“Morgan, I know you want to fly. It’s something that goes deep in you, but four years go so much faster than you can imagine right now. Flying will be there always. You can go back to it, but a college education will stay with you for life, and now is the time to do it, while you’re young and energetic, free of responsibilities. When you’ve finished you’ll know so much about agriculture you’ll make this farm as fine a place as any in the county. Then you can get any plane you want and fly in your free time.”
Morgan shook his head and frowned as if I were speaking a language whose words made no sense to him. “No, Mama. That’s not for me. You said yourself, flying goes deep in me. I haven’t even piloted on my own yet, but I know it’s part of me, like an extra heart beating inside me, a rhythm that’s different from what everybody else is walking to. I don’t want to farm, Mama. I want to fly. I want to get myself up off the ground and never come back down.” He took my hands in his own and peered into my eyes, begging me to understand.
“Look at me, Mama. Look hard. Can you really imagine me spending the rest of my life being a farmer? Because I just can’t see it. Can you?”
He was right. Everyone I knew was either a farmer or a merchant, and so I’d thought that’s what Morgan would be, too. Actually, I hadn’t thought, not at all. Just going to college seemed so fine and elevated to me, I hadn’t ever thought what it would lead to, whether or not it would make him happy. No, I couldn’t see him as a farmer. But a crop duster? That didn’t seem right, either. It didn’t seem big enough somehow.
Maybe that was the problem, I didn’t know how to think big and I hadn’t taught Morgan how to, either. Some of us are so timid and uncertain when we’re young that even the crumbs from the table can seem like a banquet. That’s the way I was. Morgan didn’t know yet about how dreams that seemed so rich and unattainable today could shrink and leave him hungry once he actually held them in his grasp. Some late night, years from now, he would furrow his brow and puzzle: why wasn’t he happier? Then he’d chide himself for ingratitude.
No, I vowed, it wouldn’t be that way for Morgan. Not if I could help it. I needed money. I could write Slim’s lawyers and get it that way, but that was a last resort. It had been hard for me to accept Slim paying off the farm mortgage. I just couldn’t bring myself to write and beg for more money, not even for Morgan, unless there was no other way on earth. But there is a way, a voice that wasn’t mine spoke in my mind. You know there is.
All at once I knew what to do. For the first time in a long time, I felt Papa was very near to me, giving his blessing to a plan that would have seemed inconceivable only a few minutes before.
“All right,” I said, nodding decisively.
“All right what?” Morgan asked softly, searching my face for a clue to my thoughts, barely daring to hope that “all right” might mean yes.
“You can have your plane, and you can learn to fly.”
“Yeow!!” Morgan yelped in exultation and lunged forward to scoop me up in his arms.
“But!” I shouted over the noise, making him halt in mid-whoop, “You are still going to college.” Morgan’s face fell, but I continued before he could begin arguing. “You don’t have to study agriculture. You can study something that will help you with your flying. I don’t know what that would be, but at such a big school there’s bound to be something. We’ll buy the plane. You can keep it near school and take lessons on the weekends. I’m sure we can work it out.”
Morgan started to interrupt, but I stopped his protestations with a firm shake of my head. “Morgan, right now crop dusting sounds like a fine profession, but as you get older you’ll want something more exciting. Something where you’ll be breaking new ground every day. I don’t know what that is, but you’ll figure it out. I’d bet the farm on it.”
“Mama! Didn’t you hear what I said?” he nearly wailed in despair. “The plane costs over a thousand dollars; there won’t be enough for it and college.”
“Yes there will, if you’re really serious about not wanting to farm. Are you absolutely sure?” I asked. He solemnly nodded his resolve. I took a deep breath and went on. “In that case we won’t be needing nearly so much land. We’ll sell that quarter I bought for you when you were little and one more next to it. That ought bring in enough to buy the plane with a little left over.”
For a moment, Morgan was dumbstruck. “Sell off part of the farm? Papaw’s land? We can’t do that. You’ve said yourself, a hundred times, that you’d die before you’d sell one acre of Papaw’s land.”
“Well, that was before. I didn’t have a good enough reason then.” Morgan began to protest again, but I quieted him before he could go on.
“Sweetheart, listen. Years ago when I saved up to buy you that land, it was for a reason. I wanted you to have a future. Back then I figured that meant farmland. Nothing else ever crossed my mind, but now I can see so much more ahead of you. I bought the land for you. Your grandpa and I kept the farm together for you. All we ever wanted was for you to be happy and live a life that would make us all proud, so if selling off a couple of pieces of property can make that happen, so be it.”
“But, you’d have fewer crops then, less money, and me not bringing in anything ...” he sputtered. “Mama, I want to help you, not be a burden to you.”
“I know you do, and it makes me proud to hear you say it. When the time comes, I’ll let you, but for now I’m just fine. Morgan, I know I seem ancient to you, but I’m not even forty. My fingers are still pretty fast with a quilting needle, and I like doing it. Now that money’s loosening up, I can go back to making the pretty quilts, the watercolor ones like I used to, and there will be people to buy them.”
Morgan looked at me curiously. “I’ve seen you cutting up all those little squares out of my old clothes, just like you used to, but is that what you are going to sell? Quilts made up of our worn-out shirts and pants?
“No,” I said, laughing. “Those little squares are for a special one, for a friend. But starting on that one quilt has kind of primed the pump, if you know what I mean.” I locked eyes with him so he’d know I was serious as I spun out my plan, trying to convince him that I was sincere in my desire to get back to work that meant something. As I talked I realized it was true. I couldn’t wait to start creating again.
“I’ve got a dozen designs floating around in my brain, Morgan. I want to stitch them together with my own hands and wrap them around a complete stranger who thinks I must have read their thoughts and patched them whole. I can’t wait to start, so you needn’t sit there with that guilty look on your face. I’ve always managed. I don’t see how not having a little bit of ground that barely produced anything in the past ten years is going to propel me into the poorhouse.”
“Still,” he said dubiously, “Papaw’s land. I just wouldn’t feel right about it.” Morgan’s face looked so solemn and culpable that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“They’re just fields, Morgan, not holy ground!” He was unconvinced by my levity. Talking about selling off part of the farm was serious business to him, and he was right, I thought. It was more serious than he could imagine. “Morgan,” I said in what I hoped was an authoritative tone, “I know that right now you think there will always be time to backtrack and fix up the mistakes you made, or explore the paths you missed, but you’re wrong. I want everything for you, the things I never had and the things I never had the courage to imagine having. That’s what I want, and that’s what your Papaw would want.”
A shy little smile started at the corner of Morgan’s mouth and spread across his face. “Do you really think so?”
“I know it as sure as anything,” I said with finality and joy as I watched the relief flood my son’s face and felt myself swept up into his grateful embrace.
And, I thought to myself, if your father were here, he’d want it too. Thinking of Slim chilled me for a moment. It ought to be Slim having this conversation with Morgan, not me. Just this once, he ought to be here for his s
on. Why wasn’t he?
That simple, silent question opened the door to a bigger one. Paul had been right; I should have asked it years before.
All the next week, whenever I could spare a moment, I sat in my room sewing the tiny squares I’d cut and collected from our cast-off clothes: mine, Morgan’s, Mama’s, Ruby’s, and even some of Papa’s old shirts I’d found wrapped in paper and stored in a chest. Years had passed since Papa worn them, but they still seemed to carry the faintest scent of him. I stitched them together with the rest, laying them out, rearranging the colors and patterns, sewing them and ripping them apart and sewing them together again, trying to piece all those separate scraps together into a whole cloth that would explain everything. A still life that was life, or at least a frozen moment of it. As I stitched and snipped and thought, Paul’s voice played louder in my mind, until I wasn’t afraid to hear it or think about what he’d said anymore.
Why isn’t he here? It was the first question. Once I allowed myself that one, the others weren’t far behind.
Watching Morgan’s valedictory speech was the proudest moment of my life. I sat wedged between Mama and Ruby. We applauded until our hands stung. We clapped when Morgan received his diploma, when he won the science award for designing a new windmill so light that it spun circles on just a breath of air, and again when he was announced as the “Graduate Most Likely To” and walked across the stage one more time to accept the $75 Grange scholarship.
It was one of the best days of my life. Even so, I kept finding myself glancing at the door of the musty gymnasium, waiting for Slim to walk through. Late, or in disguise, or without saying a word, I didn’t care. I just wanted him to come for a moment, to see his son and what he had become and how what we had started together in ignorance and love had become, finally, a happy ending to share. But the door stayed closed.
After the ceremony Paul came over to shake Morgan’s hand and congratulate all of us. Morgan asked him to join us for ice cream. Paul threw me a quick, questioning glance before saying he had an appointment. I didn’t urge him to change it. We went for pie and ice cream at the café without him, and I told Morgan that my tears were only from happiness and pride. He believed me. It was so easy to make him believe the lie. Easier than it would have been to explain I was crying over closed doors.
The acreage sold quickly, and the plane was purchased and delivered to Liberal. Morgan began taking short flights under Whitey Henderson’s direction. He wanted to take me up, too, but it was a two-seater. I’d have to wait until Morgan earned his license and could take up passengers alone.
“As soon as I can solo, Mama, I’m going to swoop down from the sky, land in one of the fields, and take you for a ride. I don’t care if it’s day or night or in the middle of exams. You’re going to be my very first passenger,” he declared emphatically
“I’d be honored, Morgan, but if it is during your examinations, maybe you’d just better stay grounded until you finish. I’ll be waiting right here when you’re done.”
The weeks flew—flashed in front of my eyes like the blinding blast of a summer storm, a series of still photo-poems I collected in my mind: “This was the last time he ate my fried chicken, the last time he cranked the Ford, fed the stock, slept in his bed.” Then it was time to go. September came, and Morgan and Whitey stuffed the plane to bursting with Morgan’s clothes and books. They flew off at dawn, a red streak of metal across the morning sky as I waved good-bye ... just like I’d waved good-bye to his father.
But this good-bye was different in that I understood exactly why I was staying behind, why the one I loved was going. Ever since Paul had dared me to ask the question, reasons for those partings, or at least the finality and persisting silence of them, had become less and less clear in my mind. I guess that’s how everything starts. It’s the unanswered questions that push us out the door and into the world.
Morgan didn’t know what he could be, what lay round the bend or inside a cloud, and so he was off into the world to find out. I didn’t know why, after so many years of silent compliance, I should still be waiting for the sound of an engine in the dusk, still waiting for him to walk into a room, shake Morgan’s hand, and say, “We’ve met before, but it’s time we got to know each other.”
I packed a bag, went to the train station, and bought a ticket to Des Moines, Iowa, where Slim was scheduled to speak. I wanted some answers. I wanted to stop waiting for the footsteps that never came.
Chapter 17
For some reason, my decision to go to Iowa cleared the clouds from Mama’s mind and roused her to action. She seemed more herself than she had in years, industrious and commanding. The lunch basket she packed for my trip was an embarrassment. Big enough to carry a week’s laundry, it was loaded with cold chicken, ham sandwiches, dried apples, cookies, cake, bread and butter, and an amber jar of cold, sweet tea. You’d have thought to look at me that I was taking the train all the way to the north pole instead of Iowa. Under all those provisions, on the very bottom of the hamper, was a flat, soft package. I’d wrapped it myself in three layers of brown paper to make sure the contents arrived in Des Moines undamaged.
Balancing the load on my lap, I felt self-conscious, figuring the other passengers must be wondering about the size of my appetite, but I knew that enormous lunch was Mama’s way of saying, “I love you. I’m worried about you.”
I was worried myself, but a lifetime of carefully engineered avoidance of pain was exhausting. I was tired of being afraid. Mama knew that, so she came to the station and leaned on Ruby’s arm, waving a tiny white handkerchief. It seemed I could see it through the dust and grime of the coach window, clean and fluttering like a flag of surrender, long after the silhouette of the station had faded in the distance.
After an hour or two I started to feel more at home with the rocking motion of the cars. The steady thunk of steel wheels against steel rail became familiar, even comforting, like the tuneless, constant song a mother hums to quiet a child.
The landscape changed quickly as we headed farther north. The dunes of sand that still nestled against buildings and fences got smaller and smaller until I realized that just a few hours away from Dillon there had been no dust bowl. If I’d stopped in that town and told the folks there that my papa had died from swallowing a small mountain of dust, or described storms of dirt so thick and black they blocked the sun and made noon seem like night, they would have looked at me with wide eyes, wondering if I was telling stories. In a way, I suppose they would have been right.
Looking around the coach at the other passengers, one eating an apple, another reading a newspaper folded in half, still another sleeping with head lolled back, breathing heavily through an open mouth, I realized they all had stories. We were all human, born of mothers, but beyond that there were so many differences among us that it was a wonder we recognized each other as the same species. Their lives were nothing like mine. Their Depression was theirs alone. Some were easier, some harder.
I had lived in Dillon all my life, surrounded by people I’d known since the day I was born. Yet it seemed I knew more about these strangers I was traveling with than the folks I knew by name. People in Dillon had become such a part of the landscape that I’d forgotten to notice what was special about them. It seemed odd that my fellow passengers seemed so much less guarded than my friends and neighbors. Maybe it was because when you’re on a train, surrounded by people you know you’ll never see again, you forget to keep up appearances, so you reveal more of yourself than you’d intended.
If I looked at the faces around me long enough, I could just make out, in the web of worry wrinkles and smile lines, the outlines of who they were, where they’d been, and how it had changed them. Not a single person was like the one sitting next to him, but I could see in their eyes, whether darting and suspicious or steady and stoic, the one thing they all had in common: they didn’t know what was coming next or if they were up to handling it.
Even the bravest among them flashed
expressions showing little seeds of doubt at unguarded moments, like stray thread ends I found in my quilts sometimes. I always shoved them back under the fabric so everything looked smooth and planned, but though the stitches looked perfect to others, I knew where every little thread was tucked, a hidden weakness that might unravel the entire seam. A whole train, a long, narrow world full of complete strangers seated side by side, a thousand different stories, and the only thing we really shared was uncertainty. It comforted me in a way I still can’t explain.
I let my head drop back and slept like the others, not concerned about how I’d look if my jaw relaxed and dropped open onto my chest, or if people stared, wondering why my leg was so twisted, or if the woman sitting in the next seat could read my life in the lines near my eyes. Why shouldn’t she? I was what I was. What could it hurt for people to know?
The hall was like the city, loud and smoke-filled, everybody talking and nobody listening, everybody knowing somebody, except me. I left my suitcase and basket at a hotel and carried only the package I’d wrapped to give to Slim when I found him. If I found him. The green velveteen dress was my very best, but compared to the tailored suits and cunning little hats I saw on the women sitting on folding chairs, murmuring and smoking cigarettes while waiting for the program to start, I felt like just what I was, a country girl come to town. I sat down on the far left of the auditorium, near two double doors where a group of serious-looking men in gray suits stood, visually assessing the crowd and talking to each other knowingly out of the sides of their mouths. They looked official and tense. I figured they were waiting to escort Slim and the others to the platform.
Eventually, the doors opened slightly, but Slim didn’t enter. Instead a carefully dressed man with glasses and a receding hairline approached the microphone and announced that, as promised and in the interest of fairness, the America First Committee had decided to broadcast President Roosevelt’s speech to the nation before beginning its own program. He thanked the audience for their attendance, and almost before he finished speaking, the warm, familiar, nasal voice of the president came over the loudspeaker, and the crowd grew quiet as they strained to hear the broadcast.
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