1880
“The seventies haven’t been so bad, but it looks like the eighties’ll be better,” Mr. Boast agreed. “Dakota land! Nobody’ll be there! I ought to show up at the land office bright and early! Don’t worry about the homestead, Mrs.!”
Mrs. Boast said, “Hurry up so we can read!”
A BEAUTIFUL LADY, LOST IN THE WORDS
But at the most exciting part, she came suddenly to the words “To be continued.”
“Oh dear me, we will never know what became of that lady,” Mary lamented. “Laura, why do you suppose they print only part of a story?”
They wondered what would happen next to the beautiful Mrs. Boast. Mrs. Boast, made of paper—folded, pressed smooth—overlapped Ma and talked mostly about homesteads. She said Ma need not worry; she would teach school and whatnot.
PILGRIMS
The fiddle squawked & dropped on the table. Pa’s spirit! Ma took hold of the edge. Her face startled Laura. “I will make … inquiries!” she said. Pa fluttered fast. “Trust in the Lord!” said Ma. “Talk, Pa!”
“Would you mind writing it down?” said Pa.
Ma got her little pearl-handled pen and the ink bottle and wrote; no one wanted to lose the opportunity to hear Pa fiddle in French. “No music,” said Pa. “Day after tomorrow. Strangers. Huron. Put them up for the night.”
The Huron men cleared the table and washed dishes. A young man pleasantly urged Ma and Ma could not refuse because she wanted that fellow. The fat was in the fire then! Caroline’s long, catamount screech curled against the walls. Ma yelled like a wildcat from Tennessee, tried every persuasion & filed on a claim south of here. Golly!
BOOM!
New grass was starting silver; the horses stretched and shone. Mary dreamed of wolves’ howling and sunflowers, her petticoats a snowdrift in the long room. The prairie grass pulled a street to fidgets; the street fidgeted so that men sat down.
“There’s murder south of town! A claim jumped,” Ma said. “We better get onto our claim before it moves.”
“It’s moving! Quick! The homestead’s moving!” They stuffed chimneys with paper and wrapped them in towels. Ma exclaimed, “Laura! This wind will ruin your complexion!” Suddenly, green horses gleamed in the sunshine, their necks arched and their ears pricked up.
“Oh, what beautiful horses!” Laura cried.
“The horses’ve taken up town, by George!”
To coarse grass horses—manes and tails marshy and silver—the shanty looked like a yellow toy on the great rolling prairie covered with rippling young. All over the prairie the blossoms were dancing; the whole enormous prairie was a green carpet of flowery colts.
In the shanty, tigers wagged to and fro, beside the clock and dog and bread sponge.
The horses dumped the wagon and stamped the shanty.
“I can’t find Grace! Go look for her!” said Ma. Laura ran. She could not see Grace anywhere. The silver prairie grasses stood higher than Laura’s head, over acres and acres, for miles and miles. “Grace! Grace! Grace!” Laura was dizzy.
There—Grace!
Grace on the grass brutes that paw up the biscuits and the china! The horses sang.
WE TRY TO LIVE PEACEFUL.
FRIENDS!
KEEP A HORSESHOE.
IT WILL BRING YOU LUCK.
“It sounds rather heathenish to me,” Ma said.
GRASS GRACE
Gently, in the shadows, moonlight shone and touched Pa’s fiddle. The bow moved over the strings. It was just the night for fairies to be dancing. Green buds were swellin’ on Grace, and she fell asleep thinking of land.
OUR AIR
They were going in, only in—2
Oh, must we go?
thin dark/fire-and-candle
light. Rabbit-skin
hoods,/thin
snow/fiddle & brindle
dog, “oh
what is a Pa?”
A Pa is a little way through
the woods, a dot
on the wagon seat, a strange
noise, Ma said.
“Do you like going in?”
Laura asked if they were in, but they were not.
It was a long way in. They had to eat cold bits of food.
tin plate, tin cup, tin cup
they could not drink coffee
until they grew up.
Where is Pa, Ma?
Mercy, whatever makes you want to see in?
We will see more than we want to.
This is in, isn’t it?
She did not know whether this was in
or not, she didn’t know where the line
was, whether the iron
smoothed wrinkles—
Where’s Pa?
When would she see Pa?
You never see in unless they want you to see.
He had seen in, but Laura never had.
He would show her.
Why do you suppose we haven’t seen in?
The sun’s up, I want a clothesline,
and if we wanted to live in
you could make a roof.
Bachelors had seen in.
They were glad to see.
They had come from Iowa.
But you aren’t Pa, said Laura.
When are we going to see Pa?
What do you want to see in for?
“In!” Mary whispered
feeling, in her middle
weak, but she looked
they did not know
there was no sound at all
oh I don’t know
Mary whispered.
Laura thought of Ma, said,
I’m going and if
she held still and pressed her nose
she couldn’t see in and felt safer.
she heard eating & turned
afraid in would hurt.
Ma said, we must get dinner
Pa must have dinner
tin plate tin cup tin plate
So you’ve seen in, have you?
I was afraid oh Charles I was afraid.
You don’t want in, he said. Never mind.
The main thing is to be good.
Laura held the edge of the skin while Pa’s
knife ripped off meat. After this you girls
remember. Don’t even think of in; it’s sinful.
He made a stout cupboard and padlocked it.
Laura held Mary and looked in
where fires had been. Fringes
& dust. Look! A thread!
Wet the thread in her mouth;
she could always think about in.
Fever shook the dipper
chimney burning up
chimney girl remember
I smoked better tobacco back in India
and we need more quinine
Pa went away. Pa
had gone. Mr. Ingalls
isn’t here!
Who oo oo oo
Hope he have no trouble
Government made in.
I’ve heard the grown-ups talk
Ma, what’s a ma
ssacre?
An Osage camp, down among the bluffs
Morning. Spring.
The government is going to move in.
But I thought this was in?
LAURA. PA IS GOING TO GET TAKEOUT. NO MORE QUESTIONS!
INDIAN.
For a Christmas dinner?
I wish Pa’d come back (Pa had not come back).
A panther would carry off Pa.
Pa still had not come home. Mary was hopping. Suddenly she stopped on one foot and said, “It’s in.” She st
ood still. That made her feel funny. It was quite in. It was like a song, but not. Ma listened. It made Laura’s heart beat fast. They saw the colors fade from everything. Laura’s heart beat faster. Listen, Laura said.
[“sugar”
“not any white”
“but brown.”
“a little white.”
“crackers … living like kings. complainin”
“they’ll make in move again”]
Ma wanted Indian food for dinner, but black clouds were billowing up. Her middle shook and tears poured out. The big fire swallowed the little one. Ma smelled scorched. Pa was gone.
Laura listened in.
Mr. Edwards said Pa moved within.
Pa went whistlin’ and the tall grass
didn’t bother him anymore.
But there was uneasiness. For days, Mary and Laura seemed to be hiding and creeping. Children should be seen and mustn’t frighten Ma. Ma was covered with ashes and had not gone to bed. Laura felt as if she were falling; there was nothing in her middle. In was dancing around/inside her. Laura saw a flutter of moonlight, and then was gone.
Durned if she knew what to make of it.
An Osage ma was cooking dinner and she saw in—a long line, far away except rushing. Osage pa came riding far and fast—a happy pony, glitter-trippety-trip-trip, trippety-trip, pat-patter, pat-patter, trippety pat-patter; there was no end to that long, long line; that long line pulled itself over the edge; but it was a bean stem, coiled like a spring, that pushed its way to dinner.
1 “On August 17, 1862, after a summer season of failed crops and diminished lands, the Dakota Uprising commenced when the US government failed to pay the Dakotas’ annuities. Local trader and store owner Andrew Myrick refused to allow credit for food until their payments arrived. ‘Let them eat grass,’ he said. Myrick was killed on the first day of the uprising. Trudy Pashe, who learned about the war from stories passed down through her family, said, ‘My grandfather was Pazoiyopa. From what I understand, Grandpa Pazoiyopa was involved in a lot of battles. They killed some guys and he was the one who stuck the grass in his [Andrew Myrick’s] mouth.’” From Indian Country Today Media Network.
2 Wilder’s original title for the first chapter of this book—Little House on the Prairie—was “Going In” (to Indian Territory). This chapter was later retitled “Going West.” In many cases where Wilder uses the word “Indian,” I have erased the final four letters of the word.
Lone Coast Recension
—“mu” one hundred twentieth part—
Nathaniel Mackey
Itamar stood brooding overlooking the bay, the
art of time he’d been getting good at suddenly
lost in its low harmonics. I was his main man,
he
was saying, had been since we met in Brazil…
He’d been reading Sophia’s Lineaments of
When, Sophia whose hard looks he loved, his
magus,
rough bay water thought’s mantle, his at her
behest. The arc and the ailment of when the gist
of it, mused-upon grab the grade of it, whose
or
of whom we debated, wondering which…
His and her platonic dialogue had rebegun. We
leaned on the rail looking out where gray
water met gray sky, the self-consuming soma
the
book touched on we talked about, Itamar ask-
ing how could that’ve been. “Damned if I know,”
I shrugged, gulls blown out to sea blown feather-
less it seemed, something caught in the batting of
an
eye… The lineaments of when, the book said,
such that dram ran as one with drinker, the psycho-
tropic lord of that realm the realm itself. “How
could
that have been?” Itamar kept asking. “Damned if I
know,” I again went to say but I bit my tongue, the
gulls blown out to sea having blown back in, fully
feath-
ered again… Block body, block gyration, nod aus-
pice. Itamar’s mantic body, sophic book. He was
turning as he talked, a slow dervish, arms out away
from
his body, hands hanging, wrought fingers working the
air for what the book meant, combed air cracking the
code. I thought to take a step away, get a better look,
no
step there to be taken it turned out, so tight my legs
were, blown-gull epiphany too much it turned out,
feathered-unfeathered-refeathered more than I could
take… Gray day. Gray auspice we disquisited under-
neath. Itamar’s belated Q & A with Sophia’s book,
book
he knew inside out he argued with, book he stood a stu-
dent of. There we stood, him whirling toward the water,
thin
rail holding him
back
*
I leaned on the rail recalling what I could of
Sophia’s book, self-imbibing soma the least
exact of what came to me, gray eminence the
wa-
ter and sky were adjunct to, mind-set and setting
run as one some clue I missed… I told myself
the title again and again, the lineaments the
mys-
tery of when seemed only obvious, too true
it could only do as it was, the one thing I remem-
bered, announcing which caught Itamar’s ear,
he stopped whirling, “What?”… I fell back on
in-
sisting on the it of it, the ease of so putting it
off-putting I recognized. “The it of it,” I said,
“is what, the it the is of it. That’s what she was
get-
ting at.” A vulgarity of sorts Itamar called it, spit-
like froth on the waves tumbling in, the is-of-its
correlative he explained… We stood on the fringe
of
the habitable world. The sea and the sky were gray
matter. Gulls wore optional feathers. So it was we
leaned looking out, stood leaning. The rail held us
back,
a tenuous foothold it was we were on… Talk
took us there I wanted to say but he beat me to it.
“A vulgarity we can’t afford,” he said, “this or
that is, this or that it of it, yours or Sophia’s, either
way.”
It wasn’t what I’d have said. It wasn’t what I went
to say. I meant in some other way to say we’d gone
too far. “Talk took us there,” I said, “the book took
us
there.” The book took us in I might well have said…
The spitlike froth kept tumbling in, a kind of cos-
mic reproach it seemed. The gulls blew out and
blew
back in and blew back out, feathered, unfeathered,
refeathered again and again, right above where the
capoeira class had been… Whatever the mood was
had
come over everything we were all in, in it, of it, the in
and the of of it, spooked by Sophia’s book, the lin-
eaments of when nowhere if not there, the lineaments
of
where never if not
then
*
I saw it in my eye’s eye, I saw it in my heart
of
hearts. Itamar put his hand on his chest as if tak-
ing an oath, struggling to hold himself up…
He
tossed his head back and squawked, a seagull’s
cry. He was in the early morning cups he called
music. No la-la came out but it might as well
have,
a tossed bird’s aria, a shaken bird’s étude… I
heard it with an ear athwart hearing, heard it in
my heart of hearts. All of all outdoors chimed in.
The air squawked in solidarity. Gray sky, spitlike
spume…
I heard something at the same time subsquawk,
blown lifted wing, blown lifted feather, a sound
exacting the play of light on wood, gray day no
mat-
ter, Lone Coast luminescence, Lone Coast buff…
Fleck turned full surface, Itamar’s burnished recall.
I saw with my eye’s ear’s eye he was Itamar whose
main
man I was, Itamar Sophia’s pupil, whose book he
drew back from. I heard with my eye’s ear’s ear it
was she in whose cabin honey went granular, Netsa-
net she might’ve been, it all so slipped and slid… I
saw
with my ear’s eye’s eye he was a fool for know-
ledge, wisdom’s idiot, a gull I could look in the eye.
With my ear’s eye’s ear I heard João Bosco, “Ca-
lifado de Quimeras.” With my eye’s ear’s ear I heard
Jor-
ge Ben, “Hermes Trismegisto Escreveu”… All the
elements joined in, eroded witnesses left and right.
I saw we were caught in the moment, hostages, the
lin-
eaments of when’s putative witness worn away,
my eye’s ear’s eye’s audition. It all had fallen under
arcane tutelage, the Bosco and the Ben threaded
in
all but inaudibly, the moment so dexterous we stood
in the book itself… The eucalyptus trees turned gray.
In my ear’s ear’s eye I saw them dance. In my ear’s
eye’s
eye I saw them incubate green and silver, gray but
with color, in concert with the sky, the reed again one