THE WHITMORE HOUSE was a box made of bleached boards. The downstairs had a fireplace at one end and a nickel trim stove at the other. Upstairs were two bedrooms reached by steps that would have been a ladder had they been any steeper. I slept in the hired man’s shed attached to the barn. It smelled like the animals, but I liked it well enough, it being off by itself.
Otis had planted potatoes the year before, but this year he was planting wheat—him and James working the double brace of oxen. I was given a spade to turn the plot for the roots and beans. I soon discovered that the loam on the Whitmore farm met every boast I had read in praise of Minnesota Territory. It ran black and deep and let go a ripe aroma that to a farmer might have been sweet but to me was rather sickly.
Otis was open and friendly. Wife Mary and brother James were not. James talked to me in an odd, suspicious tone that I pretended not to hear. Soon enough, it all got a little easier when I saw that James and Mary were no better to each other, like they had an argument going back to Indiana. For her part, Mary acted as though I were sitting in the chair that belonged to someone else. And maybe I was. As I would find out, Mary had given birth three times. A son had been stillborn in Evansville, and two daughters were buried out behind the barn, neither having lived a month. The lost children were remembered in the table blessing, every Sunday—their names spoken, followed by the words: Thy will be done.
* * *
By the last week in May, the roots were in the ground, and my corn and greens were up. And no Indians had come. The uprising had been real enough to those whose towns had been attacked, but that all stayed well south of us. Most of the Sioux, it turned out, had not risen. And almost all of those who had fled Manannah returned, wagon by wagon, a little sheepish, but we had all been chastened. Farmers carried rifles out to their fields.
One morning I was working in the garden when I noticed a grasshopper on a young plant. I plucked it off and then two more. I heard a shout and raised my head to see Otis running toward the house. “Locusts!”
We started three fires by the garden, but the insects were like driven snow. We used moldy hay, but the smoke bothered us more than it did them. They were on everything—the plants, our shirts, our faces, as though they would eat our flesh. The air smelled like something a dog had thrown up.
We fought with shovels and rakes and killed them by the hundreds to no avail. When the garden was beyond saving, we retreated to the house and stuffed rags under the door. Even so, they got in. One landed in Mary’s hair. She tore at it, eyes wide with rage.
“I never wanted to come here!” she screamed at Otis.
“Mary, this isn’t the time.”
“Oh yes it is the time! You wouldn’t hear me, Otis, you wouldn’t listen to me. We will leave it to God, you said, and now our daughters lie buried in dirt that’s covered in stinking death. May God be damned!”
Otis’s hand hit Mary’s face, and she fell back against the table. Her palm went to her cheek. “Go to hell!” she cried, and ran up the steep stairs. The trapdoor came down hard.
Otis gave James a desperate look, as though he had been the one struck. I saw no accusation in James’s eyes and took care not to show any. I remembered very well the betrayal I felt when my husband bloodied my face. But Otis Whitmore wasn’t drunk, and he wasn’t George Slater. There were three dead children in this story and hurts I could only guess at. Faint sobbing came from above.
The next day the locusts were gone, but the smell lingered. Every green thing had been eaten, and all the people in Manannah had suffered the same. For all we knew, so had everyone in the territory.
That afternoon the town met to discuss what to do. As people gathered, there was speculation upon the meaning of the plague. Some believed it a curse called down by the Indians. Others saw God voicing His displeasure as He had done in the Old Testament. Whiskey traders and whores in St. Paul were offered as provocation. Or, perhaps, a sinner among us. Who could it be?
Captain Hillsboro took charge, and the Bible talk stopped. A company was formed to go to St. Cloud and return with more seed. In the meantime, any seed left got planted. On the Whitmore farm this meant potatoes, for they still had spud eyes from the year before.
The wagons returned from St. Cloud, and each day the farmers worked well into the dark. The new seed was hardly in the ground when Mary Whitmore came down with a fever. Soon she was delirious. Manannah had no doctor, so two neighbor women took turns bathing Mary and wrapping her in wet sheets. At dinner, Otis prayed. “Lord, Mary is a righteous woman. Forgive her anger. Spare her life.” The words Thy will be done were not spoken. Otis had drawn his line.
With Mary ill, the cooking and washing fell to me while Otis and James worked the fields. My efforts were well received by Otis, and James too, although sometimes I saw a smile at the corner of his mouth as though I had been put in my place. I did try to act clumsy around the stove, but I didn’t really care what James thought. It was work I could do, and so long as it didn’t expose me, I wasn’t ashamed.
The crisis passed, but Mary languished. Days went by, and she could barely get out of bed. One sunny morning Sarah Lindross and her daughter Jenny arrived. They had come to clean. I was happy for the help and for the company, Jenny’s smile not forgotten.
“You keep a good house for a man,” Sarah said as she looked things over. I nodded and wished I had been less thorough. The plan was to scrub every surface and boil every sheet and shirt. My part was to carry the water and keep the stove in wood. On one of these forays, I stopped to talk to Jenny, who was outside hanging clothes. A work bonnet held her hair, exposing a slender neck. I stole glances at it when I thought she wouldn’t notice.
Jenny told me that she was sixteen, the oldest of four in a family come from Pittsburgh. I said I was also the oldest of four and from New York.
Her eyes grew wide. “You’re from New York?” she said, as though the words conveyed a magic. “I should so like to see New York before I die.”
“I’m not from the city of New York,” I confessed. “I lived upstate. It’s not so very different from here.”
“But you have visited, surely.”
“Of course.”
“And is it grand?”
“Oh, yes! Very grand! Hotels and theaters on every street.”
“And fine ladies and gentlemen in carriages?”
“That too.”
I had never been to New York City, but saying so would have disappointed her and, I think, diminished myself in her eyes. I wished to do neither. And so I passed a pleasant afternoon, assumed by geography to be a young man of some breeding and rank.
* * *
In Manannah, the most elaborate of our simple pleasures was the Sunday afternoon picnic along the Crow. The children splashed in the river shallows, while everyone else stayed properly dry. Misguided propriety, but I wasn’t going to do anything about it.
During the picnic, the young men and women, the unmarried ones, would gather a short distance from the others. There we would tease each other and tell our own stories. I listened mostly, but once in a while, I would tell a story of my winter in Kandiyohi. The one about the wolves gained me some notice.
But despite this acceptance, I remained an outsider when it came to the likes of Charlie, Seth, and Wes. I could skip a stone as good as any of them, shoot better than all of them, yet there was a certain bravado that I could not imitate, a bravado that had come to them at birth. Thus, at some point during these picnic afternoons, I would walk a short distance, sit by the Crow, and wander about inside my head.
Sometimes, Jenny Lindross would seek me out. We would sit there and talk, mostly when the others were off doing something loud. I don’t think Charlie even noticed.
I did fancy Jenny Lindross—that is true. But I did not love her the way I had loved Lydia, and still did. Lydia was a wild creature whose fierce thoughts spilled out of her eyes. Jenny was gentle, at peace with that around her. So I did not and could not imagine myself running away with Jenny as I had imagined with Lydia. But I did think about her. One day someone would get to kiss that neck and look at the Jenny who moved beneath her frock. I should have put more distance between us, but I didn’t want to. I liked when Jenny sat by me. And I marveled at how quickly a woman could be drawn to a man who wasn’t one. I wondered whether a woman, any woman, wouldn’t choose to marry a woman when the time came, if she could do so without penalty. The picnic certainly suggested it—the women sitting by themselves, the men in their corner.
One Sunday Jenny asked me to walk with her. We set off across the field in the late summer stillness, content to say nothing. We came to the stone fence and stopped in the shade.
“Joseph,” she said as though some question had just come, “do you want a farm of your own?” I saw where this might be going, and I didn’t know how to steer it.
“Yes,” I said. “I was thinking of staking a claim this autumn. A little west of here.”
Jenny paused and then lowered her voice. “Joseph, do you like me?”
“You know I do,” I said. I didn’t say more, and she knew I was keeping something from her.
“Joseph, you know what I want to know. Do you like me a lot?”
Suddenly, I saw the way.
“More than I should,” I said, looking up.
“Why do you say it like that?”
I took a breath. “Because I have a sweetheart back east.”
Jenny looked away. “Thank you for telling me.”
“Jenny, I’m sorry. I should have—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “What’s her name?”
“Lydia.”
“And you will send for her when you have a place of your own?”
“God willing,” I said, knowing that God would never be willing.
Jenny gave a slow nod. “I’m sorry to hear this, Joseph, because I fancy you.”
I wanted to draw her to me, but we weren’t out of sight and it wouldn’t have been right anyway. Instead, I met her brown eyes. “And I fancy you, my dear, beautiful Jenny. And if you must know, I shall be jealous of the man who will be your husband.”
There was a silence. Then her face brightened. “And I shall be jealous of your wife.” She leaned forward and brushed my cheek with a kiss.
* * *
A few weeks later I saw Jenny walking with Charlie and felt a pain in my chest. I told myself that this was as it should be. I had cut things off with Jenny as I should have with Lydia. I was to be alone, and there was nothing to be done. I wanted to be with Lydia, or even Jenny, but no matter how good a man I pretended to be, I could have neither. All I had won by my deceit was some imitation of freedom. Was it a fair trade? I couldn’t say, but I knew one thing for certain—my condition was irreversible. Having risen, however imperfectly, to the rank of citizen, I could not go back to the indentured world of propriety and deference. Having spat freely into the fire, I could not now tend the fire and guard my expressions so as not to give offense. I was trapped. I could be no man’s wife. I could be no woman’s husband. That was my fate.