Breaking Clean

by Judy Blunt

  We went through the list item by item as Rose pointed out which of my purchases could be had for less in other stores and the rash of brand-name products I had wasted money on instead of opting for less-expensive store brands. Her manner was serious but sincere, not angry as much as disappointed that I had managed to triple their food bill in one trip to the store. After all, she said as though reciting a clever saying from memory, my joining the family added only one more mouth to feed and we all expected the grocery bill to reflect that. I waited for her to finish, careful not to interrupt, though I was fuming. "We" meant Frank. Frank expected the grocery bill for two households to be almost the same as for one. Frank, the man who bragged that he'd never cooked a meal for himself since he settled on this place. Lord, the injustice. I sputtered, I flushed, I explained, voice shaking, that the bill reflected the cost of setting up a kitchen, not replenishing a pantry. I had had to purchase some of everything all in the same bill, rather than spaced out over months. Like spices— here I pointed to the list—you have to have them to bake, but they last forever.

  She studied the circled items around my fingertip as I rambled on, the pleasant smile on her face never dimming. When I stopped, she went on as though I had never spoken. Some, like the breakfast meats and that strawberry jam, were a waste of money to feed to hired men. Pancakes and eggs were good enough. My eyes must have widened at that, as she went on for some time about the economic wisdom of pancakes and eggs. I bit my tongue and focused on the list, as though reading it one more time might offer enlightenment. John. It had been John, victim of that same breakfast menu for a year, who had selected the jam and bacon. Some items she'd both circled and checked—the gallon of cherries, the case of soda pop—as too indulgent. One item, a carton of cigarettes, she had crossed off altogether. I was, she explained calmly, forbidden to buy these with corporation money.

  I waited for her to make her way to the end of the list, conscious of the pent-up thump at the base of my skull, the wash of self-pity that pushed me to the brink of tears. She must have mistaken my mood for remorse, for she patted my hand and smiled her understanding. I would do fine, she said kindly I just had to use my common sense. She finished her coffee, tucked the receipt back into her purse and left without packing a single box. I waved her to her car, then dropped into my chair at the kitchen table and gazed at the neat list of items she'd written on a sheet of notebook paper. Crib notes for grocery shopping, the mustn't-dos and can't-haves, the good-enoughs. At a complete loss, I sat in the silence of the ranch kitchen, trying to read the lay of this land. Where did I fit? Where was my place in this business, in this kitchen? How could it be that the one person expected to make most of the household purchases for the ranch was the one person not allowed to write checks, the one person with no say in budgeting or bank drafts?

  Caught up by exhaustion, I slipped into the bedroom and closed the door. If the men came in for coffee that afternoon, I never knew it. I was still sleeping when John shook my shoulder hours later. I had slept past dinnertime, he whispered as I struggled to sit up. The men were in from the field, waiting.

  We talked far into the night, my outrage returning as we lay each to his own side, hidden in the darkness of the bedroom.

  I had not married his father and I sure as hell hadn't married Rose, I told him. I had one of them looking over my shoulder and the other breathing down my neck, and it was going to come to a screeching halt. We were going to have a sit-down with Frank and Rose and get some things straight. With a long sigh, John shifted from his side to his back and lay still, as though settling under the weight of one more problem. I brushed aside a twinge of guilt as he stared at the ceiling. He was so tired. He had problems coming at him from dawn to dark, hired men screwing up or slacking off, his father second-guessing his every move. But my sense of urgency was bolstered by absolute righteousness. If I knuckled under now, when would it end? Surely I could not be expected to tackle this issue on my own. As far as I was concerned, his duty was clear. I needed him to back me up.

  John answered with what I came to know as "the voice of reason," a tone both sympathetic and evasive. Of course they were wrong, he said, but at this point all we could do was ignore their meddling, let it run off us like water off a duck's back.

  "How am I supposed to ignore them when they're parked in my kitchen half the time?" I hissed. He gave a wry laugh and his head wagged against his pillow.

  Ah, hell, things will settle down. He pulled me close, reassuring me. Just don't let them get to you. The old man doesn't believe the place can run without him. Once we prove ourselves, he'll back off. We just have to tough it out another few years and we'll be running things the way we want. As for this thing with Rose, he went on, a bit wary now, if he got in the middle of that it would just cause hard feelings. We'd have to work it out on our own. He dozed off in the quiet that followed.

  When Rose yoo-hooed from the front door the next morning, I kicked the bedroom door shut and sat on the bed, waiting for her to leave. Instead, the soft squeak of the floor mapped her progress as she began to putter about the kitchen, moving the rug to the space in front of the sink, pulling the curtains tight across the west window Then the floor squeaks were joined by the clink of dishes as she moved from drying rack to cupboard. Unable to stand it, I eased open the bedroom door and stepped out. A bit hard of hearing, she stood with a dish in each hand, gazing up at my cupboards, unaware of me until I appeared at her elbow

  "I can take care of that, Rose," I said firmly. "I know where they belong." She jumped like a deer, nearly staggering with the fright I had given her. Her whoop of surprise gave way to uncertainty when she saw I was not smiling. She didn't like leaving dishes in the rack, exposed to dust and flies, she explained, holding up two plates. Her voice trailed off. "I'll take care of it," I repeated. Chastened, she handed the plates to me and wiped her hands carefully on the towel.

  "Do you need help packing?" I asked. Oh no, she replied. She'd just get a few things and be on her way. She brightened—unless I wanted help with lunch? I assured her I had lunch all figured out, no problem. She labored upstairs to the attic with a box in hand and was gone within the hour.

  Her next visit caught me with my hands in dishwater. A "Good morning" full of smiles lilted across the room. I washed and rinsed, my stiff back and the rough jerk of my arms offering the only clue that I had heard. She stood quietly by the counter, waiting until I pulled the plugs to drain the dishwater. Intent on my game, I avoided her eyes, imagining her stony glare following me as I carefully wiped the sink and rinsed the dishrag. Shifting my face into neutral, I turned toward her, finally, ready for battle. Had she stood before me naked, I could not have been more horrified. Instead of anger there was pain, her mouth open in a soundless cry, her eyes swimming. When she spoke, tears dropped at once, as if shaken loose by the tremor in her voice.

  "Can't you even say hello?" she quavered, and under the weight of silence that followed, her face crumpled in a final plea, stark and simple as the cry of a child. "Don't you like me?"

  I felt all the shame and cowardice of a bully, and still could not bend to comfort her. My answer fell like a chill on her upturned face and her head bowed as I finished. "We'll get along fine, Rose. We just need to get settled in our own places." When her car pulled out, I sank into a chair, barely able to think. Muscles in my arms and legs crawled and ached with fatigue. I made it to the bedroom and slipped under the covers with my clothes on. With my last ounce of energy, I reached over and set the alarm for 11 a.m. There was enough ground beef in the refrigerator to make spaghetti sauce or a hot dish. Whatever. I'd think of something.

  The middle of that summer has gone from my memory, though I retain a gauzy image of events occurring, a gray stretch of days shot through with moments of clarity when panic cleared the cobwebs and I worked frantically to avoid being caught sleeping. I slept ten, twelve, sixteen hours a day In bed by nine and up to fix breakfast at five. Back to bed until the intrusion of another p
erson, another meal dragged me up, afternoons of oblivion that ended with the rumble of returning pickups, the mad dash to wash dishes from one meal and set out another. I kept a damp washcloth and a hairbrush on the dresser, my subconscious tuned to the sound of the porch door opening, the stomp of feet as the men took a break for coffee. Rolling off the bed, I would cool my eyes with the cloth and smooth my hair, then scoop up a pile of clothes and emerge from the bedroom as if caught in the midst of laundry chores. Quivering with adrenaline, I would dump coffee grounds and start another pot with blood thumping through the cotton in my head. Like acting out a dream. I barely remembered my brother Kenny's wedding, a month after my own, though I cringe at how I must have looked in my rumpled pantsuit, my hair pulled back in a greasy ponytail. I had not bathed for days.

  At some point a week, perhaps several weeks, into summer, John roused me from sleep and led me to a chair by the kitchen table. He sat and pulled me onto his lap. My resistance was visceral, a dread born so far below the surface I was helpless against it. I leaned against his chest quietly, aware of trying to wake up the same way I would try to run in a dream, the awful labor of dead weight and slow motion. We sat. A blanket of flies lifted and settled around the stove and table where dishes from the noon meal remained, and around the sink where breakfast dishes waited in a pond of stagnant water. The garbage stank. I burrowed my nose into his collar, hushed by the sweetness of dried grass and sweat, sunshine trapped in a cotton shirt.

  Gently, he pushed me upright and held me at arm's length, his face kind and determined. Unable to meet his eyes, I closed mine before he said a word. He didn't understand what was going on, he said, but there was no margin for error here. I would have to do my part if we were going to make it.

  I knew I was not doing my share, and I shriveled around the truth of what he said. No one had learned the truths about work better than I had. What was wrong with me that I had forgotten this, I wondered. What is wrong, what is wrong? I watched him from the porch window as he walked to the shop, his sadness palpable, visible in the weary slope of his shoulders. Leaning against the sill, I began to shake like a wild animal. Whatever this madness was, it felt bottomless.

  I reclaimed myself slowly, throwing myself into hard physical labor and fighting back with pots of coffee when exhaustion seemed overwhelming. I shoveled out the chicken house and worked the late garden we'd planted below a reservoir a quarter mile from the house. I poured out a basement full of canned goods abandoned since Frank's second wife had lived there, burying gallons of spoiled sauerkraut and age-softened pickles under the lilac bushes out back and washed the jars with their crazed rubber rings and zinc lids. I kept myself moving as best I could and gradually felt better. Riding horseback became one of my substitutes for sleep, though in light of the chores I could have accomplished instead, it was no more worthwhile than a long nap. Cream Puff was getting old, but she was still nimble enough to negotiate the unfamiliar trails of this new ranch, and guiding her along I felt the same thrill I felt as a child, afternoons when my sister and I would make our getaway to the horse pasture, then ride like fury beyond the sound of our mother's voice. The irony of being a married woman and sneaking out of my own house to avoid the grownups was not lost on me.

  Such was the difference in landscape that I found myself renewed by discovery. My parents' hard gumbo flatland with its musk of cured grass and sage gave way to the strong, sweet pitch of juniper and pine, the jagged landscape of the Missouri River Breaks. Awed in some private way, I found the places that matched names I'd first heard in stories. For the first time that fall I rode roundup in the pines above Beauchamp Creek, learning to balance my horse as we slid down steep ravines, a river of soft gray shale pouring around his hooves until we reached the bottom. The cattle we sought to corral at Summer Camp were branded "WV," the remains of a herd that came with the recent land purchase. They bore little resemblance to my father's herd of sturdy, amiable Herefords. Appear on the skyline, and these creatures threw their heads high in the air, sniffing the wind, then light and nimble as goats, they ghosted away through the trees, following game trails. Their calves hid the way fawns do, lying still under a low juniper with their necks stretched flat on the ground, nearly invisible, and the adults were not above "brushing up" themselves, burrowing into brush and going as flat and still as coyotes. Occasionally, when the blowing wind obscured sound, we would surprise them bedded down or grazing in a clearing. We called this "jumping" them, as in, "I jumped six or seven head of WVs out of Karsten Coulee." You had to be fast to get an accurate count. We joked that only their short horns and their superior speed separated the WV cattle from the elk they grazed with. So it happened, whether through accident or design, that I came to know and love the land that was my new home. I walked the Prowdy Pines and drove the trail to Beauchamp Creek to mine the shale banks for marine fossils and buffalo skulls washed out by spring floods. I rode horseback up the slope and down the length of Stouts Coulee and Pea Ridge, following an unbroken string of hay meadows tucked into the bends and curves of Fourchette Creek all the way to the Fields Cabin. I learned new directions that went with the new land— up the creek went west and down the creek went east. I found tepee rings, graves of dead homesteaders, the dugouts and cabins of those who had sold out and moved on.

  For the sake of time stolen from daily duties, I often took the pickup on these expeditions, but only when I rode horseback could I see the true contours of the land, the ravines hidden from any road. The Breaks, I thought, had all the rugged stature of mountains, except the peaks went the other direction—down into the earth. The ranch sprawled for miles along the northern edge of the Breaks where the shortgrass prairie began to roll, then plunged abruptly into steep gullies. Animals, whether wild or domestic, followed the same network of trails down to the narrow grass-lined strips at the bottom, tracing drainages carved into the shale of an old seabed, held down by the gnarled roots of juniper and greasewood, the sort of forage that required little encouragement to thrive.

  Looking for chokecherries one afternoon, I came upon the Andrews place, the long-abandoned buildings now part of Frank's holdings, and stopped to explore. The board barn stood agape at the prairie sage that grew to its threshold, the corrals long gone, either fallen or torn down. Nearby, a crumbling two-story shack stood in the shelter of a bleached Cottonwood. The front door had buckled across the opening, hanging by one bottom hinge, and I straightened it until it could be propped open or wired closed. We would be turning cattle into the field around it soon, and old buildings like these could be death traps for animals. Where cattle had free range, especially herds of curious yearlings, landowners made an effort either to fence off the abandoned homesteads or to clean up around them, often filling the buildings with the litter of broken glass, rusty tin cans, nails and barbed wire they found scattered around the grounds.

  I was curious enough to go snooping, for I had met the owner, Shaw Andrews, while I was working as a waitress. He was one of many quiet old bachelors who had retired from homesteads in the area and had taken rooms at the Fifth Avenue, a residential hotel in Malta. Shaw was distinctive to me because he wore a black patch over one eye, but in all other ways he was like any of a dozen old-timers who came into the Sugar Shack Cafe once or twice a day for meals. He wore the same clothes, ate the daily special, was unfailingly polite, and tipped a dime.

  I recalled only one time when Shaw had not eaten alone, but entered the restaurant with a young man in tow I hardly recognized him with his hair wet down, his rusty suit and cloth tie, his excitement. Rather than take a stool at the counter, Shaw chose a booth. He introduced his guest to Elsie, the owner of the cafe, and she waited the table herself. "Give us some of that fried chicken," he boomed with all the pride of a good host. "We'll take the works!" I watched from behind the counter as the feast was laid, and I remember his careful wrapping of a chicken breast in a paper napkin as they prepared to leave. The extravagance of this dinner was likely lost on his guest—a g
reat-nephew, perhaps, someone who had taken time to trace the last of a family line to this booth, this one day. I remember how we waitresses pitied these old men their empty lives.

  Shaw was long dead the afternoon I pushed the door open and stepped into the old house where he'd lived for decades with his spinster sister. A nickel-plated wood-burning range still held the place of honor in the kitchen, though most of the three downstairs rooms were filled with moldering boards and junk. Up the narrow stairs, a second bedroom and an A-framed attic of sorts lay much the way they'd been left. Boxes of tattered farm receipts and string-tied bundles of old correspondence were scattered across the attic floor. A large, bird-spattered window at the peak end highlighted the dust motes I stirred up as I sorted among the piles of bank statements and Christmas cards, collecting the old stamps, feeling my skin crawl at the rustle and creep of invisible little feet along the perimeters of the room. Pack rats sorted through the boxes along the walls, and I did not challenge their claim.