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Wildflower on the Prairie

By Tasha Hackett

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Nebraska, June 1, 1879

“Psst.”
Hannah Benton jerked awake at her mother’s hiss and the sting of the accompanying pinch.
“Don’t make a spectacle of yourself.” Mother motioned for Hannah to sit up straight. “Bobbing your head like a regular layabout. You may be exiling yourself to the frontier, but you needn’t neglect your upbringing the moment we cross the river.” She snapped her fan open and eyed the other passengers on their train.
“We crossed the Missouri hours ago, Mother.” Hannah yawned, but she closed her mouth before adding that her upbringing hadn’t done her any favors yet. She fidgeted on the not-so-soft bench she shared with her mother and smoothed her gloved hands along the lap of her stifling green travel suit.
“Bridle your tongue, child. If I could turn this train around I would. It’s bad enough your father agreed to this, and it’s only by the grace of God himself your brother hasn’t been kicked to death by his oxen or pigs or whatever he’s playing with on his homestead.” Amanda Benton sat perfectly still, aside from the twitch of her wrist that kept her fan moving. “I don’t need your prattle with the rest of my pains today.”
Hannah turned her face to the aisle to hide another yawn. “Hiram isn’t playing homestead.” She shook her head, chiding herself for speaking aloud. He isn’t playing at anything. He’s finally escaped your clutches and will do whatever it takes to stay out from under your thumb.
Words tumbled from Hannah’s mouth before she could lock them up. “He has sheep anyhow.” Which you would know if you paid attention to anything we’ve been telling you.
The vibrant June grass and rolling landscape seemed to hold Mother’s interest outside the window for the time. She ran a finger along the high collar of her charcoal suit. “With Hiram gone, I prayed your sharp tongue would settle. Why God cursed me with twins, I’ll never know. If you survive the winter together, it’ll be a surprise. You’ll find soon enough that books can’t be eaten.” She muttered the rest. “You with your distractions and he with his animals. Neither one of you with a care for reality.”
Her mother’s suit was impeccable. Somehow, it didn’t reveal the evidence of their two-day trip as Hannah’s did. Mother’s dark hair with a few silver highlights was swept into a simple chignon with a neat straw hat fastened to the side. A deep burgundy ribbon and a plume of feathers accented the hat, dyed gray to match her suit. Hannah wore one of her own in green pinned atop her mess of hair, black as ink.
Down the aisle, men in suits read the paper. A mother with a toddler sprawled across her lap rested her head against the window, hat askew. The father, arm around his wife and child, slept with his head at a sharp angle. Another son sat facing his parents, lost in a copy of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Hannah’s own copy nestled between Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s Hamlet in her trunk a few cars behind with the luggage.
“Farming.” Her mother’s fan flicked open and shut, joining the rant Hannah heard every week since Hiram left Des Moines in February. “I would never have dreamed it for my children. Son of a surgeon, the world at his feet, mere months from taking his own practice, and he throws it away to live in a dusty, barren field.”
Outside the window, the telegraph wires, drooping and rising, drooping and rising, pulled Hannah’s gaze. What important messages zipped back and forth? Hannah saw it all in her imagination. A little man with round glasses jumped in alarm when the warning came through his wire: Enemy advancing west of fortification. Send immediate reinforcement. Men and women scrambled to arms, hoisting shields and swords. Only a few of the trained warriors remained. The war against the mountain trolls—no, prairie ogres—the war against the prairie ogres had been too fierce, too long. A woman in leather trousers and a tunic slung a water skin over her back and grabbed her spear. Originally trained as a rear guard, she was their battalion’s best scout. She ran along the leeward side of the army. Was leeward a nautical term? Could she scout leeward on land?
Her mother tapped her fan on the window. “How much longer do you suppose? This car is beginning to sway again. We can put a man into a drug-induced sleep, remove his appendix, and he lives to brag about it, but we haven’t discovered traveling in comfort. What would it take to knock some heads together and insulate this car? The dust that blows through is insufferable.” She gently stretched her shoulders up and slowly relaxed them with her breath as if it took every ounce of willpower to sit another minute through the torture. “It all comes down to money. They’ll charge whatever they like to poor folks like us and stuff their pockets. Never you mind how it should be spent to increase the passengers’ comfort.”
Hannah lifted her gaze to the ceiling and rolled her neck, breathing through her own rising tension of a different sort. They were likely the wealthiest passengers in the car, perhaps the whole train, since the major cities had been left behind on this spur.
A sleek, shiny rail car took shape in Hannah’s thoughts. No, scaled. A machine with scales like a serpent. Yes. Hannah closed her eyes. A graceful dragon taking flight with a mere leap into the air and then only wind. Rushing wind? A gentle breeze. The dragon flight surpassed all forms of travel. Soaring high enough to drown her mother’s voice, Hannah clenched her fists in her lap. She’d packed her drawing book and pencils away. They were safe. Hidden. Drawing fanciful creatures or machines in flight in front of Mother would never do. Not when she must be on her absolute best behavior. Hannah was finished after all. Eight years of finishing school had taught her how to hide her personality if nothing else.
“Sit up, child.” Her mother flicked her fan against Hannah’s knee.
How to hide it most of the time. “Yes, Mother.” Twenty-one. She was twenty-one years old, and her mother treated her like a mischievous ten-year-old. If this was a self-imposed exile to Hiram’s homestead, so be it. But no. She was not being exiled. Nebraska, though vast, could hardly be considered the frontier. After all, it was admitted to the Union twelve years ago. More than enough time for civilization to take root. However, neglecting her upbringing was her favorite daydream. What good would it do out here?
Des Moines wasn’t exactly a metropolis. Nothing like Chicago had been, but it was growing faster than it could keep up. She had no qualms removing herself from the odor of the expanding city, no matter how many fancy shops were added downtown.
Ten years ago, Hannah’s father moved his family of four to work as the head surgeon for Saint Mary’s Hospital. Her mother fussed about the slums on the edges of town with the tents and shacks of the multiple coal mining operations, but she quickly found her place in high society at the city center. The whole lot blinded themselves. Especially the insurance giants of the business district who pretended they weren’t drinking the same water as thousands of coal miners. Mother’s days were filled with social engagements, from charity board meetings to dress fittings, and Hannah wanted no part of it.
A smile tugged the corner of Hannah’s mouth, but she suppressed it. One more day. In mere hours, Hannah would be delivered to her brother Hiram and revel in the distance from her mother. If letting a sleepy head bob on a train made her a spectacle, she looked forward to the motherless possibilities of the West. Perhaps she’d venture into the sunshine with her face fully exposed to the warm rays and let her bare feet dig into mud. Hannah wiggled her toes in her pinched shoes, and a giggle slipped out.
Mother glared with puckered lips as if she’d bitten a lemon.
Turning away, Hannah watched the family across the aisle. The bleary-eyed father adjusted the angle of the sleeping child on his wife’s lap before his own eyes fluttered shut again.
“Don’t. Stare.” Her mother hissed through clenched teeth.
“Yes, Mother.” The recurring fear that Mother would attempt to keep Hannah from staying churned in her stomach. The plan was simple. Hiram would meet them at the depot, and their mother would refuse to visit his homestead. Hannah ignored the small measure of guilt from letting her assume Hiram lived in a sod house a full day’s ride from town. After one night in a hotel, a tearful goodbye—joyful tears—they’d plop Mother on the eastbound train.
Hiram would bring Hannah to his homestead two miles from town.
And then freedom.
Glorious freedom.
Hiram insisted all would be well, so Hannah forced her fists to open and relax as the reassurance from his letters ran through her mind again. Focusing on her posture, she slowed her anxious breathing. Now was not the time to prod her mother but instead, to encourage the belief that her upbringing was fully intact.
Hannah pulled from her satchel The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Volume 1, a gift from her mother on her last birthday. Though what she really wanted to finish was the published work of Anna Leonowens and her adventures in Siam. If Mother saw her reading Wordsworth, it might soften her disposition. One could dream.
“Hannah, dear, I’m worried about you and Hiram. I don’t understand why you can’t settle in the city with the rest of us. Mrs. Preston says they don’t even have piped water in most of the state. Whyever would you give up the city for this wasteland?”
Mother’s whining was unbecoming to a lady of her stature. Hannah squeezed her hand before offering the book of poetry. “Here, Mother. Read something nice. Take your mind off the stress of the day. There’s a lovely poem on the second page, just there.”
The soured look on her mother’s thin face deepened, but she took the book nonetheless.
Hannah blinked her eyes shut, but the telegraph wires continued to travel through her mind, drooping and rising, until Mother slapped the book shut and thumped it on Hannah’s lap.
“You’re giving up piped water to keep house for Hiram, who gave up piped water to play with pigs. Will someone please explain the logic behind this nonsense?” Mother refused to acknowledge her children didn’t want to live under her rule anymore and jumping states was the best way to go about it. “The excuses you crafted the past year are not convincing anyone.”
Hannah built an imaginary bronze shield to protect the back of the man’s head in front. He would need something to block the arrows shooting from Mother’s expression.
“Nobody in their right mind desires the adventure of self-sufficiency to the point they willingly dig in the dirt for their own food. If Hiram needed to prove himself self-sufficient, Nicholas would have let him the guest house until he was established enough to buy a place of his own.” Her fan sped faster and faster in time with her rant. “Both of my children. Turning their backs in the same year. There won’t be anyone suitable for the two of you to marry so far from proper civilization. A blessing in that, at least. I don’t care what you’ve said about Ockelbo—”
“It’s OH-ckelbo, Mother. With the long O. OH-kul-boe. Ockelbo. It’s Swedish.”
For her troubles, Hannah’s knee received a smack from the fan.
“I don’t care if it’s Swedish, English, or Turkish, with barely a thousand in populace, it can’t be anything worthwhile. It doesn’t even have . . .” Mother turned her face to the window releasing a shuddering breath.
“Have what, Mother?”
“Oh! Piped water among other things. Why would you choose it?” She snapped the fan open and immediately shut it again.
One more day. Hannah would be on her best behavior for one more day. And then . . .
Well.
And then she would live.

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