The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [75]
I studied Jerseybell. I didn’t look for a miracle tonight.
“Mama?”
“What, honey?”
“You think Jerseybell knows how bad off she is?”
“I expect so.”
“Think if she does die, not that I think she will, but if she does, think she’ll go to heaven? She’s been awfully good. Especially for a cow.”
I thought about that, trying to remember what the Bible said about animals and heaven, but nothing came to mind. I recalled, though, a passage, or maybe it was a poem, about all animals great and small. I wasn’t sure if it was from the Bible, and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing about heaven. Then I thought of Johnny and my Isaac Two and Baby Henry.
I said, “I expect there’s folks up there wanting butter on their bread and cream in their coffee. There’s babies in heaven without their mamas, and they’d be needing their milk. It wouldn’t be much of a heaven, seems to me, without cows.”
“There’s big herds of cattle in heaven,” Mary said. “That’s what I think. And green pastures ’cause it rains every day but only at night.” She slapped the back of her neck, then looked at her fingers. There was a smear of blood from a mosquito. She said, “When we’re real sick, you sing to us.”
I agreed.
“You sing and rock us and we get better.”
Eight years ago I sang lullabies to Baby Henry as I held him to my bosom. But that hadn’t kept him from passing out of this world not long after his birth.
“Mama, singing would help Jerseybell.”
“Honey.”
“Could you sing to her? I know it’d make her feel better.”
“I’m not going to sing to a cow.”
“But it’s Jerseybell.”
Jerseybell was Mary’s friend. There were a handful of girls at school, and Louise Johnston was Mary’s good friend there. But school was only for five months, and if the winter was hard, weeks at a time were missed. There were children scattered all over the Badlands, but even if they were just two or three miles apart, children old enough to walk that far had chores at home that couldn’t be missed.
I knew what it was like to have friends. A handful of children lived on the sugarcane plantation in Louisiana, and in Chicago there were girls my age all up and down the street. We used to have good times. If we weren’t skipping rope or playing hopscotch, we were giggling over the least little thing. No wonder Mary had had fun with Franklin, Mrs. Fills the Pipe’s nephew. It’d been months since she had been with children other than her brother and sisters.
I said, “You got a particular song in mind for Jerseybell?”
“‘ Michael Row the Boat Ashore.’
I blinked back my surprise. “All right then.”
Mary’s eyes smiled. She pulled down her bandanna, batted away some flies, and cleared her throat. When she sang, her voice was just above a whisper. I followed along, rusty and a little off-key.
My brothers and sisters are all aboard, Hallelu . . . jah.
My brothers and sisters are all aboard, Hallelu . . . jah.
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelu . . . jah!
It had been a long spell since I’d last heard singing. I used to sing when I did my housework, but not that summer. Isaac used to whistle tunes; ragtime was his favorite. Once he spent a week practicing nothing but “Maple Leaf Rag” until he got it to suit him. “My Castle on the Nile” and “Congo Love Song” were two of my favorites, and when I told him that once, he whistled those songs just to please me. During our first summer in the Badlands, Isaac whistled while we built our barn and dugout. When pointy shoots of winter wheat broke the soil that first spring, Isaac whistled. When in April I told him he was going to be a father by early fall, he whistled as he sanded and polished the old cradle he had found at the Interior store. Then the babies came, one after another, and Isaac sent them to sleep each night with sweet whistled lullabies.
Michael row the boat ashore, Hallelu . . . jah!
Isaac didn’t whistle tunes anymore, and Johnny didn’t play the piano. My throat choked, taking my breath. I shook as an ache from deep within gripped my heart.
“Mama! What’s wrong?