by Jane Smiley
WHAT JOE LIKED was a little peace and quiet once in a while. Right now, sitting on the lowest step of the front porch, was about perfect. His tormentor, Frankie, had gone somewhere—who knew where, and who cared?—and Mama was in the house, changing Mary Elizabeth. She knew Joe wouldn’t walk away when he’d been told to stay put, and so did he. She had given him a box of dominoes, his favorite box of things, and he was laying them side by side on the second step, making sure that their corners touched. Mama had counted the dots for him, showing him that some dominoes had more dots and some fewer, but Joe didn’t care about the dots except insofar as he thought they were pretty against the black of the rectangle. What he liked was seeing a whole row or, better, a bed of dominoes, all flat and straight and with no extras. It was very upsetting to lay out the bed the way it should be and still have dominoes in the box, or, worse, to lay it out and run out of dominoes while there was a space to be filled. He suspected that there was a way of knowing ahead of time whether it would turn out, but he didn’t know what that way was. He also knew that Frankie came around from time to time and took dominoes out of the box and out of the row and out of the bed, and then he would keep them, or throw them so that Joe would have to find them, or he even put them in his mouth and made them come out like a tongue when Joe asked for them. Mama only very rarely caught Frankie doing this. Whenever Joe tried to say something important about Frankie, he was told not to be a whiner. So, even though he was preoccupied with Frankie and all of the things Frankie did to him, there wasn’t anything he could think of to do about it.
He stood up and looked at his row of dominoes. It was pretty long. Joe smiled.
FRANK PRESSED HIMSELF deep into the sofa, hoping to hide sufficiently from Mama so that, when she came down the stairs from putting Joe to bed, she would not see him and so not put him to bed. He felt that a great wind was blowing inside of him, and that it would blow him right out of the bed and back down the stairs if she took him up there and laid him down. He hid as best he could, and he also made himself a little rigid—harder to pick up, and easier to protest that way.
Here she came.
And then she did look, but she only bit her lip and went into the dining room. Frank relaxed, sat forward again, and looked at all the faces. Yes, Granny Mary. Yes, Eloise. Yes, Uncle Rolf. Yes, Grandpa Otto. Yes, Oma and Opa. These and others were perfectly familiar. But in addition to them, there were Tom, who was seven, and Henrietta, who was six, and Martin, who was nine. These were his Second Cousins, according to Rosanna, and they lived very far away, in a city where there were no cows, no hogs, no chickens, and not even any horses, only tall buildings and hard roads and many, many automobiles. The Second Cousins were visiting for Thanksgiving and staying with Granny Mary.
“Oh me,” said Opa, “stuffed. How does that happen, I ask you?”
“Opa,” said Granny, “you can eat your fill of the goose or eat your fill of the pie, but not both.”
“Ja, ja, ja,” said Opa. “Still, I am stuck in my chair, never to move again.”
Mama, who had come back into the room, leaned down and kissed Opa on the top of his head, where there was no hair.
Papa said, “If we laze about like this, we’ll fall asleep. We should play a game.”
Granny said, “Something fun for the youngsters, Walter.”
Papa looked at him, Frank, and then at Mama, and Mama said, “He can stay up for a little bit.” But Frank sat quietly, knowing that Mama could change her mind at any moment.
Then he was at the kitchen table, with all the rest of them, kneeling on a chair, and Martin was on one side of him and Henrietta on the other side of him. He leaned forward, against the edge of the table. In his hand, he had a string, and the other end of the string was tied around a cork. Frank knew all about corks, because he and Joe played with corks in the bathing tub. If you pushed a cork down under the water, it would pop up, and sometimes pop completely out. Corks were fun. All the corks, nine of them, were lying in a circle in the middle of the table, and each cork had a string. In addition to the kids, Granny Mary and Opa and Papa were playing. Papa set the green dice on the table. Frank sometimes played with the dice, too, counting the dots and adding the two numbers together. Papa thought it was good practice for him. Joe could not even count the dots. Right in front of him, Frank also had a little pile of beans—ten beans. Papa had asked him to count them when he put them in front of him. Nothing hard about that, but all the faces smiled. Frank understood easy as you please that these beans were his money, and he wanted more.
Papa showed them what to do—he rolled the dice one, two, three times, and on the third time, he put the pot lid down on the table over the corks. The lid came down fast and made a startling noise, and then Papa picked it up again. Frankie’s cork was still there, so he had to give Papa a bean. Martin’s cork was not there, so Papa gave Martin a bean. Henrietta gave Papa a bean, and Opa gave Papa a bean, and so on around the table. Frank now had nine beans.
Frank did not like giving up beans, but at first he could not see how to avoid it. Each person rolled the dice, and everyone sitting around the table read the dice without saying a word, and while Frank was in the middle of understanding the numbers, the lid came down or didn’t. The bad thing was when he pulled his cork just to be safe. He had to give up three beans that way. Frank felt himself getting mad. But Martin was laughing, Tom was laughing, and even Henrietta was laughing, though she had given away lots of beans. Frank knew that if he cried or yelled or had a tantrum, he would be carried up to bed, so he pressed his lips together and stared at the dice. The lid came down. The lid went up. He had to pay a bean to Granny Mary. It was then that Martin whispered in his ear, “It’s always seven, Frankie. Just watch for seven.”
Seven, as Frank well knew, was six and one, or five and two, or three and four. The next time he saw a seven, he pulled his string, and his cork fell into his lap. He looked up. Papa gave him a bean. He had had three beans. Now he had four beans. He laughed. A moment later, the dice and the lid came to him. Papa said, “Can you drop the lid, Frankie? I can do it for you.”
Frank put his hand out for the lid. Then he knelt up on his chair and leaned over the table. All the corks were in the middle, in a circle, with their strings sticking out of them. Frank gripped the dice in his hand and dropped them on the table. They were wide apart from one another. Six and two. Not seven. He picked up the dice. This time he opened his hand a little, the way Martin had done, and let the dice roll back and forth on his palm. Then he dropped them again. One bounced. Four and three. He brought the lid down on the corks. There was a loud clang.
“Not so hard, Frankie,” said Papa. Frank lifted the lid. There were five corks under the lid. Five people gave him beans. He gave three beans away. He did this without being told what to do.
“Ja, ja,” said Opa, “he’s a natural, this boy. Someday, we will tell him about Uncle Hans.”
“There is no Uncle Hans,” said Granny Mary. “It took me years to figure that out.”
“Who is Uncle Hans?” said Papa, who was standing behind Frank.
“Uncle Hans was the lucky one,” said Opa.
“There is no Uncle Hans,” said Granny Mary.
“True enough,” said Opa, and they all laughed.
There was a Hans, though; Opa had told Frank the story.
One day, Hans left the village and walked toward the dark mountains. As he was walking along, a hedgehog came out of the forest and said to Hans, “Would you like to come with me into the forest? I will give you an enormous fir tree to live in, all your own.” But Hans said no. He walked along. A little while later, a fox came out of the ground and said to Hans, “Good morning! Would you like to come with me? I will show you a wonderful cavern all hung with icicles, clear and shining and beautiful.” But Hans looked at the foxhole and said, “No, thank you.” He kept walking, and a bluebird flew down from a tall tree and said, “I will give you a magic feather, and if you hold it in your hand, you can fl
y way up in the sky and look down on a beautiful lake with many boats.” This tempted Hans, but, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed too good to be true, so he turned away and went on. And then a wolf came up to him, and he had big teeth and long, rough hair, and Hans was very afraid. And the wolf growled, “I have nothing for you! Do you have something for me?” Hans said, in a very small voice, “I have a penny. That is all I have to make my way in the city.”
The wolf’s eyes glared at Hans with a yellow glow, and he growled, “May I have your penny? I do not have even a penny.” So Hans gave him the penny, not so much out of fear, after all, as out of pity. Of all the animals, he thought, the wolf was the only one who had nothing. Once the wolf had taken Hans’s penny he said, “Would you care for a ride?”
Hans nodded, and the wolf knelt down, and Hans climbed upon his back. And then the wolf stood up and galloped away down the road. Hans nestled into his fur and held on tight around his neck, and before he knew it, the wolf had turned into a great prince who lived in a palace. As they galloped up to the palace gate, the wolf said, “Of all my subjects, you are the only one who was willing to give me a penny, and so I give you the name Lord Hans, Lucky Hans, and you will live with me in my castle for the rest of your life.” And the gate opened. Frank knew that, whatever Granny Mary might say, for him and Opa, Lucky Hans did exist.
At the end of the game, Mama picked him up. He had eleven beans, which was four more than Henrietta and one more than Tom. Mama carried him up to bed. He was awake enough to push his beans under his pillow.
FROM WHERE Mary Elizabeth was sitting, she could see several new and interesting items in the front room. The nearest of these were her own feet, stuck out in front of her, as they often were, pointing upward, and not appearing to wiggle, even though they felt like they were wiggling. The most she could get them to do was shift slightly, back and forth, but she was able to connect this odd immobility with the fact that Mama had slid them into her shoes sometime before. What was new and interesting about her shoes was that they were bright and eye-catching. She watched them. And then, helpfully, Joey squatted down and said, “May Liz red shoes. May Liz red shoes.”
Beyond the shoes, and beyond Joey, was Frankie. Frankie had another of the new and interesting items—it stuck out behind him and dragged against the floor, and it stuck out in front of him. It had eyes and ears and it moved, but it didn’t seem to be alive. Frankie capered about the room and it went with him. Frankie waved one of his arms. Mary Elizabeth turned her head and her body first one way and then the other way, just to watch Frankie. Then Joey ran over to him and grabbed the lower end and jerked it upward, and Frankie fell down, and Joey said, “It’s mine!” Then the two boys did something that Mary Elizabeth found eternally fascinating—they jerked and pulled, back and forth, until Frankie stuck out his arms and pushed Joey, and Joey tumbled backward and started screaming. Frankie kicked him and said, “Stop whining or I will give you something to whine about!”
Now Mary Elizabeth had pulled herself up, using the same chair she always did—it was the easiest thing in the world, especially with shoes on—and in her excitement, she sidestepped around the chair and laughed and took her hand off the chair and waved it. Joey turned toward her, crying less now, and he lay there and sighed, then sat up. Frankie and the new thing ran into the dining room, and Mary Elizabeth heard Mama call, “What are you boys up to now? If I hear any more screaming, I will tie you together like I did last week, and you can learn to cooperate all over again! Your fighting is driving me out of my mind!”
Mary Elizabeth sidestepped two more steps, but her feet and her shoes weren’t working very well, and though her one hand was still on the chair, her other was still waving in the air, and, what with one thing and another, she was beginning to lose confidence in her ability to get all the way around the chair to the table. Yes, she was confused, no doubt about it. She stopped moving and looked at Joey.
Joey had sat up. His legs were crossed and he was staring at her.
And it was true—she had lost her grip on the chair, and both of her hands were waving in the air. It was unprecedented.
Joey crawled toward her, his face bright, then sat back on his heels and said, “C’mon!”
She tilted toward him.
The top edges of the red shoes dug into her.
She bent a knee, the right knee, the knee that knew what it was doing more often.
She did not fall down.
She bent the left knee. She bent the right knee again.
Joey crawled closer and held out his hands.
Her arms waved. She fell into him, and he laughed. She laughed.
Frankie ran into the room again. He said, “Mama’s mad at you.”
Mary Elizabeth got up on her hands and knees and crawled back to the chair she liked. She pulled herself up.
Frankie and Joey were rolling around on the floor again, hitting and kicking. Mama blew into the room and grabbed them and jerked them to their feet. She smacked both of them across the backside with the spoon in her hand, and then she came over to Mary Elizabeth and picked her up. She said, “My goodness me, how am I going to get through the winter?”
1925
WALTER WAS SITTING in his chair at the kitchen table. It was still dark, and Rosanna was upstairs with Mary Elizabeth. Ragnar was feeding the hogs, and at any minute, Frank would come down, dressed and ready to feed the horses, so Walter was a little impatient for his breakfast. At the stove was Irma, Eloise’s official replacement, who might have been five feet tall, but maybe not.
Walter didn’t know what to think of this girl that Ragnar had married. She said she was nineteen, which was a good age, but she seemed much younger, and she was clumsy to a frightening degree. She had nice hair and would have been pretty if she had not lost her two front teeth, and although Ragnar had not told him how this happened, Walter suspected that it was an accident. Already since he’d brought her home, she had knocked herself out standing up in the chicken house—she had gone out to gather eggs, and when she didn’t return, Rosanna went out to discover her flat on her back, two eggs broken in her hand, and the chickens perching on her. It had taken her two days to recover completely from that. She had also dropped two plates and a cup, and smashed her finger in the door. She was as likely as not to stumble over a threshold. “Oh, my goodness,” she always said, “how silly of me!” as if her own clumsiness were an eternal surprise.
Walter couldn’t figure it out—her feet weren’t especially big for her small size. He and Rosanna had looked forward to her replacing Eloise in the house, but she made Eloise seem like a machine of efficiency by contrast. “It’s like having a fourth child,” said Rosanna. At least she was an easygoing girl, and not demanding. The two of them lived in Ragnar’s bedroom for the time being. Walter thought he could get Rolf and Otto to help him put an addition on the west side of the house in the summer, with its own door. Then Mary Elizabeth would get a room of her own, and Frank and Joe would get something a little bigger, anyway.
Irma said, “Well, the yolk split on one of them.”
Walter said, “That’s fine, just scramble them.”
“You want me to scramble them?”
“Yes, Irma.”
She turned and, after a minute or two, managed to dish a mess of eggs onto his plate, right beside his half-eaten patty of sausage. It did not look appetizing. He picked up his bowl of oatmeal and scraped the remaining bits out of the bottom with his spoon. Truly, he wished that Rosanna would go back to making breakfast, but then what would Irma do? She had no skills of any kind—she had not been raised on a farm, and hadn’t done well enough in school to get a teacher’s certificate. Sometimes, Rosanna put her to cleaning the house, but she was slapdash at that, too, and terribly remorseful when spots and stains she had overlooked were pointed out to her. She said, “Oh, Rosanna, I am meant to be a failure, aren’t I? That’s what my ma always said.” Three weeks it was since Ragnar brought her home.
And Irma said, “Oh, darling Frankie, there you are. I was just wondering when you would come down and have your oatmeal. See, I’ve sprinkled brown sugar on it.” She glanced at Walter. “Just a tiny bit. Did you have a dream, Frankie?”
“I dreamt that I was sitting up in the maple tree, and the grass was green everywhere, and the limbs of the tree suddenly dropped, and I slid down to the ground.”
“That must have been a happy dream!”
Walter thought maybe he had never asked Frankie about his dreams. Surely Rosanna did that. Walter himself had the most prosaic dreams in the world, about trying to turn the planter in the corner of one of the fields and getting stuck.
Frank said, “And Jake was in my room, sitting on a chair in the corner.”
“What a funny dream!” laughed Irma. When she laughed, Frankie laughed with her. Frank ate up his oatmeal, and Irma gave him a piece of sausage and a scrambled egg. He ate them and said, “That was good.”
Irma said, “Oh, you are a silly boy!”
Walter pushed back his chair. He said, “Look, the sky is lightening. It might be a nice day.”
Frankie leapt from his chair.
AS FAR AS Rosanna was concerned, Irma’s useful quality was that she was patient with Joey, who did demand a lot of patience. Perhaps it was simple fellow-feeling, since Irma demanded a lot of patience, too. Rosanna had never been especially patient; she felt herself stamping around the house in a state of permanent irritability, and had even written Eloise a letter down at Iowa State, where she was taking home economics (and doing very well—who was surprised at that?), living in a dorm with lots of girls, and learning to play the piano. To Eloise she wrote, “If I never sufficiently expressed my appreciation for your sense of order and your unflagging energy, I am sorry. I appreciate it now.” Eloise wrote back, “Can you make me a velveteen dress if I send you the pattern? I’m sure Ma would blanch at the very sight of the pattern! Très au courant!” Yes, Ma would, thought Rosanna, but she made the dress. It was an easy pattern, and made her, too, feel très au courant.