Prairie Widow by Harold Bakst Page B

handsome man.
    And so, one Sunday afternoon, while her father discreetly excused himself from their company, Walter finally asked for her hand, and Jennifer responded, “Why, that would be very nice. Yes.”
    And so they were married.
    Her father was so happy that he immediately bought Jennifer a slender book entitled Bridal Greetings, by the Reverend Daniel Wise in which, as the author wrote, “The mutual duties of husband and wife are familiarly illustrated and enforced.” Jennifer was grateful to her father for this gift, for the sweet, little book explained the various problems that couples were subject to in the areas of money, family, friends, the home, and so on, and so forth. She eagerly read a new chapter each night in bed before going to sleep, ever more sure that her marriage would be a happy one.
    But Walter Vandermeer, as a husband, was to prove a sore test for even the most patient and prepared woman. After a brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, which was Jennifer’s first time away from home, and which occasioned her first intimate pleasures with a man, the two newlyweds moved right back in with Poppa Schuyler. Jennifer never could figure out why her father, who was supporting the two of them, wasn’t outraged by the arrangement. A man ought to support his wife, no? But her father didn’t seem to mind footing the bills, not even after Peter was born. Walter earned money now and then as a handyman and part-time laborer, but mostly he got along by his winning ways with his father-in-law. To Jennifer’s constant exasperation, her father and her husband would often go out drinking together, leaving her home with her infant son. Or, if they stayed home, they’d talk mostly to each other, often about Walter’s plans for acquiring great wealth. Jennifer’s father loved to hear these plans and usually expressed interest in “staking” him.
    But none of Walter’s schemes—not the one for raising sheep in a nearby field, not the one to start up a “much-needed” magazine, “Scions of Holland”—ever transgressed into the realm of action.
    And when, early in 1862, Walter volunteered to join the Union Army, Jennifer was convinced it was for no other reason than to avoid family responsibility.
    Perhaps it was. But Walter was not quite so cavalier about his station in life as Jennifer thought. Based in Ohio and confronted by precious little fighting (until, that is, Confederate General John Morgan invaded the state), Walter apparently had much time to think about what he would be doing when the war ended.
    One day, Jennifer received a letter from him, written in highly excitable script: “Dear Jenny,” it read, “Have you read about the Homestead Act? It gives veterans 160 acres of Kansas land for only ten dollars! And all the homesteader has to do to keep the land is live on it for five years! And I’ll be a veteran!…”
    So now, of all things, Walter wanted to be a fanner. Well, Jennifer was glad to receive that letter because now when her husband arrived home on leave, busting with with his usual enthusiasm about his plans, she would be ready for him.
    And, indeed, she told him, “Walter, I see no point in discussing such a ludicrous idea. You don’t know anything about farming.”
    â€œIt’s a desert out there,” added Jennifer’s father, for once not taking his son-in-law’s side. “And Kansas got naked savages running around…”
    Walter was taken aback by, and not a little disappointed in, his father-in-law’s reaction. Still, Walter was adamant. “Now, look,” he said as calmly as he could, “I’ve studied the matter thoroughly, and Kansas is not a desert. It’s grassland. And the mad Indians are much farther out on the plains, which isn’t where we’re going. And, finally, I’m not so ignorant about farming—I once worked on one. So all I