EIGHT
One hundred and four degrees in the shade, and the well was drying up. The water in the tank had to be carefully conserved, carried by the bucketful to the house. At night, they gave the animals what water they could.
The vegetables that Elsa and Rose had tended with such loving care were dead. Between yesterday's wind and dust and the relentless sun, every plant had either been torn out by the roots or lay wilted and dead.
She heard Rose come up beside her.
"There's no point watering," Elsa said.
"No."
She heard the heartbreak in her mother-in-law's voice and wished she could say something to help.
"You've been awfully quiet today," Rose said.
"Unlike my usual chatty self," Elsa said to deflect a conversation she didn't want to have.
Rose bumped her shoulder against Elsa's arm. "Tell me what is wrong. Besides the obvious, of course."
"Loreda is angry at me. All of the time. I swear, before I even speak, she gets mad at whatever it is I'm about to say."
"She is at that age."
"It's more than that, I think."
Rose stared out at the devastated fields. "My son," she said. "Stupido. He is filling her head with dreams."
"He's unhappy."
"Pssht," Rose said impatiently. "Who isn't? Look at what is happening."
"My parents, my family," Elsa said quietly. This was something she rarely talked about, a pain too deep for words, especially when words wouldn't change anything; Loreda's opinion of Elsa lately had brought all that heartache of youth back. Elsa remembered the day she'd taken Loreda, swaddled in pink, to her parents' house, hoping her marriage would allow them to accept her again. Elsa had worked for weeks on a lovely pink dress for the baby, trimmed it in lace. She knit a matching cap. Finally, she borrowed the truck and drove to Dalhart alone, pulling up at the back gate. She remembered every moment in detail: Walking up the path; the smell of roses. Everything in bloom. A clear blue sky. Bees buzzing around the roses.
She had felt both nervous and proud. She was a wife now, with a baby girl so beautiful even strangers remarked upon it.
Knocking on the door. The sound of footsteps, heels on hardwood. Mama answering the door, dressed for church, wearing pearls. Papa in a brown suit.
"Look," Elsa had said, her smile unsteady, her eyes filling with unwanted tears. "My daughter, Loreda."
Mama, craning her neck, peering down at Loreda's small, perfect face.
"Look, Eugene, how dark her skin is. Take your disgrace away, Elsinore."
The door, slamming shut.
Elsa had made a point of never seeing them or speaking to them again, but even so, their absence caused an ache that wouldn't go away. Apparently you couldn't stop loving some people, or needing their love, even when you knew better.
"Yes?" Rose said, looking up at her.
"They didn't love me. I never knew why. But now Loreda has turned so angry, I wonder if she sees me the same way they did. I could never do anything right in their eyes, either."
"Do you remember what I told you on the day Loreda was born?"
Elsa almost smiled. "That she would love me as no one else ever would and make me crazy and try my soul?"
"Sì. And you see how right I was?"
"About part of it, I guess. She certainly breaks my heart."
"Yes. I was a trial to my poor mamma, too. The love, it comes in the beginning of her life and at the end of yours. God is cruel that way. Your heart, is it too broken to love?"
"Of course not."
"So, you go on." She shrugged, as if to say, Motherhood. "What choice is there for us?"
"It just … hurts."
Rose was silent for a while; finally, she said, "Yes."
In the distant field, Tony and Rafe were hard at work, planting winter wheat in ground that was as powdery as flour at the surface and hard beneath. For three years, they'd planted wheat and prayed for rain and gotten too little and grown no crop at all.
"This season it will be better," Rose said.
"We still have milk and eggs to sell. And soap." Small blessings mattered. Elsa and Rose combined their individual optimism into a communal hope, stronger and more durable in the combination.
Rose put an arm around Elsa's waist, and Elsa leaned into the smaller woman. From the moment of Loreda's birth, and in all the years since, Rose had become Elsa's mother in every way that mattered. Even if they didn't speak of their love, or share their feelings in long, heartfelt conversations, the bond was there. Sturdy. They'd sewn their lives together in the silent way of women unused to conversation. Day after day, they worked together, prayed together, held their growing family together through the hardships of farm life. When Elsa had lost her third child—a son who never drew breath—it was Rose who held Elsa and let her cry, and said, Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us. Rose, who spoke for the first time about her own lost children, had showed Elsa that grief could be borne one day, one chore, at a time.
"I'll go water the animals," Elsa said.
Rose nodded. "I'll dig up what I can."
Elsa grabbed a metal bucket from the porch and wiped the grit from its inside. At the pump, she put on gloves to protect her hands from the blazing-hot metal and pumped a bucketful of water.
Carrying the sloshing pail carefully back to the house, not wanting to spill a precious drop, she was nearing the barn when she heard a sound, like a saw blade grinding over metal.
She slowed, listened, heard it again.
She set down the bucket and moved around the corner of the barn and saw Rafe standing by the new crack in the ground, his arms propped on the head of a rake, his hat pulled low on his downcast face.
Crying.
Elsa walked over to him, stood silently by. Words were something she could never pull up easily, not for him. She was always afraid of saying the wrong thing, of pushing him away when she wanted to draw him near. He was like Loreda, full of mercurial moods and given to bouts of passion. It frightened her, those moods she could neither tame nor understand. So she held her tongue.
"I don't know how long I can stand all of this," he said.
"It will rain soon. You'll see."
"How can you not break?" he said, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
Elsa didn't know how to answer that. They were parents. They had to stay strong for the children. Or did he mean something else? "Because the kids need us not to."
He sighed, and she knew she'd said the wrong thing.
***
THAT SEPTEMBER, HEAT ROARED across the Great Plains, day after day, week after week, burning away whatever had survived the summer.
Elsa stopped sleeping well, or at all, really. She was plagued by nightmares of emaciated children and dying crops. The livestock—two horses and two cows, all bones and hollows—were being kept alive by eating the prickly Russian thistles that grew wild. The small amount of hay they'd harvested was nearly gone. The animals stood still for hours at a time, as if afraid that every step could kill them. In the hottest part of the day, when the temperature rose above 115 degrees, their eyes became glassy and unfocused. When they could, the family carried pails of water to the corral, but it was always too little. Every drop of water that came up from the well had to be carefully conserved. The chickens rarely moved, they were so lethargic; they lay like feathered heaps in the dirt, not even bothering to squawk when they were disturbed. Eggs were still being laid, and each one was like a nugget of gold, although Elsa feared that each one would be their last.
Today, like most mornings, she was awake before the rooster crowed.
She lay in bed, trying not to think about the dead garden or the dried-up ground or the coming winter. When sunlight began to stream through the windows, she sat up and read a chapter of Jane Eyre, letting the familiar words soothe and comfort her. Then she put the novel aside and got out of bed, careful not to waken Rafe. After dressing, she took a moment to stare down at her sleeping husband. He'd been out in the barn until late last night and finally stumbled to bed smelling of whiskey.
She had been restless, too, but neither had turned to the other for solace. They didn't know how, she supposed; they'd never learned to comfort each other. Or maybe there was no comfort to be found when life was so bad.
What she knew was that the slim hold she'd had on him was loosening. In the past few weeks, she'd noticed how frequently he turned away from her. Was it since the dust storms had ruined their fields and tripled the work? Or since he'd planted the winter wheat with his father?
He stayed up late, reading newspapers as if they were adventure novels, staring out windows, studying maps. When he finally stumbled to bed, he rolled away from her and thumped into a sleep so deep that sometimes she feared he had died during the night.
Last night, as so often, when he finally came to their bed, she lay in the dark, aching for him to turn to her, touch her, but even if he had, they both would have remained unsatisfied. He never spoke while they were intimate, not even whispers about his need, and he rushed through the act as if he regretted it before he began. Sometimes Elsa felt lonelier when their lovemaking ended than she had been before it began. He said he stayed away from her because she conceived so easily, but she knew the truth was darker than that. As always, it came down to her unattractiveness. Of course he had difficulty wanting her. And clearly, she was not good in bed; he rushed through it so.
In earlier years, she had dreamed of boldly reaching for him, changing how they touched each other, exploring his body with her hands and her mouth; then, upon waking, she'd felt frustrated and swollen with a desire she could neither express nor share. She'd waited years for him to see it, see her, and reach out.
Lately, though, that dream felt far away. Or maybe she was just too tired and worn out these days to believe in it.
She left their bedroom and walked down the hallway. She paused at each of the kid's bedroom doors and peered in. The peacefulness in their sleeping faces squeezed her heart. At times like this, she remembered Loreda when she'd been young and happy, always laughing, her arms thrown open for a hug. When Elsa had been Loreda's favorite person in the world.
She went into the kitchen, which smelled of coffee and baking bread. Her in-laws didn't sleep anymore, either. Like her, they held on to the unproven hope/belief that more work might save them.
Pouring herself a cup of black coffee, she drank it quickly and washed out the cup, then stepped into her brown shoes—the heels almost worn away—and grabbed her sun hat.
Outside, she squinted into the bright sun, tented a gloved hand over her eyes.