The Great Plains (22 page)

The old man touched his chest. ‘It is as deep and as wide as the grasses that now lie buried beneath the white man's plough. And now the plough is useless and the land blows away. Each day a little more of Mother Earth's dirt is lifted into the sky. I am ashamed to be a witness to the land's undoing and so in her understanding, she slowly fills my chest with her suffering.'

‘It would be better if you came back to sleep with us.' Jerome pointed at the gappy boards near where his uncle sat. ‘When the storms come you would be safer there.'

His uncle fixed his gaze on the brown-tinged sunlight filling the doorway at the opposite end of the barn and pulled the scrap of material tied about his neck over his nose and mouth. ‘We will never see the land as it used to be when the Apache and the Kiowa, Comanche and Cheyenne roamed its gentle heart and took only what was needed.'

‘I had a glimpse of it today.' Jerome lifted his dark eyes to meet his uncle's. ‘The eagle came to me.'

The old man nodded knowingly.

‘I was –'

His uncle leant forward. ‘Scared? The spirits dwell everywhere, boy. To know them and appease them is to honour them.'

Jerome hesitated. ‘And yet –'

‘The eagle has always been revered for its great hunting prowess, for its speed and canny ways. It soars above us seeing all. If the great bird comes to you, you should listen.'

‘For what?'

Leaning forward, he ran a shaky hand across Jerome's face, touching his hollow cheeks and straight nose, smoothing the glossy black brows that framed his oval eyes. ‘The time will come when your sister will have to accept her Indian blood. You must help her. You must help her sick up the anger and hurt she holds within so that she can carry on.'

‘Abelena hates being part-Apache. She resents the life that we have and the people who made it so – your people, Uncle George, and the Wades.'

‘Your mother was more Indian than white, Jerome. The difference is that Serena didn't look it. To look like a white and to crave the freedom of an Indian,' the older man tutted, ‘that was your mother's problem. Serena was at war with herself.'

The old man reached for the bottle-shaped basket at his side. Woven from cottonwood and covered with tree sap so that it was water-tight, he drank noisily. ‘The smallest thing in the white man's world may seem unimportant, but to the Apache it can be the difference between life and death. When you leave here, leave quickly and don't look back.'

Jerome shook his head. ‘I won't leave you.'

‘You will, eventually,' his uncle disagreed. ‘You will wrap me in a blanket and bury me deep in the bosom of Mother Earth, safe from the coyotes. You will do this at night, alone, and you will bury my possessions with me.' He pulled at the medicine cord tucked beneath his shirt. Braided from four strands of dyed animal hide, Jerome noted the faded colours. It was his uncle's most precious possession, along with the hide tacked on the wall of the barn. ‘No, that you cannot take, Jerome. The medicine cord was made for me alone to wear. You know this.'

Jerome knew the izze-kloth conferred both strength and the powers of healing on the owner, but it could not be passed on. He reluctantly agreed.

‘Don't look so downcast. The copy I made of the history of our people belongs with you. Everything else must go so that nothing remains of me in this world.'

Jerome agreed to his uncle's wishes. ‘When this is done where will you have gone?'

Uncle George gave a satisfied smile that creased his leathery face so the wrinkles fanned out from his nose. ‘To my people, Jerome, I will have gone to join my people. I do not know if this place will be better or worse than what I have endured but it is to them I go.'

April, 1935 – The Panhandle, Oklahoma

Jerome left his uncle to doze in the barn and walked outside. The air was dry as he side-stepped a piece of wire protruding from the dirt and walked barefooted past the tractor, harrow and plough that once dictated the farm's working hours. He tried to imagine the cornstalks and cotton that existed the day they arrived at Max Blum's farm. The dense green bushes with their white boules were gone now, and where corn once rustled in the breeze, the paddocks were empty. The last crop, a stumpy wheat field yielding little, seemed a distant memory. With the drought's continuation, the landscape repeatedly changed and re-formed before their eyes as the great dust storms rolled in, bringing with them mounds of blanketing dirt.

Jerome skirted the barn and followed the barely visible fence line that made a square around the twenty-acre homestead block. Russian thistle and tumbleweed had blown across the plains, catching in the fences to create a natural barrier for dirt to collect. With each black blizzard, the powdery earth mounded higher around buildings, covering everything in dirt and leaving a hard pan on the cultivations. It seemed to Jerome that there was only dust to eat and dust to breathe and dust to drink. It caught in your nose and the whorls of your ears, clogged your breathing and stung throat and eyes.

Ahead lay the pigsty and, less than a mile away, his home. Behind him stood the corn shed, chicken pen and the Blum homestead. Jerome trudged on, his feet sinking into the ground. He was worried for Tess. She was the only reason he didn't overrule Abelena and tell her that they were leaving immediately for the reservation. It was a long walk to the lands of their people, a protected territory in New Mexico, and he feared the little girl would not have the strength for the journey. Born prematurely, Tess had always been weak. Small for her age and surviving like the rest of them on the sporadic diet of the poor, she was prone to illness and during times of sickness would grow so faint as to pass out. It was as if her little heart found it a battle to continue beating at times. At least here there was a home of sorts and some food. He couldn't be assured of either while they travelled.

In the east a spiral of dust rose into the air. Jerome watched the coiling dirt as it merged with the brown gloom that shrouded them for weeks at a time. It was too regular in speed to belong to a rider and he quickly decided it was a vehicle of some sort.

‘Jerome.' Max Blum was astride a black horse with the strange name of Ernst. Reining the gelding to a standstill, he slipped the goggles he wore down to his neck and waited as Jerome walked towards him. ‘We will need to bring the cattle in tomorrow,' he poked a finger into the corner of one eye and rubbed fiercely, ‘while the weather's reasonable.' A man of middling height and build, Mr Blum favoured a greying moustache that was pronounced against a perpetually dirt-blackened face. ‘You be right to help?'

‘Sure thing.' Jerome couldn't get on a horse fast enough. He would have liked to have ridden the dark-eyed Ernst but there were only two horses left for him to choose from – aged mares that once formed a team for the buckboard, which now sat broken-wheeled by the barn. Mr Blum had tried to sell them last week only to bring them back to the farm at a loss as to how his two ‘girls' could now be worth such little money. Abelena said the animals should be slaughtered and salted like they did with pigs. Jerome wondered if his sister would be so keen if she knew that horse meat was considered an Apache delicacy.

‘You selling them then, Mr Blum?' The herd now only consisted of thirty head. Max Blum had once been convinced, like his father before him, that grazing cattle mixed with the growing of corn, wheat and cotton was the way to get the most out of the land. The bank didn't agree. They wanted every acre ploughed up to realise the potential of the plains, in return they'd lend the money to upgrade machinery. There wasn't much potential now, Jerome decided.

Mr Blum looked dispiritedly around his once fertile farm. ‘I'll sell most of them. President Roosevelt's Drought Relief Service is buying cattle in counties designated emergency areas. I'm hoping for fourteen dollars a head.'

‘That's good money, Mr Blum.'

The homesteader nodded. ‘Pity they didn't bring it in sooner. We'll shoot the ones that are too weak.' He looked skyward. Although the sun climbed, its brightness was dimmed by the dust in the atmosphere. ‘With the proceeds from the sale I'll try and buy another milking cow, if I can find one. A man can't live without a bit of butter.'

The old milker had died a few weeks back after the last big dust storm.

‘Can I have one of the dead ones, Mr Blum? The family haven't had meat for a while, excepting them jackrabbits I trap, and you can't survive on them.'

Mr Blum scratched at his neck.

There were five pigs left in the sty, however their meat quota had been cut off at Christmas. Uncle George's words echoed as the man on the horse considered Jerome's request. With the sale of the cattle there would be one less reason for Mr Blum to keep him and his family on the farm. They were just taking up space.

‘The rabbit drives haven't done much to cut their numbers. Now they're eating the bark off the fence posts.' Mr Blum peered down at Jerome. ‘You know those jackrabbits are full of diseases. They won't do you and yours much good.' He crossed one wrist over the other and rested his bottom hand on the pommel of the saddle. ‘And those cattle will be rough eating. I can't be responsible if one of you falls ill.'

Jerome wasn't leaving meat lying out in the paddock, especially when he had the chance to get a bit of fat into Tess. Jackrabbits barely had any grease in them at all. ‘At the very least we can use the hide.'

‘Well, suit yourself, you can have one,' Mr Blum replied. ‘And you better be telling that sister of yours that we can't be giving out anymore canned vegetables. Mrs Blum won't hear of it.' He looked as if he wanted to say more.

‘Sure, Mr Blum, I'll tell her.' Jerome thought of their already meagre diet. Mrs Blum rarely looked in their direction, let alone talked to them. Jerome knew she thought his family were all savages and he made a point of mumbling a few Apache words on the odd occasion that he ran into her on the farm. Now he was regretting it.

‘I'm sorry about the vegetables, Jerome, I know you've got mouths to feed as well. The thing is, Michael is coming home from Oklahoma City and he's a growing lad.'

Jerome did his best to keep his expression blank. Michael Blum took after his mother and was no friend to Mexican or Indian.

‘This weather has to break soon.' The older man's gaze drifted across the horizon. He chewed the corner of his lip. ‘Your uncle thinks we've brought this on ourselves. He tells me nearly every day how we ruined the grasslands with our tractors, ripping up the land, turned it to powder and took away the native plants that bound the soil together.'

Jerome squeezed dirt up through his toes. Uncle George was only slightly less popular for his outspoken comments than the local pastor, who preached that the drought was punishment for everyone's sins. ‘He doesn't mean what he says.'

Mr Blum clucked his tongue and Ernst walked on. ‘Sure he does.'

In spite of what Uncle George said, Jerome would always be grateful to the Blums. After the miles of dirt his family tramped from Boise City, occasionally scabbing bread and butter sandwiches from kindly farmers, Max Blum had offered them a place to live and work. If he'd been in the homesteader's shoes, he didn't know if he would have done the same. They were an odd-looking family when they'd first arrived. There was Uncle George with his wide-brimmed hat and thick black plaits, he and Abelena, both dark-haired and dark-skinned, one blonde-headed girl and the red-headed misfit twins.

Jerome walked towards the pigsty as horse and rider headed in the direction of the homestead. Although the twins could be relied upon to materialise out of the dust at the first hint of food, there were many hours when they were nowhere to be found. It was true that they were loners by nature; however Jerome knew that the preference the boys had for their own company was reinforced by a sense of alienation. They didn't want to belong to the Wade family. ‘What are you two doing then?'

‘Nuthing,' the twins replied simultaneously as Mark shimmied out between the railings to land awkwardly on the ground.

Mathew had a familiar shifty-eyed look and Mark was covering his mouth with his hand, although whether it was to hide something or to stop himself from speaking the secret the twins shared, Jerome couldn't be sure. ‘Well, I've got news. Do you want to hear it?'

Mark looked to his older brother for approval. Behind them the pigs charged around the sty. In a corner of the yard were three narrow troughs. One held water, one corn and another the scraps from the Blum kitchen.

‘Go on then,' Mathew urged.

‘We're to get one of Mr Blum's cows to eat, tomorrow.'

Mathew drew his pale eyebrows together. Red-headed with freckles, a knobby nose that was continually running and a head too big for his slight body, a more unattractive child Jerome had never laid eyes on, except for Mark. The younger twin was of similar colouring with a narrow elongated head and one eye that was smaller and sat a good half inch lower on his face than the other. Uncle George had apparently been inclined to drown both in a bucket at birth but Serena wouldn't hear of it.

‘Why would he do that?' Mathew asked. ‘Just give us one. Ain't nobody ever done anything for us.'

‘Some of the cows are too weak to sell and I reckon the Blums aren't hungry enough to eat the sick ones.'

Mathew considered this piece of information. ‘They eat tinned beans and pork and bring back fancy bread from the bakery in town. It'd suit me just fine to see that missus chew into a bit of cow leg.'

Jerome shushed the kid up with a scowl and looked over his shoulder, concerned someone may have overheard Mathew's remark. ‘They can't help it if they were born with money.'

‘Uncle George says the Apache used to take what they wanted.'

‘Well, we live in the white man's world now and besides, we're only part-Apache,' Jerome reminded him.

‘So why do you do all that Injun stuff with Uncle George?' Mathew jutted out his chin. ‘I'll tell you why, 'cause you're more Injun than anyone except for Uncle George. Neither me or Mark look Apache. We could get a job in town and people would be good to us 'cause our father was white and our mother was white, and we're white.'

‘Sure you are,' Jerome agreed.

‘So if you're learning stuff to be an Injun and we're all hungry, why aren't you taking what we need?'

‘'Cause times have changed and we might be hungry but we're not starving. There's a difference.'

Mathew smirked. ‘You ain't no Apache.'

‘Do you want to help slaughter the cow tomorrow or not?'

The red-headed kid cocked his head to one side. ‘Do I get to stick it with my knife?'

‘Well, I'm thinking Mr Blum will shoot her first, but you can cut her throat and bleed her.' Jerome pictured dropped meat covered in dirt.

‘Done,' Mathew agreed.

Mark clapped his hands excitedly and grinned. Jerome noticed pieces of red and green stuck between the younger boy's teeth and wondered how long it would be before the boy was caught eating the pig scraps. ‘Let's see if Abelena's got something to eat.' They had two small meals a day, one late morning and the other at dark. It wasn't enough.

Their cottage stood on a slight rise and had once belonged to tenant farmers. These people had been forced off the 160-acre block in 1929, the year the local bank started to get edgy, what with the depression and the beginnings of a drought. Max Blum was upgrading to a new plough and downsizing his herd and when the economy got a little better in '31, he approached the bank to share-farm the block. The tenants hadn't left quietly. When Jerome's family took possession, it looked as if a war had been fought in the cottage and its surrounds. The well was filled in with dirt, the hand pump and fittings removed and anything that hadn't been nailed down had either been packed up and carted off or stolen by neighbours when the Blums were away one weekend.

Halfway to their house, the boys passed a black car with two suited men inside heading for the Blum homestead. The car moved slowly, the men inside ignored them. Jerome recalled the dust hanging in the sky earlier.

‘Who'd that be then?' Mathew asked.

‘Dunno,' Jerome replied. Visitors weren't something they were used to seeing.

Mathew lengthened his stride to match Jerome's. ‘You never know anything.'

The boys approached their house like reluctant trailing ants with Mark at the rear. The younger twin didn't seem to be able to walk at a fast pace and, consequently, most of the time he was either dawdling far behind or running to catch up with his brother. The house sat in the middle of a bare cultivation, a trail of smoke rising from the chimney. Accumulated earth from previous storms eddied around the building, fanned by a light breeze. The rear of the house was mounded with dirt and the land behind the homestead dropped down into a sandy gully that merged into the plains beyond.

Jerome considered what the spirits had shown him during his dreams the previous night and wished he'd been born in another time and place. He'd be content in a wickiup, the domed dwellings of brush and bark his forefathers had lived in.

‘Food?' Mark panted. He was red-faced and sweating.

‘Don't be expecting much,' his brother cautioned. ‘It's not like we've got a mother and father who know how to care for us properly.'

At the remains of the fence that once ringed a vegetable garden, Jerome smelled a cut of meat cooking. Mathew and Mark quickly picked up the scent and ran past him, their bare feet kicking up dirt as they jumped the landing and rushed the rarely open door where Tess played. The child squealed as she was pushed aside, tumbling from the doorway, but she soon got to her feet and followed the two boys.