by Harold Bakst
When there was no digging to do, Seth and the boys tried to occupy themselves with other endeavors, like making bullets, waterproofing their boots with hog lard, sharpening tools for the spring, or, when weather permitted, hunting. Once, Seth dashed breathlessly into the soddy. “Buffalo!” he shouted as he tied on his snowshoes. Everyone crowded through the door to see—half way to the horizon was a small herd of buffalo, trudging in four, long, brown files through haunch-high snow. Seth grabbed his rifle and hurried after them. Unfortuately, the buffalo were moving away from the soddy and Seth couldn’t get close enough for a good shot. He gave it a try, but the rifle report only scared the animals into running, plowing the snow before them. Seth watched them move off, his rifle dangling at his side, his chest heaving. Everyone was disappointed as they watched him return, but Lucy said, “It was not meant to be.”
When, by and by, they couldn’t find work for themselves, or when the weather forbade them from leaving the soddy, Seth and the boys were impressed into woman’s work. “There’s no sense being idle,” said Lucy. “If you want to eat tonight, you must help with the cooking.”
“It happens every winter,” explained Seth to Peter, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I can put it off only so long.”
Peter smiled and gave a quick shrug. It lifted Jennifer’s heart to see her son behave so congenially, and she was grateful to Seth. She thought, He’s being a father to Peter. He’s a good man.
Indeed, at times, Jennifer found herself a little jealous of Lucy for having such a good husband. He seemed so even-tempered—yet so strong—and surprisingly talented! Sometimes, in the evening, Seth would take out an autoharp, rest it on his lap, and strum the few chords he could read out of a music book. Everyone else sang, even Peter. Perhaps it was due to Seth, or perhaps it was due to living with all the doughty Bakers, but Peter seemed more and more strengthened. And, to no small degree, it was also true for Jennifer. Walter’s death, though it remained painful, was less devastating.
Meanwhile, outside, blizzards repeatedly swept across the unimpeded prairie. So furious could the winds be, and so blinding the snow, that Seth strung clothes lines along the deeply etched paths from the soddy to his outbuildings to help him find his way. He told stories of people who lost their way in such storms and froze to death only yards from their houses.
Of course, it was best not to challenge a blizzard to begin with but to wait it out indoors, where the thick earthen walls of the soddy did much to keep the cold out and the heat in. But on the bitterest days, the cold didn’t stay politely outside—it seeped in through the door and shutters, squeezing everyone inside closer and closer to the fireplace, which wasn’t nearly as efficient as a good cookstove. It was the main job of the children, each taking a turn, to keep the fire stoked. For this they used the large, platter-like buffalo chips, twists of hay, com cobs, and the dead, woody stalks of sunflowers.
During particularly brutal blizzards, with the wind howling and the snow banked high against the walls, slowly entombing the soddy, Jennifer hugged her children close, regretting that she had ever let herself be talked into staying the winter. She wasn’t frightened for herself as much as for her children, who, with their father gone, counted on her decisions for their welfare. Jennifer feared she had blundered this time. Morbid thoughts entered her head. She only hoped that, come the spring, her own and her children’s bodies might be discovered by people and not wolves. No one else in the soddy knew she was thinking such things, or noticed when a tear rolled down her cheek.
But Jennifer never became totally bereft of hope. She remembered her resolve to withstand each ordeal and see it as temporary, survivable, and even strengthening. And when she was especially hard-pressed, she need only to observe Lucy Baker, who never looked worried. Even as ice began to creep under the door across the hard floor, and the frosty air penetrated farther in from the shuttered windows, tightening ever more around the huddled people, Lucy—as well as Seth—retained a calm that reassured everyone else. Jennifer marvelled at the woman’s stoicism— but she also wondered how much of it was facade.
You are not fooling me entirely! thought Jennifer as she observed Lucy’s performance. I know your game! And I can feign strength as well as you!
And she tried. Yet she could not quite succeed at this as well as Lucy. Much to her chagrin, Jennifer found that she was looking up more and more to her hostess. Indeed, Jennifer soon found that she wanted only to please her, like some little girl trying to please a parent. She felt a warm glow whenever she received a compliment from her. “Oh, these are such tasty com cakes!” said Lucy one day when Jennifer was baking. Jennifer couldn’t help it. She was very proud.
It was only the presence of her own children that reminded her that she herself was a grownup and ought not to be looking up to Lucy so much, or to be taking so many orders from her. It was then she thought, as she had done countless times before, “Who does she think she is?” And she kept wishing the winter would hurry and be over so she could leave—and not just the soddy but Kansas.
But the winter would not hurry. It seemed only to entrench itself more firmly upon the prairie, and Jennifer didn’t think anything could ever again pry it loose. When Seth went to the chickencoop one morning, he found that some of the chickens had frozen to death upright on their roosts during the night. In the stable, he found the horses and cows had their muzzles stuck to the railing in front of them by ice blocks formed of their own vapor. Seth had to knock the ice away so that the animals could move their heads and breath freely.
The temperature had now dropped so low, and the frigid air had infiltrated into the soddy so far, that the heat from the fireplace was compacted into a small bubble. Those who faced the fire warmed only their fronts. Their rears remained chilly. This was responsible for many sniffles among the children. Lucy treated them all with hot teas and plasters, and they seemed better for it.
But Jennifer, already annoyed at herself for playing the little girl to Lucy, insisted she herself tend to Peter, who was laid up in bed. She practically had to press Lucy out of the way, but she sat near her son to take over the nursing duties. She wished she could just wrap him up, and Emma too, and run away with them lest they forget who their mother was.
But that would have to wait. The winter was still fastened to the prairie, howling across the rooftop and pounding on the shutters. All Jennifer could do—all anyone could do— was stoke the fire, huddle with the others, and pray that it didn’t get colder.
For a while, it almost seemed as if the prayers worked, for the bubble of heat around the fireplace had grown. Jennifer could now step back from the hearth and feel the warmth halfway to the white-washed walls. The next morning, she was able to stand right up against the walls and still feel the warmth. At long last! The cold had been pressed back out of the soddy! The temperature outside must have been rising!
But when Jennifer, standing in the middle of the room, joyfully announced this, Seth, who was holding Mary on his knee and drawing on a slate with her, said, “I wouldn’t count on that just yet, Jenny. Sorry, but the house is just banked up with snow. The snow’s warmer than the air, and it protects us from the wind.”
Jennifer’s spirits sank. She shuffled over to a chair and plopped down into it. She was ready to go mad.
It was now three months that she was in the soddy, three months of breathing stale cold air, seeing mostly by the smoky light of lanterns and candles, forever crowded into this or that corner by children who were always under foot, and— for the benefit of her own children—all the while trying not to play the little girl. This required vigilance.
It was only at night, when she was in bed and surrounded by pitch blackness, that Jennifer felt most comfortable, for then she could at least imagine herself back in Ohio. Unfortunately, there was the occasional night when even this escape was denied her, for she would hear, not several yards from her, the discrete but clearly amorous exertions of Lucy and Seth. Jennifer sadly remembered her own
, quieter lovemaking with Walter. “I love you,” Lucy whispered to Seth, their blanket rustling.
The next morning, Jennifer inevitably felt her cheeks blush when she greeted her hosts, and she had trouble looking them in the eye.
And so, still more days and nights passed, and Jennifer was entertaining gloomy thoughts more and more, until one day in mid-March it was Seth himself who felt a slight change in the temperature. When he went outside to check on the animals, he noticed that the cloud of steam from his mouth was smaller and disappeared more quickly. Also, the air didn’t sting his cheeks so much. When he went back into the soddy a little later, he made sure to tell all this to Jennifer.
“Thank God,” she murmured.
Sure enough, with the passing of each week, then each day, the air outside—despite disheartening bouts of returning cold—was getting mostly warmer. Under the gaze of a bright yellow sun, the top layer of snow began to melt. It froze again at night, forming a smooth sheet of ice that crunched underfoot, but then it melted some more the next day. It went on like that for a week or so, freezing and melting, freezing and melting, until it kept on melting even through the night. The shoveled paths got shallower and shallower, until the gentle, mostly flat contour of the land could once again be detected beneath the smooth, white surface.
Jennifer was tantalized. She longed for the day when she could once more see the brown earth buried below. Each morning, when Seth returned from his chores, she asked him if the snow anywhere had at last melted down to the ground. Each time, however, even after spring had officially begun, he could only tell her, “Sorry, not that I could see.” Sometimes, even, he reported that it had snowed again.
But on one particularly clear morning in early April, Seth went out to do his chores and didn’t return for quite a while. Lucy couldn’t imagine what was taking him so long and was about to send Todd out after him. But then Seth did return, a great big smile on his face. And, like the dove who returned to give Noah the olive branch, he approached Jennifer, who was sitting forlornly near the hearth, and he gave her a bouquet of fragrant, short-stemmed, lavender flowers.
Chapter Eleven
Big Bluestems
Jennifer stood beneath the Baker’s leafless elm. At her feet were tracks in the snow, Seth’s, that led from the soddy out into the distance where, all up and down the prairie, brown patches of sod showed through the tattered white blanket of winter. Huddled within these patches were blossoming pasqueflowers, like those Jennifer held in her hands, and white-petaled mats of flowers that Seth called cat’s-foot.
“I said I would be leaving in the spring,” she said, her eyes fixed on the welcomed reemerging land. “It’s now spring.”
“No,” said Lucy, standing a few feet behind her, holding her shawl about her narrow shoulders. “You said you would wait until the railroad arrived.”
Jennifer turned towards Lucy. She didn’t care what she had promised. But the idea of a train whisking her home made her chest swell with anticipation. “Yes,” she said, reconsidering and returning her attention to the distant flowers. “I did say that.”
Jennifer stayed at the Bakers another few days while the snow melted. Then she loaded up the buggy and, with her children, left for her dugout. The snow was almost gone, leaving only some beard-like remnants along some northern sides of the rises. The once blackened land that had become white had now turned pale green as the down of new grass sprouted from horizon to horizon, punctuated here and there with those purple-and-white flower clusters. Both grass and flowers were so short that they only just quivered in the wind.
At first, Jennifer couldn’t find her dugout because it was so well concealed in the down-covered slope. But she saw her water well and the burnt remains of the wagon, and then she knew where to look. Sure enough, there, in the side of the slope, were three tell-tale holes for the windows and door—but only holes?
Something was wrong. The door and window shutters were gone. Could they have blown off during a winter storm? When Jennifer rode still closer, she saw that not only were the door and shutters gone, but their very frames as well.
“Momma, what happened?” asked Emma.
“Someone broke in,” said Peter, growing alarmed and trying to stand in the slowly moving buggy.
Jennifer stopped the buggy and watched the dugout from a distance. No one seemed to be on her property. She started the buggy up again and proceeded even more slowly, keeping her eyes fastened on the three dark sockets.
“Do you think Indians did it?” asked Emma.
“Wilkes!” declared Peter. “He’s no good.”
Jennifer pulled up before the dugout. Peter and Emma made as if to jump down. “No! Stay here!” shouted Jennifer. Then she herself descended onto the mat of new grass, and cautiously entered the rectangular opening that had once held the door.
The inside was lit only by the faint light entering from the three openings. But it was plain enough to see what was there: everything that had been left behind during the winter—the rocker, bureau, mantel clock, table and chairs, crates, even the missing door and shutters—all had been stacked up in the middle of the room and set on fire. All were in a cool, charred heap. The pungent odor of smoke still filled the dugout.
“What happened to our things?” came Emma’s voice from the doorway.
“I told you to stay in the buggy!”
Peter, meanwhile, slipped past his sister and walked about the rubble. “Wilkes,” he repeated dramatically.
Jennifer searched through the pile to see if there was anything salvageable, her fingers becoming blackened. The daguerrotype of her father was burnt up, as were all her books, including her little Bridal Greetings. Jennifer’s throat tightened: as it was, Ohio had become an ever vaguer memory; now she had not even her old possessions to help her remember.
“Back into the buggy,” she said, pressing her children outside and up onto the buggy seat.
“Are we going back to the Bakers?” asked Emma.
“To town!” snapped Jennifer.
Jennifer found Bill Wilkes, as usual, in Franz Hoffmann’s store, Franz apparently being one of the few people who still spoke with, or at least still deigned to listen to, the land agent. Wilkes, his holster casually untied from his leg, was leaning back on a chair near the pickle barrel in the center of the room, stroking his side-whiskers, which were thicker than ever as if he had not yet shed his winter coat. He tried carrying on a conversation with the distracted merchant, who was tending a farmer couple at the counter. Several other farmers were walking about the cramped store, ignoring Wilkes, or sometimes looking askance at him, while they waited patiently for Franz and examined the various merchandise.
When Jennifer entered the store—her children left in the buggy—Wilkes’ expression at first turned sour, his eyes cold. But then he forced himself to smile at her, nod, and even tip his hat.
“Goot morning!” called Franz from his counter, noticing Jennifer’s entrance.
The customers in the store also turned to offer their greeting, but Jennifer ignored them and stalked up to the land agent. He raised his eyebrows. He waited for Jennifer to speak, but all she could do for a moment was stand there and fume. “Mrs. Vandermeer?” he prompted.
“You leave me alone,” she hissed.
Everyone in the room froze. Wilkes’ raised eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He tilted his chair slowly forward as if this would help him understand better. “Come again?”
“You just leave me alone,” repeated Jennifer, trying to keep herself from crying.
Wilkes rose to his feet to get the upper hand. He tilted his head curiously. “I’m not following.”
One of the customers, Aaron Whittaker—the square-built man with short white hair—stepped toward the two. “Jenny,” he said in his deep, hoarse throat, “is something the matter?”
Jennifer raised her chin as if to pretend she were braver. “I think Mr. Wilkes here knows.”
“I don’t think I do,” said Wilke
s, squinting at the slender woman.
“You like setting fires, don’t you?” asked Jennifer with a forced smile.
At this, Wilkes darkened. “Now, I heard I’ve been blamed for that fire…”
“Well, add to that the one in my dugout!” said Jennifer resolutely.
“You had a fire in your dugout?” asked Aaron Whittaker.
Jennifer kept her eyes locked on the land agent. “I returned there after staying with the Bakers this winter, and I found that everything there, including my door and window shutters, had been burned.”
“Now, I think I’m beginning to lose my patience with these accusations,” said Wilkes, returning Jennifer’s stare.
“Everyone knows it’s Indians that set fires out here…”
“Oh no, sir, I won’t let you blame the Indians—not for these fires…”
“Oh you won’t, won’t you,” said Wilkes, trying to hold his temper. “Well, ma’am…” Wilkes stopped. He had by now become almost flustered. He had to start again, “Ma’am, to tell you the truth, I don’t care who set them!”
“But we do,” growled Aaron Whittaker, stepping closer.
Wilkes turned to face the short, stocky man. “You’re awfully quick to take this lady’s side.”
“No,” came back Aaron. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. We all have. Wilkes, it seems to me you’ve been trying real hard to get rid of us for some time now.”
“You just watch what you say, Aaron,” returned Wilkes. “You’ve got no proof…”
“We’ve got proof enough!” blurted another customer, a lanky man standing by his red-bonneted wife at the counter. The couple, along with everyone else about the room, had their attention fixed on the three by the pickle barrel.
