Free Dakota Blues by Lynne Spreen

generation, continuing the original migration, moved away from the farms to cities, and to other states. Now the spire of St. Elizabeth’s rose above a cemetery whose occupants far outnumbered the residents of the town.
    Drying vegetation crunched under her feet as she made her way across the slope, reading the names on the primitive stones. The rest of the women stopped here and there to visit the graves of relatives while Denise took pictures of the oldest headstones, some imported from Germany and others, more simple ones, made of local stone. Some of the graves held the remains of immigrants who were buried eighty, ninety years ago. Karen stood before one that bore a familiar surname, her mother’s. Katerina and Johann, geboren and gestorben . Born and died. Karen felt guilty, alive under the bright sunshine, thriving in the twenty-first century, comforted by all manner of modern invention. What debt did she owe them, those plain-faced great-aunts and grannies? Done with their short, hard enlistments, their bodies worn out from bearing children and tilling the soil, they lay waiting for her to make their efforts worthwhile.
    Stopping at her parents’ graves, Karen crouched down and touched the letters of her mother’s name, carved into the headstone and adorned with twin sheaves of wheat. Lena and Frank had ordered them years ago when they bought the plots of land for their final resting place. Gruesome, Karen had thought at the time, but now she understood her mother would be reassured to know where she would lie at the end.
    “How are you doing?” Lorraine grasped Karen’s shoulder.
    Karen, wiping her eyes, backed away from the newly-turned earth. “Sometimes it’s too much.”
    “Let’s rest.” They meandered toward a shaded bench and sat. Already the grass was yellowing at the tips, and soon the afternoons would turn steamy, brewing up thunderstorms and the occasional tornado. Southwestern North Dakota wasn’t an easy place. Unlike the dark, rich farmland in the eastern part of the state, here on the highlands the land was dry and windswept on its westward climb toward the Rocky Mountains.
    Lorraine pulled off her big floppy sun hat and shook out her hair. “You’re processing a lot right now. Take it easy. Breathe.”
    “So much is changing, I feel disoriented.”
    “Then slow down and take it all in. You have a lot of years ahead of you.”
    Karen chuckled. “You’re younger than me. How come you sound so smart?”
    “I’m not so smart, but Mom always told me it’s my life and I should be the one to make the big decisions. So don’t let us or anybody else pressure you.”
    “‘ Man plans, and God laughs .’ Or something like that.” Karen picked up a rock and tried to scrape off the tiny cactus sticking to the side of her sneakers. Only a fool would wear sandals to this cemetery.
    They watched Denise work, angling this way and that for the perfect shot of the old headstones.
    “I can’t believe this is so close to your house,” Karen said. “You drive a half hour and you’re standing right on top of the original homesteads. You can see a tree still growing that was planted by the first relatives to set foot in America, and you can sit by their graves, if you want.”
    “Not like we ever do,” said Lorraine. “I know they’re here and that comforts me, but I don’t come out here. We go to work, come home, eat dinner, do chores, go to bed, and on the weekends, we run errands.”
    Karen gazed across the open landscape. “In California, everybody is from another place, and nobody stays put. They move in, they move out. The house next door to mine back home is only fifteen years old and it’s had three owners already. By contrast, this,”– she opened her arms to take in the whole of the countryside,– “seems so permanent.”
    The two women fell silent as Denise folded up her tripod. Then they drove back across the highway and down another dirt road, this one heading east. The