henry was born too soon, and even though Isaac never said it, I could tell what he thought by the way he looked at me when we buried our baby boy. He thought there was something I could’ve done to stop the bleeding that had started the week before Baby Henry’s birth. Maybe there was some kind of tea I could have drunk, or maybe I should’ve taken to my bed. But if there was such a tea, I didn’t know about it. And a woman didn’t rest for hours on end when she had three little children and no one else to mind them.
Like now. I was bleeding some—not nearly as much as with Baby Henry—but I couldn’t just take to my bed, not even with Mary to help out. That was why I’d decided to keep still about Jerseybell and how I’d fallen and landed on my belly. Isaac didn’t need to know.
I said, “You rode out the storm at the McKees’ place?”
Isaac had a bite of beans, smiled his appreciation, and just like that, I knew he had forgiven me for Emma’s hand. That was Isaac for you. He could, when it suited him, let go of something before it had a chance to turn into a hard grudge. Nothing, I understood, was going to get in the way of him being happy about the rain. I’d do the same. I smiled back at him.
He said, “It was Rounder that warned us early about the storm. He got skittish long before the wind picked up. Got to barking; he was nervous about getting home. Should have listened, but we still had some cows to move. By the time the clouds rolled in, it was too late. We were halfway between the McKees’ and the Walkers’ so we took a vote. The McKees won fair and square.”
Mary said, “We got the horses in their barn just when it started to pour.”
“I thought maybe you were out in that storm.”
“You weren’t worried, were you?” Isaac said.
I sat down at the table. “No.”
“It got real dark, Mama,” John said. “There was lightning everywhere. And thunder. Rained cats and dogs—that’s what Mr. McKee called it.”
Isaac said, “John and I expected to sleep out in their barn; their house is only the three rooms. But you know how Mindy is. There’s plenty of room, she said, though I didn’t see where. That is the most crowded house I’ve ever been in.”
“There’s a piano in the kitchen,” John said. “They just got it.”
“A piano?”
“Al won it in a poker game over in Deadwood,” Isaac said. “Mindy cleared a spot the width of a toothpick in front of the stove. That’s where she put me. Mary slept under the kitchen table, Rounder on one side of her, Al’s hound dog on the other. John bunked with their oldest boy.”
“He’s just a half-pint,” John said, “but at least he’s a boy.”
“Nothing but boys at that place,” Isaac said. “Good God, they’re a tumble.”
Mary rolled her eyes in agreement.
“Yeah,” John said. “And right before bedtime, there was a bunch of loud thunder, and we were all sitting in the kitchen when this ball of fire came down the stovepipe. It was this big.” His cupped hands showed the size of a popcorn ball. “It was shooting sparks clear across the room. You should’ve seen it. It went round and round the