The Personal History of Rachel DuPree_ A Novel - Ann Weisgarber [86]
I put my hand on the door latch, feeling the solid metal of it. The key was somewhere, I wasn’t sure where, but I’d look for it first thing. That way I could lock the door when me and the children left the Badlands.
After a while I went inside. Emma’s eyes were half closed. Maybe I hadn’t hit her as hard as I thought. Other than spanking their bottoms, I’d never hit any of our children before. It shamed me that I had done it now.
I remembered Peaches Orwell what lived behind Mrs. Du-Pree’s boardinghouse. Her baby screamed day and night, and Peaches always wore a stretched-out, tight look on her face. I put my hands to my face, surprised that my cheeks were wet. I rubbed them, not wanting to carry Peaches’s look.
“Honey,” I said to Emma, holding out my hand. “Let’s get your dolly and get that hand of yours fixed up.” She looked at me as if considering. I smiled at her. She got up and put her good hand in mine.
The syrup made me feel heavy and light all at the same time. “All better now,” I told Emma.
16
MARY AND JOHN
It’ll be after supper,” Isaac said as me and Mary cleared the noon dinner dishes later that day. “Don’t wait for us.”
Just like that, the good feeling brought on by the soothing syrup left me. My hand slid over my swollen belly and went to my apron pocket. I fingered the letter I’d written Mama, remembering each word.
Mama it is time the children got to know family. There GRANDMA and AUNT. And COUSINS. If you think it is safe this winter from RACE RIOTS can we come?
The nerve of it made my knees wobbly. It wouldn’t take much for Isaac to figure out what I was planning. One careful look and he’d see it on my face. I turned away from him and steadied myself against the kitchen counter. “I’ll keep something warm,” I heard myself say.
“Obliged,” he said, and then, “Ready, son?”
John took one last gulp of water and was out the door, breathless with his good luck. Helping Isaac with Jerseybell that morning had taken the starch clean out of him, but just the idea of going to the McKees’ perked him up. John admired Al almost as much as he admired Isaac. Since coming home three days ago, John had talked about nothing but Al McKee.
“He’ll scare the Germans something big,” John had said to me just the day before. The two of us had been on the porch; I had clothes soaking in a tub. “He’s a mountain man,” John said, “a real mountain man.”
“That so?”
“Yeah, and he showed me his rifles. For grizzlies. Used to hunt them in the wilds of Canada. Him and his daddy, when he was my age. Showed me his gutting knife too.” He held his hands out, palms facing, and stretched them further and further apart. “It was this big, that knife was. Me and Daddy, we’re thinking about it.”
“That so?” The water in the tub turned muddy. I took the clothes out and put them in a dry one. “Help me empty this. I’m needing fresh.”
John picked up one of the handles; I got the other. He said, “Daddy said maybe before the first frost we could go hunting in the Black Hills, get ourselves a few bears. Make a good cover for the beds, Daddy said. Plenty of meat for the winter too.”
Halfway down the porch steps, the water sloshing, I stopped. “What’s that?”
“Daddy said bear hunting would be a fine adventure.”
My mouth went dry.
“Mama?” John said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said and I got myself moving again. We went out into the yard, and I watched John from the corner of my eye. His tongue was poked out some as he held his end of the tub, careful to not flood the prairie grasses as we went from patch to patch. John was too thin, anybody could see that, but he was tall and wiry, the muscles showing in his arms as he tilted the tub. A few days of enough water and better eating showed too. His light skin had lost its dullness; it looked alive again. But it was the shine in John’s eyes that seized my