Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

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  When I was young, my older sister had long tresses. Her auburn blond hair would reach her waist. Mother would French Braid Deborah’s hair. She would always go to her for that. But sometimes, of an evening, Daddy would “pretend braid.” He would divide her long tresses in two, and began making loops, drawing one through the other. I don’t know if he really knew how to do the real thing, but he never tried. His big thick fingers and hands, much like Henry’s, were too clumsy for such fine work. Deb would walk around the house and do whatever until she got tired of the arrangement that Dad had made. It was the same as he used in the barn, taking the reins and shortening them, loop after loop, before coming in for dinner at noon.

  “Oh, all right,” she would say at last. And he would reach out and give the works a big pull, and it all would fall out.

  I think of her hair and of Daddy’s hands every time I am with Henry. His hands lie on top of the covers, often slightly cupped and palms up, and I think of what they could do and how quiet they are now.

  Every other day I am with Henry. Elise drives me over, a real friend who came, no questions asked, to stay with me and set up my quarters in the dining room that first long October night they took Henry away. I bring my diary and read to him: weather reports, field conditions, projects ahead, underway, completed. If there are visitors, and there are a few, I tell him. The diary is my platform. And from it I digress and ramble. I tell him how Burdell is doing, mostly by himself this year, in the fields Henry knows so well. The shorthorns are gone now, but Duke and Dan, Henry’s favorites, Burdell still keeps in the barn, out of respect I think, even though they are his now. Of an evening, he stops his home-bound team and Duke and Dan, their lines looped up and shortened and hung on the hames, walk in of their own accord, just like Henry himself was there. And Burdell follows. In the semi-darkness of these October evenings, he rubs them down good and feeds them grain and hay in the tie stalls before he pushes on towards home.

  All this I tell to Henry. Often I take one of those big hands and hold it as I speak. And the sense I always have, as I sit with him afternoons, every other day, is that I am talking for two. And seeing for two, looking out from my place at the roll-top and bringing it all here faithfully. Really I am looking and speaking about the things that are happening in those places where I believe he still is. Past the frame of the house in which I sit and from which I look, he is out there, his mind playing over the contours of the land like this wind that rattles the window pane and pushes in under the door and finds every place, every crevice with its cold.

  So I bring him to himself, and hold his hands, and hope. Sometimes there is a little stirring, but the doc who comes once a week when I am visiting, tells me that there is very little change. His hands are softening now, in the warm air, the cocoon of this time. It flows around him like warm water with him scarcely noticing. So I tell him about all the things that Burdell is doing, all the things that I think he himself is doing, somewhere deep inside.

  That’s why I sit here still, writing this diary. It still needs to be done. Oh, how I wish Henry could laugh again and tease. I write late into the night of what I have seen. The wind and the black paint outside doesn’t bother, when I am writing. Like the light around this desk, my words push it back, into the corners, while I catalogue the day. And if I am making false braids, I don’t rightly say, to myself or to anyone, especially Henry. For just yet I am not ready for him or God or fate or anyone to reach out, and to give it a big yank, and to have it all, these words and all my secret hopes, fall away.

  HAY FOR SALE

  Get up! get up for shame! the blooming morn

  Upon her wings present the god unshorn.

  See how Aurora throws her fair

  Fresh-quilted colors through the air:

  Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see

  The dew bespangling herb and tree.

  — Robert Herrick