Wild Rose (21 page)

Sophie had gone to the other side of the wagon and was helping the woman down. She was stout, at least fifty, an old woman, Sophie noted, too bad, she’d hoped for a friend, but despite her age, the horde of children of all ages leaping from the back of the wagon, and her corpulence, she was strong, so strong Sophie wondered if what she had taken as fat was instead muscle, like a man. Smiling, the woman shook off Sophie’s helping hand on her elbow.

“Oh, that prairie!” she exclaimed, “My back is broken in ten places!” But then, changing her tone, she went on, stiffly, properly, “I am Madame Beausoleil, Séraphine Beausoleil, and you…” here her serious expression dissolved into a grin, and she threw her arms wide, “You are our new neighbours!
Bienvenue, bienvenue!
How I have longed for neighbours! We meant to come sooner but what with all the work and winter never too far away…” She apparently planned to go on, but had taken Sophie in her arms and hugged her as if she had known her all her life. Sophie, out of surprise (or so she would tell herself), could not stop herself from hugging her back. “And these,” she went on as she stepped back, sweeping her arm around to indicate the children, are, “Théophile, Rémy, Martine and Marie-Anne, Aurore and Jacqueline.”

Huge tears abruptly began to run freely down her cheeks, and Sophie, to her dismay, found tears had started in her own eyes. At the same time she couldn’t stop herself from recognizing the Beausoleils as one of the
habitants
families she thought she had left behind in Québec, nor could she quite quell a touch of unease that she recognized as coming from her grandmother’s attitude toward such people, people from whom she had tried to keep Sophie separate. And now, in all places, the middle of nowhere, Sophie seemed to find herself one of them.

On the other side of the wagon the men were still talking loudly, their voices overlapping, questions being asked about where in Québec the Beausoleils had come from and then the Hippolytes, and mention being made of this relative or that who might once have lived where the other family lived. Soon the horses, still pulling the wagon, were being led to the corral, barely begun and with its too-small wooden trough, where they would be unhitched, given water, and using hobbles, be allowed to graze.

“No fences!” Sophie heard the man whose name she now knew was Napoléon, shouting, “I will come and help you. Fences, you can’t do without them. We can be of help to each other,
non?”

“A garden! You have begun a garden, so good, good for you!” Sophie was already leading Séraphine over to have a look at it.

“If only it would rain,” she said. “Then I could put all the seeds in, but right now, the ground is still too lumpy and it is too hard to chop it down into good soil. I’ve done some,” she pointed out, and looked questioningly at Séraphine, wanting advice from the older woman, who stood, elbows extended, fists on her wide hips considering the situation.

“Time for all that,” she said, turning away. “Now, the children must eat,” and began to walk toward the wagon, calling to the oldest girl, “Martine, Martine, bring the basket.”

The basket contained two loaves of fresh bread and a jar of Saskatoon berries that Mme Beausoleil had brought as a gift for their new neighbours.

“The last one,” she declared, and when Sophie remonstrated, she said that soon there would be a fresh crop and she would can them and they would have their winter’s supply.

“It’s going to be a good berry season,” Napoléon announced, puffing at his pipe as they sat, the men and children on the grass, the two women on empty packing cases.

“We can meet at the berry patch north of here,” Mme said. “We can all pick berries together. Like at home.” There was also home-canned beef to eat, from a steer butchered from the Beausoleil’s small herd.

“We need
venaison
,” Pierre murmured, gazing out across the prairie to where, faintly, they could see a few antelope who seemed unaware that nearby were humans who would see them, not as a party of the beauty, but as a meal. “Our supply of meat is almost gone, but I’ve been so busy…”

“We need to make a hunting party,” Napoléon said to him, “Like our cousins, the
Métis
. We pack up camp; we all go; we hunt for weeks and months. Sophie and Séraphine there, they can skin the animals, gut them, slice up the meat and hang it to dry in the sun on racks.” He was laughing. Sophie stared at him in surprise.
Our cousins? What could he be thinking of?
Still, fresh meat, even if the day would never come when she would skin and gut an animal. What nonsense he talked, she decided. The basket had also contained a bottle of homemade wine and he had been drinking freely from it. So had Pierre, now that she noticed. Even Séraphine had taken a small glass and Sophie had accepted one out of politeness, but so far hadn’t even sipped at it.

Next from the capacious basket came oatmeal
biscuits
, large and a bit hard, but when she bit into them, the flavor of Québec came rolling out to fill her mouth and throat.

“You used maple syrup!” she cried, her mouth full. Séraphine merely nodded, frowning, as she tasted her own
biscuit
.

“It used to come into the settlement,” she said, meaning, Sophie understood, the Red River settlement. “So we get a tiny bit shipped to us sometimes.” It was in the flavor of the cookie that Sophie came at last to understand how important this visit was to the Beausoleils, never mind to herself and Pierre.

“You are so kind to bring some to us,” she cried, turning to Séraphine, blinking in her sudden emotion.

“New neighours, well…” Séraphine said, the corners of her mouth turned down, thrusting out both hands, palms up. “And a woman to see sometimes. I will feel better just to know you are here, hoeing and digging and cooking, like I myself am doing, just over the grass from my house. How good it is to have you here!”

“I have a million questions,” Sophie told her. “I don’t know where to start.”

Pierre said, “Sophie comes from a house with a maid and a cook.” He laughed, teasing her, but she thought in surprise, with a faintly derisory note. Was he mocking her?

“Oh, Pierre,” she said, chiding. Séraphine was staring at her as if seeing her for the first time.

“I thought…I wondered,” she said, staring back, her eyes wide, searching Sophie’s face. “Oh,
ma pauvre petite
, how hard this is for you!” If Pierre had expected laughter or angry sneers at the product of the
seigneurys
from the Beausoleils, he was not getting it. Even Napoléon gazed at her with wide open eyes, then turned his head away, saying nothing.

“I can work just like…anyone,” she said, angry, but with a hint of her surprise at Pierre’s suddenly turning on her. All three voices agreed with low murmurs, and Séraphine looked hard at Pierre as if to remonstrate with him for being cruel to his young wife. Pierre was stretched out on the grass, lying on his side, supporting himself with his elbow so that the upper half of his body curved upward.

“Did you see her garden?” he asked, falling on his back so that he could look up at the sky instead of at the rest of them.

“Oh, yes,
certainement
,” the Beausoleils said.

“She has done hard work,” Pierre muttered.

But Sophie was wondering in what way she had failed him, but could not, no matter how she searched her memory, think of anything she might have done that she hadn’t, or that she might have done differently.

“Séraphine,” she cried, “you must tell me what I need to do!” She gazed about the camp, all the sacks and boxes neatly arranged, the kindling for the stove kept in the tent, the now empty bucket for water waiting at the open flap into the tent.
She could think of nothing. Was there some mystery here that needed solving? But Séraphine had her lips pressed in a tight line.

“You are doing very well,” she said. “I see nothing forgotten here, or undone. The Blessed Virgin knows you have been here only a few months and there is plowing and building to be done first.” She threw out a hand as if to indicate the impossibility of this vast place and its distance from civilization. “But I will help you.”

The Beausoleils were gone by mid-afternoon, having cows to milk, animals to pen, and the long, bumpy ride back across the prairie to get through. Before they drove away Napoléon insisted that he and Pierre and the oldest boy, Théophile, would take Pierre’s oxen and the wagon and help him fill the barrel. “We have used up all your water!” he cried, and would listen to no objections. How relieved Sophie was, although she had objected briefly too. When the family was no more than a tiny black dot across the yellowed grass, a new mood descended on Sophie, who was at once elated, exhausted, and for a few long, bad moments, feeling thoroughly abandoned. How can this be, she wondered, when before I saw them coming across the prairie I was happy as a lark all alone out here?

The following morning, though, she rose into the clear, early morning, the air cool and lighter than silk on her skin, and could not believe that no children would come shrieking past her, chasing each other. How still it was, only the faint calls of the tiny birds that lived in the grass disturbing the silence. The sun was barely breaking the horizon to the east, sending long fingers of gold across the grass to where it reached her standing alone beside the tent, her elongated shadow stretching like a dark finger behind her. A few feet out from the tent a gopher popped its head up from its hole, looked about – Sophie held still so that it wouldn’t see her – then pulled itself out to stand upright, surveying its kingdom. She wanted to laugh; how self-important it was, like Napoléon Beausoleil. She lifted a hand to cover her laugh at this absurd thought and the gopher was gone in a flash.

Pierre got up, moving slowly, stretching and yawning, but with a look of his old near-contentment on his face that she was relieved to see, washed himself in the puddle of water Sophie had heated for him over the small fire she had built to allow him a few more minutes sleep, and after eating the last of Mme Beausoleil’s bread and meat, went back to plowing. He looked fully into her face before he went to hitch the oxen, holding her with his arms around her shoulders, lifting a hand to play with her still-touseled hair. She remembered then how he had been cruel to her yesterday and wanted to ask him how she had failed him, but could not bring herself to say anything. His eyes this morning, she thought, were again full of love for her, and seeming to know what she was thinking, he said, “Sophie, you are the best wife a man could have. I would not be here with anyone else,” and kissed her full on the lips before dropping his arms and going away. Contented by this, it was a long time before she began to wonder, just a little, what he had meant by that last remark. If it hadn’t been for her, he wouldn’t be here? He
would be home with his family, married to a solid
habitante
who…who…could do the plowing herself, she thought, for an instant angry again. Who would have dug up that entire garden all by herself on the first afternoon, but after she had delivered a baby first. The ridiculousness of this made her laugh, and her
anger, or unease, or whatever it was, dissipated.

She wished that the men had gathered a real pile of wood while they were at the stream, instead of the armful they had brought back. But she had been so pleased about the water, and they had been doing so much talking – and, it must be admitted, drinking – that they seemed not to have thought very seriously about what else was needed. Never mind. She would go herself, and went into the tent to
transfer contents from a sack into an empty packing box so that she would have something in which to carry back the wood. When I return, she told herself, I will dig in that cursed prairie if it kills me. I will break those infernal sods to infernal powder. No one will be able to say I’m not a fit wife for a homesteader.

When evening came, Pierre stopped early, before his supper was even ready. Tomorrow we go to town, he told her. I am too tired even to hitch the plow for another day’s work. Even the oxen are tired. He didn’t look about to see how much work she had done in the garden patch, or even to notice how much wood she had gathered, having made two trips instead of the one she had originally planned. She thought to herself that Séraphine Beausoleil would not expect her husband to notice every bit of work she did; one worked, that was all. One worked as hard as one could, every day, forever. The thought chilled her momentarily, but then, Pierre rose, mumbled something to her, and went into the tent where she could hear him undressing. By the time she had extinguished the fire, put the food and dishes away, and undressed herself, he had been, for some time, snoring loudly.

So their first summer on the prairie went, work and more work, although neither of them flagged for longer than a second, in love with this strange new landscape and each other, and the promise of a prosperous future if they could just accomplish all that lay before them. First, the cabin and at the same time, a dugout barn for the oxen and Fleurette, and then the animals they saw themselves soon acquiring: a pair of workhorses, the beginning of a small herd of cattle so they would have something that could be sold quickly to raise a little cash if they needed it. There would be fences, and a farmyard alive with chickens, ducks and geese; there would be a flower garden, not just the vegetable garden that would keep them from starving during the coming winter. On and on it went, all of these needs beyond the plowing of the land that never stopped except for the building, and if either of them paused at all to think of what lay ahead of them, they soon chased away their fears, believing in themselves and their youth and strength.