The Great Plains

by Nicole Alexander

  Will came through a side gate carrying two buckets of water. ‘I started the hole but I figured I’d finish it in the dark.’ He waited as Marcus tethered the milkers and then both men began scrubbing the cows’ udders with a brush and water, before drying each one with a towel.

  Dragging the milking stools from the corners of the first two stalls, they positioned them next to their respective cows and sat clean buckets on the ground. Perch walked the length of the stands, stopping to sniff at each cow, and then returned to where Sissy stood. An upturned forty-four gallon drum sat next to the railing. Perch sprang up to sit on the top of it, settling himself like a roosting hen as Marcus and Will almost simultaneously took hold of a teat in each hand and began squeezing their fingers progressively from the udder end to the tip. The stripping action increased in pace and milk squirted into the buckets on the ground.

  ‘The feed’s cutting out, Dad.’

  Sissy gave a low moo and Marcus paused in the milking to give her a pat. ‘We’ve done well to last this long, even if we are down to an average of four gallons a cow, a day.’ That was the worst of their business. Unable to produce and store sufficient silage that would last them year round like some of the bigger producers, the Todds’ dairy production was seasonal in order to take in the best of the feed on a yearly basis. Consequently, long hot summers with little rain and cold winters equalled little or no milk production. With the pail full of Sissy’s rich milk, Marcus emptied the contents into one of the ten gallon galvanised tin cans that were lined up against the railings outside the yard. Across the flat a light shone from inside the house. He wondered how Flossy was.

  ‘If we could get a contract with one of the butter companies we’d make more money.’ Will emptied his pail as Marcus began to wash down Sissy’s udder. Once finished he opened a gate for her to return to the paddock. The old cow walked out obediently.

  ‘It won’t ever happen, not when we can’t be assured of good feed twelve months of the year.’ Marcus moved to the next stall and began milking. ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘I told her not to help, that we could manage,’ Will answered. He leant forward, his head resting against the side of the cow he milked. ‘Will she be all right?’

  ‘Sure, sure she will.’

  ‘What if the baby doesn’t come again?’

  Marcus gave too hard a tug on the teat and the cow he was milking kicked out, knocking over the bucket and spilling the precious milk in the dirt. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘I just thought that maybe she should stop trying.’ Will busied himself with the next milker as the light faded and the stalls grew dark. When he’d finished, he fetched two kerosene lamps from the stable, lit them and hung them on hooks on the wall. ‘I was thinking that I might try to find some work, Dad.’

  Marcus turned to his son. ‘What about the dairy?’

  ‘Well, they’re not producing as much, you said it yourself. And wouldn’t it be better if there was a bit of extra money coming in, you know maybe even enough to get the truck repaired? And what about Mum? She could buy a new dress or something.’

  ‘Where is she going to wear it?’ Marcus asked.

  Will emptied his bucket. Milk sloshed down into the tin canister. ‘Maybe church?’

  Flossy had not been near their local church for ten years. Instead she’d taken to reading the Bible every Sunday, for most of the day. That wasn’t a worry really except that on the odd occasion Marcus had heard his wife repeating sections from the good book out loud, when she thought no-one was around. He never had gone much on people talking to themselves. His mother used to say it was the first sign of madness.

  ‘What about another Bible then, Dad? She’s nearly worn the old one out,’ suggested Will. ‘Or one of those religious tracts that we used to read in Sunday school?’

  Marcus wasn’t of a mind to be encouraging Flossy’s religious fervor. He knew his wife looked for answers when there were none to be found. ‘I don’t know that you’ll find much work around here, son. Things are pretty tight. There are still men walking the country looking for jobs. There was a tramp on the road yesterday when I collected the empty milk canisters. He offered to help me load them in return for food. I gave him short shrift. He had a shifty look about him.’

  Marcus did see the benefit of Will finding employment. It would mean the workload would increase for both he and Flossy, but there was barely enough money coming in to keep the farm afloat. They bartered the extra eggs the hens laid and the butter Flossy churned with Hal Stevens at the general store and that kept them in flour and sugar, but there was nothing left over. They existed on the few vegetables they could grow, rabbits and bread. Marcus didn’t want to break up their family, but the stealing of the ewe was a new low. A man had to have some standards and his were beginning to slip. There were stories of husbands leaving to find work and never coming home, of women taking in boarders to help pay the rent and offering favours in return for money or gifts; of men becoming alcoholics under the strain of not being able to provide for their families.

  Marcus rested his brow against the warm hair of the cow he milked and wondered at how a man’s pride could eventually be turned by privation. ‘Maybe you’re right, Will. We’ll keep an ear out and see if anything’s going locally.’

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’

  ‘Are you feeling better, love?’ Marcus sat the pail of milk on the table, selected a mug from the cupboard, dipped it into the warm liquid and gulped down the contents. He sighed and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.

  ‘The first three months are always the worst.’ Flossy jiggled the lamb’s fry with a wooden spoon. It sizzled and spat in the skillet. ‘I get the bad bits and none of the good.’

  Marcus kissed his wife’s forehead and offered her some fresh milk before washing his hands, arms and face in the sink. ‘Everything will work out just fine.’

  Flossy sat at the table, the cup in her hands. The dim interior was lit by a single kerosene lamp. It was a comfortable home with an ancient horsehair sofa and a rocking chair, a tattered mat on the timber floor and an old pop-up sewing machine that belonged to her mother. ‘It doesn’t work out fine though. They won’t stick to me. You’d think after birthing a boy I could hold a tiny girl inside of me.’

  Marcus patted her hand. ‘Don’t think about it, love. You’ll only start worrying again and I’m sure that doesn’t help.’

  ‘Of course I worry. I’m nearing thirty-eight and it’s twenty years since Will was born.’

  ‘And a strapping young lad he is.’ Outside they could hear Will showering. The bathroom was a separate structure behind the house, with the long-drop twenty feet further on in a clearing among the trees. Marcus wiped his skin dry with a towel and then moved the nearly cooked fry off the heat. The room was warm and slightly smoky. Opening the end oven on the stove he positioned his chair near the warmth. He’d lost count of the number of babies they’d lost over the years. Most were miscarried early before they resembled much at all, others got to nearly four months before they aborted themselves. Sometimes Marcus was with Flossy when the babies left her, but mostly she was by herself, alone and lonely while he and Will were outside working the farm. Either way, it was always the same; hope followed desire, and grief chased away hope.

  Selecting a length of timber from the wood-box near the stove, Marcus fed the fire until it was good and hot, hotter than it needed to be in spite of the cold night. He didn’t know if he could go through another loss. It was not for his sake, but for Flossy’s. She was always so steadfast and quietly hopeful every time she discovered she was with child, then when disappointment presented itself once again it would take weeks for her to recover. Marcus had listened in the past as she berated herself as a failure and knew the premature grey that streaked her mouse-brown hair was not due to age. He watched her staring at the framed picture of the King hanging on the wall that they’d cut from a magazine following his coronation. How he wished he could help her.

  ‘Maybe i
t’s just not meant to be, love.’ They’d seen a doctor some time ago, an elderly man of repute when it came to women and birthing. Although telling a woman to spend nine months in bed with her feet raised when she lived on a farm was hardly helpful.

  ‘Then why am I with child again?’

  Marcus knew most of the blame lay with him. It would have been different if he didn’t love his wife, want his wife, but Flossy was still as comely to him as the day they’d first met and one of the great joys of his life was taking his woman to bed.

  Flossy took the plates from the cupboard and began to set the table. The cuffs of her blouse were frayed and there was a hole in the arm of the sweater she wore. She sat the skillet on the kitchen table, its surface ringed from the many pots that had rested on it over the years. She was still bright-faced and clear of skin, if a little worn about the edges, and the full lips and cheeks which once spilt over with good humour still entranced, although the spark that initially attracted him was long gone.

  ‘The Bible says be fruitful and multiply.’ Flossy stirred the fry and then licked the spoon, checking the flavour. ‘What are we born for, otherwise?’

  Marcus was still trying to answer that question. At Gallipoli, when he’d been flung on the back of a donkey and carted down the craggy hillside to the beach, he thought his life revolved around two things: to kill and then be killed.

  Outside lamplight passed the end window, briefly illuminating a long low table that held old family photographs, a pair of painted emu eggshells on brass stands, and the family Bible.

  ‘Cold night.’ Will appeared all clean and shiny looking. ‘I strung the rabbits up with the sheep,’ he told his father. ‘We were thinking about making rabbit sausages, Mum.’ He took up his place at the table as Flossy dished up the lamb’s fry in its thick gravy.

  ‘Mixed with a bit of minced mutton, they’d be tasty, Will,’ Flossy replied.

  Soon they were eating hungrily, mopping up the thick sauce with chunks of homemade bread. It was a long time since they’d eaten sheep-meat.

  ‘It’s like a feast,’ Will said happily.

  The first few mouthfuls caught in Marcus’s throat, but his belly wasn’t complaining. ‘I’ll milk the cows in the morning, Will, while you cut down the sheep.’ They couldn’t risk it hanging any longer in case someone saw it.

  ‘There was a man here this afternoon, Marcus. I gave him bread and a ladle of milk.’

  Marcus swallowed. ‘A tramp, Floss?’

  ‘Well, he was looking for work, he asked who lived here and if we needed a hand. I told him no.’

  They’d not seen many drifters since autumn and even then the numbers had dropped considerably compared to the worst of the depression years in ’32 and ’33, when out-of-work men from the cities and towns began to go bush in search of employment. Most of the men were pushy but harmless, though you could never be sure. ‘And he was alone?’ Flossy nodded.

  ‘You know where the pistol is, Floss, don’t you? And there are bullets in the drawer as well.’

  ‘I know, but he was quite harmless.’

  ‘Maybe, but Will is going to try to find a job and if he does that will mean you’ll be by yourself a bit, love. Best to be prepared.’

  Flossy’s hand moved automatically to her stomach. ‘But where will you go, Will?’ She turned from son to husband. ‘Marcus, I thought we decided that we would all stay together? Are things so very bad?’

  ‘Not at all, everything’s fine.’ Marcus patted his wife’s free hand. ‘Will’s twenty now, Floss. He should be out working if he can find a job. Besides, we can spare him.’

  ‘We’ll never be able to buy more land if I don’t start trying to earn some extra money, Mum.’

  ‘More land?’ His mother’s eyes widened.

  ‘Why not?’ Will argued.

  ‘You should be happy with what we have, Will,’ Floss chided.

  Marcus began to discuss the next day’s work as they finished their meal. After milking they would load the galvanised cans and leave them at the drop-off point on the road and then deliver another single tin to town. That was one of the few benefits of being the closest dairy to the village. During winter, when no transport refrigeration was required, they supplied the general store.

  ‘There’s butter and four dozen eggs for the store as well. I’m hoping there’s enough for flour and baking soda and perhaps a rasher of bacon to go with the sheep’s brains.’ Flossy turned to the brains soaking in a bowl on the sink. ‘They’re nice and glossy and I added extra salt.’

  Marcus’s jaw clenched. A single rasher of bacon. ‘We’ll manage that, love.’

  ‘And pickles. I’d love a jar of those as well.’

  Will leant towards his father. ‘If we sold the farm, Dad, we could probably buy another place that was more productive.’

  Marcus frowned. ‘I told you not to mention that, Will,’ he whispered. He glanced at his wife, who was busy washing up plates. Flossy hummed a tune as she poured boiling water from the kettle on the stove into the basin.

  ‘But the Wades have money, they –’

  ‘The Wades don’t even live here, Will. Those people are thousands of miles away in another country. I’ll never sell this place, but if I wanted to it wouldn’t be to a family who aren’t even interested in coming out here and having a bit of a gander at all that land that they own.’ He pushed his chair away from the table so that it squeaked against the timber floor.

  Part Seven

  Oklahoma will be the last song I’ll ever sing

  ‘The Last Song’, a poem by Joy Harjo, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2002

  Chapter 30

  May, 1935 – The Glass Mountains, Major County, Oklahoma

  They lay huddled in the cliffs in the dawn glow, looking down at the land that stretched out flat and red. Jerome turned to his sister and then checked on the sleeping children. Mathew and Mark were lying some feet away, both snoring softly; Uncle George sat nearby with Tess, his gaze blank. They had left the Blum farm eight days ago, taking with them the gelding, Ernst. All except Jerome had ridden the horse during their flight, allowing them to make good progress.

  ‘I still think we should have headed south to Mexico,’ Abelena muttered. Dust and grime caked her face. The nights had been cold.

  ‘They would have expected us to go that way, sis.’ Jerome wished Abelena had taken his advice and let him go on alone. He was running from the law, for his life, and although he didn’t want to leave his family, Jerome knew that they would be better off without him.

  ‘You don’t know the boy’s dead and it was an accident.’

  ‘Abelena,’ Jerome touched her arm, ‘I know what I saw, the life went out of him, he must have broken his neck. It’s my word, the word of an Injun, against that of a homesteader. You know what that means?’

  Abelena thought of Philomena, the great-grandmother who had been abducted by the Apache. Often she wished for the woman to have never been born. Perhaps then she and Jerome would have been birthed to white people instead of being burdened with Indian blood.

  The penalty for murder in Oklahoma was death by electric chair. Jerome tried not to think about his capture, about what would happen to his family if the law eventually caught up with him. Alone, only he was responsible for his actions; as a family, both Abelena and Uncle George could be implicated in his crime, accused of aiding his escape. He peered down the rocky slope as the town’s buildings were outlined by the rising sun. ‘No lights, no movement, not a sound,’ Jerome said softly, ‘it looks deserted.’ This was the second ghost town they’d come across. The discarded settlements unnerved Jerome. The abandoned dwellings only served to emphasise the vastness of the land they wandered upon.

  Uncle George crawled to Jerome’s side. ‘You’re right, boy.’ As he spoke the wind lifted. Tumbleweed blew down the track leading into the single street. The air bore the scent of dust as the wind continued to carry the soil of The Great Plains eastwards. ‘It’s
probably as good a place as any to spend the day.’ The cough that had nagged him so incessantly since the beginning of the dust storms returned to choke his words. He adjusted the roll of hide, the history of his people that was bound by a leather thong and slung it across his shoulder.

  In the glow of early morning the old man looked worn out. Jerome recognised the yearning, felt the old man’s loss. With each mile travelled, they were heading further away from the land of their people and their leaving ate at his uncle like a worm. They were heading east, guided by the stars. The old man had already shepherded them across the Cimarron River and many miles safely to the north of Oklahoma City. It was the closest Abelena got to the last known residence of the Wade family. The family who had thrown their mother aside to die in a run-down boarding house in Boise City.

  ‘Where to next?’ Jerome asked.

  ‘We still have some way to travel but Broken Arrow is our destination,’ his uncle replied. ‘There was once a Creek settlement there so it will be easier for us to blend in while we wait for the train from Oklahoma City that will carry us east.’

  ‘How do you know of this place? About the train?’ Abelena asked. ‘Why have we not taken a train before this? We have crossed tracks.’

  ‘This was Indian Territory before it was Oklahoma, woman. Have you forgotten? Many of the old tribes were forced to move from their homelands one hundred years ago and thousands died on the march to resettlement. I have told you of the suffering, of what the Choctaw Chief said, that it was a trail of tears and death. Well, we too are heading east, if we make it. As for a train, I think we would be easy prey to travel that way. It’s safer to continue as we are.’