by Jane Smiley
FRANK WAS SITTING in his seat in the fourth coach (right behind the dining car). Out the window, there was nothing to look at but snow, snow, snow. That was the way it had been all winter—at home, the drifts on the west side of the house were above the roof of his and Joey’s room—when you looked out the window you saw a crystalline white wall. This snow was blowing, but it was still utterly white, and Frank could feel the train slow. He had been on the train for three hours, so maybe they were almost to Clinton, maybe not. The last stop, where the stationmaster had put the flag up for some folks who got on and then passed through to the sleeper, was DeWitt.
The reason Frank found himself on the train, the Challenger, the newest and best train on the Chicago and Northwestern line, was that Mama just could not put up with him any longer, though what she said was that he had to go to school, there was no way around it. Maybe it wasn’t so important for Joey, but Frankie needed school. The idea that he would go to school in Chicago had rolled across the table as a silly thought at Thanksgiving, when Eloise came home with Rosa and Julius. Already by that time, Frank had missed six days of high school, off and on, because of snow, and Mama was plenty steamed about it—steamed at Papa, it seemed, as if the blizzards were Papa’s fault. “Well, send him to me in Chicago,” said Eloise, and Mama said, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”
But between Thanksgiving and Christmas he had missed nine days, four of them because the school itself was closed when the water pipes burst. Grandpa Wilmer and Granny Elizabeth and all the oldest people Frank knew said that they had never seen a winter like this—it wasn’t just that there were layers of snow on the ground, five feet in some places, not including the drifts, but it was deathly cold and windy, too. Papa’s cows and sheep and hogs hadn’t been out of the barn for any reason in two months. “Are we living in Minnesota now?” exclaimed Mama. But Papa said it would turn out fine in the end, because the drought was over. At Christmas, Eloise issued her invitation again—yes, the snow was deep in Chicago, too, but she and Julius had a big apartment a block from the high school. Frank would like it, she thought. And Mama said yes.
The train came to a halt, but there was no town to be seen, even dimly. Frank looked around at the other passengers—there were twelve of them in this car, a family with three kids, two ladies, and the rest businessmen. The ladies kept talking, and the businessmen kept reading their newspapers. Only the kids gawked at the windows. The car was quiet. Frank got up.
The wind in the vestibule was sudden and breathtakingly cold, even though it was surely no sharper than Frank had felt many times heading home from school. As Frank pushed and pushed on the door into the dining car, he felt a moment of panic. In the dining car, there was more news—the locomotive had run up against a huge drift. Crews were coming. No telling how long it might take. Frank eavesdropped on a man asking the porter “whether you expect supplies to hold out.” Since he had a glass of whiskey in his hand, Frank figured that was the supply that he meant.
“Yes, suh. I expect they will hold out for a week, suh.” The porter was the first black man Frank had ever seen. Mama had told him that he would see plenty of black people in Chicago, and that he was to avoid antagonizing them by looking them in the eye, and that only low-class people called them “niggers,” and that that word was another thing they didn’t like, so to be careful. They were to be called “colored.” But it looked to Frank like it was the porter who was being careful. Frank bought a chicken sandwich from him for a quarter, avoided looking at him, and went back through the vestibule to his seat. It was disconcerting how warm and still the interior of the coach was, compared with how wild and cold the weather was. Frank picked up his book—he was reading Robbers’ Roost, by Zane Grey. He had gotten it from one of the guys at school, and he planned to send it back before the guy realized it was missing.
The conductor did not say what “held up” the crew, but by the time it was dark, and everyone knew they were stuck at least until morning, things in the coach weren’t quiet anymore. Two of the children were crying, and the two ladies were tutting and shaking their heads; one of them said in a low voice (but Frank was used to listening to low voices), “If we make it till morning … but you heard about that train in New York. Mumble-mumble frozen to death.” Frank could hardly keep himself from looking around, but he didn’t dare. If he did, they would lower their voices even further and he wouldn’t learn a thing. One of the businessmen kept pushing a button next to the window, but the conductor didn’t come. And then the lights went out. Frank set down his book, but still there was nothing to see in the pale, snowy darkness, least of all “crews.”
Not long after the lights went out, the conductor did come through with a flashlight, and he had two porters with him. He announced that the Chicago and Northwestern Railway was very concerned about the comfort of its passengers, and that since there were berths available in the sleeper car, it had been decided that coach passengers would be allowed to make use of those berths for the night. Other passengers had chosen to bunk down in the dining cars and the bar car (one of the businessmen laughed at this), and perhaps, given the comfort of the seats in the coach, others would prefer to stay where they were. If so, the railroad would be happy to supply them with blankets and pillows. Crews were ready to get to work before dawn, but the drift was a large one—not so high, but extensive and difficult to clear.
It was one of the ladies who said to Frank after the conductor left, “Son, you better claim one of those berths, because at least you can insulate yourself in there. We heard of a train near Buffalo—it was the coach passengers who froze to death. You come with me.” The two ladies led Frank to the conductor, and declared that they wanted upper berths (“because heat rises”) and also one for their nephew here. The conductor was in no mood to argue.
His night in the berth was a strange one—maybe he had never been in anything that felt so much like a hole in the ground. He could open his eyes and see the window, but as soon as he closed them, he sank again. When, in a dream, he thought Joey poked him, he threw out his arm and hit a wall. That woke him up. And then, lying there, he was as sure as he could be that he was going to die—that on this train, unlike the one in New York—not Buffalo, near Rochester, was it—everyone would freeze to death, and it didn’t matter that he was perfectly warm. The freezing part seemed to have more to do with being three hours from home and three hours from Chicago, as far as he could be from everything and everyone he knew, than it did with mere temperature. “Hell’s bells,” he said aloud, “I miss Joey.” And he did. His head touched the wall, his feet touched the wall, his hands touched the wall, and only a curtain hung between him and falling out of the berth into the aisle. If it hadn’t been for those dead passengers in Rochester, he would have gone back to his seat.
But the train was moving by sunrise, had already, in fact, crossed the Mississippi, a sight Frank was sorry to have missed. They were at Union Station in Chicago by nine, and Frank’s breakfast (eggs, bacon, an orange) had been free. He had thanked the two ladies for “saving” him. When they pulled in, he was picking his teeth, something that he saw one of the other passengers do and that he thought looked very urban. He looked out the window and could see Eloise running down the platform. When he got off, the first thing she said was “Frankie! What in the world would I have told your mother!”
“She’s seen plenty of snowdrifts,” said Frank. And then he said, “Call me Frank.”
And Eloise said, “Oh, you are so funny. Are you sure we’re related?”
“Only Mama would know,” said Frank, and they both laughed. Eloise reached up and ruffled his hair. But Frank was surprised, and maybe a little taken aback, by how happy she was. Maybe those people in New York really had frozen to death.
THE DRIFTS IN CHICAGO were still nearly as tall as the streetlights, but it was the end of March, and you could get around. Which was good for Frank and bad for Eloise, since he was gone most of the time and she had just about no control over him
. The thing was, he was so charming. When he came in, he would say, “Oh, I was down at the Y, and they said to say hello to you,” and she knew he was at the pool hall or down by the stockyards or the train yards. But she had walked over to the school and talked to the principal about him, and the principal said that he was a very quick student and was making straight A’s. And, said the principal, “There is a sweetness about him. A bit of the country boy.” Right, thought Eloise.
She had her hands full with Rosa, who was three now, and with her job, writing articles for both the paper and the Daily Worker, and, of course, with Julius, who was turning into a Trotskyite, and so was she. But she kept her mouth shut about it and he didn’t, and if they expelled him from the Party, she would have to go, too, and then what? Half of her income came from the Daily Worker, and all of his came from the Party, since he was in charge of education.
Her worries about Frank only bothered her when she got a letter from Rosanna; she had one in her hand now and wasn’t all that eager to read it, but she put Rosa in her high chair, set her scrambled eggs before her, and ripped open the envelope.
Dear Eloise,
Thanks for your reassurances about Frankie. There is no out of sight out of mind with him, at least not for me. I wish he would write more often, and at greater length, but if, as you say, he has lots of studying to do, I understand that. Every word he reads and every math problem he solves is another step away from farming, and that is good, as you know.
Usually, Rosanna was not quite as open about these sorts of opinions. Eloise read on:
If there is more snow in Chicago, even in Chicago, than here, then the end really is at hand, because although now we haven’t had a new blizzard in a couple of weeks, we are still digging out. Walter has a tunnel between the house and the barn. You would think that he would be happy, but he says that if the ground stays frozen while the snow melts, it will just run off, and then the floods—I don’t like to think.
However, we are all fed, and the snow has insulated us from the winds, and so the rooms we are heating have been warm enough. I am in a mood to be thankful, because a terrible thing happened to Mrs. Morris, and Lillian and I have been over there twice.
Eloise didn’t want to read on, but she did. Mrs. Morris, she remembered, was Lillian’s best friend’s mother.
Last week, she had a baby, a boy. Her Jane is ten, Lucy is five, and Gloria is two, I think. I guess she’s had trouble before. They wanted a boy, but this one, Ralph, they named him, seems to have been very premature. He is tiny. He cries day and night—he even pulls away from nursing to cry. Of course he has to be swaddled because of the cold, and he can’t stand that. Mama says that in her day he would have been quietly passed on to the Lord, and maybe he would have been, I don’t know, but Mrs. Morris would never do such a thing. I help her a bit with the baby, and Jane stays here for the most part, with Lillian, which is fine, because there is still almost no school. Jane and Lillian read books to Lucy and Henry, and the two little ones don’t seem to care that they are hearing about the French and Indian War or the last of the Mohicans. Every time they stop reading, Lucy asks, “How’s Ralphie?” My goodness, so sad!
Eloise wished she didn’t know how this was going to end. The one thing she and Julius had formerly disagreed upon was procreation—Julius thought they should produce as many New Men and New Women as they could, whereas Eloise shrank from subjecting more children than necessary to the cruelties of life. Now, of course, they disagreed about lots of things, and if Julius were to come back to the apartment this very minute, no matter how many resolutions she made, they would resume their argument about Stalin, the trials, the vilification of Trotsky, solidarity versus truth. He was always manipulating her into the righteous but powerless corner—what was she willing to give up just to hold her own opinions? She was reacting, he was sure, to having grown up Catholic rather than to the needs of the working class. Obviously, it was a bigger leap for her from the Opiate of the Masses to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, especially since she came from long lines of landed peasants on both sides, but eggs had to be broken, omelettes had to be made.
Her own analysis was that Julius, as the nephew and grandson and great-grandson, etc., of English rabbis, had a love of and talent for rhetoric, and no one else argued with the fine-hewn eloquence of communists. He wanted to stay in the Party in order to disagree with them. And the revolution in Chicago, the founding spot of the Communist Party in the United States, was burbling along just fine. They could afford a little thesis and antithesis. She picked up the letter again, but then put it down and looked at her watch. She said, “Rosa, Nancy is coming over with her mommy, and they are going to watch you while I do some writing, okay?” Rosa shook her head, but she didn’t cry. She said, “Nancy pulls my hair.”
“Doesn’t Mary stop her?” Mary was about Eloise’s age, in charge of writing up minutes from meetings.
Rosa shook her head. “She’s busy.”
Eloise picked Rosa up and set her on the floor, then said, “Okay, honey, listen to me. When Nancy pulls your hair, you take her by the shoulders and look her right in the eyes and say, ‘Stop that. Right now.’ No yelling, but very firm.” She knelt down and took Rosa by the shoulders and demonstrated. Then she said, “Understand? Speak up, but don’t retaliate, okay?”
Rosa nodded.
“Now go watch out the window until they come.” Rosa walked away, and Eloise picked up the letter again. It was strange to Eloise that Rosanna never complained, no matter how Job-like her life became. But, then, perhaps she didn’t know what had happened to her. Eloise was amazed every time she went back for a holiday. Rosanna, who had been so beautiful fifteen years ago, with blond hair so thick that it burst out of her hairpins, brilliant blue eyes, and a sudden, dazzling smile, now looked cadaverous, with hollow cheeks and a flat, controlled bun. She was thirty-six and looked fifty. The turning point had been the birth of Lillian—everything Rosanna had seemed to flow out of her and into the little girl, and no one noticed except Eloise, who had grown up thinking Rosanna was the most beautiful person in the world, and the luckiest, and the brightest. Eloise looked around, and then crossed herself for luck and in thanks for having escaped the farm. Life in Chicago was full of vociferous “struggle,” but Julius was right, wasn’t he? He had saved her.
FRANK’S NEW SCHOOL was actually new—it was called the Franklin Branch, and it had only been open for two years. It was much bigger than North Usherton, and there wasn’t a single farm kid enrolled, unless you counted Frank, which Frank did not. It had a big library, a gymnasium, and a meeting hall where the student body gathered to be told things, and where performances and shows were put on—Frank was pretty impressed when, two weeks after his arrival, the students themselves did some singing, tap dancing, piano playing, and violin playing. The first half was for classical music, and the second half was for popular music, and the last act was eight girls who kicked up their legs and threw their arms around, and eight guys who tossed them in the air. There would be another show at the end of the year, and Frank planned to be in it, but he wasn’t going to sing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.” “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” was more like it, but in the larger scheme of things, he was misbehaving, and it was wonderful fun.
He had fallen in with a gang of boys who ranged all over Lincoln Park and the North Side of Chicago, Terry, Mort, Lew, and Bob. Bob was the most accomplished thief—he walked into Woolworth’s and even into Marshall Field’s in one pair of shoes and came out in another. For his mother’s birthday, he had stolen a five-pound roast, walking out with it under his coat. He had also stolen her birthday present, which was a silk blouse. The other boys, and Frank himself, stuck to packs of cigarettes and bars of chocolate, but Bob would try anything. Terry and Mort were the brawlers. When they happened to run into the gang from St. Michael’s, who were good fighters because they were Micks, Terry and Mort could do damage if they had to. Lew, Bob, and Frank did some punching, but only
for the fun of it. Terry broke one kid’s nose—really broke it—and Mort had another kid down and was kicking him as hard as he could, until the kid could hardly walk. Lew was the best talker—he talked a mile a minute, and just like Jimmy Cagney. Lew knew all the stories about the twenties in Chicago, and swore up and down that his dad and his uncle had been bootleggers, but Mort said that Lew’s dad and uncle were plumbers and always had been, and so what? Lew had perfected a type of swagger and knew how to get into Cubs games for free, so Frank was looking forward to Opening Day. The boys were going to skip school, as was everyone else. Wrigley Field was about a half an hour from Eloise’s place, less on the L. There was a catcher everybody was wild about named Gabby Hartnett. He was called Gabby because he had a big mouth and was funny. His batting average in the last season was .344, and Lew was sure he would end up in the Hall of Fame. Frank didn’t tell them he had never been to a baseball game. Even Julius liked baseball games, and they took Rosa.
It was Frank who was good with the girls. The others stood back and gawked at him—he could talk to any girl, and he would talk to any girl. He didn’t care whether she was nice or had a bad reputation or was pretty or not. He started by giving the girl a smile—not a dumb smirk or a sideways thing, but a good smile. He made sure she saw it, but he didn’t say anything right away. When the girl was used to smiling back, then he would start chatting like they’d been talking all along. It was easy. And, as he tried to explain to the others, though to little effect, it didn’t matter if some of them walked away—girls were all the same; you couldn’t tell by looking which one you wanted. The other thing was that if you had the girls on your side, then the teachers liked you. Frank didn’t know why that was, but maybe that, too, was the smile. One teacher, Mr. McCarron, he thought might see through him—he was a little impatient, and he taught French. But Frank liked French. He was in there with freshmen, since there hadn’t been French at North Usherton, but he did his work and practiced his pronunciation and raised his hand and asked Mr. McCarron about all the Louises and the Charleses, and the ponts and the gares. He imagined Paris to be a kind of better Chicago. He said that his father had spent a lot of time in Paris during the Great War, but of course he hadn’t. Yes, Frank had a contribution to make to the gang that was certainly on a par with Lew’s, Bob’s, Terry’s, and Mort’s—he was the best liar. He didn’t tell stories and he didn’t put on any performances, but he got them out of trouble two or three times. Frank liked to think of himself as the brains of the operation.