Fervent Charity (15 page)

What else could these men say? They
didn’t
know. They didn’t
ever
know. Lena went into the kitchen and washed up Walter’s supper dishes.
He’d better learn how to do a few dishes. I’m not doing this every blame night
.

She peered back into the living room. The brothers were as she had left them. Will murmuring his small comforts, Walter nodding like an idiot. Lena would have felt better if Walter had ranted, smashed some of that china. But that wasn’t the Kaiser way. He would mull it over in his mind. Over and over. In a month or two, he would take it in. In another month, he’d believe it. Then he would react. By that time, Mary would be far away.

Lena couldn’t feel much sympathy for her brother-in-law. A year ago, when she and Will had been destitute and in trouble, Walter had not offered them a dime or a box of groceries. He never offered so much as to finish the well that Will had had to leave when they hauled him off to jail. If it hadn’t been for Gustie, Lena would now be scrubbing floors for her keep, the childless widow of a hanged man. Gustie had saved their bacon. That’s what Alvinia didn’t know about Gustie. Nobody knew, but Pard Batie, Gustie’s lawyer. To this day Lena and Will had never properly thanked her, and she had never mentioned it. And in the midst of those troubles, which had fallen upon them mostly due to Will’s weakness for the booze, Walter had offered Will a drink! That had been too much even for Ma Kaiser, and she popped Walter a good one. Lena had almost liked her mother-in-law then. Ma. Who would tell her? Not that she would care. She’d want Walter to come back with her in the big house. Even she must be tired by now of Oscar and Nyla.

“Walt, you want us to stay with you? You want to come home with us? We’ll make room, won’t we, Duchy?”

“Sure. He’s welcome.” Lena didn’t mean it, but she didn’t expect Walter would accept the invitation. She was right.

When Will finally took his eyes off the stars and started moving again, he said, “I guess he took it pretty good.”

“Not so bad,” responded Lena. “I think it’s going around in his head and hasn’t settled yet.”

“I think he feels pretty tough.”

“They didn’t have much of a marriage, Will. Do I have to tell you that?”

“Naw, I know, Duchy. More than you think I do, sometimes.”

She punched his arm. He grinned.

“I think he’s not missing a woman,” Lena sniffed. “He’s missing his housekeeper.”

“She’s still his wife, Duchy.”

“PPfffh! Believe you me, I know she’s his wife. The way Ned and Jerry over there—” she cocked her head toward Walter’s barn, “are his horses.”

“Duchy, you’re a corker!”

“You keep an eye on him.”

“I will, don’t you worry.”

Alice Torgerson was home with Gracia. For Lena and Will to be out alone at night, even for something as simple as a starlight walk, was rare. Lena threaded her arm through the crook of Will’s elbow, tucked herself as close to him as possible, and enjoyed their walk home.

The next day, when the west-bound train screeched to a stop at the Wheat Lake station, three women, two with veils covering their faces and one with the hood of her cloak pulled up over her head, keeping her face in shadow, got off and slipped quickly and quietly into the station’s back room. One of the women beckoned Joe Gruba to come back and speak with them. Dropping his cigarette in the snow, he followed them in. The tall woman closed the door behind him and drew back her hood.

“Miss Augusta! Well, I’ll be! Miss Augusta.”

“Joe, we need your help.”

He could see now that she was accompanied by Mary Kaiser who looked poorly—and the young one had to be one of the Torgersons from Charity. He had helped Miss Augusta board only yesterday. He didn’t know where the other two were coming from. “Anything, Miss Augusta. You name it, old Joe’ll do it. Old Joe’ll do it.” Joe Gruba wasn’t that old. He just seemed old, with his knotty frame, his toothless smile and his lined and scuffed shoe-leather hide.

“Jordis doesn’t know I’m here so we need a ride out to Crow Kills. We need you to forget you saw us, Joe. As far as anyone knows, we are—all three of us—in Philadelphia. It is important that people think that. It’s important, Joe.” She looked steadily and seriously into his eyes.

Joe had helped her before because she was Will Kaiser’s friend. In the past two years she had become his friend, and there wasn’t anything Joe Gruba wouldn’t do for a friend and do it, no questions asked. He didn’t bat an eye or skip a beat. “Nobody hears nothing from old Joe Gruba. Nobody hears nothing from Joe. I’ll get the wagon and pull ’er up out back. The team’s hitched. You have a biscuit. The Missus makes them fresh every day. Help yourselfs. Give me ten minutes then go out the back door and I’ll be there.”

Gustie nodded. “Thank you, Joe. This means a lot to us.”

Joe was as good as his word. In ten minutes, the three women climbed into Joe Gruba’s wagon. Gustie, gathering her hood and cloak around her, sat next to him, and Mary and Betty, pulling their veils down once again, took the second seat behind. Gustie hunched down so as not to appear so tall.

Joe’s sturdy team moved ahead willingly at a shake of the reins, trotting the cold road to Crow Kills.

Joe chatted amiably. “I got it figured out, Ma’am. I got it figured. If anybody seen us, and busy-bodies me who was I taking out of town, I’ll tell ’em you was some missionary folks. Missionary folks come by here all the time like ticks to a dog. I’ll just tell the nosies that you was three of them prissy faced Psalm singers come to convert the Indians.” This tickled him and he slapped his thigh and laughed a high-pitched hee hee hee. Gustie smiled. He laughed all the harder.

Gustie squinted against the sun’s glare and kept her hood up. She had been sorry to miss these icy, snow swept days, winters that most of the locals claimed they could live without and threatened every year to leave for a warmer climate, and how could God make such a deep freeze and expect god-fearing folks to live in it? But she had always loved the winters. The sleeping land was pristine and heaven felt close. Gustie was not religious in the traditional sense and the word heaven didn’t fit her views, but it was the only word she could come up with. Yes, on brilliant, crystalline days like this, heaven was close. So was Jordis. Gustie looked forward to seeing the look on her face when she came back. She didn’t have long to wait.

Joe pulled his team to a halt in front of the cabin. It had changed since the last time he had seen it. After Dorcas’s death, Jordis and Little Bull had built on an extra room and painted the outside white. It looked like a nice cozy cottage now, instead of the one-room weathered shack it had been. Jordis would have built on to it earlier, but Dorcas had liked it the way it was.

Betty jumped down from the wagon first and helped Mary down. Gustie followed and pulled off their bags.

“I’ll come out and look in on you, if that’s okay, Miss,” said Joe. “Way out here in the winter. You never know. People won’t think anything of it. I bring mail out to the reservation sometimes, and chew the rag with old Jimmy Saul. Bring him a plug of tobacco now and then. People won’t think twice. Why, they’d have to think twice if I didn’t come out once in awhile, so that’s how that is, you know.”

“That would be fine, Joe. We would like that. Thank you again. Oh, wait. Can you send a telegram for me?” She took a pencil and scrap of paper from her purse, wrote a few lines on it and gave it to Joe. She also handed him a dollar.

“I’ll take care of it, Miss Gustie. Old Joe’ll take care of it. Well, bye now. Bye now. Okay, Bess, okay, Nattie, we’re goin’ home. To the barn, old girls.” The horses stamped their big front feet, blew steam out their nostrils, and eagerly headed back to town and barn.

Gustie watched him go for a moment. When she turned around, Jordis was standing on the porch, a huge smile on her face. “Short trip,” she said.

My dear aunts,

I’m sorry for my short telegram. I hardly know what to tell you except to describe what happened. You know we had planned this trip carefully, and while Mary seemed distressed at times, I thought she was naturally concerned about her condition, but also that she was afraid that she, a stranger, would be imposing upon my family.

I assured her repeatedly, even letting her read your letters for herself, that you and Father were eager to have us visit and that you were especially pleased to think that soon there would be a baby in the house. But when I boarded the train in Wheat Lake I found Mary in a state—so pale I thought she was near to fainting and Betty frightened to death. We both tried talking to Mary, to soothe her, but she seemed almost catatonic. We got into Minnesota and I couldn’t let it go on any longer. I feared for her and I feared for her baby. I asked the porter which was the first town that would have a decent hotel where we could get off and spend the night because my friend was ill. We disembarked in a pleasant town called Stanton Grove and checked in to the hotel which fortunately did prove to be very comfortable. When Betty and I went to Mary’s room we found her sobbing, saying she was sorry, that she felt like she was dying and she couldn’t leave the land where she was born, where her babka was buried. She went on incoherently about her roses and her grandmother’s prayer book and how without them she knew her baby would die. I couldn’t force her to go on. The only thing we could do was come back here. In fact, as soon as I promised her that we would be on the east-bound train in the morning, she became calm and went to sleep.

So, here we are, four women in a two-room cabin. She says, now that she is calmer and able to express herself more clearly, that her fear was in fact that if she gave birth somewhere else, the baby would die. At any rate, she is at peace now and is happily looking forward to going to Philadelphia after her child is born. Jordis seems to understand this. I don’t, but I have to accept it.

Dear Louisa, Margaret, Edith. Thank you again for your readiness to help my friend, and I must ask you for yet more assistance to enable us to keep up our charade until the birth of Mary’s child. I’m enclosing envelopes in Betty’s hand addressed to her mother and to her fiancé, as well as a few from me to Lena. We must send you our letters for you to resend so they will have the Philadelphia postmark, and ask you to, in turn, forward their letters to us here in Wheat Lake. I know this reeks of childish skullduggery, but I see no other way. You see both Jordis and I have a strong feeling that it is absolutely imperative that Mary’s presence here not be known by anyone. There are too many inquisitive people about and, while we trust Alvinia (Betty’s mother) and Lena, we don’t feel that they need to be burdened with this fantastic construction at this time. Pauly still resides with his parents—they would question many letters coming to him from Wheat Lake, and I doubt that he, full of the fire of youthful ardor, and Alvinia, full of mother-love, would be able to keep themselves long away from Betty, knowing she was so close. However good their intentions, our secret would be at risk. So I ask for your indulgence and help.

Express my deep apologies to Oksana for having put her to extra trouble, preparing for guests that won’t arrive till summer.

Thank you dear aunts, and give my love to Father.

Your affectionate

Gustie

Chapter 12: March 1901

F
eather haunted the barn like
a sleek, gray, luminous-green-eyed phantom. His favorite perch was the high crossbeam from which he could detect the slightest movement under the hay, the merest rustle of straw, the swift, tiny shadow against the wall where a mouse skirted the open floor, trying to make its living between the grain bin and the water buckets. The cat was as devoid of mercy as was the winter that had swept upon them like a furious arctic bear leaning heavily against the buildings, snapping the treetops with silent paws. In the last few days, the bear had begun to howl, disgorging a belly-f of snow.

The mice who had ventured from their holes, attracted to the barn by the oats, impelled by the cold and the famine of the frozen ground, did not long survive the cat. His prowess was such that today there was no movement, no rustling, not a single shadow. He was content to wait. There would be more. There were always more mice. Life was an extremely satisfying affair. In the summer there were juicy frogs, ground squirrels, birds and small rabbits to slaughter and devour from whisker to tail. In winter, only mice. But mice were good.

Feather was distracted from his meditations by the opening of the barn door and a rush of fresh, biting air carried on a shaft of cold white light.

Jordis came in with a bucket of snow-melt in one hand and a plate of cooked food in the other, followed closely by Mary who held a lantern and another plate of something nearly as tasty as fresh mouse—the raw entrails of a couple of perch. Feather didn’t need an invitation. He leapt from his crossbeam to the top of the tallest stack of hay bales, skimmed down its side to the floor where he braided himself around Jordis’s soft, moccasined legs.

“Ho, little warrior,” Jordis said, putting down her bucket and balancing her plate on the top rail of Moon’s stall. She removed her shawl and poncho and draped them over the stall gate. The blanketed horses welcomed her with pricked ears and soft equine snuffles. She took the lantern from Mary and hung it on a hook protruding high on the wall.

Mary sat on a hay bale and put her plate on the floor at her feet. The cat streaked to the dish and began to devour the shiny red, blue, and yellow fish guts. Mary let the blanket she had wrapped herself in drop down, revealing her burgeoning form. She had had to remake the dresses she had brought with her, taking the bodices off and cutting pieces from one to add extra gores of material to the others so the skirts could fit over her expanding waist. Over them she now wore some of Jordis’s wool shirts for warmth, and because they were so large, they draped nicely over her middle. When the road was cleared to town, Jordis promised to get her some material so she could make something more to her liking. In the meantime, she was happy to be warm and comfortable.

“I can’t get over this cat!” Mary laughed. Feather had been the pampered lap cat of Gertrude Kaiser’s sister Julia. His paws had rarely touched the floor, let alone the out-of-doors. He had lapped cream from a china saucer and was hand fed choice morsels of cooked meat. At Julia’s death, Lena had given the cat to Jordis.

“He got a taste of the wild life,” said Jordis, “and it seems to agree with him. He is blood-thirsty really.”

“Julia loved this cat. I’m glad he’s doing so well.” Once Mary’s eyes adjusted from the outside snow-glare, the interior of the barn did not seem so dark. The single glass window shone like milk, with nothing visible through it but a bottomless white. The lantern’s soft glow brought out a golden shine to the straw. “When did you build this barn? It wasn’t here in October, was it?”

“No, we put it up right after we added to the cabin.” Jordis had mixed feelings about this barn. Gustie had insisted, gently, that if she was going to be out here in the winter at all she needed a place for Biddie who, unlike the reservation horses, was not used to spending the cold winter months with only a sparse stand of cottonwoods for shelter, or if they were lucky, a three-sided shed. This barn was small, but sound and snug. Grain filled a bin in one corner and a pile of straw took up another. Hay bales were stacked in varying formations against the walls to provide winter fodder and further insulation. With pieces of scrap wood, Jordis had made a platform a few inches off the dirt floor to keep the hay dry.

She liked this place because she had constructed it herself, with help from Little Bull and Leonard, of poles cut from young cottonwoods and the lumber left over from what Gustie had purchased for the house. It was a simple rectangular structure with doors at either end built on a rise so the dirt floor wouldn’t hold water, and it was sheltered on the north side by trees. But because it was also a better structure than many of the flimsy cabins that most of the people on the reservation lived in, she felt it was…inappropriate. Tipis, of course, were snug and warm if they were constructed properly, but in the absence of buffalo, those who still preferred tipis had to make do with steer hides, government issue blankets, and pelts of small animals—all poor substitutes for the warm buffalo hides of their grandparents.

Jordis put these thoughts aside as she knelt before the tripod that stood under the window. Suspended from leather straps in the center was a shabby blanket roll fastened at each end with leather thongs.

On the floor beneath the bundle in the triangular space created by the tripod legs was an empty dish. Jordis replaced it with her plate of cooked food: small portions of the fish, potatoes, and fry bread they had just had for their noon meal. She paused just a moment before the tripod and then went back to the bucket of snow-melt.

Mary said, “You take a plate of food out every day.
This
is what you do with it?”

“Yes.” Jordis poured half the bucket of water into Moon’s drinking bucket and moved to Biddie’s stall. Both horses were blanketed and in their stalls, side by side. “When a person dies, you cut off a lock of his hair and put it among sacred objects. There are certain rituals you do for a year. That way, the person’s soul stays with you and you honor it. One way is by bringing food offerings. That blanket roll was Dorcas’s. She called it her memory bundle. It contains all the things that were most precious to her. When she died, I cut a lock of her hair and put it in there. Since the missionaries got here, people don’t do this much anymore.” Jordis had taken Moon’s blanket off and was now brushing her with long strokes.

Mary peered at the frayed old blanket roll with interest. “Do you really think Dorcas’s soul is in that bundle?”

“I behave as though it is. So does the cat.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I first brought him out here to Crow Kills he attached himself to Dorcas. He would disappear on his hunting trips, but he always came back to her. Then after she died, he came back to that.” She nodded her head toward the tripod. “Wherever it was, that’s where he would be. After we built the barn, I decided to keep it out here. She always wanted to be outside more than in, so in the winter this seems like the place. And he stays out here now. I think they are both happy here.” Jordis cast a glance at Mary. “Everude used to preach that the devil was in such practices.”

“Is he the one who hurt you?” Mary had been shocked to tears when she first saw Jordis’s scars rising across her back like twisted vines, scars from a beating she received at the hands of Reverend Obed Everude at the mission school. “He was an evil man, Jordis. He should have looked for the devil in himself. That’s where he’d have found him. To hurt a child like that…” She shook her head unable to understand cruelty. “Anyway, it was not for him to say how other people should respect their dead.” She had kept her attention on the tripod. “But, what happens to the food?”

“I assume the cat eats it, eventually. Maybe the mice. But Feather has never even sniffed it in my presence.” She stared at the tripod as if contemplating the implications of that. Seated next to Mary, Feather washed himself meticulously.

They enjoyed the silence for a while. Mary stroked the cat while Jordis brushed the white mare. Mary said, “The wind is coming up again. You hear that?”

Jordis nodded. “I think we are in for more snow.”

“Oh. You and Betty worked so hard clearing our paths.” With some help from Gustie, they had shoveled paths, one to the barn, one to the woods, where they emptied their refuse, and one to the lake, where Jordis fished through the ice.

“I think this time we will be digging tunnels, not just paths. Anyway, with the snow banked up against the house and barn, it’ll be warmer inside than it is now.”

“May I stay out here with you for awhile?”

“Of course.”

“It’s nice here, isn’t it? This barn is a good place. It’s kind of like church. A small church, with hay bales for pews. Actually, that was the first church, wasn’t it? A stable.”

“I suppose it was,” said Jordis, replacing the blanket on Moon’s back.

“I think a soul would want to rest here for a while.”

The wind whipped the rope that was strung from the house to the barn door hard against the front of the barn. The horses whickered softly and shifted in their stalls but were not unduly alarmed. Mary stroked the cat who was lulled into a drowsy, trancelike state. Jordis prepared Moon’s manger with fresh hay and gave her some oats.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For letting me stay here.”

Jordis stopped to look at Mary who sat, small and grateful on her hay bale and realized she didn’t mean staying with her in the barn while she took care of the horses. Mary pulled the blanket back up over her shoulders. The cat curled next to her enjoying his full stomach and warm back. “I haven’t had a chance to speak to you just by ourselves. I’ve thanked Gustie of course, but this is your home…”

“It is also Gustie’s home.”

“I know… I know you are doing this for Gustie…”

“I’m not doing anything for Gustie.”

“You’re not?”

“Gustie isn’t your only friend, Mary.”

“Thank you, Jordis.”

Jordis smiled.

“Gustie asked me once if I was happy. I wasn’t then, but I am now. I like our suppers together around the table in the lantern light, and hearing Gustie tell us about Philadelphia. I feel like I already know her wonderful aunts and Oksana. And Michael. Her beautiful garden. I feel like I’ll recognize Market Street and find my own way to Wanamaker’s! I like listening to Gustie and Betty reading to us in the morning. Gustie has such marvelous books. I like my new moccasins! Before I met Gustie, I never had a friend. And now, I’m surrounded by friends.”

Jordis said, “I know just how you feel. Except for the…” Jordis mimed a rounded belly.

Mary laughed, then became serious. “Do you think it is very hard for Betty? To be here, separated from her family, from her boy, and not being able to go to the concerts and the plays and the stores except in her letters to her mother?”

“I don’t think Betty cares much for city adventures. I think she is enjoying putting one over on her mother, and she said to me once over a shovel full of snow that this will be good for Pauly. Make him appreciate her more when she gets back. Besides, nobody is keeping her here. She could have gone back any time. She can leave whenever she wants. Or at least as soon as we shovel our way to the road.” Jordis replaced the blanket over the black mare. “Have you thought of names for the baby?”

“I’m going to name her Augusta Rose and call her Rose. Do you think Gustie will mind that?”

“She will be pleased. What if you have a boy?”

“I don’t have a name for a boy, so I hope I’m right about its being a girl.”

Feather’s purring provided a cozy counterpoint to the sound of snow being flailed into the north wall of the barn and the rope slamming against its door. Mighty hunter though he was, he still liked being scratched behind the ears.

“I think we better go in before it gets any darker.” Jordis put the two empty plates in her snow bucket, slipped on her poncho, and wrapped the shawl around her head and neck. “You’ll need both hands getting back,” she said as Mary wrapped herself in her blanket. Jordis took a coil of twine from off a knob on the wall and tied it in a crisscross fashion over Mary’s shoulders and then fastened it around her waist.

“Now you hold the bucket with one hand and me with the other. I’ll go ahead.” Jordis took the lantern and blew it out. Its feeble light would do them no good in the raging wind and snow. “Ready?”

Looking like a child getting ready for an adventure, Mary nodded, took the bucket, and linked arms with Jordis.

Feather watched them go. A cloud of snow swirled into the barn as the door opened and the two women disappeared into it. Snow crystals hung tenuously in the air until the door closed. The sound of the blowing wind was muted and the crystals, in their thousands, fell one by one softly to the floor. He got up, extended his claws and pulled at the hay half-heartedly, then bounded over to the stalls and walked gingerly along on the top rails around each horse. He made his usual round of the barn, sniffing out corners, traversing crossbeams. When he was satisfied that all was as it should be, he curled up inside the box that Jordis had lined with a piece of blanket and some straw and placed next to the tripod and the memory bundle, and
her
.