by Rae Meadows
Maybe she would tell Cy and he would lift her up into the sky and say, “Birdie Bell, be my wife,” and she would be happy. Maybe she would have a baby girl and dress her in a pinafore dress and push her around in a carriage on the shady sidewalks of some town far from Mulehead. Birdie and Cy and a baby girl would make a little family. It didn’t sound so bad.
I don’t want a baby, she thought.
The water in the tub started to shake and soon it was too dark to see anything. She cursed, knocking her shin on the edge of the tub, and grabbed her dress from the floor, yanking it over her head. She stumbled out of the bathroom to join her mother in trying to get wet sheets over the windows in time. She called outside to Fred though she knew he wouldn’t be able to hear above the din. They were all getting used to these, and she figured he would be fine out there in the henhouse with the birds. She didn’t get it about the chickens—they smelled bad and pecked her feet—but Fred would put leashes on them if he could.
Samuel came in bringing with him a rush of dirty air and helped get towels under the door, without a word to Annie. Birdie thought it strange how this had been going on, something between her parents that was quiet, heavy.
The storm was a smaller one this time, brief, the dust reddish so Samuel said it must have come from New Mexico. He got a candle lit and they sat at the table and waited until the sun came back outside. Annie stood at the window and looked through the crack the sheet didn’t cover.
Birdie thought of Cy’s slightly crossed front teeth, the rough skin of his hands, a cowlick at the whorl of his hair that he ran his hand over when he had something to say. When she saw him she felt it in her fingers and toes, a tingle in her scalp, like she couldn’t feel anything before and now she could feel everything. Her mother thought she was too young, frivolous. She doesn’t remember what it’s like, Birdie thought. Birdie did not want to spend her days weeding a garden and washing clothes, a Sunday trip to church the only thing breaking up the drudgery. She eyed her mother’s frayed, ill-fitting dress and wondered when she’d started looking so weary. Her mother had bought the dress—a cotton floral more ornate than she usually wore—years back when the crop was good, on a whim one afternoon trip to Beauville. When did Mama ever do anything on a whim? Must have been the only time ever.
Cy said he didn’t want to be a farmer, but he didn’t know what he wanted to be or how to be anything else. Birdie didn’t know what she wanted to be, either, but she knew she didn’t want to be her mother, nice and regular and bound up by the farm and this cruddy town. Where was the fun in that? That felt like giving up. Birdie wanted to be with Cy and she wanted something bigger, and knowing that was something.
I am not pregnant, she thought.
* * *
THE SITE OF the roundup was northwest of town, out toward Black Mesa, at the base of the small hills above Mulehead. Styron busied himself with the chicken-wire fences, which he’d fashioned into a large three-sided pen. People could take what they wanted, and the rest of the animals would be carted away and buried in a pit he’d had dug two miles farther west.
He’d fashioned a banner, clothespinned to a barbed-wire fence, which he’d painted in red, white, and blue: First Annual Mulehead Rabbit Hunt. The mayor was still not on board, he knew, even though a fellow over in Texas County had told them that each jackrabbit could account for $10 worth of farm damage, and hundreds of them had come down from the hills looking for food. Styron saw the roundup as a community unifier, a way to give folks agency who felt they had none. He’d gladly take credit for it. He was a leader, he knew he was, and each day he felt that self grow inside him, like the luna moths he remembered from his youth wiggling around in their silk cocoons, and when they did finally emerge from their drab pouches, there they were with their ethereal wings sweeping around at night, flashes of pale green and haunting eyespots in the lamplight. So he was not humble, but great men rarely were. He wished he’d planned to have more water. The ladies of the church were bringing lemonade, but they weren’t arriving until noon. Styron sat on the open front seat of his car and wiped off his hands with a towel.
He’d been seeing Hattie Daniels for six months. She was a genial woman with an attractive enough face helped by wide-set gray-blue eyes, but she was a little more ample than he preferred—her body the shape of a bell—and a little too chatty. She lived nearby in Herman, where she was a schoolteacher, and sometimes he found himself saying nothing more than “uh-huh” for minutes at a time as she told him about her students’ antics. But a lack of eligible women was one of the major drawbacks to life on the Plains.
Why had he invited her today? It was the excitement of the pending event that had gotten him, and last night as his hand had reached under her skirt as far as her girdle, he’d blurted out, “Come with me tomorrow.” She had looked so pleased, her eyes shiny with tears even, that he’d felt terrible and had vowed to be kinder to her. But here he was today, the morning of the roundup, wishing she weren’t coming at all. He would have to leave soon to drive all the way to Herman to pick her up and be back before the townsfolk arrived. There was no way he would miss his chance to fire the opening pistol.
* * *
ANNIE HAD FOUND her apron hanging with the potholders next to the stove. She was reluctant even to touch it at first—how in the world?—before looking around the empty kitchen. Last night she had considered slipping out of bed and over to the Woodrow place, but she feared Samuel might wake up. Now here was the apron, as if she’d sleepwalked to retrieve it. She couldn’t ask. She wiped the dust from the counter again, floured its surface, and turned out her biscuit dough.
She had told Fred he could not go today—too young, too sensitive, and too curious about what would happen to all the rabbits once they were trapped—but after Pastor Hardy preached last Sunday about supporting your neighbors, how the only way to survive this mess was to pull together, she and Samuel had decided they would all go. Jack Lily would be there, of course. It had been three days. For three days she had felt like her body was filled with tar, a hot and heavy ooze. Yet somehow she carried on, outwardly unaffected, working to exhaustion. Outside the window, white sheets baked in the sun, snapping in the wind like flags of surrender.
“We really need to go to this fool thing?” Samuel smiled, since he was the one who had insisted. He had changed from his work clothes into a clean shirt and navy trousers, which were held up with a belt and hung loosely from his whittled frame.
“You dressed up for the rabbits,” Annie said, putting biscuits in the oven. “I’m sure they’ll be pleased.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself, Mrs. Bell.” Samuel was trying for lightness. He sat at the table and retied his shoes, unsure of what to do while he waited. His dreams were getting more frightful—rising black swirls of water, cars floating by like river bugs—but he didn’t know much about how to build a boat. The steam box was a start, even if he couldn’t tell Annie, even though the line between faith and becoming unhinged seemed perilously narrow.
“I redid the ribbon around the hem,” she said, hand brushing against the fabric of her dress. “Changed out the faded blue for a red I found in the bottom of my sewing basket.”
He nodded. “It’s pretty. I’ve always liked that dress on you.”
Annie turned back to wipe the flour from the counter, her head in a bashful tilt, a gesture that charmed him.
“Saw Cy ducking away the other day. Strange he doesn’t even come by to say hello. Don’t you think it’s strange?” Samuel asked. “He’s always seemed a polite young man. You’d think he’d want to keep up the good impression.”
“Birdie doesn’t say peep about him to me. I worry about it, though,” she said, thinking of the mattress at the Woodrow place. “About what they’re doing. What do you think they do together?”
“Do?”
Annie glanced through the kitchen window before turning back and lowering her voice. “Do.” She widened her eyes.
Fred came bounding
in from outside and began coughing wildly, his hands on his knees. He was pale, despite the heat, and noticeably thin, his knees knobby—his feet looked too big for his body. When the last storm had rolled through, Samuel had found him huddled on the floor of the coop with a hen in his lap, the others bobbing and squawking fearfully around him. He was covered in the reddish dirt, his hair matted, his eyes white against his stained face, and he was gulping for shallow tugs of air. Annie had mixed kerosene with lard and rubbed it on his throat. It had taken a full day for his airways to ease.
“Sit, son,” Samuel said, guiding him to a chair. Annie placed a glass of milk in front of him. Fred drank and then coughed some more. She patted his back until he could get some breaths in.
“We’re taking you to the doctor,” Annie said. “Day after tomorrow.”
Fred shook his head.
“No fussing,” Samuel said. “It’s decided.”
Fred slumped. “I will try harder,” he thought, “walk not run, breathe slowly, stay in when the dust comes, say prayers, be better.” He felt the familiar tickle in his chest and tried to stifle a cough.
“You best go get cleaned up,” Samuel said. “We’re all going today to see the rabbits. That means you, too.”
Fred perked up and slapped his palms against the table.
“Go on,” Annie said. “Oh, and let Birdie know we’re leaving at noon.”
“Your apron’s untied,” Samuel said, reaching for the strings behind Annie’s back. She had sewn it their first year in Oklahoma by lamplight in the dark dugout house. When he’d first seen the swoop of the embroidered canary yellow “A,” it was a flourish that had made him feel flush with buoyancy, a sign of her optimism and eagerness for their life.
Samuel finished the bow with a tug.
“Thank you,” she said, without turning from the sink.
* * *
THEY HAD BEEN married only a week, had yet to spend a night alone together, when Samuel said let’s just go, and Annie said yes. Her parents had given up trying to persuade them to stay. Samuel had settled up with Gramlin, the landowner of the farm he worked, and procured a wagon and a team, which they packed in the quiet early morning. The horses snorted, their exhalations visible in the chilly dawn.
Her mother came out from the house, a shawl around her shoulders, and held a small wooden crate.
“A tea set,” she said.
“I won’t need that, Mother,” Annie said.
“What will you drink out of? Your hands?” It was a rare moment of levity from her mother.
Annie took the crate and shoved it into a small crevice she found along the side of the overstuffed wagon.
“I’ll write,” she said, knowing she wouldn’t, knowing she would relish the distance.
“You are married now. Before God,” her mother said. “You know—”
Annie hoped she might divulge something to her, some motherly advice.
“You can’t come running back here when it gets hard,” she said. She stood with her feet perfectly together, her hands pulling her shawl tightly around herself as if she were trying to take up as little room as possible.
I never would, Annie thought.
“‘Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.’” Her mother’s mouth twitched, and Annie couldn’t say if she’d seen a smile or a grimace. “You make it work.”
Samuel came from the house with the last suitcase and Annie felt herself swell with relief at the sight of him in his old work clothes, his felted hat.
“I do wish you well, Annie,” her mother said.
There were no kisses or hugs—her father never even came out to say goodbye—no waves as they set off, the two of them close on the buckboard seat, so ready for everything.
After they’d arrived in Cimarron County, at the end of a long rough ride, Annie looked in the crate to find the teapot in pieces, the saucers chipped, the sugar bowl’s handle broken. Only two teacups made it. Months later, when the well had finally been dug, she and Samuel had toasted each other with teacups full of the coldest, sweetest water she had ever tasted.
* * *
WHY STYRON HAD decided to hold this thing at midday in July was lost on him now. The brutal sun beat down on the crowd, which had swelled to upward of three hundred. The wind shook the tent he’d put up over the refreshment table, and underneath it, the churchwomen handed out cups of lemonade and water as fast as they could.
“We sent Betsy back with the truck,” Mable Helmsly said. “Block ice from Thurston’s and water from the nearest well.”
Styron nodded, intensely aware of Hattie on his arm, but trying not to look like it. He took the glass of lemonade Mable held out to him and gave it to Hattie, who drank a greedy sip and then another, emptying the glass before they’d even moved beyond the table.
When he’d picked her up that morning, he’d felt great relief that she looked pretty good. She filled out her pink dress, but the fabric didn’t strain. They drove to Mulehead with the windows down, which made it too loud to hear much of what she was saying. If today went well, he wondered if tonight he would get beyond the girdle.
“Good Lord,” she said, blotting her face with a handkerchief. “Seems like there’re more people than there could possibly be rabbits.”
She took the handkerchief and rubbed his face.
“There,” she said. “You don’t want your picture in the paper with a smudge on your face, now, do you?”
Sweat from his armpits soaked his undershirt. Styron parked her in the shade of a straggly juniper.
“Wait for me here?”
He walked away before she responded, eager to get the hunt going. Win Johnson’s band launched into “Deep Elem Blues.” Dwight’s sure hand with the fiddle was one of his few redeeming qualities.
“Hello, Mr. Styron,” Birdie said. She held Fred’s hand, and he held up his other in greeting.
“Birdie,” Styron said. “Fred.”
“Say, you haven’t seen the Macks yet, have you?”
“One of them in particular you looking for?” Styron smiled, and wished, as he had before, that Birdie Bell were a few years older.
“I suppose I am. Yes,” she said.
“I haven’t seen Cy,” Styron said, “but I’ll keep my eye out for him.”
* * *
STYRON CLIMBED UP onto the flimsy stage. His hand trembled as he lifted the megaphone. The mayor stood off to the side, his arms crossed, bemused.
“Hello,” Styron said. No one could hear him. Someone motioned to the band to stop playing.
Styron shouted, “Hello, hello, hello,” until people quieted some.
“Welcome to Mulehead’s first annual rabbit drive!”
The crowd clapped lethargically, ready to get on with it.
Birdie and Cy hadn’t set a meeting place—no one had any idea people from all over three counties would be here—and now in the glare and the crowd, it seemed they might not find each other.
She and Fred moved closer to the stage as Styron went on. Bodies pressed in around them, everyone charged up and eager for action.
“But they don’t call these the Great Plains for nothing. This is God’s land,” Styron bellowed, so lifted was he by his own speech. “And we’re tough enough to make the Plains great again. So I pledge to you today, I will stay on. And darn if we’re going to let some rabbits make it harder for us. Am I right?”
The whoops and hollers rose.
Fred tugged Birdie’s hand as the crowd surged forward.
“You want to go up?” she asked. Their mother had instructed them that they were only there to watch, but when she looked over, she saw the mayor talking to her parents. They wouldn’t notice.
Fred nodded and jumped twice in excitement.
Styron pointed the gun in the air like he had practiced, and he fired three shots, sending the throng of people running toward the hill.
“Let’s do it,” she said.
They joined a group moving up the far side of the
line. Jackrabbits scooted this way and that, jumping into the shrubs. Birdie swept the faces but didn’t see Cy among them. She had washed her hair and left it down long, just as he liked. She had used the last of her powder on her neck. Afterward they would walk together and she would tell him. Or she hoped she could.
Fred ran off with a boy from school. Birdie stood next to Gladys Abernathy, the librarian, and took her small hand with a smile. On her right, an older man touched his cap in her direction. He shyly held out his hand and she took the knotty fingers in her own.
* * *
AFTER STYRON’S SPEECH, Jack Lily had come right up to Annie and Samuel, clearing his throat, she supposed, to steady himself. When their eyes had met it was too much, so she’d focused on the space above his shoulder. He and Samuel talked, but she couldn’t concentrate enough to get the details. His hand, only a foot from hers. She had kissed that mouth. She felt like hot wax was spilling down her limbs.
“I’m going to get water,” she said, sensing both men watch her as she walked away.
Jack forced his gaze away from Annie, though he could barely look at Samuel. He had designs on the man’s wife, for Christ’s sake.
“Maybe you can help me with something,” Samuel said.
“Sure, whatever I can do.” Jack checked himself for sounding overly solicitous. “What’s it you need?”
“Lumber. But I can’t afford to get it green.”
“How much are we talking?”
“Enough to build a boat.”
“A boat?” Jack leaned closer. “To go on water?”
Samuel smiled. “I think there will be rain enough, when the time comes. I’ve had these visions.”
Visions? Jack thought. Bell thinks there’s going to be a flood in the middle of this drought?
“It was Fred’s idea, really. The boat. He’s going to help me with it. Need to get him a little stronger first.”
“Good to work on something together,” Jack said, unsure about how to proceed. He’d never been comfortable with the spiritual fervor that sometimes took hold out here, and he hadn’t seen it before in Samuel Bell. “Know anything about boats?”
