Lutie cocked her head, squished up her face in phony disbelief and crossed her arms over her chest. “So, with all your talents, why’re you here, on this prairie, fighting fire and dirt and—well, you never have really explained. Your dearest Frank has filled us in on a bit of it all, but you know men, they’re always short on words when we need them most—”
“Because it’s the way circumstances went, Lutie,” Jeanie said.
Jeanie bent down and began sorting the already sorted clothing, hiding tears that welled in her eyes. Because, with the fall of her father’s bank and his stealing of his customers’ money, went the purses of three of the biggest designers in New York City. Jeanie was sure her likeness was posted far and near in New York, announcing a reward for the apprehension of her for doing nothing more than being the daughter of the man who destroyed the lives of many.
“Well, that doesn’t explain anything,” Lutie said.
“Well, we don’t really—”
Jeanie’s words were interrupted by the sound of a train roaring from the west. But the last of the railroad ended east of Darlington Township in Yankton. They covered their ears and spun around trying to match the sound with a sight of something, anything that could create such an auditory disturbance. At first, they saw nothing. Their voices rose over the escalating din.
A dark cloud appeared in the west, the rising drone accompanying the sight of dark storm clouds. Not storm clouds that developed slowly, darkening over the course of an hour or day, but instead, like the snapping shut of a window, the darkness was there, above, filling their ears, though dropping no rain or driving no wind. They all stood there gaping at the unnatural sight.
And, once the clouds blotted out the sun to a large degree, the black plumes began to descend upon the group. Jeanie instinctively covered her ears while running to the soddie to check on Katherine, to get her inside the house for cover. Katherine wasn’t there.
Jeanie spun around, searched for the site of Katherine’s homespun flowered dress and white apron. Jeanie stood under the lip of the front of the soddie and in her mind it made sense that she wasn’t getting wet. What didn’t make sense was the sight of her friends, nearly running in circles, yelling for children and husbands over the storm, the perfectly dry storm.
Jeanie’s chest heaved and she looked up into the sky. It was then she saw what was happening and what she saw was so unlikely that she was taken by laughter as chaotic as everyone else’s panicked screams and flailing motions. What was happening?
Jeanie held her shaking hand out into the air waiting for rain to drench her skin, but instead of water, enormous insects landed there. What was she seeing? She let six of them sit there until they nibbled her skin. Grasshoppers! She’d heard about infestations over the years. The thought of the destruction that swarms of these miniature beasts could inflict took her from her laughter.
Still choking on laughter—that nervous laughter that always came at the wrong time, but somehow felt great when it did, she couldn’t stop it, its inappropriateness, she choked on it as she spun around looking for Katherine. She stood with the others, hands moving across her face, covering her eyes, then mouth then ears as though she couldn’t decide which orifice was best shrouded from the beasts.
Jeanie saw the world slow to nearly half motions as her mind watched the three-inch creatures, so large she could see their jaws work as they chomped on grasses. The freshly sprouted green that had seemed like such a miracle after the fire was consumed in front of her eyes.
She finally was able to stifle her laughter enough to run to the clump of women and Anton and begin pulling them into the soddie. She tried to step over the grasshoppers but every time she lifted her foot, the space below was filled with insects, piled three deep, fighting for anything remotely green. They crunched under her boot igniting chills in her body, nausea tore at her insides at the thought that she was killing living things. Except that stepping on them didn’t actually kill anything, they merely readjusted themselves and began munching away.
“Everyone into the soddie!” Jeanie said. “We’ll be safe in there!” She groped at Katherine and Lutie, pulling each by a dainty arm. Both of them crying, hid their faces with their free hands as they followed Jeanie to the home. She shoved them into the soddie and turned to pull the rest of them in, but Ruthie, Greta and Anton were still at the wagon. They were kicking and swatting at grasshoppers while they attempted to drag the clothing toward the house.
“Leave that stuff!” Jeanie stomped toward them. “They’re looking for grass and vegetables! Come inside.” None of them seemed to hear what Jeanie had said as they continued to hit and stomp and drag the clothing.
Jeanie pulled Ruthie’s arm. “Come inside. They won’t bother the clothes. It’s greens they want.”
Ruthie tore her arm from Jeanie’s hand and bent down. When she stood up, holding the beautiful green dress to her chest, Jeanie gasped. She covered her mouth when she saw. She pulled the dress closer so she could touch it. Jagged holes covered the dress, as though they’d been cut into the design.
“What is that?” Jeanie said, not believing her eyes or the feel of the ransacked material. Another swarm of grasshoppers dropped and covered the dress, nearly eating it right out of Ruthie’s hands. Finally Jeanie understood what was happening.
“Move! We’ll lose everything!” Jeanie said. She was taken by insidious laughter as she bent down and scooped up the grasshopper-covered bundles of clothing. Greta and Anton were already half-way into the soddie, arms laden with all they could carry. Ruthie stood, statue-stiff, head bowed.
Jeanie threw her bundle into the soddie and turned back to Ruthie. “Ruthie! Come, now. You must come!”
Ruthie remained, her shoulders jumping with cries into the din of munching insects.
Jeanie ran to her, wrapped her up against her body and pulled her toward the soddie. Jeanie shoved her inside and slammed the door behind her, shutting out a bit of the drone of ravenous insects.
Katherine squealed, pointed to Ruthie and then buried her head into Lutie’s breast. Jeanie turned and nearly fell over at the sight of clusters of grasshoppers, sitting on the flowered fabric of Ruthie’s dress, jawing at it, too stupid to realize its lifelessness.
Jeanie and Greta batted at the insects, while Ruthie sobbed, face in her hands. Jeanie and Greta stomped them once the grasshoppers fell on the floor and then Anton swept them out of the soddie. Once this process was complete, the only grasshoppers they could hear were outside, gnawing away at anything they could. With the buzzing of the grasshoppers beginning to sound like silence itself, the soddie became heavy with quiet.
They picked through the clothing Jeanie had so lovingly made, assessing the damage. Jeanie would intermittently rupture the silence with raspy cackles, laughter no one else seemed to be taken by.
The grasshoppers stayed for hours, twelve at least. Though no one could say how long they ravaged the land for sure, because even with all the worry about where the rest of their cooperative members were, even with the chilling sound of millions of insects eating the house that protected them, at some point, their bodies won the battle and each of them fell asleep. Except for Jeanie. She guarded the home against the occasional rodent seeking refuge. This allowed her to hover, watching over the rest of them.
She listened to their breath, holding the oil lamp over them, noticing the slack calm of their faces interrupted by a grimace here and a grunt there. She wondered if they dreamed of prairie horrors. When Jeanie finally grew so heavy with fatigue that she thought she could sleep, she lay down with Katherine. She closed her eyes and an oppressive fear settled inside her, shocking her with what felt like tangible weight, like she could have touched the black mass if she’d been able to open herself up and locate it.
Though she’d been met with fears like never before over the last few months, nothing had ever been as real as this, and she hoped her children felt nothing of the sort. She wasn’t sure how she would protect them, not w
hen things like grasshoppers descended like rain, but she knew she had to. And, somehow she would.
After the day of the grasshoppers Jeanie woke first. Katherine was folded into her body, both barely clinging to the edge of the bedstead as they shared it with Ruthie who slept like an irritated bull.
Jeanie stretched and crawled over Katherine. Upright, she crept into the bathroom and recoiled at the smell of six people having nearly overflowed two chamber pots.
She stifled her gag and even though scared of what she might see outside, she lumbered toward the front door, hand over mouth and barely made it outside before vomiting on the freshly shorn ground. She dry-heaved, feeling as though her insides might have been turning inside out, emptying its lining as much as anything else that had been in there. Her eyes watered and her head filled with fizz leaving her unbalanced. She steadied herself on the side of the soddie, her fingers digging into the earthen bricks, while her eyes squeezed shut, watered so forcefully that even though closed, tears soaked her cheeks.
Jeanie stopped heaving and the sensation of arms circling her from behind, made her jump. Greta helped Jeanie stand straight and together, their gazes slid across the land. As far as they could see, russet, naked land stretched. In the way that one would imagine bright, bold colors giving a person a jolt, the nothingness of bland earth tones, in the abrupt absence of the green, gold, and blues that had been present the day before made Jeanie’s breath leave her. She leaned further into Greta’s embrace.
Jeanie stole a look at Greta whose expression was blank except for the twitch at the side of her mouth, one that Jeanie thought was the precursor to tears, the sign of the frustration that they’d again lost everything. And this time, there wouldn’t be a replanting and subsequent harvest. This time, it was completely lost for the year. Greta cleared her throat and clenched her eyes shut, but no tears came. Perhaps there was no point.
Jeanie made her way to the space behind the hill where the Zurchenkos had designated a necessary. The sound of horse hooves clopped over the land, growing louder, made her hurry to see who was coming.
Jeanie came from around the hill and in front of her stood the entirety of their Darlington Township cooperative. Everyone was safe and sound, but bearing the looks of people who’ve been pushed to the ground and trodden upon for the extent of their existences. Tommy and James ran to her and attacked her with hugs, hiding their faces in her chest and shoulder, forgetting their ages. She clutched them, making them choke on her desperate embrace.
Once the boys had sheepishly moved on to the other children, they began comparing notes on the events of the day past, re-enacting the unbelievable grasshopper descent.
Ruthie came out of the home and held the dress Jeanie had made her. Only some snarled fabric remained, dangling from the collar. She bowed her chin into her chest and sobbed. Jeanie went to Ruthie and wrapped her arms around her. Ruthie jerked away with a violent shrug of her shoulders.
Frank, his face stricken, watched his wife as she failed to soothe the anxious Ruthie. She snarled and ran back toward her home. Frank stepped forward then backed up, clearly understanding if Jeanie couldn’t help her friend, he certainly couldn’t either. He began to recount the state of their home, to describe how he had been working at Templeton’s when the grasshoppers arrived. They had retrieved some of his tools, but many had remained on the plains, open to the gnawing insects. Their exploratory bites may not have rendered the tools completely unusable, but Frank, the scars from their little mouths, seemed enough to render him unusable, Jeanie feared.
Likewise, five of the chairs he’d begun to make were ruined. Some of the animals had been nipped at here and there, but mostly they were safe, though now, facing a shortage of food. Even Tommy and James looked sorrowful, their gazes drilling holes into the ravaged soil.
Frank’s posture was sunken, his face gray. Jeanie’s heart nearly shrunk to a pea at the thought of what this might do to him, that it would send him to that black place that handicapped his ability to function like a responsible husband and father. They did not have the luxury on the prairie, for Frank to fall into his darkness.
Standing there, clumped together like lost children, Nikolai methodically reported the inventory of crops they’d seen so far. The Moore’s garden was decimated, the Hunt’s vegetables were so badly destroyed that the ground itself looked as though large fist-sized rocks had fallen from the sky, pitting their land. The only thing they managed to save was hay stored in a shed that had survived the fire.
The Zurchenkos accepted this information with stiff posture and nods of the head, as though they were being told it was going to be sunny and breezy that day. The Hunts were quiet, but slouched in much the same way as Frank. Jeanie dismissed it as them possibly coming to realize that housing God inside one’s skin, might not be the most useful place to keep him. Or maybe it was the realization that the poppy crop was annihilated. Jeanie knew all too well what an opium-eater faced when he was out of crop.
Jeanie was unable to read Templeton’s expression—his stance was relaxed, leaning on one hip. He turned his hat by the brim, but something in his lounge made Jeanie want him to hold her. In Frank she only found disgust and the aversion was amplified by her adulterous mind. How could she seek even mental comfort in another man? Even if that man was unaware of her longings, even if she was always unaware of them too, until they sprang to mind, ceasing her heart in the process.
Jeanie was about to succumb to the despair she saw in Frank, to join the Moores in their pity party for no one beside the Zurchenkos had lost as much as she in the last months. If anyone should be blubbering, contemplating her suicide, it should be Jeanie. But a flutter in her belly reminded her that she wasn’t just responsible for her own mood, but that her mood might flavor the personality of the baby inside.
She grabbed her belly and straightened as though she’d never been aware of the pregnancy until that instant. Her mind flashed to the near future, the way nurturing an infant could be precarious anywhere, and the way conditions needed to be at least adequate to ensure her baby’s early health. A baby due to be born on the prairie in February would be dangerous in itself, let alone if they hadn’t feasible housing and nourishment.
She edged closer to the men who had heads bowed in problem-solving discussion.
“We’ll just have to go to the railroad until December at least,” Nikolai said.
“The railroad?” Templeton nearly spit. “I can’t yield to some mumble-mouth railroad superintendent and his henchmen. We aren’t the kind of men who take orders and bow to others. We wouldn’t have lit out for the prairie if we were. We’d already be at the railroad if that was who we were.”
Frank nodded to Templeton. Nikolai rubbed his neck. “I will go to the railroad. If I don’t, my family, this cooperative of Darlington Township, won’t make it through the winter.”
“Well, that’s not entirely true, Nikolai. Why I have another stash—” Templeton said.
Nikolai raised his arthritic looking hand. “Now, I won’t have you digging into your monetary stores to help us survive while we do nothing but sit around reading and dreaming about the land…“
“Nothing wrong with contemplating the beauties of nature,” Frank said.
Nikolai turned his shoulders away from Frank, focusing fully on Templeton. “But, if there’s a way for us to not borrow from Templeton, to build up stores for all of us, then we should do it,” Nikolai said. “We never know what’s next on the prairie and spending money when there’s a way to save it, is foolish at best. And, I say that having never lifted a book in my life. But something tells me that within the pages of the tomes you folks inhale as though it were food itself, are the exact same sentiments I’ve expressed. We men need to do what’s right for the group and we need to do it now.”
“We can’t just leave the women alone with the children. How will they survive?” Frank said.
Jeanie bit the inside of her cheek to hold in her thoughts— the notion th
at she might survive just fine without Frank. The men yammered on about how to ensure they had the necessary provisions for winter and Jeanie mulled over that niggling thought that had pounced into her consciousness—that she might not need Frank, that she might feel relief if he were gone.
She stretched her heart, back to when she first met Frank and he turned her foolish. There, in that memory was a strand of love and generosity toward him. And she pulled that strand into the present-time making her heart disagree with the idea she could live without Frank. It was with that sliver of love that she battered back her intellect and its pursuit of autonomy. It wasn’t right to house such thoughts and in doing so, only trouble could come. “And trouble comes soon enough without courting it.”
Abrupt silence startled Jeanie. The group stared at her. She hadn’t realized she’d spoken aloud. When conversation didn’t take up again, she pushed her shoulders down and back as she always did when filled with confidence.
“Well, as I can see, the elements hold quite enough surprise for us to go on ruminating and mulling over what might be or not be or whatever. Let’s just say,” Jeanie spread her hands in front of her, “we’ve lost nearly everything, so the answer to getting back enough to subsist through the winter is the men going to the railroad until Thanksgiving.
“By then we’ll have enough money—to purchase the items we need to make it through winter. Do we even know if anything survived the grasshoppers? Did they stay localized or is the entire county wiped clean of greenery? Berries? Hay? Did the ugly creatures even eat the cow dung we use for fuel? These are the questions that need answered. Whether you men go to the railroad or not is easy. Yes, you go. We’ll be fine.”
Jeanie’s gaze shifted among the men. Though she wouldn’t be wounded emotionally if they brushed her off, she knew it was a possibility they would and if so, she would be forced to forge another path to solve the problem. She was growing ever more convinced that she’d been right about gender stations in America. It wasn’t feasible for women to do everything men did. Though she was feeling at that time that it was she who could and would keep her family alive, not her very male husband.