Beiderman and the Hard Words

BEIDERMANN and the hard words /Lloyd Zimpel 1876 AUG. 2. AN OVER-HEATED wind aU day, and the dust that rides on it—not simple dust but dirt itseti, the earth itself. The rags Ma stuffs in door and window siUs hold back only some; and grit in her kitchen, on the oUcloth, pots, in the waterpaU , a skin of it everywhere, near gives her fits. With grit in our teeth, we spit black. That wind is too much to work in for more than a few hours, in that the horses wUl stand taU to it, heads lowered and eyes hooded, taUs blowing back across their rears. Among us it goes unsaid, though bursting to be said, there wUl be tittle crop anywhere this season in this part of Dakota; except in the smaU greener bottoms of the river where, for aU that the heat goes as it does everywhere, yet the baking wind is less. Those fields are the lucky Beidermann's, indeed, the blessed Beidermann's, for it is as if the drouth chooses to pass him by; his good fortune being that the greater of his land Ues where the river sttil shows something more than a damp stain; at which our cattle contend with his along its snaking length, a hundred heads tossing and taUs whipping against the flies that cover them Uke a coat of blacking wherever mud is not crusted, as it is on their legs and underbeUies, baked there like armor-plating. Today, the twins peel off sheets of it from a skinny heifer before she summons strength enough to stagger free---Aug . 3. God gives no quarter, sending nary a cloud, nor one the size of a baby's hand, against the fearsome sun, which murders any beneath it that turn for a moment careless. Henry, coming home from the North section with the hides off two calves gone under from this onslaught, rides in himself dizzied and hatfaddled ; and here it is weU into the stall-hot night and he has watered himself thoroughly, inside and out, and only now does he come into my lamp's light, and sighing heavUy takes a Utile of the meat and potato Ma left out for him___ The Missouri Review · 9 Aug. 4. Even as he stands and watches, vows Otto, he can discern the decUne of the water in our weU. It is nearly so; against the fading wetness of the stone waU it descends the width of a girl's finger each day; and the rope paid out today to fetch a bucketful exceeds by my arm's length the amount required to do the job after the spring thaw. Much of what we take from it goes to keep Ma's garden decent; and she begrudges more of it than I would to her damned geraniums, which flout their health whUe the grass six feet from them is dead, and the leaves on the box-elder by the porch are gray, not green---The twins return late from a day helping Beidermann scrape up a dam at a trickle of a spring he has lately, most providentially, discovered, and they report the pool sufficient to provide the stock consigned thereabouts; even as Beidermann's home-place weU, which they assisted in digging when he first came here, is no less full than when they dug it, say they. They express puzzlement then, why our own should drop, as U there is some flaw in my placement of it, done before they or any of the boys, excepting Otto, were even born; but my explanation that our bachelor neighbor draws from a different reserve, appears to fade away unheard. There is this too, left unsaid, for it would seem sour: that Beidermann's good fortune does not waver much, however the destinies of others are jarred and twisted as God sees fit to do so often; and if such blessings result from our staunch neighbor's close attention to his land and animals, why, then those of us who labor no less strenuously, have cause to ponder how even-handedly the destinies of men on Earth are administered from on High...