by Jane Smiley
Frank turned his head and looked out the window.
1935
AT DINNER, Henry ate all of his chicken hash and all of his applesauce, and Mama said he was a good boy. Then Papa got up from his chair and groaned, but Mama didn’t say anything, just kept standing by the sink. When Papa was out the door, Henry slid down from his chair and went over to the sink and held up his hands. Mama pumped some water and wiped his hands and face with a rag.
The room was bright. Henry could see the snow out his window, lots of it, so much that for two days Frankie, Joey, and Lillian had stayed home from school. They had built a snowman sitting in a chair. Henry could see the back of the chair from his crib. It had taken all morning, one of the mornings. Henry liked it. When it was all built, Frankie had sat him in the snowman’s lap, and everyone laughed when Henry slid down to the ground.
The house was completely different with no one in it, Henry thought. He went to the toy box and took out three of his books. He opened the one he knew by heart and looked at the pictures while telling himself the story: A man and his wife were lonely. A cat came. More cats came. More cats came. No one had ever seen so many cats in one place before. Papa didn’t like cats. Mama said that cats were useful; she shooed them out if they came in the house. Lillian wished she had a cat. Joey wished he had a dog. Henry read the story again, then opened another book, but he didn’t know that story. He got up and went into the kitchen. He looked around, but he wasn’t hungry. He got up into his chair and got down again. He walked across the kitchen and looked out the window. There was nothing out there, and then there was, something red. Red was a good color. He stared and stared at the red thing in the snow. Maybe it was moving, maybe it was waving. Henry couldn’t tell, but he wondered. He opened the kitchen door and put his foot out onto the porch. It was—
“Oh, my goodness!” exclaimed Mama. “What in the world are you doing? I thought you were taking a nap!” She grabbed Henry by the shoulder, and now she whirled him around. “Do I not get a moment’s peace? It’s freezing out there! You don’t have any shoes on, even!” Then she hugged him and started to cry. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry could still see the red thing.
RIGHT AFTER the state fair—all the way to Thanksgiving, maybe—Frank had hardly thought about that girl, Libby Holman. The whole episode just seemed like a little hard bit of a thing that was in your shoe or something. You stopped, shook it out of your shoe, and kept walking. He never told anyone about it (but, then, he never told anyone about anything), and he decided not to think about it, either. He was sure that girl was older than eighteen; when he thought about her, she seemed weird and not like a girl. Whatever sense he had had of being flattered had evaporated as fast as dew in the morning.
Then, at Thanksgiving, a funny thing happened at church (they didn’t have the gas to go to church every week, but Mama made sure they went once a month and on special days). At Thanksgiving, Pastor Elmore gave thanks for being guided to embark upon a new crusade, which was “Nipping It in the Bud.” He said, “In these hard times, O Lord, we know that our young people are being led astray by their own thoughts and also by the sinful things they see around them. O Lord, preserve your children from the Jews in Hollywood who infest our world with evil thoughts of bodies and carnality, bare legs, and heaving bosoms. O Lord, you know of what I speak!” And the congregation had said, “Amen!”
On the way home, Frank had heard Papa say, “Now, why did he bring that up?”
And Mama said, “Well, didn’t you see that that Mae West picture came to town? I guess some boys went to see it.” Then she cleared her throat, and Frank knew she was thinking that there were big ears in the back seat, which there were. Some boys at high school, boys from Usherton, had been talking about that movie—not about how naughty it was, but about how it was not nearly as naughty as another one, called I’m No Angel. The boys who were talking about I’m No Angel had sneaked into the theater when the ticket taker went out back to piss in the alley and thought he had locked the door. Well, he hadn’t.
It wasn’t that Frank knew what Mae West looked like or anything about the movies, even though he had listened closely to what the boys were saying. But that phrase, “I’m no angel,” went together with Libby Holman and Pastor Elmore, and the thing that was lodged in his shoe (in his mind, he knew) got bigger and he couldn’t shake it out. If he stayed awake at night and didn’t fall right to sleep, he had to turn on his side, away from Joey, and push his cock down between his legs, but even then it got bigger. This was called jerking off. The boys at school talked about that, too. And about whores. Two boys, Pat Callahan and Linc Forbes, had been taken to whores by their fathers when they turned sixteen. Frank was wondering if that was the reason Libby Holman asked him his age. Maybe she was a whore, and if he was sixteen she was supposed to charge him some money.
Of his rabbit and fox money, Frank had kept back eight dollars and given the rest to Mama. Papa had gotten nothing for the oats and nothing for the corn after harvest—the cost of planting, when you factored in fuel for the tractor and a repair that a man had had to come out and do (and he had taught Papa how to do some repairs himself, so the money had been worth it, but still they paid him partly in eggs and butter), had been more than the corn and oats were worth, even when processed through hogs and cows and sold as milk, beef, and pork—beef was selling in the winter at under ten cents a pound. Only Mama, with her chickens and cream, and Frank, with his fox pelts, were actually bringing in cash, and all of that was going for three things, shoes, coal, and mortgage. With luck, Papa said, there would be an early spring and the coal would hold out. And no one at school had it much better. The two boys Frank knew who smoked cigarettes were stealing them, and the ones who saw movies were sneaking in. Every time they went to church, Mama put a quarter in when they passed the plate. That was fifteen eggs. Frank kept the eight dollars behind a loose board next to the gun case. Since Walter no longer hunted, even deer, Frank was the only person who went near the gun case (and Mama made him store his bullets out in the barn).
But, Frank thought, if Libby Holman were a whore, she wouldn’t have seemed so sad after he came on her skirt, but that part made him feel strange, too, both the coming and the look on her face, and the sound of her voice when she said, “Ugh.” He had thought that Pastor Elmore was on to something when he talked about his new crusade, but then Mama had made him and Joey go to a class where the man from Des Moines who specialized in all of this didn’t say a word that was useful—it was all about kissing girls and magazines and striptease (“It’s not worth it, boys, it really isn’t,” and “Thank the Lord that Iowa is still dry, boys,” and “The girls you really like, and who are worth your time, depend on you to keep yourselves and your thoughts clean!”). The night of that class, Frank lay in bed thinking about it, and he couldn’t for the life of him make a link between Libby Holman, that cold night in the car, sitting there with her clothes all rumpled and her hair messed up, and the light from the state-fair midway glaring down across her cheek, and what that fellow said. Jackson Clifford, his name was: “Call me Jack Cliff, boys. Wherever you are now, I’ve been there!”
IT COULD HAVE BEEN colder. Other springs had been, Walter knew. Here he was forty now. Wasn’t that something? Walter thought. Been on this farm for fifteen years, and the day he walked through the farmhouse and decided that this was the one he could afford was as clear in his mind as anything. Now he was forty and had a belly and his hair was backing off his forehead, just the way his father’s had, and the oddest thing was that his eyes were lighter and lighter blue, as if that was where the graying was taking place, not on top of his head. Walter carried both pails across the barnyard, which was wet but not squelching. Down to four milkers now, which he didn’t mind compared with starving to death. He and Joey between them could milk four cows in half an hour. He stepped onto the well cover, which was crisscrossed with bindweed that he should have rooted out, but in fact he rather liked the flowers that would
come in the summer. He set the pail underneath the spigot and began working the pump handle. The water came pretty quick—two up, two down. Good well, Walter was thinking.
When the well cover broke away underneath him and the pail fell into the well, Walter threw his arms out straight to either side. The edges of the well caught them above the elbows. Walter looked down. The pail made a splash.
The dark, wet sides of the well dropped maybe twenty feet to the surface of the water. He could just make out the edges of some of the bricks that had been used to shore it up, and he wasn’t actually afraid, just startled. Startled at the sight of his own boots hanging there, maybe fifteen feet above the dim shine that would have been his death if he hadn’t thrown out his arms. He had never fallen into a well before. It was children who fell into wells.
Of course, he was only preliminarily saved. He had to figure out how to move forward or backward or upward somehow, and for the moment, the instinct that had thrown his arms out wasn’t operating. He took a deep breath and looked around. Rosanna was in the house; you couldn’t see the well from the house. He had left a barn door open by mistake. He took another deep breath. It was a chilly day. The water would be chillier still.
And yet.
And yet the farm was bust. He had no money, and his land now was worth eleven dollars an acre, maybe. The cows and hogs and Jake and Elsa and the sheep were worth nothing. The tractor was worth less than he had paid for it, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because there was no one who could buy it from him. He dreaded that his father might die and leave him the big farm, even though it was paid for (or probably it was—his father was close-mouthed about all dealings with the bank). He had voted for Roosevelt, and he would vote for the Democrat in ’36 if he was any good at all, but it had all come to naught anyway, and so …
He looked down again. A single streak of sunlight shone on the surface of the water. The water could be ten feet deep. He would either let out all his breath and just sink, or he wouldn’t. He wasn’t much of a swimmer, but his father had taught him to tread water. How long could he go?
How long could he hang here? He was a strong man, especially in the shoulders and upper arms.
Would Rosanna miss him? He had to say that he didn’t know. She would be furious with him for sure—how could he do such a stupid thing, stepping on the well cover, or not fixing the well cover, or something? And how could he? As in so many things, she was right. That’s what he had married her for, wasn’t it? That she was smart and self-assured and knew what she wanted. If you didn’t have that in a farm wife, then the farm wasn’t going to make it. But maybe the farm wasn’t going to make it anyway. He looked down again. Experimentally, he let his shoulders relax. They didn’t relax. He tried again. They still didn’t relax. It was then he knew that the end really wasn’t at hand, that his body would save itself, no matter what, and it did. He used his elbows to inch his way forward until his chest was flat against the front edge of the well; then he grabbed the pump shaft below the spigot with his hand and clambered out. He wasn’t even wet. The second pail was sitting there on the ground. He stood behind the pump, holding the pail under the spigot, and when it was mostly full, he was careful to stay back from the edge of the well. He got some planks of old barn siding and placed them over the hole. He didn’t look at it again, nor did he tell Rosanna, when he went in for dinner, that he’d had a close call, but that was what he decided to name it. It was only a few days later, when he had to fill a bucket at that well again, that he felt the fear, that he didn’t want to go near the thing or step on the boards he’d laid across it, though he knew they were sturdy. Once he dreamt about it, too—not about falling into that particular well, but about sinking into a pile of straw so that he couldn’t get out, so that the straw got into his mouth and he couldn’t make a sound. He woke up in the dark and thought, so he was still afraid of death after all. But when Rosanna turned over and asked what the problem was, he said, “Nothing. Can’t remember now.”
ROSANNA RARELY LISTENED to the radio, but she did know, if only dimly, about the Labor Day hurricane down in Florida somewhere. Who in Iowa thought about Florida? People in Iowa had problems of their own—maybe not dust storms like the ones out in Nebraska and Oklahoma, and maybe not heat like in Texas, but if you got up in a sweat every morning after barely sleeping all night, and there was no rain for the crops and not much water for the animals, and the children were crying, and when Henry, so beautiful, fell and cut his lower lip and you couldn’t afford to take him to the doctor but had to boil a needle and a length of silk thread and sew it up yourself, with him lying on Lillian’s lap and screaming, and Lillian herself streaming with tears, well, you had to wonder if a slow demise was preferable to a quick one, didn’t you?
But Pastor Elmore knew all about the hurricane, and he saw it clearly as God’s will. His cousin was at the work camp there for war veterans, and was lost, presumed dead now, six days later. Pastor Elmore was sweating already before the sermon, given how hot it was, and all the ladies in the congregation were sitting there with their collars open, fanning themselves. Walter had his handkerchief on his head to keep the sweat from pouring into his eyes, and Henry was asleep on her lap—that scar was one he would have for the rest of his life, but after sewing it, she had put bag balm on it and some leaves her mother had, and it wasn’t his arm or his eye or his leg, was it? Only Lillian was neat and calm. She was a marvel. Joey and Frankie had stayed home to look after the animals—they were lost to the faith, maybe—but just as Rosanna was thinking that she was too tired to care right this very minute, Pastor Elmore roared out, “ ‘On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened!’ And why was that, my friends? Why did the Lord see fit to destroy his own creation, like a sculptor who smashes his clay with his fist, or a painter who slashes his canvas? Why, because it wasn’t right and good! And does the pot revile its creator for this? And does the painting weep? No! And so we must accept that the Lord is getting mighty close to that state of dissatisfaction he found himself in when Noah was six hundred years old. Did you know, my friends, that there is no record of such a hurricane as struck those islands in Florida seven days ago? The first of its kind! What does that tell you? And, my friends, look around you. Are your crops thriving and your cattle fattening? No, they are not.
“Let me tell you about my cousin. My cousin was not a bad man. His name was Robert, and he was a kind and gentle boy when I first knew him. He was not a boy to tease a cat or trap a bird, but neither was he right with the Lord, and his life was on a downward path. He came home from the war a drunkard, and his mother died of the grief. Nor was he a mean drunk, my friends. If he had a dollar, after spending what he needed to on a pint, he would give it to you, and no thanks necessary. But his wife didn’t know him, and his children didn’t know him, and he wandered off, from Ohio to Missouri to Texas to California to Florida, hardly a word to his family, only a card from time to time to say where he was, and last spring he was in Florida, clearing swamp, and three weeks ago he was there, too. But the Lord was having none of it. The Lord is just about to that point he was with the Nephilim—sick and tired of the sin. And so he is sending us warning after warning. Did every single Nephilim man, woman, and child offend him? I doubt it. I am sure there were good Nephilim and kind Nephilim like my cousin. They were, it is said, the sons of God, as are you and I. But they were sensuous and irresponsible, and so God saved Noah and his sons and their families, and he saved some animals, and he smashed the rest.
“Now, you are saying that God gave Noah a promise never to do such a thing again, and that is true, but neither did he inundate the whole world—just a bit of it there in Florida. And I am telling you that this is a warning to you and to me.…”
Rosanna dabbed her upper lip with her handkerchief, then patted Henry’s forehead. Lillian was taking in every word. She was almost nine now. It occurred to Rosanna that maybe Lillian did not have
to hear this—she was already careful to be good at all times and in all ways. Did she need to know that being good wasn’t good enough? When you came right down to it, Rosanna thought, being a Catholic was more reassuring for a child—it made sense to confess your sins, do your penance, and have a clean slate. Rosanna didn’t think about her childhood much—no time for it—but maybe going to St. Albans had been easier than this. If a child thought a priest or a pastor was the voice of God, then at St. Albans the priest droned on every week in the same Latin gibberish and the rules were clear. Here, the pastor was very excitable and full of inspiration—Rosanna knew that he wouldn’t have talked about the hurricane or Noah or the Nephilim if his cousin hadn’t been killed. She looked at Walter. He had his elbow on the end of the pew and his hand over his eyes. He could make it no clearer that, whatever he said, what he thought was that she had gotten them into this congregation, and it was up to her to get them out.
The pastor boomed out again: “My friends, who can say where it will end? Who can say when the Lord will at last be pleased with us?”
Walter shifted in his seat, and Lillian took his hand. Rosanna saw him squeeze hers. Right then, Henry woke up and coughed. Rosanna knew a sign when she saw it. She poked Walter and cocked her head toward the entrance. Walter took her meaning as if he had indeed been waiting. As one, they got up quietly, and eased out in Walter’s direction—thank the Lord, not the center aisle but the right-hand one—and they walked toward the door without looking back or looking down at any of their fellow worshippers. Behind them, Pastor Elmore said, “My friends, I think, humbly and even with thanks, that we should be prepared for just about …” The door swished closed behind them, and they were out on the porch.
1936