The Last Letter (14 page)

Lutie sat up and squinted at Jeanie. “Did I do something? I mean, in the last two minutes? I could have sworn you said you didn’t want your next byline to read “clapper claw, extraordinaire.”

“Light the fire. Don’t make it hard for me to like you. I’m trying, I am.”

Lutie groaned and lumbered to the firebox they’d built a bit away.

Jeanie snapped one of the tablecloths into the air, basking in the smell of a proper laundering, something Jeanie hadn’t experienced since they left Des Moines. She smoothed the tablecloth over the pine table. Jeanie traced the pink flowered embroidery with her forefinger.

Lutie came beside Jeanie. “This is the tablecloth from the book, isn’t it? The one you and your mother made before she passed. Right? That’s so precious. I wish…“

“I thought it was time I brought it out. It’s not doing any good sitting in an old trunk.”

Lutie nodded, fingering the embroidery.

Just touching the fabric lifted Jeanie’s spirits, making her realize that abandoning her beautiful things just because their home was ugly had been a mistake. She vowed to use at least one beautiful linen per day from that point on. Maybe she was being too hard on Lutie.

Jeanie sighed. “Look, I’m not angry. I look at you and see what everyone else does, a beautiful girl.” Lutie batted her eyes at Jeanie who rolled hers back.

“Now stop that, Lutie Moore. If you could just see yourself. You look ridiculous. Don’t you want people to take you seriously? If you learned to work at something. Perhaps you wouldn’t have met with divorce.”

“I know you think I’m lazy. I’m sure you must think the divorce was my doing.”

“Think, nothing. I
know
you’re lazy.”

Jeanie drew back and whispered an apology.

“Way I see things,” Lutie said, “you’re some kind of otherworldly phenomenon, and you’d view anyone who worked any less than eighteen hours a day as slothful. And that’s not fair. Everyone can’t be like you. But, trust me on this, even you wouldn’t have kept my husband in good cheer.”

Jeanie ignored that comment thinking of course she’d have been able to achieve good cheer in that home. Her dull spirits and dull marriage at that moment in time was merely something to contend with, to look back on later as a blip in time, that did not define their marriage, but made it stronger. No, there was barely a circumstance Jeanie couldn’t imagine remedying if she had her wits about her.

“You have to find a way to make yourself attractive to men, Lutie,” Jeanie said.

Lutie threw her head back. “What, like learn to cobble shoes? Frankly, I think I’ve got the “attractiveness-hay” baled and stored for the winter.”

“I didn’t realize you knew how to bale hay since James and Tommy have done all of that for you.”

“I knew you were angry about that. I just
knew
it.” Lutie crossed her arms over herself and pursed her lips. Jeanie was getting sucked into a pointless conversation that would only result in her saying things that were truly mean or interpreted to be so.

“I merely think,” Jeanie said, “you should have something more to offer than beauty.”

“I have plenty to offer, I just need to discern the nature of my gentleman’s desires and needs—the fields of his being if you will— before I commit the right crop to its earth.”

“You’re saying you’ll wait to cultivate your interests until you understand those of the man to whom you’d like to marry? That will not be enticing to a man of any sort of substance.” Jeanie stopped herself from going on. Hadn’t she done this very thing back in the year leading to her elopement? Made herself as appealing to Frank as possible?

Lutie rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, yes, I see that principle at work out here on the prairie. I can’t believe you’re saying that. Your books are all about making a pleasing home, working your fingers to the bone for the head of your domicile—in whatever way he expects. I like the decorative elements of your writings—the beauty you suggest for a home, but the women, their position?”

“Well, yes, partially a woman molds oneself to…yes, but one must cultivate her personhood to be attractive to a man who will then be head of her home. That goes beyond decorating a fine home.”

“Pffflt,” Lutie shook her head. “All that work so finally you can have the pleasure of the only aspect of marriage worth entertaining— the nightly duties. I certainly learned what I
don’t
want in marriage from my former placement in one.”

“Allow me to offer a secret I’ve never published though others have. Whatever success a man enjoys, it is only possible in the presence of a fully-realized woman.” Jeanie couldn’t believe Lutie just said intimate relations were first on her list of marital bliss.

“Templeton looks fully realized himself. And he’s without a wife.”

“Well, yes, that’s true. But his home, it’s disastrous without a woman’s touch. Batching-it is not a friend to a pleasant home.”

“Well, you’re not the only one who could turn that outfit around. But, really I’m not sure I want that. I
had
that. I do have dreams, you know. Castles, kings, jewels…“

“That’s it!” Jeanie said. “That’s the kind of passion you need to find. I can teach you to sew, if you’d like. You’re always saying how much you admire the advertisements in the newspapers, the women with intricate hats and perfectly appointed bodices.”

Lutie shrugged and picked her cuticle. “Well, no, I’m not passionate about it. I can get excited about something—a funny story, the sight of a beautiful blouse or well made stool, but I can’t
do
anything in those terms, I’m not a creator, I’m a partaker. That’s just how it goes for me.”

Jeanie had enough of her obstinate student. “Lutie,” Jeanie said more harshly than she wanted. “Do you suppose you could summon the passion to finish setting the table?”

“Well, I’d be happy to, Jeanie. How about I set it according to the diagram on page three-seventy in the first book. Would that suit?”

“What would
suit,
would be if you never mentioned those books again.” Jeanie ducked into the dugout without hearing Lutie’s reply to that.

As the corn cakes finished cooking, Jeanie pulled one of her trunks of fabric from the dugout to begin the process of inventorying what she had left and which materials would go for what dress next. Lutie hummed as she set the table, commenting on how beautiful everything was.

“Perfect for a dress for a lady about my size and standing,” Lutie said. Jeanie knew Lutie was hinting at the fact Jeanie hadn’t yet fitted her or Ruthie for their new dresses. Jeanie was half-hoping just to remake one of Lutie’s old ones rather than spare an entire bolt of her own material. Lutie finished the table and wandered to the trunk. They both ran their hands over the damasks, cottons, linens, lost in their beauty and exquisite cleanness. It couldn’t have evoked a more powerful reaction had the trunk been bursting with gold. The fabric was treasure to Jeanie.

“Look at these buttons, Lutie. They’re called paperweights.”

Lutie held a pink glass ball up to the light, turning it back and forth. “Why it’s like a little world in there. That little flower, there, it’s a pasque flower, isn’t it?”

Jeanie took it from her and examined it. “Why I suppose it is.”

“Almost like the fates knew you’d someday live where they grew wild.”

“My, my, my, aren’t they exquisite. Not like pearls, but still.” Jeanie had never loved the glass buttons. The pearl buttons were the ones that made her shudder with glee. She pulled another glass button from the box and held it up. Inside it was a teeny French house. France, oh to be there. Jeanie sighed and shook her head, feeling happy that Elizabeth had no idea of the value of the glass buttons, that she hadn’t pointed to them when she was acquiring Jeanie’s things. Jeanie stuffed the button into her pocket, loving the idea that another world lived inside the glass that sat beside her hip, that someday she’d be back in that world, out of the dirt and squalor. She took the button box into the dugout, planning to sort through them, to decide which should be used for which dresses and which should be never used, kept for Jeanie’s fantasies.

“I could use these for your dress, Lutie.”

“I haven’t had a fitting yet, you’re aware. Now that you bring it up. I don’t presume to be forward in regard to the dress you promised to fashion, but that fabric in that first trunk…“

“Well, let me measure you. Two fittings is all I need.”

“Two? I’m sure you’ll need more than that. Greta is one thing, but I am a little more, shall we say, subtle in appearance.”

“Two, Lutie. That’s all I need.”

“It’ll fit like a thumbless man’s wagon cover with but two fittings!”

“With the time you’re wasting, it’s already lunch. You’ll be lucky if I get to two fittings at all with you. I’ll fit you after we eat.”

Lutie shrugged like a ten-year-old in response, but made Jeanie all the more sure that she was exactly what Lutie needed to further develop her personhood.

Chapter 8

Jeanie rang the lunch bell then rummaged through the materials in the trunk some more, with Lutie over her shoulder pointing to her favorites. They waited for the chirping of the kids that should have followed. But instead of happy voices, what she heard next was a great sound of crackling, whooshing, and wind so strong that she almost thought she could see it if she hopped above the dugout to look.

Jeanie looked at Lutie who had frozen in the middle of laying a fork next to a plate, head lifted, face paled as though a mask of fear had been placed over her.

“What?” Jeanie said. Lutie shook her head but didn’t move.

Jeanie ran around to the top of the dugout and saw blackness sitting atop the brightest wall of orange and red and yellow that she’d ever have imagined before that time. “Frank! Fire! It’s a fire! The children! Where are the children!”

Frank, atop the horse, galloped toward her, yelling that the fire had already swept past the Zurchenko homestead, the Moore’s, and was obviously heading right for them.

“The gully? Did the fire jump the gully?”

Frank looked away, into the flames that were growling like a mythological beast, gorging itself, crackling. Frank had dismounted and yelled that Lutie and Jeanie should get on the horse and just ride as fast as they could to Templeton’s. He’d prepared for times like this with firebreaks.

But as Lutie climbed atop the dugout, the horse spooked and bolted, dragging Frank with it. After a few yards, Frank let go of the reins and scrambled to his feet, running back to the women. The flames, behind Frank, rushed toward them, so thick that even though still one hundred yards away, Jeanie could feel the heat. She collapsed to the ground. Sobbing, head buried in her arms, she curled into a ball. Lutie yelled at Frank and though Jeanie couldn’t hear the specific words, Lutie was clearly giving him instructions of some sort. And before Jeanie knew what was happening, Lutie had hauled her up and dragged her down the hillside, around the front of the dugout. It was then she heard Lutie’s words, that the flames would leap over the dugout, that it shouldn’t burn the sod barn, and that Frank should get the cow inside it. She was quite clear that their home wouldn’t be destroyed and neither would they if they made it inside.

Jeanie didn’t close the dugout door until Frank sprinted back after closing in the cow. The three of them stood, Jeanie near the front door, Frank by the lounge and Lutie by the cook-stove, in the dark dugout, no one moving to add candlelight or oil lamp glow. The sound of their scratchy breathing, occasional whimpers, and shrieks of disbelief didn’t require light. Jeanie spread the curtains as far wide as possible and watched as orange flames ate past the window, keeping an odd ten-foot distance as though there was a reason to do so.

Watching those flames made Jeanie want to die, to find a way to harm herself if the fire itself didn’t. She would not live without her children. Stunned, body shaking to its core, she turned from the window and fell back against the dirt wall. Frank pointed to the roof of the house and Lutie nodded. The roar of the flames running over the dugout, the realization that they were sitting inside the fire made Jeanie woozy, and before long, everything went black as night.

Jeanie came to, Frank squeezing her cheeks, moving her face back and forth. It took her a second to remember the flames, to be engulfed in the pain that accompanied knowing her children had just been swallowed up in the most painful death there could possibly be.

The fire that chomped at the land like a lion would gnaw its prey. Frank’s face hung above Jeanie’s and Lutie stood behind him, her chest heaving with deep, silent breath. The sound of the earth crisping had passed while Jeanie had been unconscious and in the dugout, a hush as loud as the flames had been, saturated the space.

Jeanie pushed Frank aside. He tried to keep her down, but she punched his shoulder, making him draw back and give her space to move and run to the window. Though mid-day, the earth and sky had gone black, choked with smoke that tumbled from the sky and hovered just over the ground, as though teasing it with descending then receding smoke streams.

It was only in seeing its blackness, the golds and yellows zapped from the earth, that visions of the original greens, purples, and blues rushed to Jeanie. Her teeth chattered as she scolded herself for noticing such things, for caring about the colors of the prairie when her children had been wiped from that same prairie, extinguishing their lives. She pulled at her hair, wanting to inflict pain on herself in a bodily sense to take away the pain of her spirit.

She ran to the cook-stove where a knife hung above it. She grabbed it and poised it across from her heart as though about to stab it into her body. It would end everything for her, the pain, the sight of her burnt children, or worse, not finding them at all. She could not live that way, with those images fried into her brain.

Frank nearly tackled her to wrench the knife from her hand.

“You give that back to me. You are not my father, you cannot control my life.”