Life Is Short But Wide (3 page)

Irene was a medium-sized woman, bright and healthy. She had smooth brown-gold skin and clear, hazel eyes like dusky sunshine. Even though they were sad eyes, they were bright and honest, seeking some happiness, yet reserved and subdued. Irene was twenty-two years old. She had been struggling to survive ever since she could remember. She had run away from a motherless home, at last, five years ago. Running from her father, brothers, uncles, and white men pulling after her body.

Irene, clean, mannerable, and presenting herself well, had found work as a servant to a family with three children. It was a fairly wealthy house, and they spent good money on the children’s education and tutors. Irene always sat in on all their classes for the five years she was there.

She had learned to read and write and more, along with the children. She was alert to life’s demands. Her learning was her tool for her living. Now she taught what she had learned. She still had her same books, loved, worn, but very well cared for. She taught from them, sometimes copied from them for her students, but seldom let anyone touch them. No, sir!

Now, Val thought of her very, very often. He loved his mother and his Indian family, but sometimes he had looked at American houses in passing. He wondered at the privacy and quiet inside those rooms. Native Americans lived in many types of structures. Some even built low, flat houses similar to the white man’s before the white man came. But those were Indians who worked the land, not migrating with the seasons and animals.

Val, being a young healthy man, looked at all women, their
clothes, their ways. He was handsome, and they looked at him, too. He did not like the white women because of his family’s history with white men, but he knew there were Brown women, and women who were Black, like his father. And now, he had met one. He liked the women on his reservation, but felt like they were sisters. “Oh, Irene, Irene.”

It had taken a few months, though he asked often, before Irene allowed him to take walks with her. She knew about men and how they could be. She had a healthy and wise fear of them.

Val, with good sense, was patient. He was a thoughtful man, and discovered she liked books and learning. He could not read, but he had brought her a few books here and there, wherever he could find them. Spelling books, simple reading books, and even one from Europe he had found in a bartering shop. The books pleased her; that made him happy.

When she found he could not read, she decided to teach him. He had already begun to fall in love with her, and now, slowly she began to love him, not too much, but a little. They did not see each other often because of his work schedule, but it was at least twice a month.

Soon, very soon, that was not enough for him. He wanted her as his wife. He decided to ask her to marry him. She had to decide whether she loved him a little or liked him a lot. She decided to ask Mz. Shaw, the landlady, for some advice.

Mz. Shaw had thoughts. “Chile, that man is a working man. He don’ seem to be no gambler or liar. He always pay me what he owe me, and don’t make no fuss bout it. That Indian friend of his, he ain’t no thief, cause I done tried him. And, usually, if a Indian like you, you a pretty good person. How do ya feel bout him? You gonna have to sleep with him! I don blive you done
done that already, has you?” She smiled and gave Irene a sly, sidelong inquiring look.

Irene gave a little gasp, “No, ma’am! The last thing I need is a baby sittin on my hip!”

Mz. Shaw nodded her head, wisely, as she said, “That’s right, chile, keep that dress down over yo knees. Cause once they get that juney-puney, mens be gone.” She moved a pan on the hot stove, stirred another one as she shook her head dolefully. “Chile, this here world is a wilderness, and you out here struggling on yo own, all by yo’self. This a hard world sometime. Specially for womens. I ain’t crazy bout that ole husband of mine, but he’s mine, and he work hard WITH me, not on me. He younger ‘en me, but I watches him.”

Irene, though serious, smiled in understanding.

Mz. Shaw continued, as she stirred her pots. “Ya got to think bout some things! Where you gonna live? Is he gonna take you to live on some Indian reservation? Live in the wilds? Ya betta ask him bout that. Do he save his money? Ya need a home if you gonna leave this’un here. Ya can’t walk out into the streets and hope for the best; ya betta check on that best first. Why, you a lady what can read and write! See what he have in store for ya. If ya ain’t sure you loves him, ya can wait for a little. You a nicelookin woman. Be somebody else comin right along.” She gave Irene that sidelong look again. “Less’en ya done already give him some, and liked it ya own self.”

As Irene left for her class, she waved the last words away and started hoping her students were there waiting in the shack. She needed even those few nickels and dimes, and even pennies.

Later, Irene took Mz. Shaw’s words and, as she lay in her small, but clean and neat bed in her small, but clean room that
night she thought about Val. “I don’t like poor. I don’t want to be poor. And if I have children I want them to do better’n me. Be something besides born. But I do like him, Val. He kind of old, I think. Thirty-three or something. He way older than me. But, still, he is working. Oh, Lord, don’t you forget to direct my feet. Cause I’m scared. Scared to do it, and scared not to.”

Val and Irene continued their courtship, such as it was, and it bloomed slowly. She still didn’t know if she loved him when she agreed to marry him.

She looked in his eyes, seriously, and told him, “I don’t want to be no farmer’s wife, Val. I ain’t diggin and picking round in no dirt under no hot sun. I don’t want to cry cause I don’t have no food either. I don’t want no babies standing out under no hot sun with their eyes full of tears and their stomach full of empty air.”

His heart was full of love, so he assured her, “I’ll take care of you. I make a good livin, and I ain’t no farmer, though I do know how to plant things to grow; every Indian does.”

“You a Indian?”

“They are men, and I am a man.”

•

Val had been referred to a Jewish man who dealt in land and such, Mr. Meyer, who lived in the Wideland area. Val rode over to see him one day. Mr. Meyer told him, “I believe there is something coming up pretty quick. There is a lady, an old lady, whose children have moved east and their mother is out here all alone. She is the last white person on that street. They want to move her back east with them. She don’t want to go, but I blive she is going. Give me a couple of weeks, then stop back by and perhaps I will have it to show you. It’s gonna cost round bout two hundred dollars, though. It’s worth it. Don’t know if you can owe them or not, but they got banks here. You got credit?”

Val shook his head, “No, ain’t never needed none.”

Mr. Meyer shook his head, understanding. “Well, it’s time to think of all these things now you’re gonna get married. Young man, when you get married many things change.” He laughed softly. “For the better, though, I must say. It’s usually for the better. She a nice woman?”

Val grinned and nodded his head. “She is very nice. A good woman. A teacher.”

Mr. Meyer liked that. “Well, we’ll just work on getting a good house for her.”

So now Val was back to look at the house.

Val liked the house and was even surprised it was as nice as it was. It was two stories, large and well built. The original owner had used good materials for this home for his family, and it was well planned out and built.

The house was about thirty-five years old, it had been white but was yellowing from age. It sat on five acres of land with
neighboring houses, usually with the same degree of land, clustered in that area. The house had a large front porch with most windows looking out to the trees and yard.

The owner, a calculating builder, balanced the house. A lawn and a once blooming garden, now dying. Ventilation, drainage, and water service. All prime quality. Iron clamps and girders, fireproof. He had also built a three-room shotgun house far off to the side of the front acreage, for a laborer, or a guest, if needed.

There were four large bedrooms upstairs: a parlor room, dining room, and kitchen downstairs. The carpets were worn thin from many years of children, cleanings, and now neglect, as children left home and the widowed mother aged. The curtains, left behind, lifting in the breeze, were a bit ragged. The paint in all the rooms was old and yellowed with age.

The kitchen had a good wood stove for cooking and heat, and the sink had a water pump bringing water from the well. Stairs with a solid banister led upstairs to the bedrooms. The movers had left an upright piano in the living room; it just sat there looking lonely, but slightly grand.

Val thought all in all it was a good house for his young bride, who had never had a home of her own. “It will be mine. And my children will have a home. All this land, and these trees, the birds in them and the bugs beneath them will be mine. Ours.”

He paid one hundred and fifty dollars for the house. A goodly sum at that time. That money stood for years of sleeping on the ground, and sweat running down his face and back, smelling of horses and cattle.

The house sat on the acreage with a good number of trees. Fine beautiful oaks, a good-sized pecan tree, many willows and
other types. Plus several fruit trees, peach, apple, plum, full grown. They all needed some attention, but Val knew how to do that too.

Family name of Smith rented the house across the road. Joseph and Bertha, recently married. Glean and poor. Joe worked at the lumberyard, and did odd handyman jobs for a thin living.

Bertha stayed home to care for her husband, running off now and again to do domestic work to help with the money they sorely needed. She mostly sat in a narrow front window to watch life go slowly by. She loved flowers and horses. Actually she loved anything live.

Val hired Bertha to clean his new house for his new wife. Wash the curtains, polish the banister and floors, clean the fireplaces, polish up the kitchen, and all the things a woman would see needed to be done. He smiled proudly. “I want my wife to like this here house, Mz. Bertha! This my first and only wife and this our first house!”

Proud, he nearly flew back to Irene, wrapped his arms around her, saying, “Better start getting ready to move, sweetheart, into your own house. I done … I have bought it. It’s ours! I blive you are going to like it!”