Charity

by Paulette Callen

  Gustie entered, grateful to be the only customer. She could conduct her business quickly and be gone, she hoped, before anyone came in.

  “Afternoon, Miss Roemer.” From behind the counter, Kenneth O’Grady greeted her pleasantly, closed the ledger book he was writing in, and stuck the pencil behind his ear. Morgan slid a box he was unpacking out of the way so Gustie could walk by. With his curly hair, rolled up shirt sleeves and suspenders holding up loose serge trousers, Morgan was a seventeen-year-old version of Kenneth. All he lacked was the broadness of maturity and the lines in his face to be the mirror image of his father.

  “I need quite a lot of things today, Kenneth.” He took the pencil from behind his ear, tore off a small piece of brown wrapping paper and wrote as Gustie briskly gave her order: two bags of flour; a pound of salt; five pounds each of sugar and coffee; tins of dried fruit—peaches, apricots, prunes, and apples; a large bag of oatmeal; a pail of eggs; a chunk of butter; a box of tea.

  She took some satisfaction in the surprise on Kenneth’s face as he began to write. She usually ordered only a few things measured out in ounces.

  Among the barrels of dry foods lined up against the back wall stood a barrel of bologna packed in salt brine and another of the evil-smelling fish that the Norwegians loved. She ordered some of the bologna and passed on the fish.

  While Kenneth and Morgan scrambled to measure out each item, wrap or bag it, and load it onto her wagon, Gustie wandered over to the racks of ready-to-wear: pants, shirts, and overalls for men; dresses, skirts, and blouses for women. In glass cases were displayed handkerchiefs, gloves, ornamental hair pins and combs, even a fan and a parasol.

  She held up the skirts and the blouses looking for the largest size available. She found several items she thought would do. Under the glass she spied something that made her smile: a pair of enormous bloomers, trimmed with lace and ribbons. She pointed to them, and Kenneth brought them out and wrapped them along with the other garments in brown paper. She went back to the rack where a nicely tailored split skirt had caught her eye. She bit her lip, then impulsively whipped it off the hanger, chose a high necked yellow blouse to go with it, and added it to her other purchases.

  Behind the display cases, on a corner shelf, lay stacks of paper in creamy linen finishes, matching envelopes, and notebooks, lined and thick. Since coming to Charity, Gustie had never indulged herself in such things. Now, with a subtle trembling joy, for herself alone, she chose a supply of paper, envelopes, notebooks, and a handful of pencils and pens, and two jars of ink—one black, one blue. She brought them to the counter to be added to her already lengthy bill. She thought Kenneth O’Grady was looking worried, knowing as he did how frugally Gustie had lived since coming to Charity. Gustie’s account was up to date, but last night she had purchased three times as much in groceries as she usually did, and now this. He added the sum of her purchases and, with an effort, kept his mouth closed as she counted out new bills in full payment.

  “One more thing.” She looked up. “That. Morgan, can you tie it in my wagon securely so it doesn’t bump around? I have a long road ahead of me.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Father and son stood on chairs and cut loose the bentwood rocking chair that was suspended from the ceiling. The heavy, beautifully crafted oak chair, Kenneth had despaired of selling. They lowered it carefully. Kenneth wrapped it in sacking material so it would not get scratched and Morgan tied it in the back of the wagon.

  Gustie counted out more bills to cover the cost of the chair plus a few extra. “This is for Lena Kaiser. The next time she comes in, tell her you made a mistake somewhere in her account, and she has a credit. Give her whatever she needs. And please don’t tell her anything about this.”

  “No, Ma’am. I sure won’t.” Kenneth shook his head earnestly.

  Gustie hesitated at the counter.

  “Help you with anything else, Miss Roemer?”

  “Can you take a special order for something you don’t have here?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Most anything we can get from St. Paul, or even Chicago, if you’ve got the time to wait for it.”

  “I want two beds. Two small beds.” Gustie spread her arms to show the size she was talking about.

  “Sure. I can order those from St. Paul. You’ll have them in a few weeks. Come by train.”

  “I will need you to deliver them. May I borrow your pencil?” She tore a piece off the roll of wrapping paper and drew a rough map. “And don’t tell anybody about this either. Here’s half the money. I’ll give you the other half when they are delivered. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, Ma’am.” Kenneth studied the map that Gustie had sketched. “This is out on Indian land isn’t it?”

  Gustie nodded.

  “Well then, we might wire the station master in Wheat Lake...that’s Joe Gruba...to take them off the train there. I’ll tell him where they go. He’ll take care of it. Rather than bring them all the way into Charity and have to haul them back.”

  Gustie looked uncertain.

  “Oh, sure. We’ll the make the arrangements. They’ll get there. Joe’s an old buddy of mine.”

  “That’ll be fine.” She paused a moment more. “I’ll take this too.” She picked up a bag of hard candies tied with a red ribbon and strode out, leaving Kenneth O’Grady a very happy merchant.

  Gustie went home. She watered her horse and added the groceries she had purchased the night before to her wagon load. She had not expected to be leaving her home again so soon. In these few weeks she had felt quite changed—charged with hope—and now this. She walked into her bedroom, right up to the closet door, grasped the sides of the white nightgown hanging there and buried her face in it, remembering the last time she had left her home a few weeks ago, driven by a familiar terror...

  Clots of earth…sprays, spumes of dirt rising and falling muddied her skin, blinded her. The dirt worked itself into her hair, through her clothing. And all the creatures that thrived in darkness squirmed and writhed in the painful light and were hacked and tossed with the earth up into the air only to fall and be crushed by earth and metal. Some of them—some parts of them—found their way into her hair, inside her clothes. And they grew. Their blind mouths, red rimmed, cavernous, protesting their catastrophe, grew larger, sought her blindly but surely with probing tongues and razor fangs—nipping, bearing down upon her, forcing her into deeper darkness where rasping sounds, like chewing, or breathing.

  She awoke with the usual terror, gasping and flinging her arms to ward them off. Conscious now of the gentle light illuminating the muslin curtains of her bedroom window, but still filled with the horror of that avalanche of earth burying her alive and of those gaping mouths, Gustie sat up, wiped the sweat from her face with her sleeve, and checked it, as she always did, to make sure that it was merely sweat and not mud, alive with squirming things. She remained still, waiting for the cold fear to pass, for her heart and breathing to return to normal.

  The nightmare plagued her almost every night, but when the terror overwhelmed her so completely, she knew the time had come to go back. See it again. Touch it. Dig her fingers into the soil again. Be with Dorcas.

  The last time she woke up shrieking and tearing at her bedclothes was in March when the snow had lain so deep, the temperatures fallen so low, travel was impossible. She had had to endure sleepless nights when the nightmare woke her, or when she made herself stay awake for fear of it. She took to sleeping with her photo album, and finally she brought the white nightgown out of Clare’s cedar chest and hung it on the door of the closet where it would be the last thing she saw at night and the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes in the morning. Not as good as tasting the soil, but it helped, and gradually the nightmares receded into simple, bad aching dreams. Ever since, the album had stayed on her night stand; the gown remained hanging on the closet door.

  School was out. The weather was fine. The
re was nothing now to delay her going.

  Gustie sloshed water from a flowered ewer into the matching bowl on her dresser and stood naked on a towel while she washed herself with a chunk of hard soap, rinsed, and dried herself with another towel. Both towels she tossed over the bedposts to dry. She dressed quickly and made up her bed, stuffing her own nightgown under the pillow. She did not fold it. She was not by nature tidy, but she had so few things it hardly mattered.

  In the next room she lit the stove and put her kettle on to boil. Then she grabbed her shawl and scurried out to her privy.

  The quiet of a prairie morning still captivated her. Birds and insects entered into the day with a kind of reverence, trilling softly, building slowly to their full-throated cadences as the sun rose higher. Gustie came out of the privy and gazed across the unbroken prairie that stretched for miles behind her house. Tall grasses leaned together in waves before the wind. Wild plants bloomed in rainbow colors, attracting clouds of yellow butterflies, bees, and birds with bright yellow or ruby eyes on their wings. Unseen in the shelter of the grass the less showy members of the population scuttled about their business: mice, gophers, rabbits, skunks, badgers, snakes. She had no fear of any of them and did not disturb them.

  On just such a morning as this—the earth glorying in a candescence of morning dew—she had seen the doe. Gustie had been at the pump bringing up her day’s water supply. She straightened up for a moment to rest her back and saw the animal watching her from a short distance away. Gustie had not seen her approach. The two gazed at each other, the doe with unwavering eyes that reminded her of Clare’s. A door opened and for a moment, Gustie felt a breath from another world—lighter, more tranquil than the one she knew. Then as quietly and quickly as it had opened, the door closed; the doe turned and bounded away in graceful arcs. Her four feet appeared to skim along the tops of the grasses as she disappeared into the distance. Gustie discovered tears on her cheeks and felt a sweet ache over her heart, as if she had just experienced a blessing and a loss. She went back to her pump.

  Since then Gustie had trained herself to fill her ewer and kettle before she went to bed so she did not have to struggle with the pump in the morning, but she always took time to scan the horizon.

  Lena was afraid Gustie would go crazy living alone out here, seven miles from the school, three miles from Charity. But Gustie did not want to be passed around from family to family for her room and board as was the custom with unmarried school teachers. This house with its one large main room and small bedroom had been well made by Elef Tollerude for himself and his bride. After Ardis Tollerude died in that bedroom, along with her child striving to be born, Elef had no heart left for homesteading. He went back to his brother’s farm in Wisconsin. The house stood empty till Gustie came. She liked the house and was relieved that she did not have to explain to anyone the nightmares, or where she took off to on a fairly regular basis, weather permitting.

  On the cookstove, her kettle rumbled as the water boiled, rocking it back and forth across its uneven bottom. She made coffee and stirred up two eggs in some pork fat left over from the night before in her skillet.

  She finished her breakfast, slipped into her woolen jacket and went to the barn.

  As Gustie opened the barn door, her mare nickered and tossed her head up and down in greeting. Before putting her in harness, she took a little time with the big horse, stroking her head and caressing her wonderful, velvety nose.

  The black mare introduced Gustie to her first friend in this new land.

  On her third day in Charity, Gustie had come out of O’Grady’s with a bag of groceries to find a tiny woman with an abundance of fine reddish hair, her purse tucked under one arm, nuzzling the black horse and making sounds—a combination of baby talk and imitation horse. The mare did not mind the attention. Gustie said nothing until the woman noticed she was being watched. She turned her enormous cornflower blue eyes upon her and asked, “Is this your horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “She sure is a nice horse.”

  “Yes, she is.” Gustie put her bag of groceries in the back of her wagon.

  “I won’t hold you up,” the red-haired woman said. She backed away from the mare a little but continued to caress her. “She just reminded me so much of a horse I grew up with. Dolly.” The woman twisted her fingers gently through the horse’s mane as if she were getting a hold upon some moment in her childhood. “Oh, not in looks. Dolly wasn’t much to look at—not like this horse. Dolly was heavier, you know. She pulled my pa’s plow...” the woman laughed, “when she felt like it. Oh! Pa used to get so mad!” She shook her head all the while patting Gustie’s horse and calling back that other horse of her childhood. “No, Dolly was just a work horse, but it is something in the eyes. You can tell a horse by its hind legs and its eyes, you know.”

  “You can?”

  The woman nodded with certainty. “I can always pick the winner in a horse race if I can just go see the back legs and look into a horse’s eyes. But this one...what’s her name?”

  “Biddie...that was her name when I got her.”

  “Yes, she reminds me of Dolly in her eyes, you see. There’s somethin’ going on in there. You’re the new teacher for the section school, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Getting settled?”

  Gustie nodded.

  “I didn’t know you were in town till yesterday. I’m Lena Kaiser. Say, do you have time for a cup of coffee?”

  Gustie was still not used to such overtures of friendliness from strangers, but this woman, unselfconscious and genuinely friendly, was irresistible. She accepted, somewhat shyly. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Olna’s kitchen is right down the street there. Just leave Biddie here where it’s nice and shady. Kenneth won’t mind. Now, I recommend Olna’s pie, but stay away from her cake. It’s dry as toast, but never tell her I said so.”

  Gustie led the mare out of the barn, hitched her to the wagon and brought her around to the front of the house. She put down a blanket in the corner of the wagon to cushion a pail of fresh eggs packed in straw. Around the pail she placed a sack of flour, a bag of coffee, and a bag of oats.

  Back inside her house she lifted up the trap door to the small cold cellar. Six months of living in this house had passed before Gustie could bear to lower anything into that hole in the earth below her floor. The practical necessity of storing food and keeping it cool forced her to use it. She still had potatoes, turnips, and carrots. She hoisted out the three small bags of vegetables and added them to the supplies in her wagon bed.

  She went back in for her old train conductor’s cap. She needed it to shield her eyes as she drove east into the morning sun. Then she got up into the wagon seat and headed Biddie out toward the road.

  Gustie traveled east on Dryback Grade—a road built up with tons of mule-hauled dirt through the middle of Dryback Lake, which was really a slough that stretched out for several square miles. Some years, the old folks said, it had lain dry as dust and the old Norwegians used to cut hay out there enough for a winter. This year, between the clumps of fat marsh grass, the still water shone blue with reflected sky. Ducks paddled and bobbed in purposeful circles. One made a chip chip sound, like a tiny spoon striking a tin plate. Muskrats quietly parted the waters with round backs, sleek as chestnuts, where last year they had waddled in mud.

  A cloud of tiny insects enveloped the mare and wagon. Gustie waved one hand about her head and slapped the reins on Biddie’s rump. The mare lurched forward and pulled them out of the swarming gnats. “Good girl!” said Gustie and reined her back to a comfortable pace.

  Once past Dryback Lake, the land on either side of her alternated between marsh, unbroken prairie, and perfect black squares of tilled soil.

  Gustie allowed Biddie to go at her own pace, an easy trot, which lulled Gustie into simple enjoyment of the rhythmic motion under a war
m sun, breathing cool air.

  The twenty-mile journey was always a pleasure for Gustie. She loved this Dakota land, especially now, as it was waking up green and wet after eight months of cold sleep. The sweet wind lifted her hopes and ruffled her desires at the same time as it honed the edges of her sorrow.

  After several hours, the ground began to roll, imperceptibly at first, until Gustie was aware of Biddie’s laboring up the first hill. The farther east they traveled, the more the land undulated, becoming rockier, the soil less suited for crops. She passed cows grazing on a hillside. They looked at her with large sleepy eyes and switched at flies with their tails. Filled coulees glistened like oval mirrors among the green and yellow grasses.

  In the early evening, Gustie finally turned off the dirt road and endured the jolting of the wagon on its unforgiving wood wheels as it traversed the lumpy ground. Over the next rise, she saw Crow Kills.

  From her present vantage point, Crow Kills looked like a small lake, but she was seeing only its western loop. Crow Kills lay like a satin sash draped around the hills. At no point could one see the whole of it; it wound long, deep, cold, clear. And while the lake appeared still in the quietude of evening, Gustie knew it was never really still. There was, on the most breathless of days, small ripples, a slosh against a rock here, the splash of a fish there, a wave rising subtly and merging silently back into its smooth surface. Crow Kills lived and breathed and freely bestowed its soothing spirit upon even those who cursed it, as Gustie had done once. The lake had absorbed her anger, and everything she had flung into it, with grace, with merely a ripple, and was as before visibly unchanged. Crow Kills understood and forgave. Now she found balm in its nearness. Someday she would like to live here. She felt if she could live near this water, the nightmare would leave her.