The Great Plains (23 page)

Inside, the twins sat around the kitchen table, a door resting on a number of kerosene tins. There were tin plates and forks to eat with and more kerosene tins for seats. Jerome shut the door tightly to stop the dust coming into the house. Although the room was already hazy, they didn't need anymore wind-carried dirt to choke the air. His sister wiped the dust from each tin plate and then passed the wet rag between the children, ensuring each one cleaned their face and hands.

‘Is that the last of the jackrabbit?' Jerome asked. Over the last few weeks the skies had been cloudy with grit but the sunlight today was a little brighter, the wind barely present and for once he could smell other things beyond dirt. He smiled hopefully. Clear weather was helpful when enticing the jackrabbits into a snare, and clear weather would mean a feast day tomorrow following the slaughtering of the old cow.

Lifting the skillet from the fire, Abelena turned towards him and nodded. ‘Are you eating?' Their oven was a kerosene tin with the front cut out of it and a rusty piece of flue stuck in the back and wired to the remnants of the old flue belonging to the previous tenants.

Although his stomach felt like it was gnawing itself, Jerome shook his head. ‘I'll just have some cornbread. By the way, Mr Blum won't be sharing his canned vegetables anymore, but we get to kill one of his starving cows tomorrow for meat.'

Abelena paused in dishing up the jackrabbit and then resumed serving, passing around a plate of cornbread. ‘There's something else. A man from the bank came out not ten minutes ago. He told me that the Blums weren't share-farming here anymore and that we would have to vacate.' She sat the empty skillet on the end of the table and the four children craned their necks to see if there was anything left.

‘Why didn't you tell me straightaway?' Jerome complained to his sister.

‘Cause it's food time.'

The younger children crammed what food they could into their mouths and then turned to their older siblings. Abelena wiped her nose with the back of her hand and pretended not to be upset. Tess looked to Jerome. Leaning across the table, he tweaked her nose playfully. Abelena swotted Mathew's hand with the metal serving spoon as he lunged for Tess's food.

‘Then we have to leave,' Jerome said flatly.

‘We'll be staying put,' Abelena replied. ‘We ain't done nothing wrong so what harm is it to them if we stay?'

Jerome scratched the fuzz on his cheek. ‘I don't think it works that way. If the Blums don't work the land anymore then they don't have the right to say who can or can't live in this house. The bank does.'

Wiping her hands on the piece of rag tucked through the leather belt, Abelena looked out the open door. ‘If we have to leave we'll move into the barn with Uncle.'

Jerome didn't have a better suggestion. ‘You'd think Mr Blum would have told us himself.'

‘Maybe he didn't know,' she answered.

Mathew's plate clattered to the table as he finished licking it. ‘Well, if he didn't I reckon he does now.'

Abelena agreed. ‘And if we do have to move on, leave the farm, we'll head back to Boise City for work.'

‘The city,' Jerome repeated. ‘None of us like the city and the people don't like us either. Last time we were there they called us names and told us to go back to the reservation.'

‘That's right,' Mathew agreed, picking dried snot from his nose. ‘They'll spit on us and call us names all because you lot are Injuns and Mexicans.'

‘Spit on us,' Mark repeated. ‘Spit on us, spit on us.'

‘Stop it, stop it,' Abelena cried. She turned her back on the ruckus and stared out the cracked and partially boarded-up window.

Bare feet hit the kerosene tins, rattling the table violently. The skillet slid from the table to land with a thud on the dirt floor.

‘Now look what you've done!' Jerome yelled. ‘Stop fidgeting and be quiet.'

Tess started wheezing. Abelena squeezed out a rag in a bucket of water and wiped the girl's flushed face.

‘Why do we have to go?' Mark asked.

Jerome leant his elbows on the rickety table. ‘Because there is no work here and no money and hardly any food. You don't want your little sister to starve, do you?'

Mathew grunted and pulled Mark to his side. ‘She's not our sister.'

‘Mind yourself, Mathew,' Jerome cautioned.

‘Don't talk like that,' Abelena snapped. ‘We may have different fathers but we all have the same mother.'

Mathew frowned. ‘Our mother was a whore. Everyone knows that and that's why no-one's father ever stayed. That's why we're starving with no proper home and that's why Mark and I don't listen to you, Abelena, cause the mother you talk about like she was something special was a whore and worse, she was an Injun whore.'

Abelena struck Mathew so hard that he fell to the ground. A red welt spread across his cheek as he sat upwards, his legs splayed across the dirt floor.

‘Don't you ever talk about your mother that way! Her grandmother was Philomena Wade from Oklahoma City and the Wades were respectable newspaper people with a house in the city.' Abelena extended a hand to help Mathew up.

‘Go away,' the boy replied.

Mark was by his brother's side, growling at her like a mad dog. Tess scrambled on her hands and knees to sit under the table.

‘Get outside, the both of you!' Jerome yelled at Mathew and Mark. He grabbed the younger of the two boys by the scruff of the neck and, in response, Mark kicked him hard in the shins before running out the door with Mathew on his heels.

‘If there weren't so many of us to feed we could probably stay here.' Abelena cradled Tess in her arms and rocked the girl gently.

‘Tess's cough is getting worse,' Jerome commented.

‘I give her salt gargles.' Abelena hunched her shoulders. ‘What else can I do?'

Once before Jerome had gone in search of a doctor when Uncle George's cough threatened to take all the air out of him. Dr Carmichael spoke of an illness called dust pneumonia and said there was very little he could do for George. In the end, the doctor hadn't come. Abelena quickly decided Dr Carmichael helped people with the coin to pay and those that bartered were at the end of the line. Somewhere in the middle was the truth, for Jerome thought the doctor was a good man.

‘They're just scared, you know,' Jerome said softly, referring to Mathew's nasty comments.

Abelena poured a little hot water into the greasy skillet and swirled it around the pan. The moisture was speckled with grit as she poured the mixture into a tin cup, added a pinch of salt from the canister sitting on a crooked shelf, and took a sip. ‘Is that what you think of our mother? That she was a whore?' Her hazel eyes were dull.

‘She was a good mother and I liked José. He may not have been our father but he was a good man,' he replied carefully. José was the first man in Serena's life who made Jerome feel that he was part of a family. ‘And he loved us enough to want us all to go with him to Dakota.'

Abelena interlaced her fingers around the cup and sipped. ‘I remember Mother telling us that she cried and cried but she wouldn't follow him. She wouldn't leave this country. Why didn't she go with him, Jerome? We could have had a good life there. Things would have been different. Better.' She sighed. ‘Easier.'

She passed the cup and Jerome drained the remains of the watery soup. ‘Yes, easier,' he agreed. ‘There would have been no twins,' he answered thoughtfully, ‘and no Tess and I can't imagine our life without her.' Jerome feared ending up in another argument over their mother's decision not to follow José. Jerome believed that Serena Wade's Apache blood kept her rooted to this country. He was the blood of her blood, after all, and he had a strong sense of belonging towards their ancestors' lands. Such attachment didn't exist in Abelena or if it did, knowing her bitterness towards the Apaches, she would have willed any such connection away. Instead Jerome told his sister what she wanted to hear. ‘The Wades are from Oklahoma, that's why Mother wanted to stay in the area.'

‘Rubbish. They didn't want her.' Abelena wiped a finger across an eye. ‘Uncle George said they went back to ask for money once and all he got for his trouble was a punch in the nose.'

Jerome recalled sitting around a fire many years ago. The twins' father, Jock, was yet to disappear into the night. That would happen a few years later when Mark finally began talking and the family realised his dropped eye wasn't the only thing wrong with the younger of the two boys. Yet that particular night, with the stars hanging low and beans and bread stuffing their bellies, they were a real family. Their mother talked about her people, the Wades, and how she'd fallen out with her Great-Great-Uncle Aloysius and his family because she found it impossible to fit in.

‘Things might have been different.' Abelena cupped her chin with a work-chaffed hand. ‘Why didn't the other men stay if Mother loved them?' she asked.

It was always the same with Abelena. His sister was at her best when kept busy; once she stopped the same melancholy that affected their mother came to the surface. ‘I guess they didn't love her enough or maybe Mother didn't love them.'

‘If all men think like Uncle George and behave like the three fathers that came after ours, what chance do women have?'

Jerome didn't know what to say. He knew that children were women's work, that houses were women's work as was the preparation of food. His mother had shown such tendencies every day and Uncle George had taught him such things. He also knew that Abelena had undertaken these roles following their mother's death without being asked and so the task of child-rearing had fallen to her. Rising, Jerome dipped a tin cup into a bucket of water sitting near the dying fire and drank thirstily. Through the half-boarded window and its single pane of uncracked glass, their few items of clothing were hanging to dry across a wire. It was the first washing day in a number of weeks. The clothes would smell better but by the time they were dry the dust would have streaked the material brown. ‘You want me to take the mattresses outside and shake the dirt out of them?'

‘That would be good. Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever see rain or if the sky will ever be blue again. I'm worried, Jerome. I'm getting tired,' she sighed, ‘and there is always the hunger.'

‘When did you last eat?'

She gave a wan smile. ‘I don't remember.'

‘If you don't eat you will grow sick and then who will care for the children?' he replied angrily. ‘You know better than that, Abelena.'

‘Everything is so simple for you. Do you not see that there is scarcely enough food to bulge a child's mouth, that each month the Blums give us less and less to eat. Now there is no milk or butter, no lard or sugar, no vegetables and we've no money. You can bet that woman has hundreds of quarts of vegetables and fruit hidden away.'

Jerome splayed his hands across the table. ‘Tomorrow we'll have some cow meat.'

‘I could salt the meat and pack a bit of it in one of those old wooden kegs we found and put it under the house where it's a bit cooler.' His sister tried to sound enthusiastic.

Jerome wondered if it was the Blums' intent to starve them off the farm. If it was, it seemed the bank had beaten them to it. He thought of what Mathew said at the pigsty, of what it meant to be an Apache, of the right to take what was needed. Jerome had a feeling that the old ways were going to be needed very soon if things didn't improve, yet with the Apache way of life at odds with the white man's world, there would be a cost to their survival if he took the path travelled by his ancestors. ‘Things will get better.'

‘And if they don't?' his sister asked.

‘Then we will do what we have to, to survive,' he told her. ‘But first we have a cow to butcher and I will ask Mr Blum for more corn. I won't have Tess starving.'

Abelena's features softened. ‘Maybe she will be the best of us. I can't help the boys. Their futures are their own. Mathew is old enough to find work when we eventually leave this place and where he goes Mark will follow, but I want Tess to have a better life, Jerome. She needs schooling and a proper home.'

‘Then we have to leave.' He looked about the bare, dusty kitchen. ‘I just wonder if the city is the best place for us.'

Abelena patted him on the shoulder. ‘It probably isn't for you and Uncle,' she replied, ‘but we must stay together if we're to survive.'

April, 1935 – The Panhandle, Oklahoma

It was midday. Outside the house Abelena had filled a horse trough with water in order for the children to bathe. The red-headed twins were nowhere to be seen, however Tess, finally untethered, ran in circles around the makeshift bath, squealing loudly. On the third leg of her race she tripped and tumbled about in the dirt, the faded words Chicken Starter across her bottom from the cloth feed sacks that clothed her. Abelena reached for the girl and, stripping the child, sat her in the water. In the distance the Blums' T-Model Ford drove out towards the main road.

Jerome headed away from the house at a slow run. A week had passed since he'd been able to continue his training and his body felt stiff and awkward. He pulled at the scrap of material he wore around his neck so his nose and mouth were protected from the dust and felt his chest strain from the restricted breathing. Uncle George's tutelage went beyond evenings spent under the potent imaginings of the peyote button, and although he sometimes wondered at the sense of training like an Apache warrior, his body always felt better afterwards and a sense of accomplishment pushed him onwards.

Jerome's blue cotton shirt began to cling to his back as he headed for the barn to check on his uncle. The old man was asleep.

‘I see you.'

‘Your eyes are closed,' Jerome replied.

‘My head is always awake.' He waved a hand at the space where the car was usually parked. ‘They did not check the oil or water for dirt.' He clucked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘They have gone to collect the lumpy-headed son they call Michael.'

‘I heard he was returning.' Jerome sat opposite his uncle. ‘The bank came and told Abelena that the Blums no longer share-farmed the eastern block. They said we couldn't stay.'

Uncle George sighed and opened his eyes. ‘This bank is like the crafty coyote. Its people creep over the land spitting out money so the foolish white man can buy their tractors to tear out the heart of Mother Earth. Then when the rains do not come and the land blows away and the white man can see nothing but the jackrabbits invading their farms, the bank takes back what it gave, and more.'

‘Other farmers have left,' Jerome replied. ‘Remember when we first arrived here? Mr Blum said the last folk in our house went west when the bank evicted them. And if you stand by the main road you see old jalopies piled high with anything that isn't nailed down. Those people are headed to California to find work.'

‘The Blums own this land. It is different for them. The bank may puff out its chest but who will buy this land while it withers?' The old man shook his head. ‘In the white man's world a land empty of landowners is worthless to the bank.'

‘How can you be so sure that the Blums will stay?' Jerome asked.

‘The white woman wants to move to Oklahoma City but Mr Blum won't leave this place.' His uncle was clearly pleased with the owner's stance. ‘He says to his woman, “You go, but I will not leave the ground that my father worked before me.” This is as it should be.'

‘Abelena thinks we should move back to Boise City.'

Uncle George rubbed at a droopy eyelid. ‘Abelena, Abelena,' he repeated irritably. ‘What do
you
wish to do, boy?'

Jerome grinned. ‘The air is not so bad today so I will run across the fields until I come to the dry gully and then I will run her length until my legs cannot carry me.'

The old man nodded and passed Jerome the woven basket of water. ‘Good, take a mouthful and hold it as you have been taught. Do not swallow it or spit it out until you have covered a great many miles.' He sniffed at the air, his nostrils flaring. ‘Watch the sky. A storm is on its way.'

Jerome peered disbelievingly through the gap in the timber boards and then shook the basket of water, listening to the liquid as it swirled within.

‘Remember the old people's ways,' Uncle George reminded him.

‘Always.' Jerome took a slug of the warm water and, holding it in his mouth, grinned at his uncle. The old man nodded, pleased.

Outside Jerome headed through the remnants of sparse wheat stubble and, eyes directed at the horizon, continued running. The water was warm in his mouth, the urge to swallow great. Turning his thoughts inward, he concentrated on the gritty air being sucked down through his nose and into his lungs. He willed his throat to close over and for his mouth to go slack as he trained in the Apache way. The sun became a distant object, the thick dirt a cushion beneath his feet as his stride lengthened and the land stretched out before him. The world dwindled in size with each mile covered and, as Jerome ran on, he became aware of his body moving automatically. Time was irrelevant, there was only the steady pull of air entering and leaving his lungs, the beat of his heart and the rhythmic movement of his legs.

The earth almost shimmered as he ran across her gritty membrane. He imagined the impressions left by his bare feet, began to feel the slightest of temperature changes as he moved through patches of warmer or cooler air. Overhead, a hawk circled, a gopher snake slithered through the dirt and still his eyes remained on the horizon as the water sloshed in his mouth.

At a gully he slipped to its sandy bottom and ran along the dry bed, his feet numb. Having run in a half-circle, very soon he would cut across the desolate fields belonging to the Blums' neighbours and find himself heading back towards the barn where his uncle lay. The cotton shirt, moulded to his body with sweat, cooled his skin as he ran and still he kept going, willing his body to endure.

Having exceeded the four-mile distance designated by his uncle two years ago, Jerome could now cover ten miles easily, although it was true that with his poor diet, tiredness often consumed him for a time afterwards. Abelena would berate him on his return for his stupidity yet Jerome felt compelled to do his uncle's bidding and, despite his own mother's family having suffered at the hands of his people, he was proud of his Apache blood. If José had stayed with them Jerome knew Uncle George would not have become the central figure in his life, but the man had not and so instead of living a white man's life with white man possibilities, he was straddling two worlds, belonging to neither. The Apache way gave him something to cling to and Jerome knew he was the stronger for it. He could run long distances, survive on little food and water for days at a time and had trained to endure long periods of exhaustion by going without sleep over consecutive nights. His body had grown lean and muscular. He was dark-haired, like his sister Abelena and they had both inherited the fine features of their mother. Yet unlike Abelena, he could not pass as a white man but nor was he a pure blood Apache in looks.

As the gully twisted and turned, the first faint stirrings of tiredness began to pull at his muscles. He ran out of the dry bed and headed across country, his eyes gritty as his mind began to wander. The countryside wavered and for a moment he believed he was staring at a picture, the corners of which were curled and yellowed by the sun, then The Great Plains rose up as they had the previous night.

The thick grasses rippled in the wind and the air held a tangy freshness. Jerome ran towards grazing buffalo as the light grew in intensity. Seconds later a shadow crossed the face of the sun and a golden eagle swooped towards him. His legs stilled without warning and he swallowed the water in his mouth.

Gasping for breath, he looked up cautiously. The sky was a hazy brown, the grassy plains replaced by the dustbowl the land had become.

A flutter of movement caught Jerome's attention. Ahead, the golden eagle swooped low to land on the barren ground in front of him. Folding its massive wings, the bird observed him for long seconds, tilting his head from one side to the other. This time Jerome wasn't sure if he dreamt or if the bird truly existed so he kept perfectly still until finally the eagle took flight. It circled back in the direction of the gully and then soared skyward to disappear into the glare of the sun.

In the eagle's place was the figure of an Indian. Jerome dropped to one knee, stunned by the apparition before him. The man stood some three hundred feet away and wore his black hair to the shoulders with a colourful bandana tied about his head. In his hand he carried a rifle. Around the man's waist was a glittering weapons belt that held a handgun and a knife. The man lifted the rifle as if in salute, and then disappeared.

Confused, Jerome wanted to head in the direction in which he'd seen the Indian, yet he knew the figure didn't exist, at least not in terms of flesh and blood. Nor was it a person from the present. The man's attire was from another age. As Jerome tried to justify what he'd seen, the unmistakeable stink of dust filled the air. Billowing dark clouds were gathering on the horizon. They swelled skyward, mushrooming out across the heavens and dwarfing the sun until the great orb was obliterated. Taking a few steps backwards, Jerome turned on his heel and began to run as the dark mass chased him. With the Blums away, the pigs needed to be caught and ushered to the safety of their stalls and the chickens locked in their roost. Animals and people had died from such black blizzards. There were stories of wayward children being caught outdoors, of townsfolk being engulfed in the street, of cars running off roads in the blackness. At the very least a person could become hopelessly lost out in the open during a dust storm, a predicament that could lead to suffocation. Jerome gritted his teeth and ran.

Abelena tugged at the tether about her waist and shushed Tess to quietness. With a quick look through the homestead door, she shut it quietly and peered around the Blums' kitchen. She'd never broken into a house before, never stolen. Such an act wouldn't have troubled Uncle George, he considered it a right to take what was needed, but for Abelena it showed how desperate she'd become, and how angry.

‘Why are we here?' Tess asked.

There was a good-sized kitchen table with wooden chairs and a sink for washing and a pot-belly stove for cooking. Abelena began opening drawers, marvelling at the cooking utensils. In a drawer used to make bread in order to keep the dust out, she discovered a fresh loaf. She blanched at the uneaten food and, briefly hesitating, broke off a chunk, cramming it into her mouth.

‘Give me some,' Tess cried.

‘Here,' Abelena soothed, handing her a piece. ‘You'll be good and not run away?'

‘Yes.'

Untying the tether confining the child, Tess sat at the kitchen table and waited as Abelena evened up the bread with a nearby knife. She gave the cut piece to Tess and then brushed the crumbs into her palm, eating them before closing the drawer.

There were china cups on a wooden dresser, china plates stacked neatly atop a cupboard and a big clock that sat inside a wooden case nearly as tall as a man. The windows were uncracked with faded curtains and there were pictures of people in frames hanging on the wall. A series of wooden shelves held dried herbs and canisters of sugar and salt. Glasses rested on the sink.

Abelena crossed the kitchen floor and opened a tall cupboard. Inside were cans and jars of bought food; carnation milk, flour, vanilla essence and gelatine amongst other ingredients. Selecting a tin of milk, she searched the drawers until she found a can opener and poured Tess a glass. The girl gulped at it eagerly and burped, a white circle shadowing her lips.

‘Is there more?'

‘Shush.' Abelena drank from the tin and then poured Tess the rest of the milk. ‘Stay here and be quiet.'

Out the back door and to the right was the house cellar. She slid the crossbar to one side and, flinging open the door, stepped down into the shallow basement built beneath the farmhouse. A minute or so after her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, Abelena found herself standing in the middle of the small space. The cellar was lined with wooden shelves filled with hundreds of jars of food. She stared at this hoard of quart jars that were sealed with rubber and zinc. There were tomatoes and beans, onions and corn and other fruits and vegetables she'd not seen for a number of years. Mrs Blum had ensured she'd canned a plentiful supply of food for the winter months from the vegetable garden before it died out. The jars' neat labels dated back to 1931. There were also wooden kegs containing salted meat and bags of flour, sugar and potatoes.

She reached for a folded cloth sack sitting on one of the shelves. By the time Abelena closed the cellar door she'd stuffed the sack with two quart jars of tomatoes, six large potatoes, a jar of coffee and enough flour to make a loaf of bread. She hoped Mrs Blum wouldn't notice anything missing.

Inside the house there was no sign of Tess. Abelena checked the bedrooms, calling the girl's name as she searched, but there was no response. Rinsing out the milk glass in the sink she placed it back with the other glasses, straightened the chair Tess had sat in and cleaned up any crumbs, before dropping the empty milk tin in the sack with the goods from the cellar. Certain the house showed no signs of their visit, Abelena swung the bag over her shoulder and walked out the back door.