Prairie Widow (17 page)

And still she waited. Before she knew it, spring had peaked and was already fading. The tallest flowers yet were now appearing in the swelling grasses: the daisies, larkspur, and wild roses. Then, one hot day in early July, while washing clothes in a tub before her dugout, sleeves rolled up, dark hair drawn tightly back in a bun, Jennifer noticed familiar pink flowers, mostly because of all the hoardes of monarch butterflies fluttering about them. Emma, who was helping with the wash, told her mother what they were: milkweed.

Jennifer remembered now. These were the flowers that had greeted her when she first arrived in Four Comers. But could it be? Had she really been there a year? And yet not even for such an occasion as that did the weeks pause, for it didn't seem so long before a different, and still sadder, anniversary arrived.

Jennifer and her children hadn't been to the cemetery since Walter was buried. It looked very different. The grasses had infiltrated the tombstones, except for where there were some freshly dug sites, mostly on the perimeter. Jennifer and her children waded their way from one marker to the other, brushing back the tawny-green grass. When they found Walter's grave, they bent those tough grasses back and tugged at them until they could read the stone's inscription. Then they stood silently before the marker, Jennifer embracing her children by their shoulders. She and Emma cried softly while Peter clenched his jaw and wiped away the occasional stray tear from his reddened cheek.

Still, the weeks passed. And while during that time there came no railroad—and Jennifer was beginning to think there never would be—there did arrive a letter. It was dropped off at Pearson's Inn with other mail from the east by westward-bound homesteaders. The letter, however, was not the one Jennifer expected.

Dear Jenny,

Can anyone be as unfortunate as I? What news I have to tell you! Your letter, meant for your father's eyes, has instead reached mine. And now I sit before my desk, wondering how to tell you what I must. If only you hadn't lost Walter! My dear, poor thing, just when you need solace the most, I must compound your woes, for your father, too, has passed away…

Jennifer, standing on the loose planking before the inn, stared glassy-eyed at those scribbled words of Dorothy Owens, her neigbhor back in Ohio. “Poppa? Gone?”

…
Your very house has been sold to pay for his debts. What unfriendly people live there now! Oh, if only there had been someone else to tell you this
…

Jennifer closed her eyes tightly. A tear dribbled down her cheek. So all this time her Poppa had not been sitting before the hearth, awaiting her return. He had been in the cold ground! Like Walter! Oh, it smacked of a conspiracy! If she didn't know better, Jennifer would have sworn the two had actually arranged it that way, to sneak off together, leaving her with her earthly burdens so they could pal around in Eternity!

“Is the letter from Grandpoppa?” came Peter's voice as the boy stepped up, holding his sister's hand. Both had green-striped candy sticks from Franz's store.

Jennifer gazed at her children. “Get in the buggy,” she said stiffly. “I have something to tell you.”

That night, the dugout was silent. Peter kept trying not to cry, but sometimes he broke down. At one point, Emma, teary-eyed, went up to her mother rocking in her chair before the cookstove. “Is Grandpoppa keeping Poppa company?” she asked, her eyes red.

The very notion angered Jennifer. Her own eyes watery, she began rocking harder. “I imagine so,” she said curtly.

Then later, with her children sleeping in their comer, Jennifer calmed down enough to come to a sobering realization—there was no longer anyone waiting for her back home. There wasn't even a house there. No Poppa. No hearth. Suddenly, she felt her feet take root in the dirt floor— as if, with no connection back home, and after now having lived in that hillside for so long, she had just at that moment become—like all the animals, grasses, and flowers around her—part of the prairie's sod.

This she could not let happen. “No, I am not a prairie plant,” she murmured. “I can return east. And I will.”

Autumn arrived. It was Jennifer's second autumn in Kansas, and this time around she recognized, from lands that had been spared the fire the previous year, the prairie's apparent cycle of the seasons. This was the time of the year when the grasses, having reached their greatest height, were now tawny and ready to wither, when those tallest flowers of all—the yellow goldenrod and sunflowers—were blooming, and when her students, all a year older, again departed to help their families with the harvesting.

But, this time around, there was something she hadn't before seen—at least not in such great numbers…

The ground was littered with grasshoppers. When she went to the well, Jennifer would knock one or two off the bucket. When she went to the stall, she'd find several clinging to the sod walls. And when she went to the garden, she found the most, all eating away at the leaves of her lettuce, potatoes, and watermelons. Karl Pfeffer's chickens chased them around with outstretched necks, trying to gobble them up, but without much success.

“Where did they all come from?” wondered Jennifer out loud as she and her children walked through the vegetables to knock away and squash the big, jointy-legged insects with the children's old shoes.

Then, while her children worked, Jennifer noticed off to the northwest a strange cloud. It was massive and stretched clear along the length of the horizon. Jennifer at first thought it was an approaching storm and worried about her dugout flooding. But it didn't really look like a storm cloud.

Then she thought it might be smoke. Another prairie fire? “Wilkes!” she gasped. But, no, it didn't look like smoke either.

This cloud scintillated, almost as if, brushing through the atmosphere, it were crackling with static electricity. Also, it seemed to move fester than the wind was blowing, as if it had a life of its own.

Below the cloud Jennifer now noticed a distant, solitary horseman, or rather muleman, riding on the trail in her direction. Jennifer hoped it was Joseph. He would know what the cloud was. But when, finally, the man had gotten close enough, Jennifer saw that it was Isaac.

“Why, Mr. Caulder!” called Jennifer from her door when Issac had at last reached earshot. “I never expect a visit from you!” She waited till he was close enough so that she could lower her voice. “I'm delighted.”

Isaac Caulder didn't answer. He just kept up a steady walk on his mule until he came right up to Jennifer.

“Morning, Mr. Caulder!” called Emma, standing up a moment from her work in the garden. “Did you ever see so many grasshoppers?”

Isaac Caulder ignored the child. “

They do seem to be all over,” said Jennifer, looking about her. “But come in. I can spare a moment and make us some tea.”

Isaac Caulder looked grimmer than usual. His jaw was unshaven. His tired eyes were sunken, his hat slouched low. His whole body hunched over the saddle pommel as if he might soon topple. He seemed so loath to move that he hadn't even bothered to knock away a grasshopper that clung to his beaten coat and another that stubbornly clung to a long, flicking ear of his mule. “I didn't come for tea,” muttered Isaac.

Jennifer lifted her chin, preparing to defend herself once more. “You seem upset over something. I do hope it doesn't involve that chair Joseph gave me. I told him…”

“I didn't come for the chair.” Isaac ground his jaw muscles. “I've come to set something right.” The grim man swallowed hard. His eyes focused on the grasshopper-spangled ground. “I come to give you and Joe my blessing.”

Jennifer pressed back and placed an open hand on her chest. “Your blessing!”

“And I hope to get your forgiveness.”

Jennifer softened. She shook her head sympathetically. “You needn't apologize for anything. I know I must have seemed an intruder. But why don't you come in so we can talk?”

“Ain't possible. I'd only bring more ruin on your home.”

“Heavens, Mr. Caulder, you are being more puzzling today than usual.”

“In the Bible it tells of a ship that nearly sunk 'cause it had a sinner aboard. God wasn't appeased until that sinner was thrown over.”

“That was Jonah!” came in Emma, proudly displaying her knowledge. “He was swallowed by the whale!”

“I'm a sinner,” said Isaac. “And I'm leaving before God scourges this land.”

“Mr. Caulder,” said Jennifer slowly, “I'm still not sure I'm following you.”

But even as she spoke, Jennifer found herself distracted by that cloud, which, so much closer now, was filling the sky behind the slumped man on his mule.

“I sinned twice against you,” continued Isaac, his mule pawing the ground nervously and grunting, as was the mule in the stall. “And then I sinned against Bill by letting him take the blame.”

Jennifer, still distracted by the cloud, only barely heard her mumbling neighbor. “Take the blame? For what? What are you saying?” Then Jennifer fell silent. She stared up at the bedraggled man. “My God, Mr. Caulder, you don't mean it was you…”

“But I'm setting it straight,” said Isaac. “Like I said, you and Joe got my blessing.”

The cloud behind Isaac Caulder was closer. It moved in great undulating layers, like huge waves of an ethereal sea, its front portions breaking now and then upon the prairie below.

“And you don't fret about this scourge,” said Isaac. “It'll follow me out.”

“Mr. Caulder,” said Jennifer, not sure where to direct her attention anymore, “if I understand you correctly, then we've done a great injustice to Mr. Wilkes.”

“Justice will be done,” assured Isaac, tugging at his reins and turning his restless mount away. “God has rooted out his sinner.” He started off slowly toward the tall grass.

Jennifer wished to call out to him, but she could no longer ignore the cloud, which loomed shimmering ever nearer. It engulfed so much of the sky by now that it threatened to swallow the noon sun. And from it could be heard a low hum.

Just then, a grasshopper landed on the ground next to Jennifer. As if the ground were too hot, it jumped up with a click and landed several feet away. Then a second grasshopper landed farther off, hopped with a click and settled near her. These were followed by a third and fourth grasshopper, also hopping with clicks and resettling, and then by still others, all landing here and there, hopping with clicks, and relan-ding like so much popping com. Before long, there were so many grasshoppers falling to the ground, the two excited chickens were having better luck in catching them.

Then the hum grew louder. The sun darkened. And as Jennifer glanced up, seeing the sun dimmed as if behind a scrim, the great cloud burst upon the land like a blizzard of frenzied flecks and glinting sparks, the air filled with a whirring roar. Isaac Caulder, moving off, was lost from view. Indeed, so thick was the blizzard that objects much closer—the well, the stall where the mule bayed wildly, the dugout itself—all disappeared in the blinding storm. Jennifer and her children became quickly spangled with dropping, clinging grasshoppers, which struck hard, like hail. Jennifer frantically tried brushing them off, only to have more settle upon her. “Get inside!” she finally shouted over the din as she shielded her mouth with one hand. She rushed to sweep her children, whom she could hardly see, to shelter.

“Get them off!” cried Emma, cringing frozen where she had been working in the garden and covering her face. Jennifer ushered both her and Peter toward the dugout.

The ground had quickly become inches thick with grasshoppers, and each footstep squished several of them into a slimy mash, smearing the children's bare feet. Only paces from her door, Jennifer herself slipped on the slushy bodies. As she pushed herself up, her open hand crunched even more of them. Peter darted out to help his mother, but Jennifer lifted herself and pushed him back into the dugout, whereupon she slammed the door behind her.

“Get them off!” repeated Emma, her hands swiping at her sleeves and dress, whose green hem had attracted a particularly thick congregation of grasshoppers. Her mother and brother swiped away at her dress. By the time the grasshoppers had been knocked off, the hem was gone.

Shuddering, Peter next began to shake his own shirt, for grasshoppers had dropped into it, and Jennifer began to shake out her dress. Emma helped, knocking away grasshoppers from her mother's tusseled hair and onto the dirt floor, where many insects crawled about on long, backward-jointed legs.

Meanwhile, beyond the window, the wide open prairie was no longer to be seen but only the thick roiling air. Some grasshoppers were trying to climb up the panes, only to slide back down again, their bulbous eyes staring blankly inside. Others, in whirring flight, kept thudding against the panes. One pane, which had already been cracked during the transfer from town, now broke, and grasshoppers began flitting into the dimly lit room and settling on the floor, table, chairs, and walls. A few sizzled when they landed on the stove, and a few struggled and then drowned in a pot of water.

Jennifer rushed to stuff one of her blouses into the jagged opening of the window. Meanwhile, those grasshoppers already inside were everywhere eating. They ate into a sack of flour, they pressed themselves into a sugar bowl, they blanketed a loaf of bread, they filled a basket of vegetables from the garden, and they set upon some folded linen lying on the crate. They even gnawed at the sweat-stained handle of the scythe leaning in the comer. Jennifer started for the broom, but its bristles were already being devoured. “Swat them with the books!” she ordered.

“Will they eat us, too?” cried Emma, as she timidly poked at grasshoppers feasting on a McGuffey Reader.