The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [72]
I pictured Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s daughter, Inez, in her short linen dress with the pink sash. That dress belonged on Mary. John should have a gray suit and a crisp white shirt. The little girls should have blue dresses with white starched petticoats. They were the children of a Dakota rancher, one of the biggest land-owners in the Badlands. And me? I should be like the Circle of Eight ladies with a cream-colored blouse, a black skirt, and a brooch at my throat.
Last spring there was money to buy Mabel Walker’s place. This coming winter, Isaac was going off to work in the mine. He was doing it to raise money for more cattle, for grazing rights, for that bull of Al McKee’s. Isaac wasn’t doing it to buy linen dresses with sashes and a boy’s suit with a white shirt. He was doing it to buy Al McKee’s land.
Anger welled up inside of me. Land was a measure of a person’s worth. I couldn’t count the number of times Isaac had said that. But there’d never be enough land to satisfy Isaac. There’d always be another patch just right for grazing, or there’d be a corner with a wash that never ran dry, or there’d be a stretch of flatlands made for raising winter wheat. It’d never end.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Fourteen years ago I lived in fear of Isaac sending me back to Chicago. I had worked hard to please him; I had done everything he’d asked of me just to see a shine of admiration in his eyes. Looking back, I understood that I had done it all too good. He couldn’t run the ranch without me. I was never going home.
13
MARY
Late the next day I stood in the open doorway looking out. The air was fresh and cool; the rain had quit that morning. It was the day after I’d read Sue’s letter about Johnny. I had just put the little girls to bed and had my sewing basket and mending in my hands. The light wasn’t all that good for mending, I decided. Either that or my eyes weren’t up to it.
“Fall finally got here,” Isaac said to me. His rocker thumped unevenly over a rough patch on the plank porch floor. I sat down in the rocker beside him. “Rode in on the storm,” he said. From all sides of us, toads chirped their quick, high call. I had thought the drought had killed them all, but I was wrong. All along they’d been biding their time, low in the grasses, waiting for the rain so they could do their calling and mating.
Isaac said, “I’ll go to Al’s tomorrow, get the horses and the wagon. It’ll be dry enough. With Mary and John’s help, I’ll have the wheat in the ground in a week’s time. You wait and see, Rachel. Come spring, the fields will be green and the cattle getting fat.”
My brother Johnny had been killed. That morning there’d been more blood in my underclothes, and the baby still wasn’t kicking. There was winter to get through on low supplies and Isaac away at the gold mine. All that to face and he was looking past it.
“Spring,” I said.
“It’ll be here before you know it,” he said.
I held my tongue. Like yesterday, everything was still peculiarly sharp in my mind. There’d been more clouds than sunshine, but even so, the sun had seemed too harsh. The wind was overly crisp and the children’s voices were shrill, all of it setting my teeth on edge. And the mud. The heavy, rotten smell of it made my belly roll.
Earlier that day, right after noon dinner, the prickly sharpness in my mind made me go to the root cellar. I needed to see firsthand how it was going to be this winter. Usually by September sealed jars of tomatoes, corn, and carrots lined the cellar shelves. Usually I’d be busy putting straw on the cellar’s dirt floor so I’d be ready when it came time to store the potatoes and the heads of cabbage. Most times in September, I was counting and sorting