The Turtle's Beating Heart

by Low, Denise;

  Some hand-tatted lace is among my mother’s mementos, and it could have been hers. Later the lace was on my sister Jane’s wedding dress. Grandmother’s engagement ring has a beautiful filigree gold setting, lacy also—but with a glass stone. My mother claimed a jeweler switched the stones, but I suspect the real diamond was bartered for cash. After years of just getting by, no luxury remained.

  My sister Mary told me Grandmother and Grandfather had some good years together, among the many hardships. I can only imagine Grandmother’s feelings when in his later years Grandfather disappeared on open-ended journeys. She always waited at home. In those days women most often stayed in marriages, but Grandmother could have left. She had experience working as a young woman and also she had family. She chose not to leave.

  Their grandchildren have scattered from the East to the West Coasts. I am the only descendant left in Kansas, and I miss my siblings and cousins. Overhead, as the two eagles loop away from each other and then return, I feel less alone. Eagles once were rare in this part of the country, and their silhouettes still create a hush. These are golden eagles, feathered angels of the Great Plains with tawny brown markings. It is a warm day, not the frigid weather when they occasionally ride cold wind riptides over the northern prairies, so these two must be yearlong residents. When I notice the first one, the larger female, she might be my own confabulation. The second one, then, stills my doubts. As they continue to circle, I call to them. They also are Grandmother and Grandfather. In the absence of my grandparents through most of my life, I look to the land to present kinship in the natural world. They are comfort in the cold wind.

  I swallow a sip of whiskey myself, exhale a last breath of cigarette smoke, and leave fresh tobacco by the headstone. I thank all the family for their hard lives—Grandmother, Grandfather, and my mother, whose ashes are buried with them. I remember their twin baby daughters who also lie, unmarked, in this plot. Finally, I thank the eagles for their presence.

  The graves face the western horizon, where earth and sky create a jagged line of blue vapor. In summer mirages appear in that distance, moisture shimmering against waves of yellow hay. When sun descends into its own fire, light evaporates from engraved letters of Grandmother’s and Grandfather’s names. So my grandparents, together, face west for eternity. Their courtship story is lost, yet the results remain. In the sequence of generations they passed forward the gift of life.

  *

  Grandfather did not participate in the military during World War I. He once told me he was too young for the first war of his youth, the Spanish-American War, and too old for World War I. His 1917 draft card shows he was twenty-seven years old when “C. W. Stratford, registrar,” signed his exemption form.

  When he talked to me once about missing the armed service, his voice had a timbre of regret. “I wanted to fight,” he said. “I was no coward.” He wanted to fulfill a man’s responsibility, but he was exempted from the war because he had a wife and child. He had started a business, which he would lose if he left, and his family had no other means of support.

  Grandfather’s World War I registration card shows he owned Butler County Garage, an early car repair enterprise. Uncle’s wife, Theress (McCann) Bruner, remembers her father-in-law owned this business in El Dorado, a few miles from Burns, Kansas. He was, however, “too soft-hearted” to collect debts, she told me, so the business went broke. With the Ku Klux Klan in the vicinity, this may have cut down on his clientele as well. That is the only business he ever owned.

  I wonder how much his “Indian”-looking appearance limited his work choices. For most of his adult life he worked as a laborer, often at dangerous jobs. During World War I my mother remembers living in Oakland, California, briefly, while Grandfather worked on the docks, demanding physical work. She was three years old and barely remembered the bay, a great change from the grasslands. This work allowed him to contribute his labor to support the war effort while still sustaining his family.

  Later, by 1918, the small family returned to Kansas City. My mother often talked about Grandfather’s next job, endless days in a meatpacking plant. Sinclair Lewis would write about the hardships of this kind of work. Grandfather never allowed the family to eat hot dogs after he saw what offal went into them. This was employment of last resort. Conditions were harsh, with long shifts, no unions, no medical assistance, and no recourse when injuries occurred.

  Grandfather became involved in the fight to establish unions. He told me about this struggle during his history lesson card games. One winter afternoon during Christmas holidays, he dealt, arranged his cards as usual, and waited. I sorted highest cards to the left and then realized he was about to speak. He cleared his throat and said, “Unions did not always exist.” This gave me pause. My father was a union representative, and the phone rang often. I did not understand all the talk, but I knew it was important. I waited for my grandfather to continue.

  “Men met in secret at night because they feared the company men would beat them to death.” I thought about this a moment, startled. Who would want to kill my grandfather? He continued: “We wore sacks over our heads—flour sacks with eyes cut out. That way the informants could not take our names back to the bosses.”

  I could hardly believe he had experienced this hardship or that people could be so cruel. This was not a history I was learning at school. “If men lost their fingers or arms in the machinery,” he said, “they were fired. If they fell asleep after long hours, they were fired.” He paused, then gathered the cards and dealt another hand.

  I said nothing, but I watched him closely to make sure he was finished before I turned back to my cards. His descriptions of mutilations frightened me. I was a child, but I knew this was an important story, and I always remembered it. My brother told me later that Grandfather used obscenity to describe how Kansas had passed anti-union laws, the “right-to-work” laws, in 1958.

  Other relatives treated me as an inconsequential female who should learn charm and domestic skills. Grandfather honored me, a young girl, with important knowledge. He practiced feminism years before the term had become well known. He showed how I had importance outside the household. I needed to learn how to stand up against bullies.

  Grandfather was a lifelong Democrat, despite the Lincoln Republican majority around him, because of the party’s policies to protect the working class. “Once,” he said during another card game, “a lifelong friend ran for a city office. But he was a Republican. I planned to vote for him, but when I got to the polling booth,” he laughed at his own stubborn nature, “I just couldn’t do it.” He voted the straight Democrat ticket to support worker ideology.

  My mother told me how Grandfather believed no man was worth a million dollars. No labor any man did could merit that extreme income, he explained to her. He never made anywhere close to a million dollars. Grandfather struggled to find a place for himself in the economic system. From his marriage in 1914 until the 1920s, he worked many jobs. He lost them or quit or moved on. He also suffered the tragic loss of two children, which scarred him and his wife. Throughout all these years he did not give up his principles.

  *

  Late in my mother’s life, long after her father’s death, I discovered family photographs in her basement. I took the fragile scrapbook of black pages to my mother. She turned the soft paper slowly as we reviewed her baby pictures.

  “Oh,” she said suddenly and then sat stricken. “That is my sister who died.”

  I looked at the photograph of a round-faced baby, a stranger to me. Mother said, “Photographs should always have names on the back and dates,” and she handed me back the photographs. “This is Mary Jane.”

  As my mother remained lost in thought, I penciled in the name of this lost baby. The silence deepened as I etched lead across paper.

  “She was born in 1921,” she finally added. I wrote the date for posterity.

  Then she told the story. Her twin sisters were born between her and her brother. One died at birth. De
livery of twins was hazardous to the mother and the babies, so the loss of one infant was not uncommon. It was not tragic. But the living one, the one in this photograph, lived only a few years. She became sickly for a long time and then died. After a moment of silence Mother continued: “In those days doctors lost many children because their knowledge was limited. Besides that, my parents were poor.”

  We both understood what that meant—they could not afford every option for the sick child. “After the second baby died,” my mother said, “my parents were never the same.”

  This conversation was the first I knew of these small aunts who had existed so briefly. The sepia cardboard of Mary Jane’s image was badly faded, but I could see white organdy and lace festooning the smiling infant. She was clearly beloved.

  My mother would never speak of this again. My mother was six years old in 1921. Death of the newborn might have been hidden from her, but loss of the toddler would have loomed large in the mind of a little girl who played with dolls and helped with a new baby. Her lifelong anxieties may have been related to this loss. As an adult, my mother named her first daughter Mary and her second daughter Jane, and so the lost child’s name continued.

  After this conversation I better understood why my grandmother always seemed on the verge of tears. I remember her in our living room, sitting uneasily on the edge of her suitcase, ready for a train two hours before departure. Her anxiety was palpable. I also understood the hollows under my grandfather’s eyes. Sorrow is an undertow in our family’s conversation. We remember startling calls in the night with the worst possible news.

  One night when I was a teenager, the phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. My father got out of bed and answered, and then I heard my mother wailing. My sister Mary’s first child had died of pneumonia. The terror of that jangling nighttime call stays with me.

  Other Delaware descendants live in the Kansas region, and as we exchange stories, lost children is a recurring theme. Gretchen Eick, a Wichita friend, told me her story of her colonial Delaware grandmother losing two children in Pennsylvania. A Dutch couple had only one grown son, who was very sickly, probably with tuberculosis. Delaware people traveled through the Dutch community on hunting trips, and so the parents of the frail young man decided on a plan. They became friendly with the Delawares. The found a healthy Delaware woman who agreed to marry their son. In time she bore two children. When the son died, however, the grandparents took the children for their own and forced the mother to leave. That Delaware woman sued the court to retrieve her children, and her letters are a record of the conflict. She lost, but generations of grandchildren remember the cruel loss for that grandmother. They pass down the court documents to ensure no one in the family forgets.

  A 1782 mob killing of ninety Delaware men, women, and children in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, is another story of tragedies from past centuries. The Christianized Delawares were slaughtered and scalped after time for hymns and prayers. Murders of the children were especially brutal.

  As I grew up, I was made aware that everything could suddenly change forever, as when a tornado struck or unpredictable illnesses ended people’s lives. Or violence. When my mother babysat my children, she held them closely, as though they could be taken away at any moment. She participated in a sad tradition of loss.

  Throughout the first years of marriage, Grandfather attempted many jobs. He started at a good job in Concordia, as a hay inspector, but within days of the family’s arrival, a tornado struck. This terrified my grandmother, who was a city girl and not used to the Great Plains weather. She insisted that they move. Grandfather listened to his wife and complied. Respect for a woman’s opinion is woven into family stories through the generations.

  Finally, in 1923, Grandfather started a job with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. Grandmother and Grandfather resettled in Newton, a town less than thirty miles from his birthplace. His new and dangerous job as a switchman required strength and foolhardiness. Duties included riding atop cars, setting breaks, connecting air hoses to cars, and all details of switching cars from one train to another. He worked at this job almost twenty years.

  The railroad position was the cornerstone of family prosperity. After a few years they were able to move into a respectable bungalow. Grandfather and Grandmother welcomed a healthy son, Robert Lathrop, into their family. He was eight years younger than my mother.

  These were the most settled years of my mother’s childhood. She was a beauty, and she did well in school. Both of my grandparents were proud of their firstborn daughter, and the new baby had no problems. The American dream was working, for a golden moment. If only the story could end at this moment, at 219 Oak Street, Newton, Kansas.

  *

  More stories about Grandfather’s Kansas City years come from the 1920s. When my mother was about ten, her little brother became ill, and to avoid contagion, her parents sent her to Kansas City. My mother stayed an entire school term with her Bruner grandparents. When she remembered her Bruner grandparents, this was the setting.

  A Native strategy to survive pestilence was to break the family into smaller groups and scatter. In the crisis of illness the extended family provides a safety net. My grandfather sent his precious oldest child to live with his parents, rather than risk her death. Few stories remain from his young adulthood, but his actions show he was careful. He was close to his parents and called on them to care for his firstborn.

  Great-Grandmother Charlotte ran the Kansas City household, and everyone obeyed her. My mother remembered how unusual she was, especially compared to women of European descent in Newton, on the Kansas plains. Grandmother Charlotte refused to go to church. She could be a good person, she told her granddaughter, without being Christian. My mother always explained this with pride, even though she herself identified as an Episcopalian. Charlotte did not directly teach my mother Delaware religion, but she taught daily values. Hospitality was an important virtue as well as generosity. Grandmother kept a pot of stew simmering on the stove all day, so anyone could eat when hungry. Hoboes learned to find Grandmother’s house, where she provided each a bowl of food. Charlotte was a capable woman—tall and sturdy. She had a hunting rifle handy and never had any trouble with the more desperate men. She knew how to shoot and defend her home.

  My mother remembered how Grandmother Charlotte worked hard in a large garden. Asparagus creamed with hard-boiled eggs from the hens was a favorite meal. The backyard plot produced snap beans, corn, squash, peas, peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes. All of this was in the middle of Kansas City, but it was not unlike the farm. Her husband and sons no doubt helped with heavy work, under her direction, as my father tilled our garden in the springtime.

  My mother returned home to Newton after her brother recovered fully. She visited Kansas City other times, but this long-term visit is the one most vividly recorded in her childhood memories. Grandfather Bruner received the Kansas City Star each day, read it, and worked the crossword puzzles. He taught her how to read the paper, starting with the headlines. He had patience as this busy granddaughter tussled with the pages and sounded out words. My mother remembered her grandparents with great affection.

  The marriage between Charlotte and Frank Bruner Senior was not without incident. A cousin tells one story: The old man tried to sneak through a window after a night of carousing. Grandmother Charlotte knocked him unconscious with an iron skillet. Misuse of alcohol is an obvious part of the story, along with the woman’s righteous anger. Was this an isolated happening, or was it a conflation of many times when this happened? Details are lost, but the example of women’s strength is clear. The husband feared his wife’s wrath, with good reason. No stories of wife beatings are part of the family legends.

  Grandfather’s parents lived in Kansas City from 1905 until World War II started. By then they were elderly. They returned to live in Burns with the most prosperous son, the banker. Frank Senior died first, in 1941, and Charlotte lived until 1954.

  During her years as
a widow, Grandmother Charlotte cut a dramatic figure in Burns. She wore a coat outside, no matter how hot the weather was. She pestered her banker son by charging goods downtown and leaving him to pay. She would order “beer” at the pharmacy, and when given root beer, she crowed about it, causing a commotion. She always carried a derringer. She teased her Burns area grandchildren with it—almost allowing them to touch the miniature firearm but then pulling it away at the last minute. I wonder if the derringer still fires, if it fits into a cousin’s handbag among lace handkerchiefs.

  During these last years often my grandfather visited his parents in Burns for Sunday dinner. Uncle Bob told me about these excursions into the countryside until, abruptly, the visits ended. The sudden break occurred with no explanation, the recurring theme from the days of Jake Bruner and before. Perhaps, simply, Grandmother Charlotte died, and she was the one who had held them together. That was the last my uncle remembered seeing that part of his family with any regularity.

  Charlotte and Frank Senior lie buried together in the Burns cemetery, their stories suspended but not concluded. They cared for my mother during the family crisis and supported their son, my grandfather, as he struggled to keep his children alive. The time my mother spent with Grandmother Charlotte and Grandfather Frank, her Delaware grandparents, was memorable for her. We are made up of many fractions of bloodlines, but family inheritance is not a single pattern so easily measured by mathematic abstractions. My mother’s time with the Bruner side of her family influenced her greatly during impressionable years.

  16. Robert Lathrop Bruner (1923–2013), son of Frank Bruner Junior and Eva (Miller) Bruner. Photograph taken in Newton, Kansas, about 1940. Author’s collection.

  *

  Uncle, born in 1923, remembered that when his mother was mad at her husband, she blamed his “Indian blood.” So that was the family oral tradition: Indian blood dwells within us as a dark shadow that can arise at any time and cause trouble. I have heard other people say they have bad tempers because of their Indian blood, or they are stubborn or stoic or reticent or alcoholic. The stereotypes continue, but at least when his Irish and German American mother was angry, Uncle learned his father’s identity, even if it was a negative epithet. This cursing was after calamity ended the good years of the family. It was after a random accident at work.