Prairie Fever Read online

  “At the home of the Kiowa horse trader, whom Edith claims is well known to you all, I saw a horse the color of the red mud, which was the bane of my existence when I was your age. Had I brought west with me the old pair of mud-caked boots I wore to and from school and mounted this horse, my shoes would have been indistinguishable from her flank. The horse appeared to have lain down in the road I knew so well. She reminded me of certain struggles I faced.

  “It is good,” said Mr. McQueen, “to be reminded of your struggles.

  “I can’t say that the owner of the horse, who you all know by name, did not warn me that her nature was recalcitrant. Do you all know what ‘recalcitrant’ means? Because now that I have used it, I am not so sure I do. In fact, I often get it mixed up with ‘intransigent.’ Let’s just say she’s stubborn. I have a few skills and one of them is memorization. I can quote song lyrics and passages from Latin and also the one hundred counties of North Carolina. (As an aside, I plan to commit to memory the counties of this fair state, but I thought I would wait awhile as someone recently told me they are not done making new ones.) Anyway, and I am ashamed to say it, Joseph, I know very little of the Bible—to quote, I mean—but I do know the Beatitudes. I attempted to settle the horse by singing to her, but this only riled her, so I started in with quotations and only the Beatitudes turned her downright docile.

  “She has limitations, as do we all, but her name is not one of them.”

  Ella Holman, who was seven and was not expected to follow all the rules, said that she had never met a horse or a dog not named after a person. Elise loved little Ella Holman and she loved that she said “met,” as if she had made the acquaintance of many dogs and horses, whereas most people would have said, I have never heard of a dog or horse not named after a person.

  “I hope this brief digression has been enjoyable to you all,” said Mr. McQueen, but he was looking only at Elise.

  That afternoon in the stable before Mr. McQueen pinned the blanket over them badly, Elise studied his horse. She might not have appreciated her beauty before she knew about the violently beautiful clay that clung to the shoes of Mr. McQueen and was in many ways the bane of his existence. The Beatitudes might have appeared to her an ancient and broken nag. One thing she did not appear to be was fleet. And yet she reminded Mr. McQueen of his home and of his struggles.

  One of his current struggles was pinning the blanket tightly around the Stewart sisters. Today the cracks were wide enough for the muted white sky to appear at the top of the blanket. Inside the blanket had always been their own world, so why not have their own sky within it? The blanket was meant to protect them from the elements. The sky was more than an element. It was the source of elements. The snow that fell from it was its words and the wind its song.

  And yet a snowy sky was as violently beautiful as the streak of red in the earth in Mr. McQueen’s home place. Violently beautiful was Elise’s favorite new phrase. That night at the supper table, she would apply it to a stew of rabbit and carrot and potato her mother served. Her mother would look at her with a mix of wonder and suspicion, and her father would chuckle as if it were a joke and her sister’s expression would get caught, as it did more and more often these days, somewhere between amusement and annoyance.

  “I think I am done with those Bulgarians,” she said into Lorena. They were headed into the wind and Sandy’s progress was slow and their world was loud in a way that was violent and beautiful.

  But Lorena heard her.

  “But what will take their place in your life? In other words, how will you fill your afternoon hours?”

  Elise did not share with Lorena every detail of her life.

  “In the barn we could stage a play.”

  “And freeze to death by suppertime,” said Lorena.

  “It would be best if staged in the barn because it involves a dramatic death from a great height. I could fall from the hayloft onto a carefully placed pile of hay.”

  “Into, not onto,” said Lorena. Then she fell silent. She breathed bossily.

  “Or you could.” Elise thought “onto” the better choice, and she wanted to be the faller, but she would do what it took to get Lorena away from their mother’s vanity and have something to do with her hands besides clutching mother-of-pearl.

  “And what is this play?”

  “It is based on an actual true-life event.”

  “Pray tell.”

  “Killing in Hobart,” said Elise. “L. C. Ivent shoots Charley Sherman in self-defense.”

  “Then it would be more accurate to say that it is based in part on an actual event, given that L. C. Ivent is hardly a reliable source.”

  “Ivent, upon being asked what he had to say in regard to the shooting, said, and I quote, ‘I was forced to shoot Sherman or he would have used the knife on me, which he held in his hand.’”

  “Yes, Elise, I read the same article. I believe I read it to you, in fact.”

  Elise continued to quote from the article, which she had long committed to memory. “‘Did you ever have trouble with Sherman before?’ Ivent was asked. ‘No, but I have had some with Jensen, agent for the Schlitz Brewing Company. Just a few minutes before the shooting occurred I told Sherman I did not want to have any trouble with him, and Jensen, who was standing nearby, said, “Well, you will have trouble with him.”’”

  “Your point?”

  “In the words of Ivent,” said Elise, “‘Sherman made several threats and I started to go out the front door but it was locked, so I tried to get out the back way, but I could not as Sherman was following me too close. He had a large knife opened and I made up my mind to protect myself, so I did and fired one shot at him and he fell. I gave myself up to the jailer as I realized what I had done.’”

  “And I quote,” said Lorena, proving that she remembered the article well herself: “‘Charley Sherman was shot at the Palm Garden saloon by L. C. Ivent. They were both Hobart men and widely known. Ivent having run the saloon at the Choctaw depot for the past two years.’”

  “Yes?” said Elise.

  “If Ivent ran the saloon,” Lorena said, “why were the front doors locked? He would have been the one to lock them if it was his own establishment.”

  “The Palm Garden saloon is different from the saloon at the Choctaw Depot. It was not his saloon where he pulled the trigger that fired the fatal bullet.”

  “Your extensive experience in the saloons of Hobart is revealing itself,” said Lorena. “But I will choose to go with the facts presented to me in the paper. Nowhere in the paper does it say that Ivent was not employed at the Palm Garden.”

  “To continue with the story in progress: ‘A few hours before Sherman died, he was in continuous prayer, asking God to forgive, and only let him live until he could reform and become a Christian before he died.’”

  “Yes? And?” said Lorena.

  “If Ivent was lying, why did Sherman repent?”

  “Because he was a drunkard on his deathbed? Repenting while your life’s blood is draining out of you is well known to be common among murderers and saints alike. If you had been paying attention in church instead of dreaming your dreamy dreams, you would know that you must get right with the Lord before ascending into heaven.”

  Elise was about to say that claiming to have paid closer attention to Pastor Womack was not going to win the day, but she felt a charge go through her sister’s body.

  “Because he knew his limitations,” Lorena said in a lofty register, as if she’d been illuminated by the elements. “It is, after all, the point of life.”

  “Who would you rather play,” said Elise to steer her sister away from the point of life, “Ivent or Sherman?”

  “Sherman, of course. Ivent is dastardly.”

  This meant that she would get to fall from the hayloft onto or into the carefully placed blanket of hay. Elise suspected this was the root of her argument.

  “What makes you say so?” she asked.

  “The business of the saloo
n. You say that it is a different saloon, but that is not clear from the wording of the article,” said Lorena.

  “Well, it’s perfectly clear to me,” said Elise. “But in order to appease you, we will conduct our own research into the matter.”

  “Who do you plan on asking? Father? Big Idea, perhaps?”

  “I have never spoken to Big Idea. I would not know how to. It would be like talking to a Chinaman. I will ask Mr. McQueen.”

  “Mr. McQueen does not frequent those sorts of establishments, and if he were to, he would not need to go to Hobart. Lone Wolf has its own saloons.”

  And how are you so sure of his doings and goings? Elise said but did not say into her sister’s shoulder, which was warmed by her breath.

  “Okay,” she said instead. “We will just have to go there and see for ourselves.”

  “Hobart is ten miles from town. That is fifteen miles from home.”

  “An easy trip,” said Elise. “We will go tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is a school day,” Lorena said. “Even if it were a weekend and they were not calling for more snow and record-breaking cold, I should not think Mother would approve of our going to Hobart to conduct research in saloons.”

  “She might approve if she knew the research was for an artistic production.” In college, their mother had played the piano and also the organ. She sent both sisters to Mrs. Robertson’s for piano lessons, but Lorena showed no talent for it. Elise continued to take lessons. She had an ear. She was allowed to practice at the church as long as an adult was present. Often her father would take her because he loved music, though he was the source of Lorena’s lack of talent, according to their mother. Still, he fancied himself a decent tenor and would sing often in the fields, which (also according to their mother), accounted for the lack of rain if there was a drought and the deluge of rain if the cotton fields flooded. Lightning striking the barn had been blamed on his tenor, which he described as an “Irish” tenor, even though he was no more Irish than Damyan.

  Sometimes when Lorena was combing her hair with the pearl-handled brush and pursing her lips into (or at?) the pearl-handled mirror, Elise lay on the bed studying the drawings by their deceased brothers, kept hidden in a drawer in a bureau in her mother’s room. The paper was crinkled with age and the pencil was faded, but the clouds the boys drew above the prairie seemed pregnant with rain, soon to burst. Elise wandered about in her deceased brother’s stormy depictions of the prairie while lying across her parents’ bed on her stomach, attempting to kick her fanny with her legs.

  “Since it is an artistic production, in this case a play, more specifically a work of the imagination, you can just make it up,” Lorena was saying.

  “Make what up?”

  “Whether or not the saloon in question was run by Ivent.”

  “But this is a story based upon facts.”

  “And yet the story related in the newspaper in the words of Ivent is not certifiably factual.”

  “Who certifies fact?”

  “Why you, if you would have your way and travel to Hobart tomorrow.”

  Elise thought about it. “There is a difference between the way a man tells a story and fact.”

  “What is the difference?”

  “A story is never told the same way twice. But the place of Mr. Ivent’s employ is, as you say, certifiable.”

  Elise did not know what “certifiable” meant. Was not the newspaper a sort of certificate?

  “You confuse me sometimes,” said Lorena.

  “Good.”

  “Why is that good?”

  “It is natural to be confused.”

  “It is good to know your limitations,” Lorena said. “I would think you might seek clarity? Also, speaking of limitations, we are severely limited when it comes to your plans to conduct your research.”

  “Limited how?”

  “Clearly you have not thought this through at all. First of all, there is the weather. If you had read the almanac, you would know the cold and snow are meant to get much worse. There is also the fact that we know nothing of Hobart and are not allowed in its saloons. And there is, neither last nor least, the fact that we would be lying to Mr. McQueen.”

  “Mr. McQueen would not mind,” said Elise.

  “You’ve discussed this with him?”

  “Of course not. But Mr. McQueen is clearly a supporter of conducting research for a drama based on fact. If you had been paying attention in class instead of dreaming your dreamy dreams, you would know this.”

  They were hard upon home. Sandy’s hooves kicked up foam that laced the edges of waves. Crabs scurried out of the way of a horse eager to escape the elements. The snow was so thick and blowing that they did not see the barn until they were inside of it. How, then, did their mother know they were there, for they weren’t ten seconds in the barn before she arrived to unpin them. Snow was a half inch on the blanket and the blanket was as stiff as lumber. Her mother whipped it about to get the snow off and would take it inside to thaw. She could not have seen them from the window, which even if it were not frosted over with ice, would have revealed only whiteout.

  “What did you learn at school?”

  “The curious name of Mr. McQueen’s horse,” said Elise.

  “Which is?”

  “The Beatitudes.”

  Her mother said her name in that way she did when she thought Elise was making the world up.

  “She’s telling the truth,” said Lorena.

  “I did not figure him for pious,” said their mother.

  Elise thought it odd that her mother, who rarely left the farm, figured Mr. McQueen at all. She had no idea, however, what her mother went around figuring. She knew it was not ideas.

  “Your mother feels things very deeply,” her father said to his daughters not long after they lost their brothers to prairie fever. Lorena nodded, so Elise did also, but after he left them alone in their room in the attic, Elise said, Well, what is that supposed to mean, and Lorena said, He means well, and Elise said, Does he mean to say that he himself feels shallowly, and Lorena said, He’s trying, and Elise said, Why are you taking up for him? Lorena said, Because I don’t want to believe that he poisoned them and could have easily done the same to us.

  But just a week later she gave up defending him and could not stop accusing him of spreading prairie fever. It was true Lorena did not challenge Elise when Elise protested that he did not know prairie fever was in the water tank, he wasn’t some scientist, he was just a cotton farmer. But Lorena stopped speaking to him. He was not around much to speak to anyway. Elise had no idea where her father spent his time. He would appear and her mother would call him Harold as if he’d just gone out to fetch more wood for the stove, and then the next three days they’d not see him. Lorena would sometimes say to their mother, “Where is old Harold?” and her mother would say Lorena’s name in a way that made it clear she should never call her father by his name.

  “He is not pious,” said Elise. “He is good with memory.”

  “You mean he has a good memory?” her mother asked.

  That was not what Elise meant, not really.

  “That’s a good quality,” said her mother. “I often feel my memory has a head cold.”

  “Mine has a fever,” said Elise. She was rubbing Sandy with blankets. He stood still for her. Lorena had wrapped her scarf around her nose and taken her leave of them. Likely she already had her hand curled around some mother-of-pearl.

  Her mother laid the back of her hand on Elise’s forehead.

  “No, Mother, I don’t have a fever, it’s my memory.”

  “Does it feel on fire?”

  “Exactly.”

  Her mother rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand and said, “You are a special girl, Elise.”

  “Don’t say that. Mr. McQueen calls Edith Gotswegon special.”

  “Is she the bright orange one?”

  “That’s Marvene. She’s joined the nuns. Edith’s hair looks like tree
bark.”

  “Do you miss trees, love?”

  Elise did not know to miss them.

  “Mother, how did you know we were home?”

  “Sandy,” said her mother.

  “He told you?”

  “He certainly did.”

  “Sandy knows the way.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. She put the back of her hand to Sandy’s forehead as if checking for fever.

  “Does he know the way to Hobart?”

  “Of course,” said her mother.

  “And can he get us to Hobart and back in a day?”

  “Easily,” she said. She kissed his muzzle. “Old Sandy. I depend on you so.”

  Elise giggled.

  “Is he not the most handsome thing?” asked her mother, and then she was gone.

  In the night came the constant noise of what Elise called coyote wind, crying out in pain, mourning, or warning. Her mother climbed the stairs with them and put the lantern on the table and tucked them both in Lorena’s cot and put quilts atop them. They were far too old to be tucked in, but either her mother forgot or the coyote wind warranted it.

  “Lorena,” Elise whispered into her sister’s sleeping shoulder, and the shoulder replied with a slight shrug.

  Why was her sister so tired? Was it exhausting to look at yourself in the mirror for hours? Surely her lips were exhausted from all the pursing. Likely her scalp hurt from the brushing. Elise took care not to touch her hair.

  What she had wanted to ask her sister was, Do you think Mother still feels deeply? What she wondered was, Is depth of feeling a life sentence? Is one born with it? She wondered if she’d inherited it from her mother and if Lorena, who despised their father, had not been handed down his love of ideas. Elise had notions, which she always took. But Lorena seemed to have more restraint. She did not run off, literally, to see if the Bulgarians could take over her mail route in the prairie dog village when she was busy, and she did not run off at the mouth. Lorena made plans. Plans were made for Elise by her notions, without consultation.

  Lorena slept. She radiated warmth and Elise loved her for keeping her warm and safe and for not coming down with the strain of prairie fever that afflicted Elise and her mother, much less the kind that took her brothers. Lorena put one foot in front of the other, but she did not stay put. She was not Edith Gotswegon. Together they lived inside a blanket where the air was thin and cold and they breathed each other’s dreamy dreams. Elise said I love you to her sister’s shoulder, and her sister twitched. That meant “me too.” Once Lorena woke herself up laughing. Sister, you may marry Joseph Womack and become a preacher’s wife and wear dresses to your ankles and your hair up under a bonnet and deny yourself worldly pleasures on the off chance of some after, and you could condemn me to the everlasting fires of hell for my failings and my sins and I would—I will—remember the night you woke up laughing, woke me up with your laughter, and I will remember how I never asked you what is so funny because I am not Edith Gotswegon. We are not Edith Gotswegon.