The Great Plains (27 page)

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 it'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.

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.'

‘If we make it?' Abelena's brow furrowed. ‘We're going to have to find food.'

They had talked briefly about killing the horse, but he was too valuable. If anything they needed another two, then they could all ride and double a child each. They'd only risked a campfire twice since their journey's beginning. Jerome had snared jackrabbits to roast but for the remainder of the time they'd subsisted on water and a bag of uncooked corn they'd stolen from the Blums on their leaving. ‘At least there will be timber to burn tonight.' Jerome glanced at the twins.

‘They sleep,' his uncle confirmed.

Mathew had been trouble since their forced leaving. Annoyed that they'd had to run from the farm, he'd been vocal in his complaining. The boy was old enough to recognise the difficulties they faced as a family if they all stayed together and more than once he'd suggested that Jerome either give himself up or take off on his own.

‘He worries for Mark,' Abelena explained, ‘and I don't blame him. The boy has been afraid and confused since our leaving.'

‘We have more than one to worry about.' Jerome rose and walked to where Ernst was tethered to a ground stake. ‘Let's get moving before it's broad daylight.'

‘Look, the mountains are shining.'

They stood in the main street of the deserted town and looked to where Mark pointed. The flat-topped hill, which had given them shelter during the night, rose from the red earth and sparkled brilliantly as though flecked with silver and glass.

‘Crystals, crystals in the mountain,' Uncle George explained. ‘Come, we look for food.'

The deserted town yielded little. An uninspiring destination of eight buildings, the structures verged from partial to near ruin. Timber shutters banged on cracked windows, doors swung uselessly on broken hinges and signs that once noted a general store and a blacksmith's forge lay in the dirt. Tying Ernst to a hitching rail, Jerome led the way as they went from building to building. Initially he'd hoped for a scrap of food, clothing, anything useful. However, he'd soon realised this was a town long abandoned.

‘Nothing,' Mathew said loudly from the middle of the street. ‘Ain't nothing here.'

Uncle George urged him to keep his voice down.

‘Why?' Mathew yelled. ‘There isn't anyone here.' His young voice echoed in and out of the deserted buildings.

The old Indian grabbed the boy by the ear and tugged at it until he squealed before letting go. ‘If I tell you to be quiet, then be quiet.'

Mathew spat on the ground and joined Tess and his brother. Mark was on his knees peering under the landing of the general store. He held out his hand and a few minutes later a tawny cat appeared from under the timber.

‘Why didn't it run away?' Abelena asked Jerome as they watched the children petting it.

‘Good question,' Jerome answered. ‘Let's have another look around. It could be that that cat's friendly because he's used to people coming through here on a regular basis.'

Leaving the children in the street, Jerome, Abelena and Uncle George walked around to the rear of the buildings. Lengths of rotting timber lay scattered on the ground amidst stubby bushes, while the land stretched towards mesas that squatted forlornly in the distance. Behind the blacksmith's they found horse manure and the remains of a campfire. Uncle George crouched to prod the ring of blackened earth.

‘Three days at the most, two men.' He traced a hoof print with a forefinger. ‘They're travelling light.' He followed the hoof marks in the dirt for a number of feet. ‘They came from the east and are heading west.'

Jerome prised the lid off a wooden keg standing at the rear of the building. ‘Look at this.' He pulled free a couple of blankets, canteens of water and a half dozen tins of beans.

Uncle George shook his head. ‘Put it back.'

‘But we can use this, old man.' Abelena looked to her brother for agreement.

‘You would steal from these men?' Uncle George asked her.

Abelena laughed. ‘Now you're becoming righteous? What happened to the Apache ways?'

‘He's right,' Jerome said to his sister, ‘these men could be dangerous. Look at us. We have no guns, only children.'

‘Who have to be fed.' Abelena rolled the tins up in one of the blankets and hefted it over her shoulder. ‘You both know Tess is not herself. She needs more food. Bring the rest, Jerome. We'll be out of here by nightfall anyway.'

Jerome looked to his uncle as his sister walked away.

‘I would sooner try to trick a coyote than argue with a mother hen over the feeding of young chicks.' The old Indian leant against the wall of the deserted blacksmith's building and began to cough. By the time the spasm had passed, he was gasping for air.

‘You need to rest,' Jerome advised, lifting the other blanket and slinging the canteens across his shoulder.

‘There will be plenty of time for that,' his uncle replied.

They walked back to the general store. Uncle George called for the children to come indoors while Jerome led the Blums' horse inside the dilapidated building to a store room. Here he tied the animal securely.

‘Do you think those men will come back?' Abelena cut the scavenged blankets in half with a knife she'd found behind the wooden counter. The few belongings they'd brought with them, a change of shirt for all and Uncle George's possessions, sat in a heap on the floor.

‘Perhaps,' Jerome replied. ‘Better to be careful.' Picking up a pile of tattered wheat bags, he shook them vigorously before laying them on the rotted floor for bedding. ‘I'll go outside and have another look around.'

‘Cat come?' Mark asked, lingering in the doorway with the animal purring in his arms.

‘Sure he can,' Abelena told him.

Abelena cut neck holes in the blankets and slipped the roughly made ponchos over the twins' heads and then Tess's.

Mark and Tess lay on one of the bags, the cat between them, as Mathew helped Abelena break up splintery lengths of wood for kindling. She was surprised at his helping without being asked. There was a pot-belly stove shoved up in a corner of the store. Although the flue was missing, it was sitting directly beneath a gaping hole in the ceiling. ‘At least we'll be warm for a few hours this evening before we move on,' Abelena told the boy as they stacked the wood. ‘I'll light it late in the afternoon.'

Stacking the timber near the stove, Mathew watched Abelena puncture a tin of beans with the knife. ‘Where'd you find that?'

‘Outside.' Abelena shared the contents between two tin mugs. ‘Here you go, give that to your brother and Tess, you and I will share another tin.'

‘Can Mark keep the cat?' Mathew asked, picking up the mugs.

The cat was nosing around their few belongings, hopeful of something to eat. ‘We've barely got enough food for ourselves.'

‘Yeah, but Mark ain't never had anything of his very own.'

‘Neither have you,' Abelena said gently. ‘I tell you what. We'll take him with us when we go, but if the cat doesn't want to stay with us, we'll have to let him go, okay?'

Mathew nodded solemnly, however there was a brightness in his eyes, a gratefulness that was difficult to ignore.

‘No cat,' Uncle George said flatly. ‘If anything we should be eating it.' He moved to Abelena's side. ‘There is a meal there for the children.'

Abelena, busy opening another tin of beans, stilled the knife. ‘You wouldn't?'

Mathew's eyes widened. He glanced at his younger brother. ‘Abelena said –'

The old Indian picked at a splinter in the floorboard. ‘We can't take a cat with us, Mathew.'

‘But it's Mark's,' Mathew argued.

Their uncle ignored the boy. ‘Who do you think will be carrying it, Abelena? What will it eat?'

‘It's a cat, it's harmless,' Abelena argued.

‘And when it runs away and the boy gets upset? No, better the cat stays where we found it.'

‘But Mark won't understand.' Mathew's face was tight with emotion. He waited for his half-sister to speak, for his uncle to change his mind. Instead Abelena concentrated on bending the lid on the canned beans. ‘You don't want us to have anything of our own,' he complained. ‘You boss us and tell us what to do but it's Jerome that's done murder, not Mark and me. Why are we running?' Mathew stomped out of the store.

‘They are children,' Uncle George told his niece. ‘They will soon forget.'

Abelena wasn't so sure.