Alice rubbed her left
eye and pulled the end of her braid out of her mouth. “Disgusting habit”, she thought to herself as
she stretched and squinted, trying to read the time on the Westclox on her
dressing table. Seven o’clock. Jasper had already been up for two hours,
watering the first-calf heifers, putting out their grain buckets, and he hadn’t
even shaken her awake so she could get a start on her day’s chores. “What day
is it anyway”? She struggled to wake up her brain as she set her feet on the
cool floor. She smiled, remembering. Ten years ago today, she and Jasper
recited their vows in front of a JP in the office of the city clerk at Chicago
City Hall. Two agreeable strangers accepted their hasty invitation to act as
witnesses, and after the short and business-like ceremony, Alice and Jasper
were on their way to York, Nebraska, a mere fifteen hour ride in his pick-up
with bad shocks and the habit of spewing out alarming staccato explosions when
he accelerated the engine.
~
Alice Fabulic wasn’t
a woman to act impulsively. That is, until that day when she saw and answered
Jasper’s advertisement in the Bronx Home News, under the column entitled
“Heart& Hand”:
A
bachelor of forty years of age, strong, in good health and of reasonable
appearance and means, seeking amiable, educated woman, thoroughly versed in the
mysteries of cooking and housekeeping, for the purpose of matrimony. Must be
strong, under the age of 40, pleasant to the eye, and possessing of good moral
character. To join me in cattle endeavor in York, Nebraska, charged with the
management of household, hen-house, hogs, and milk cows.
There was a small black and white photo that accompanied the
plea, for the message did have an edge of desperation it seemed to Alice, and a
Western Union address. He was of more than “reasonable appearance” if his photo
were to be believed; he was quite handsome, and apparently modest, too. “Is he
a widower? How would he have managed on his own up until the age of 40”? She had no idea where York, Nebraska was, but
she assumed it to be somewhere in the Great Plains where the Dust Bowl was
breaking families and, unbeknownst to her, changing the course of history for
the whole country. But on that late Spring day in the Bronx, New York, she had
no concept of the true plight of those ranchers. “How many cattle”? she
mused. She had long fantasized about
life with such a man’s man, in such a rugged land, but she often thought that
the realities of courtship and marriage were far beyond the realm of her
imagination. Could she be the perfect
farmer’s wife, with swept floors, and clean sheets flapping in the wind, and
hot and hearty meals served up to her proud husband and their ranch hands?
“Think of it”, she said to herself. “When I look out my kitchen window, I won’t
even be able see the boundaries of our ranch”.
Still unmarried at
36, she was considered a handsome woman by her group of women-friends, handsome
being a word they used to describe one who was not quite pretty, but somewhat
well-proportioned and groomed, and pleasant enough to look at. Alice did take
care of her appearance. Every morning she brushed her long corn-yellow hair,
recently shot with silver, one hundred times. Then she pinched her cheeks and
carefully plaited her hair and secured it with several hairpins at the nape of
her neck. The style wasn’t exactly fashionable in those mid-years of the ‘30s,
but who had the luxury of fashion – or need?
Troops were marching again in Europe, and people already dying by the
thousands. Who knew when the US would join their allies? And besides, many of
the men of her generation had already made their sacrifice in the fields of
Belgium and France during the Great War. There were not many marriage prospects
in Alice’ purview.
Oh, how her friends had chided her when
she told them of her intention to wed. “Why Alice Fabulic! You haven’t even set foot
out of this city since we all took the train to Long Beach for our holiday two
years ago”. What they never quite understood was the way that she travelled
every day, her mind drifting at first, and then racing down the halls of the
New York Public Library to exotic destinations, meeting strangers she read
about in the seemingly endless aisles of books housed there. She was indeed an
armchair traveler of the first order.
~
Alice had been born in a hospital in
the Bronx, nicknamed “The Home for the Incurables” when it opened its doors
right after the Civil War, to Louisa Alma Dekkers and Samuel Fabulic. Such a
luxury in those days, to give birth in a hospital! The truth was that the old family doctor sent
Louisa to Saint Barnabas because he didn’t believe she would survive
childbirth. And sadly, he was right.
That she was born in
a place called a home for the “incurables” was not lost on the two adults who
participated in her early upbringing, her great aunt Esther and her father, as
she seemed to be an incurable romantic, inventing elaborate games of
make-believe, even from the time she took her first steps and spoke her first
words. There seemed to be such a longing in the child. A longing for the mother
she never knew; a desire to go to the exotic places she read about and would,
most likely, never see; a craving deep within her for someone to love and
cherish her being, just for the sake of her being. Well-intentioned though he
was, her father was far from warm, and incapable of women’s wisdom. Samuel did, however, give Alice a gift she
would treasure for all of her days – the love of literature. As a result, Alice’
young life was spent largely in her tidy room, having weekly adventures without
leaving her window-seat, reading from his eclectic collection of books.
When she was old enough to attend the
big public school six blocks away from their small apartment, she rose early,
splashed cold water on her face, dressed in her Sunday meeting dress and
carefully folded two pieces of bread and butter into a clean kitchen towel. The
six block walk seemed to take forever, but the walk itself was not nearly so
tedious as the drone of the teacher, a big-boned woman with a stern face and no
patience for daydreamers. After such great anticipation, school seemed rather
inconsequential to Alice. After all, she
was already reading Moby Dick and had
recently started on the Complete Works of
Shakespeare with the help of her father.
Many times her two sturdy feet, clad in the sensible shoes her Auntie
purchased for her, did not take her to the school room she had come to dread.
By the time she was twelve, Alice was spending most of her days in the Bronx
branch of the New York Public library, and living out the lives of the saints,
heroines and cowboys who captured her imagination and occupied and widened her
world through the books she voraciously devoured.
At 36, Alice’ back was stick-straight,
and she was head librarian at the Bronx branch of the library – both of which
things delighted her great aunt Esther. Auntie had always been a rather fussy
woman, and took pains to ensure that Alice comported herself like a proper
lady, with straight back and dainty steps, and keeping her smallish hands as
white as kid gloves. As Alice got closer to the age of thirteen, Auntie often
admonished her to “Sit gracefully and be at ease. Stand straight and tall to
impress your peers. You would be amazed at all that good posture can do,
Alice”. The words were indelibly imprinted in Alice’ mind. She knew that Auntie
loved her unconditionally, even if her demonstrations of such were somewhat
like those of a quartermaster. “Walk and command respect from both men and
women who are in your company”. As she
grew, her dear Auntie provided her with all of the womanly guidance, and then
some, that her father was incapable of.
It was Auntie who encouraged her to
follow her heart, and who also accompanied Alice to Grand Central Station those
ten years ago so she wouldn’t lose her nerve. The route to her new life was
direct. Six hours on the Hudson Line to Union Station in Albany where she would
transfer to the famous 20th Century Limited for the second leg of
her journey. She wondered if she would, indeed, get the “red carpet treatment”
that the color travel posters promised.
What she did know for sure was that for $46.70 she could acquire an
upper berth, closed from the aisle by a curtain, for the overnight journey.
This she told Jasper and he promptly wired the fare. Auntie insisted on giving
her $5.40 more for a private compartment so she could freshen-up after the
night ride; comb and tidy up her hair, and powder her nose before she met
Jasper at the appointed time at Chicago’s LaSalle Street Station.
~
“Still stick-straight, Auntie”, she
said aloud. “And stiff as a board,” Alice added to herself. “I must talk to
Jasper about turning this mattress”. She
dressed quickly, pulling on a clean shirt-waist and apron, choosing to wear her
only pair of silk stockings for this day, rather than her familiar cotton
work-hose. Ten years. No more tittering in their tea-cups for that
bunch from Woodland Heights. She showed them. She had followed a dream to make
it her reality, her fantasy, they said, of being a rancher’s wife.
“Oooooh! Miss Alice is all for the
glamour life. – The glamour of a cow-pie”, they taunted her. But that was then,
and here she was now. Married ten years and happy. Beyond her wildest imaginings.
Unconsciously she pulled the handkerchief
from her apron pocket and dusted the worn bannister as she padded down the
stairs to the big ranch kitchen that was the center of her universe. She caught
a brief reflection of herself as she passed the cracked mirror in the hallway,
and noticing the escaped strands of her braid, smoothed them back into place
with a bit of spittle, and deftly re-pinned them in place as she walked to the
sink to pump water for tea-kettle and coffee pot.
“Time-thieves are at
it again”. It was already seven forty five. Any time now, the men would be
riding in to water their horses and get their mid-morning fill of coffee and
bacon and biscuits. She checked the egg basket.
Seven. When she brought the cream to the farmer’s market on Saturday she
must see if any of the neighbors had pullets for sale. As much as she hated the
process of killing, plucking and cooking her own, the hens were no longer
laying enough to provide for the appetites of six grown men and her more modest
tastes.
By eight fifteen, the temperature was
already over 100 degrees in the kitchen. Her prize-winning biscuits would be
ready for butter and her homemade preserves any time now, and still no sign of
Jasper and the crew. She poured herself a cup of coffee, a luxury for this
special day, with cream and even a spoonful of sugar. She hoped the warm, rich
beverage would quell the growing uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. Eight
thirty. She walked out onto the broad porch and scanned the horizon. Ten
thousand acres of land. Land and livestock, as far as the eye could see. Just
as she imagined. They had toiled together, Jasper and she, shoulder to
shoulder, to re-build this ranch after the drought subsided and the Department
of Agriculture came into town to help the locals. Her hair had changed from gold
to silver during those years, but Jasper still touched it with reverence each
night when she shook loose her braid as she prepared for bed. She closed her
eyes and smiled at the thought of his touch.
~
It was Ernest who
broke the news, although he didn’t really need to utter a single word. She had
watched, barely breathing, as the six horses moved closer and closer to the
house, one mount riderless. She broke into a run as soon as she could read
their faces. Jasper. Jasper. Where was her husband? “Miss Alice”, he started,
but she was already at his side - the lifeless form of her husband, draped
across his favorite Aussie stock horse. “Miss Alice? We was just above the
ridge, tying off some fence-posts, when I looked over and saw him on his knees.
By the time I got to him, he was down. Gone”.
The rest of the day was a blur for
Alice. Even though there were great distances between farmsteads, neighbors
were tight and close at hand when help was needed. She made more coffee, several pots of
chamomile tea, warmed the biscuits. She accepted pies and eggs and a half a ham
brought in by folks who didn’t know what else to do. Finally, exhausted, she sat in his rocker on
the porch. She’d rest. After all her book-inspired fantasies, surely - she knew
that this day was just another daydream. Any time now Jasper would ride up to
the porch with a posy of her favorite wildflowers. Then they would have a quiet
meal to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
She opened her eyes
when a chair scraped across the floor-boards. “Miss Alice? Miss Alice, we’ll be going now, if’n you
think you’ll be all right”. All right? What did those two words even mean
anymore? “Yes, yes of course, Ernest. You need to rest after this day. Is there
anything I can do for you”? The poor man
looked exhausted, probably from holding back tears all day. They had been
boyhood friends, Jasper and he. It was Ernest who had convinced Jasper that
they needed a woman on the ranch in order to make a real go of it. A woman who
had travelled and done things with her life so she wouldn’t be longing to see
the world that existed beyond their front porch and barns and fields. Once she
set eyes on her new home, Alice never yearned for anything more.
“Jasper”. She watched Ernest turn and walk away toward
the bunkhouse, shoulders hunched. “Jasper” she sighed softly. She scanned the
horizon. Ten thousand acres of land.
Land and livestock, as far as the eye could see.
She waited until
Ernest was out of sight and earshot and then gave way to pitiful, wracking sobs.
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