by Jane Smiley
ROSANNA WAS HAPPY to have him out of her hair. Now, if only the same thing could be done with Joey, but at seven, Joey was small for his age and continued to be a nervous case, though he had more or less stopped whining. Now he just stared. If Walter raised his voice or Rosanna burned herself with a hot pan and said “Ouch!,” Joey looked startled. He did have chores—every farm boy had to have some—but they didn’t involve strength or speed, only gentleness or caution, like gathering eggs. He was, in fact, pretty good at taking a turn with the butter churn and kneading the bread. More than once, Rosanna said to him, “Well, Joey, at least you know where supper comes from. Some folks think it just appears on the table.”
For that brief time when Cousin Berta had come “for a visit,” Joey was good to her. If she said to pull the curtains, he pulled the curtains. If she very soon after that said to open the curtains, he opened the curtains. If she asked him to pump her water while she washed her hands with lye soap, he pumped. If, five minutes later, she asked again, he did it. If Lillian sat down beside Berta on the sofa, she could ask Joey to take her away, and Joey would come over and hold out his hand to Lillian and say, “Lily, let’s jump up and down eleven times.” Lillian loved to jump up and down and count—that was a game Joey came up with. After Cousin Berta went up to Independence to the asylum there, Joey was the only one who asked after her. So Joey had his virtues, Rosanna knew. But he was a small, unappealing boy. His features were not regular—his nose went just a bit to one side, like Walter’s, and his eyes were not level. How a boy with dark hair got such pale eyelashes, Rosanna did not know. His one attractive feature was his big smile. And it wasn’t as though all of these wrong bits were from the Langdon side. His eyes were the spit and image of her brother Gus. It was as if God had picked all the worst features of both families and given them to Joey. Such a cross to bear was hard for Rosanna to understand, except by remembering that she had known she needed saving but had not bothered to do anything about it.
Rosanna kept all of these feelings to herself, and prayed over and over to be rid of them—to see Joey as perfect, the way she saw Frankie (if not Lillian—she didn’t think she would ever see anyone the way she saw Lillian). She also recognized that, to her own mother and to Walter’s mother, Joey was fine—“a sweet boy,” “a darling,” or, according to Oma, “a diamond in the rough.”
FRANKIE WAS a little dismayed by what a gloomy Thanksgiving it was—Papa and Grandpa Wilmer and Grandpa Otto sitting around the table, shaking their heads and talking about “the Crash.” Even Uncle Rolf looked gloomier than usual, if that was possible. But when Frankie went out to the back porch to look at the pumpkin pie again (there was a mincemeat pie cooling there, too, but Frank didn’t like mincemeat), he found Eloise. She had her back to the door, and when she turned around, he saw that she was smoking a cigarette. She brought it to her lips, took it away, breathed the smoke out into the cool air, and said, “Say, Frankie.”
Frank said, “Yeah.”
“You’re tall.”
“I’m as tall as Bobby Dugan, and he’s twelve.”
“He must be Jed Dugan’s youngest brother.”
Frank shrugged.
“Is he a bully?”
Frank said, “Used to be.”
“Until—”
“Until he got kicked real hard in the side of his knee and had to go to Dr. Craddock and be on crutches for a couple of weeks.”
“How did that happen?”
“He was walking home from school and he ran into someone he had punched during recess the day before.”
“Do I know the person he ran into?”
Frank nodded.
“But the Dugans live on the other side of school.”
“Not that far.”
“Not that far if you’re a fast runner, right, Frank?”
“You could say that.”
“Who else doesn’t bully anyone anymore?”
“Well, Dallas Coggins doesn’t even go to school now. I think the school gave up on him. Howie Prince tried a few things, but he stopped when the person he was kicking lured him round the school to where Miss Louis was reading a book and she saw what was going on.”
“The teacher?”
“Yeah. I guess when he got home he got such a whipping that he couldn’t sit down for three days.”
“That was smart, what that person did.”
“I don’t know, it just seemed obvious.”
“How did you know Miss Louis was reading a book?”
“I saw her. I thought everyone saw her.”
Eloise stubbed out what was left of her cigarette on a saucer she had set on the railing. She said, “Sounds like there isn’t quite as much bullying at that school as there used to be.”
“I got it seven times by the time I was Joey’s age, and he’s only gotten it once.”
“Who did he get it from?”
“Me.”
“Well, I guess I’m not surprised at that.” Then she said, “Boys will be boys. But here’s the thing, Frankie. Almost everyone sees things, but not everyone notices them.”
“I suppose so,” said Frankie. Then, “Were you in Chicago?”
“I live in Chicago now.”
“Chicago is big, right?”
“You can’t imagine. You just can’t. I couldn’t. I’ve been to New York and St. Louis, too, and Chicago seems bigger than they are, but New York has more people, they say. I don’t know.”
“Do you like it there?”
Eloise put her hand on her hip and crossed her ankles. She was fiddling with the packet of cigarettes. She said, “They couldn’t drag me out of there. I think the Loop is the most wonderful place in the world.”
Frankie said, a little alarmed, “Do they want to drag you out of there?”
Eloise threw back her head and laughed. Her hair, which was shiny, flicked forward, then backward, then forward again. She said, “No, I’m joking.” She had beads on her dress, lines of beads that made a V-shape and glinted in the twilight. All of a sudden he said, “That’s a pretty dress.”
Now she took another cigarette out of the packet and tapped it on the railing. She put it between her lips and lit it, then took it out and picked something—a bit of tobacco?—off the tip of her tongue. She said, “Thanks for noticing, Frankie. What are you, eight?”
“Almost ten. Ten in a week.”
“Well, in a few years, you can come on the train to Chicago and visit me. Or you can talk Walter into putting those beef cattle on the train and bringing them to the stockyards himself, and you can come along.”
“I think he sends them to Omaha. He doesn’t like to send them very far. What do you do in Chicago?”
“I work at a newspaper called the American. I write recipes, but next year I might get to write about other things. I might get to go to some swanky parties and write about those.”
“Do you like swanky parties?”
“Don’t know yet. I like the houses and the hotels along the lake where they have the swanky parties.”
“What lake?”
“Oh, Frankie! Lake Michigan!”
Frank felt his ears get hot. It was very unusual for him to say something stupid. He bit his lip. Then Eloise ruffled his hair and said, “You come see me on the train. I’ll show it to you.”
Just then, the door behind him opened and Granny Mary stepped out onto the porch, but she backed up and closed the door, and Eloise hurriedly stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. She coughed twice, and then Granny Mary came out again. Both ladies now had those frozen smiles that meant trouble, so Frank slipped through the door, back into the kitchen.
1930
ON JOE’S BIRTHDAY, Papa came home from town just before supper, and he had a funny look on his face. Mama was busy fussing over the fried chicken and the mashed potatoes, which was what Joe had told her he wanted. He was eight now, which was pretty big. There was also a pound cake, but no ice cream, because Mama didn’t have time to make it, and no pie, beca
use no fruits were in season and they had eaten the last of the apples stored in the cellar. The icing for the pound cake was something Joey rather liked, though—Mama took a jar of strawberry jam from the previous summer, heated it on the range, and poured it over the top of the cake. It seeped down into the cake and made it smell very good.
Granny Mary and Grandpa Otto brought Opa and Oma for supper. It took two people to help Opa out of Rolf’s car (driven by Granny Mary), and then it took three to get him up the front steps. He was little and bent over. If Joe stood up straight, he was nearly as tall as Opa, which was a funny feeling. Opa looked at him very carefully, and then said, “Wer ist dieser Junge?”
“Opa!” said Granny Mary. She leaned toward him and said, “This is Joseph. Today is his birthday.”
“Ja,” said Opa, and Mama helped him to Papa’s chair, where he very slowly sat down. A moment later, he said again, “Wer ist dieser Junge?”
Granny Mary came over, put her hand on Joe’s shoulder, and said, “Joey, dear, show me your cake in the kitchen. When I was a girl, we didn’t have birthday cake.”
“What did you have?”
“No one cared about a birthday in those days. If you even knew when your birthday was. We had a girl working for us, she never knew how old she was. Opa used to tease her. He would open her mouth and look at her teeth, like she was a horse. Then he would say, ‘Callie, you are more than ten and less than a hundred.’ Well, she was a poor girl, in the end.” Then Granny pressed her lips together, and Joe knew not to ask any questions about what had happened to her.
At the supper table, Opa sat between Granny Mary and Oma, and Oma tied his napkin around his neck, and gave him a spoon to hold in one hand and a piece of bread in the other, but she and Granny Mary fed him. Grandpa Otto tried not to pay any attention to this—he sat between Frankie and Papa and talked about farm prices. Mama set out dishes of food and made sure that they were passed around the table without spilling, and because it was Joe’s birthday, he got to pick his piece of chicken. Opa only once said, “Wer ist dieser Junge?” and no one answered him.
Once everyone was served, Papa sat back in his chair and said, “You’ll never guess what happened when I was in town today.”
“Which town?” said Granny Mary.
“Our town. Denby. Population two hundred and fourteen.”
“What?” said Frankie.
“Dan Crest’s store was robbed.”
“Oh, my goodness!” said Granny Mary, and Opa said, “Was ist los?” as if he was worried.
“While you were there?” said Mama.
“I was standing looking at the work gloves, and two young fellows who’d put some things on the counter pulled out guns and said for Dan to give them his money, and he did, just handed them about ten bucks, and they turned to run out, and Rodney Carson—you know, that boy who’s been working there—he stuck out a broom handle and tripped them up as they headed out the door. They went sprawling down the steps.” Now Papa laughed, and Grandpa Otto said, “Well, I’d like to have seen that.” Mama said, “Oh dear! They had guns! I swear, it isn’t safe to leave the farm anymore.” And Papa said, “Turned out the guns weren’t loaded, which was—”
“By the grace of God,” said Mama.
“Amen,” said everyone.
“Couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty, those boys,” said Papa. “Looked pretty hungry, too. If they’d asked Dan for a loaf of bread, he would’ve given it to them.”
“Lots of folks with nothing now,” said Granny Mary.
“Going to be more of those boys, I’ll bet, with everything that’s going on.”
“We just have to pray for mercy,” said Mama. Then she looked at Joe and put her finger to her lips. “Enough of that now,” she said. “Joe’s a big boy today.”
“Well, I’m not saying what that robbery, if you want to call it that, meant, but it was funny in the end. I guess those boys learned a bit of a lesson.”
Granny Mary said, “Didn’t they get arrested?”
“Who was going to arrest them?” said Papa. “No one around to do that. Dan got his money back and took away their guns. They went off pretty sheepish.”
Mama made that noise with her teeth, and Granny Mary shook her head, and then Grandpa Otto said that he had heard something on the radio.
“What was that?” said Papa.
“Turns out they found a new planet. You boys know what a planet is?”
Frankie said, “The Earth is a planet. And Mars. And Saturn. The planets go around the Sun.”
“Now there’s another one. Some fellows in Arizona found it, and they’re wondering what to name it.”
“I think it should have a girl’s name,” said Mama. “Only one planet has a girl’s name now.”
“That’s Venus,” said Frankie.
Joe wasn’t exactly sure what a planet was, but he knew what the Sun was. After supper, they ate the cake, and Joe got two shirts that Mama had made him, and Otto gave him a bag of cat’s-eye marbles, which Joe saw Frankie looking at more than once. Oma gave him some neatly wrapped molasses caramels with walnuts, and even though he had to share them around the room, everyone said, “Oh, thank you, Joey, but not tonight, I am just terribly full.” Only Opa took one. Once Opa, Oma, Granny, and Grandpa had left, and Mama and Papa had taken Lillian upstairs for bed, Frankie gave him a slingshot he had made from a branch of the Osage-orange hedge.
EASTER WAS LATE, as late as Walter ever remembered it—April 20—and the day after Easter, he started planting his corn. He didn’t like it one bit. After years of complaining that the fields were wet and he couldn’t get into them, or that the rain just came in fits and starts, so that every time he got his equipment ready he had to put it away again and keep stirring the seed corn so it wouldn’t get moldy (or would get less moldy), or that because of rain he had to replant some of the lower bits of the fields, this year he and Frankie had the wires strung in the first section before Easter, and the day after, instead of sending Frankie to school, they drilled the corn. The soil was fairly moist—that was the best you could say for it—and once he had worked for a while, Walter started to worry, not about the corn crop, but about the oat crop. The oats looked fine for now—a few inches high, and green—and Walter kept telling himself not to borrow trouble by worrying about it. But there was no wind. The air just stood there, and it seemed like it had been standing there for weeks. Jake and Elsa were sweating by the early afternoon, even though the work was slow.
Frankie said, “What’s wrong, Papa?”
Walter wiped his brow. “Not much. Nice day, huh?”
Frankie said, “When we’re done, can I go shoot frogs?”
“Down at the creek?”
Frankie nodded.
“I suppose so. Maybe I’ll come with you.” Walter hadn’t been down to the creek in two or three weeks, and he wanted to see how it was running.
But it wasn’t running very high, and there weren’t any frogs. No frogs was a bad sign.
Rosanna didn’t think much of his worries. She and Joey had two flocks of chickens now, fifty hens in each, and she was feeling rich, because a new café in town had made a deal with her and her alone to supply them with eggs and butter. The owner of the café, down from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a German man whose real love was pastry—he could make those old-country treats, schnecken and strudel and even baumkuchen, and he said that Rosanna’s eggs and butter were as good as any he’d seen in Bavaria. He expected the citizens of Usherton to storm his establishment once he had it going. Joey was good with both the hens and the eggs—he didn’t mind candling, which was a tedious business, and of course the hens seemed fond of him. Rosanna had gotten herself a new type of chicken from Canada called White Chanticleers. Walter thought they were a little picky, and they didn’t like to be confined, which meant that they were underfoot a good deal, but they had almost no combs or wattles, and were good outdoors even in winter, even when there was snow and ice. The best part abou
t them was that you could mistake a roasted mature White Chanticleer for a small turkey—it would be that big. And the meat was tasty. Dan Crest was paying her four cents per egg, and the German man—his name was Bruno something, Bruno Krause—was paying her five and a half. Walter was delivering eggs every few days, four dozen, and three pounds of butter. So two good things—the corn planted after all, in spite of his worries, and a new source of income with this Krause fellow—and yet he lay awake looking for the worm in the apple, as his mother would have said. Rosanna was even talking about buying them a new bed—not a rope bed, but one with actual springs, so that they wouldn’t slide every night into the center and have to hoist themselves out. Walter turned over, and thought that if they got a new bed he would probably find something wrong about that, too.
LILLIAN WAS SITTING in her chair—she no longer used the high chair, because she was three and a half now, and good at sitting still, right where Mama had put her, and eating what was set in front of her. Or she was usually good at that; today, all she wanted was the tapioca pudding and the strawberries. Even though she was wearing only drawers and a loose smock, and had her hair tied out of her face, it was too hot to eat anything else. All the windows were open, and the dust hung in the air. Mama said, “Goodness me, praise the Lord, please give us just a bit of a breeze!”
Lillian yawned, and Mama said, “Well, you can have your nap on the sofa, darling. It’s roasting upstairs. I hope it cools off before bedtime; I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”