Slider’s Son

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  * * *

  Racehorse Romney stood at her desk, studying her lesson plan while the students hung their coats in the cloakroom, filed in, and plunked into their seats.

  “Good morning, class.”

  “Good morning, Miss Romney,” they chorused.

  “Everyone present?” She cast an eye over the group. The class looked around the room, too.

  “Sue’s not here,” Frank said.

  “Pardon me?” Racehorse said. Her big, beautiful brown eyes flashed behind her wire-rimmed glasses. She took a step toward Frank.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. Miss Romney. Sue—I mean Seward—isn’t—present.”

  “Seward won’t be back, I’m afraid,” Racehorse said. She stood where she was, lovely and willowy tall with chestnut hair brushing a crocheted white collar on her emerald-green dress. She was so tall, she could almost look Slider in the eye, and her legs were so long, the boys figured she could compete with any racehorse. When they sat at their desks, they had to crank their necks upward to look at her face. Now she watched everyone with her big brown eyes. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that Monday was your last chance to make fun of Seward’s name.”

  Grant looked at Frank. Frank looked at Orland, Orland looked at Little Joe, and Little Joe looked at Grant.

  Frank raised his hand to ask what happened to Sue—Seward—but Racehorse Romney turned her back on the raised hand, faced the tattery American flag hanging in the corner of the room with her hand on her heart. She said, “Class, let us begin. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.”

  So they did.

  * * *

  At recess, the five boys ran to the edge of the schoolyard as fast as they could run. “It’s the TB, isn’t it?” croaked Orland. “It’s the TB got Sue.”

  “Yeah, you hear how he was coughin’ in school on Monday? And he’s been gone since,” Frank said.

  “And he wasn’t at the train this week,” Grant said.

  “He’s a dead man,” Frank said. “My dad says the TB is as good as a death sentence.”

  They blew their breath out in front of them like smokers and watched it crystallize in the frozen air.

  It was their own private wake, a memorial service for their friend. It had happened once before. A boy in the class ahead of them, Joseph Timmons, got tuberculosis, got whisked far away to the sanatorium and was never heard from again. Nobody ever told them what happened. Even when they asked about him, the adults ignored the question. TB was a silent stalker, attacked overnight, and then the TB victim became a ghost and was gone.

  The theory seemed to be that if you didn’t say it out loud, it didn’t exist.

  “Why won’t Racehorse Romney talk about it, at least?” Sammy asked. “Doesn’t seem like she’s scared of anything.”

  “Gosh darn it, “Frank said. “I’m not goin’ like that. I’m not.”

  “Me neither,” Little Joe said. “My dad says, they stick all the coughing TBers together in a big white room, and they don’t let ’em out of bed, and the air is as rancid as manure. They all cough blood all over each other, and pass the germs back and forth until they die like a bunch of flies on the same pile of horse dung.”

  He let this important information settle, proud of himself for knowing. “Yup, that’s what my dad says.”

  Grant wondered if there was truth to anything Big Joe said. Who could believe a drunk? Still, he shivered, imagining Sue in a bed with white hospital sheets, flanked by shriveled old people, coughing and coughing so the white curtains on the windows of his imaginary sanatorium billowed from the wind of all the hacking and wheezing and blood and mucus flying around. Seward. Since Seward was gone for good, it seemed mean to tease the memory of his name the same way they’d always teased him to his face.

  “Shucks,” said Orland. “I don’t wanna go like that, either. But how do you keep from gettin’ it? Except maybe pray?”

  “Pray? What’s that going to do?” Frank squinted at Or-land. “You believe in that?”

  Orland scratched his head through his wool knit cap. “Maybe.” His thick black hair poked out in waves where the cap shifted. “My mom says it works. It’s better than doing nothin’.”

  Grant didn’t want to side with Frank, but he couldn’t help saying, “Don’t you think Sue’s mom prayed for him? It didn’t do any good. Slider thinks praying is fire insurance.”

  “What’s that mean?” Little Joe asked.

  “You pray ’cause you’re scared of going to hell. Fire insurance.”

  Little Joe laughed. Orland shrugged.

  “If you get the TB, you can’t help it,” Frank said. “Nothing you can do. With or without God. It’s a plague. But I ain’t dyin’ in any TB ward. I’d ruther do anything—fall, die under the train wheel and get cut in half—anything than get the TB.”

  “Me,” said Little Joe, “I’d run away. If I got it, I’d take the train to Canada. They’re not stickin’ me in no stupid prison sanatorium. Man-o-man, I’d rather die coughin’ in the wide open spaces.” His dark eyes were fierce as he looked around at the other boys.

  “Me, too,” said Frank and Grant at the same time.

  “Yup,” said Orland.

  Sammy nodded.

  “Listen,” Frank said. “Let’s make a pact.”

  The boys leaned in and Frank lowered his voice. “If any of us. Any.” He looked at Little Joe specifically, and then at Orland and Sammy and Grant. “If any of us gets the TB, we’ll sneak out at night, round up each other, and we’ll ride the coal train to Missoula, Montana, and then take the lumber train north to Canada. Where they’ll never find us.”

  Grant looked at Orland. Orland leaned closer to Frank, listening hard. Orland wouldn’t jump on Frank’s bandwagon too fast, Grant was sure. Orland loved to draw. He was a real, bona fide artist. And he liked to read, and he could play the piano as well as his mom, the Lutheran church’s organist. In the wilderness of Canada, Orland would lose all of those things he loved.

  “What about our moms?” Orland said. “They’d worry themselves to death, and then we’d be like murderers.”

  “What?” Frank said, “You a mama’s boy now? Since when did you care that your mama worried?”

  “But we can’t just leave and not tell anybody,” Grant said. He imagined Mamie finding his bed empty. She’d pace the kitchen, watching out the window, worried into a lather and crabby about it, too. Slider would scour the ditches and railroad tracks for their remains. Out loud Grant said, “They’d sic Slider on us in the wink of an eye. And he’d probably figure it out and find us.”

  “You too?” Frank said.

  “I think,” said Grant, “that we better leave notes. Saying we’re fine and don’t look for us, and we will contact them when . . . when we arrive at our destination.”

  “Okay,” said Frank. “That sounds okay.”

  “And we’ll write ’em letters when we’re safe in Canada,” Sammy said. He looked at Orland. “Then your mom’ll know her prayers are answered and you’re safe.”

  “But that way,” Frank went on, “we’ll die in the open air, breathin’ sky and pine dust. Not that prison, not that stinky, poison air they got in the sanatorium.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Swear?”

  “Okay,” Orland said, “in that case, I swear. To run away together if any of us gets the TB.”

  “I swear,” Little Joe said.

  “I swear,” said Sammy.

  They all looked at Grant.

  “I swear,” Grant said, thinking of Mamie and Slider, a tight spot growing in his middle.

  Little Joe dug his pocketknife out of his pocket. “Blood oath?” he asked.

  Grant heard his own breath come out in a rush.

  “Yes!” said Frank. “Swear in blood.”

  “Is it a sin? To swear?” Orland held one mittened hand with the other. “Mom says it’s a sin to swear.”

  “Naw,” Frank said. “And quit bein’ such a mama’s boy. But it’s not the same thing. This a
promise. We’re not taking the name of the Lord in vain, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  The boys whisked off their right mittens. First Joe, then Frank and Sammy, then Grant. Orland looked at Grant and slipped his off, too. They took the point of the smallest knife blade, poked the palm of their right hands until a drop of red showed, a sharp, quick pain, and put their hands together in a stack, like they were calling first-ups with a baseball bat. Joe’s hand was a few shades darker than the other four, but the blood pricks all bubbled the same shade of red.

  “We swear,” Frank said, “that if any of us gets the TB, we’ll hightail it out of Larkin together on the coal train. So we won’t die in the hellhole sanatorium. We won’t tell nobody, but we will leave notes not to look for us.”

  “Swear,” said Sammy.

  “Swear,” said Grant.

  “Swear,” said Orland.

  “Swear,” said Joe.

  “Swear,” said Frank again. And they shook their hands down, apart, and pulled their mittens back on, over the dull sting of the bloody poked spot.

  They turned back toward the schoolyard to start a snow chunk fight. It was still too icy to make real snowballs.

  Suzy Matheison was sitting alone, singing and swinging back and forth on the swing set, scraping the toes of her brown shoes on the snow as she went. She had a high, sweet voice, and Grant hung back from the others to hear what she was singing. To the tune of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, my Bonnie Lies Over the Sea,” Suzy sang:

  “My brother has tu-ber-cu-losis.

  My sister has only one lung.

  They sit and spit blood in a bucket.

  And dry it and chew it for gum. Yum, yum!”

  Suzy took a deep breath and started over.

  “My brother has tu-ber—”

  “Yuck!” Grant came to a halt. “Suzy, that’s a really icky song. Where’d you learn that?”

  Suzy shrugged and smiled at Grant. “My cousin taught it to me.”

  “Listen to this!” Grant bellowed at Frank, Orland, Sammy, and Joe. “Come back here. Suzy, sing it again.”

  Suzy looked at him, her little face peaked and pale under her gray knit cap, and she started singing again, from the beginning. Suzy’s skin was so clear, and her face so perfect that she reminded Grant of Shirley’s celluloid doll. As she sang, her breath made little puffs in the cold air, as if each clear and perfect note hung visibly in the air.

  When she sang, “Yum, yum!” Frank started to laugh. “That’s horrible, Suzy.”

  “It’s so, so—disgusting,” Little Joe said. “Can you imagine chewing blood for gum? Yum yum?”

  “It’s not so bad,” Orland said. “Just think, every time you have communion, you do that.”

  “What are you talking about?” Grant said.

  “You have communion. The preacher says, ‘The body of Christ given for you,’ and you chew it, and then he says, ‘The blood of Christ shed for you,’ and you drink it.” Orland looked at each of them. “It’s not so crazy as you think.”

  “You’re crazy,” Grant said, and spat. “I always wondered why the priests seem crazy. Now I know.” Just thinking about it gave him the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

  He was glad when Racehorse stepped outside the door, rang her hand bell, and yelled, “Come back in now.” Grant spat again as he ran toward the door.

  Nine

  Saturday Night

  Every Saturday night, half the county converged in town. The December cold snap, after dumping two feet of snow and then staying below zero for ten days straight, had finally broken. That morning, the sun melted snow on the roads to slush, and the monster drifts sunk into themselves just a little. Snowmen sprang up in every yard where grammar school children lived. Shirley and Harley made a snowman almost as tall as Slider.

  “How’d you get that snowman’s head way up there?” Grant asked.

  “Stepladder, ninny,” said Shirley. “How else?”

  As the afternoon light grew thin, the temperature dropped below freezing again, As dusk fell, Larkin’s streets teemed with pickups and cars and horses and wagons.

  The farmers brought cream in cans to the Larkin Creamery and the week’s eggs to Mandan Mercantile and Sims’s Mercantile, on either end of Main Street. Everything anyone wanted to buy or sell changed hands on a Saturday night. And this Saturday night, a week before Christmas, the town seemed busting at the seams in spite of the cold.

  Grant, Frank, Orland, and Little Joe walked the street together.

  At one end of Main Street, in the park across from the library, ice skaters—adults and children alike—glided around the frozen pond.

  A few children skidded around the ice in their shoes, but most skated with blades strapped to the bottom of their shoes. Somebody had built a bonfire near the edge of the ice, and a dozen people were squeezed around it, warming their mittens and feet. Grant spied Shirley, sitting near the fire, helping Harley strap on his skates. Grant went over to help Harley so Shirley could start skating.

  “Thanks, Grant.” She smiled and spun away, and was cutting figure eights in the middle of the pond before Harley launched himself unsteadily onto the ice.

  The boys stood for a while, watching pretty Violet Sutton, Tim’s twin sister, cut figure eights, too, her brown curls bobbing down her back below her hat. She saw them watching and waved. They waved back. Shirley and Violet skated together, and even Grant had to admit to himself that the two of them together were breathtaking.

  “She’s pretty,” Little Joe said.

  “Violet?” Grant asked.

  “Your sister, you stuffinghead. Shirley’s pretty. And look at her spin.”

  “You’re bats. She’s just Shirley,” Grant said.

  “Hello, Grant O’Grady,” Suzy Matheison said as she skimmed past them in perfect rhythm, so methodical and smooth it would be easy to miss seeing her skating a line around the edge of the pond.

  “Hi, Suzy. You’re a good skater,” he said back.

  Frank elbowed Grant. “You sweet on Suzy?”

  “No! Leave me alone. I was just bein’ nice. Something you know nothin’ about.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Never mind.”

  They almost bumped into Lorraine Woods, who was herding two little sisters toward the ice. Orland stopped. “Hello, Lorraine. Goin’ skatin’?”

  “Hello, Orland. Yes, we are.” She smiled as if it was a very silly question, but he didn’t seem to notice. She asked, “Do you like to skate, Orland?”

  “A little,” he said. The boys moved on.

  “Kissy, kissy,” said Frank.

  “Hush up,” Orland said.

  “Orland’s sweet on Lorraine!” sang out Frank.

  “Am not,” Orland said. “But she looks good all prettied up instead of out gettin’ coal with us.”

  Frank gave him a shove. Orland shoved back and took off running, Frank and Little Joe on his heels.

  Grant waved at Suzy, who was coming around the rink toward them again, and followed.

  The boys raced across the icy ruts in the intersection to Sims’s and squeezed through the crowd to the counter. Orland, the fastest runner, beat them all. By then, Frank had forgotten all about Lorraine. And Suzy. Smart move on Orland’s part, Grant thought.

  Each boy bought a penny’s worth of black licorice “Scot-ties.” They stashed their candy in their pockets and went back outside to eat it while they walked. They followed the cement sidewalk, stepping through slush and patches of ice the length of Main Street, chewing their black licorice. They passed the blacksmith shop where Little Joe’s dad, Big Joe, worked part time, and the Larkin Hotel, all the way to the end of the street, where the livery sat opposite the white clapboard Lutheran church. There, they ran out of walkway and moved down snow-packed South Road, running parallel to the railroad tracks, toward the depot, the elevator, and the train water tank tower that marked the edge of Larkin.

  “Hey,” Frank said,
“let’s go climb the water tower.”

  “The train tank tower?” Grant said.

  “No, that’s not high enough. The city one,” Frank said.

  Orland scratched his head through his wool cap. “You really have bats in the belfry.”

  “Why do you want to climb it?” Little Joe said.

  “Because it’s the tallest thing around,” Frank said. “We could see everything going on in town from one spot. The catwalk goes all the way around, too.”

  “I don’t know,” Little Joe looked at Orland. Orland looked at Grant.

  “What? You chicken?” Frank backed up a few steps toward Main Street.

  “’Course not,” Little Joe said, not budging.

  Frank turned and headed back toward the center of town. He looked over his shoulder, and Grant, Little Joe, and Orland followed him. Instead of going down Main Street, they took the alley behind Byrne’s Hardware, the bank, and Cleaver Butcher Shop. Ahead of them, behind the Larkin County Courthouse, loomed the city water tower. Far above them, its one blue light glowed like an eye in the darkness from the peak of the round, pointed, tin roof.

  When they reached the ladder, Frank didn’t hesitate.

  Above Grant’s head, Frank’s leather shoe sole slid on a slanted step of the icy ladder. “Gosh darn it.” He looked down at them. “Be careful. This is slippery.”

  The boys ascended, step over step, all the way to the catwalk surrounding the main water tank.

  “Holy cow. Look,” Frank said from the catwalk.

  Grant held tight to the railing, his palms sweating in his mittens, as he stepped onto the catwalk. Little Joe and Orland followed him. Like a magic miniature village, the town spread before them. Electric lights and Christmas lights, too, lit up Main Street, the town’s backbone, bustling with vehicles and bundled-up people. Fainter streetlights on side streets radiated out like ribs and arms and legs, all the way to the railroad tracks.

  Frank leaned over the railing, hacked, and spit as far as he could. His spittle arced into the dark and crackled when it landed on the snow below. “Snowballs would land like bombs from up here.”