The boy jumped on stage and smiled, winking at Magda. The announcer was telling everyone to step up closer. When he told the boy to pull up his sleeves, Al saw that his skin was scaly and crusty, but it didn’t look like snakeskin. Everybody looked at him like they did at strange animals at the zoo. Al wondered where the boy’s mother was. Was she a snake lady, or did she work at some factory like the rest of their moms?
People had started to yell rude remarks to the announcer about his freak show when he shushed everyone and asked the boy to open his mouth. The snake boy strutted around the stage a few times, and then he smiled and slowly opened his mouth, sticking out a forked tongue. The crowd began blessing themselves and spitting three times to ward off the evil eye. Al wished his mother, who believed in evil eyes and curses, had come with them; she’d know how to protect Magda. If only she were here instead of at the Kool-Aid factory. She was always at that factory. Or sleeping.
Al looked over at Magda, who was smiling at the snake boy. He had never seen her flirt before, and it made him feel a little weird. “Come on, Magda, let’s get out of here,” he said, taking her by the arm.
“No,” answered Magda, a bit too loudly.
“What’s your hurry?” asked the snake boy with a wink at Magda. “Stick around.”
“We gotta go. My father’s waiting for us.” Al pulled a grinning and flustered Magda out of the tent. Once they got outside, his sister became upset, so he tried to distract her. “Look,” he said, pointing, “there’s the Ferris wheel.” Magda’s eyes widened. “Let’s go,” he prodded, pulling her toward the giant double wheel though he had never been on one and felt scared when he looked up at the top. He swallowed his fear as they stood in line and got on. A man shut the bar down over their laps, and the seat lurched forward, slowly ascending to the top of the wheel. When it stopped at the top, waiting for more riders to get on, Al closed his eyes, his panic rising. When he finally dared to open them a little, he saw the sun was setting. The whole neighborhood twinkled below—houses full of people living their family lives. The lively carnival music played, and the lights gleamed as the wheel finally started circling. They went round and round until suddenly they stopped at the top again, as one of the cars had a problem. The colorful carnival below reminded Al of brightly wrapped candy, the kind his mother kept in a glass dish on the buffet. He could hear the merry-go-round and the rifle shots from the arcades. Sparklers twinkled near the tents. Farther away, Al could see his father still slapping down cards on the table.
A cool breeze blew up from the lake, rocking their seat gently. Chicago was so flat you could see great distances from up high. A small streak of lightning blazed far away, near Lake Michigan. A storm was heading their way. Next to him, Magda hummed some familiar Lithuanian song, and Al realized he no longer smelled the stockyards, nor did he feel frightened. In fact, he felt light and carefree, as if his whole life was going to roll out like a magic carpet, and it was going to be good.
Suddenly, fireworks burst in the sky above them—huge colored blossoms of light. With all the excitement, Al had completely forgotten it was the Fourth of July. “Magda, look, aren’t they beautiful?” He was filled with wonder. When the seat suddenly lurched, he turned to see Magda slinking down, making strange animal noises, as she tried to hide in the bottom of the car. Thankfully, the bar prevented her from moving too far, but their car swung back and forth.
“Magda, stop that. What are you doing?” He grabbed her, afraid she’d fall out. “Cut it out, you’re scaring me.”
“Bombs,” screamed Magda, covering her face with her hands.
“Those aren’t bombs, Magda, they’re fireworks. It’s the Fourth of July. Look, people are holding sparklers. Don’t be afraid.” He could feel her trembling, and when the next burst lit up the sky, she screamed and started to cry, burrowing her head into his shoulder. Al held her close and wanted to cry too.
At last the Ferris wheel started its descent, and when it stopped, Al helped a cowering Magda get out. Whimpering and crying, she held on to him, making him frightened and embarrassed as he took her to his father, asking him what was wrong.
His father held Magda like a little girl, stroking her hair, murmuring assurances that everything was all right, and then another burst of color exploded in the sky.
“Bombs,” she cried, burying her head on his shoulder.
He spoke gently, trying to soothe her. “Not bombs, Magda, never again bombs, my sweet girl. No more bombs. Shh, don’t cry. You’re safe now,” he said, frowning at each burst of color above them.
“What’s wrong with her?” Al had never seen her like this.
“Nothing, she just remembers the war.” His father held her with one arm and shooed Al away with the other. Al went to sit nearby, not saying anything, just feeling sad as he watched the fireworks. At the arcade, boys were pitching pennies onto glass plates, while others were throwing balls at milk bottles, winning large teddy bears for their girls. He watched them for a while and then returned to his sister. “Hey, Magda,” he said suddenly. “Answer me this.”
She peeked up from her father’s shoulder.
“Would you let the elephant lady step on your bare foot for a million dollars?”
His father looked annoyed until he noticed that Magda had stopped crying and was shaking her head.
“How about this one,” Al continued, trying to hide his growing smile. “Would you marry the giant for a million?”
Again, Magda shook her head.
Now Al was grinning slyly. “I know a good one. Would you kiss the snake boy for a million bucks?”
A tiny laughed bubbled out of Magda as she nodded.
“You would? Really?” Al made a face when his sister nodded again, this time with more enthusiasm.
“Now that’s really icky.” A crack of thunder seemed to split the sky, and a cool wind began to blow. Al felt a deep sadness settle over him. Magda was never going to be like other girls. She would always be different.
“We’d better go home,” said his father. “There’s a storm coming.”
On the way out, his father bought a fluffy cone of pink cotton candy for each of them. They saw the Gypsy lady sitting in a booth, reading a soldier’s palm while he stared at her three breasts. Near the exit, Al heard an announcement on the loudspeaker for the Corvette raffle. The whole carnival seemed to be gathering there, holding their raffle tickets like holy cards, muttering prayers to Saint Jude, patron saint of impossible causes. A cool wind from the lake blew dust around, ballooning the lime green, puffy dress of a blond girl with a sash that read, “Miss Stockyards of 1954” as she climbed the platform to choose the winning ticket from a large glass bowl. Al saw the snake boy waving good-bye to Magda, a half dozen raffle tickets held tightly in his hands. Magda shyly waved back.
When they got on the bus to go home, Al sat down by a clean window, picking off the last globs of cotton candy from the paper cone and stuffing them in his mouth, enjoying the way they melted into sugar. Outside the bus window, the wind blew the trees. Closing his eyes, Al leaned back on his seat and didn’t open them again until the familiar Kool-Aid smell greeted him, letting him know he was almost home. By then, the rain was coming down in hard sheets, and thunder crashed through the dark and empty, wet city streets.
Trains
Antanas Balys, 1955
Chicago winters are as long as old age and as cold as death. The north wind howls down over the plains, skittering across Lake Michigan, into the hub of the nation’s railroads.
Antanas Balys bent into the frigid wind hissing along the snow-caked railroad yards, struggling to open the frozen latch on the old shed. Pulling the handle, he shook the weathered plank door until he heard the crack of release as a board broke. He was about to go inside when he noticed a trickle of blood running down his hand into his sleeve. His hands were so numb with cold that he hadn’t even felt the splinter in his palm. With fing
ers as clumsy as frozen sausages, he couldn’t grasp it to pull it out. His hands were as weathered as that old shed door—a landscape of calloused skin and dirty cracks that no amount of soap could clean. And underneath was the remnant of an older splinter that had been in his hand for years—a tiny piece of wood covered by layers of callus like a submerged branch in an ice-shrouded lake—a fossil of time captured in his skin.
He caught sight of his blood drops on the snow like tiny blooms, the only specks of color on the winter landscape. And strangely he felt a slight release. It made him want to yell and scream at someone, at the wind or the sky, but instead, he took a deep breath as a slow moan escaped, and the moment passed. If someone had heard his bitter complaint, he would have been ashamed, because so many others had it much worse, like his younger brother who had died so senselessly.
He often thought that if they had not been in their fields that day, the Germans might not have taken them for forced labor, and his brother, Stasys, might still be alive. The Germans forced them to dig muddy trenches during those last frantic months of the war while Antanas and his brother waited for the American GIs to arrive. Rumors were flying that they were near. As they waited for liberation, wearing their one-piece work clothes, they strung wires along the endless railroad tracks with Stasys getting sicker each day. Antanas begged him to hold on, telling him how they would eat meat again once the Americans came, how they would celebrate, and then how they would go back home to their families.
But Stasys was killed, not by the Germans or the Russians, but, ironically, by the Americans—a simple mistake made by a skittish GI at the end of the war when everything was chaos. Antanas tried to hold the wound tightly so that his brother wouldn’t bleed to death, but he couldn’t stop the blood that seeped into the dark soil. After his brother died, it took four men to hold Antanas down. He didn’t remember the rest. Only the long stay in the hospital until his friend, Viktoras Matas, a teacher from his village, found him in the DP camp hospital in Germany and filled out papers so he could immigrate to America. Antanas hadn’t wanted to go so far away from his family, but Viktoras patiently explained that the refugee camps were closing, and the Iron Curtain made it impossible to return home.
So he followed the others to America and now he was a broken and lonely boarder in the Matas house. Antanas wrapped his bleeding hand in his handkerchief and picked up his tin lunchbox, suddenly remembering this morning in the kitchen. He was going to make his lunch when he’d found the Matas girl, Irene, dancing back and forth with Magda, her blond braids swinging as they wiggled to some nervous music. Antanas thought it was comical and wanted to laugh, but he stopped himself once he saw how embarrassed Irene was.
“We’re learning the cha-cha,” she said sullenly.
“Go on, you’re a good dancer,” he said, patting her cheek, thinking she reminded him of his own daughter. “Magda too.” He nodded as if to convince them.
Irene flinched and drew away. “Ouch, your hand feels like sandpaper.”
“Oh, sorry.” Antanas quickly pulled his hand away and thrust it deep into his pocket. They must be rough, he thought, because he could barely feel her soft cheek. Suddenly, the familiar feeling of self-consciousness returned.
“Have to go. Good-bye, girls,” he stammered on his way out the door. Back on his farm he hadn’t felt this way. Everything seemed natural there, but in America it was as if everything was wrong, especially him. Like some wounded animal, he was too shy to talk to people—Americans were out of the question. With other Lithuanians, he might be able to mumble a word or two, but with their children he was at a loss. They had an American veneer, as if they knew more than their parents. And maybe they did. They knew how to live an American life, something he would never become accustomed to. In Lithuania he had blended into the landscape like a rock or a tree, living a simple life, driven by the needs of the seasons, the animals, and the church festivals that marked the passing of time.
Only with Magda did he feel himself, because she had remained innocent despite her age. And that was because the poor girl had been damaged during the war. Damaged like he was. He could sit on the stoop and talk to her without feeling so terribly odd.
A train pulled into the railroad yard, and Antanas jumped at the familiar screech of train brakes, the scream of steel against steel. When he arrived in America, he spoke no English, but so many Lithuanians worked at the railroad yard that he hardly needed to apply. A friend from the Amber Tavern simply arranged it with the foreman. At the time, Antanas thought it would be only until he made enough money to return to his wife and four children. He sent them packages of heavy wool cloth, clothes, and shoes. He sent them anything he could, and still he worried how they survived without him since the war. His eldest daughter, only eleven when he left, was now twenty-two and about to marry, but he wouldn’t dance at her wedding. Time was rushing by like a runaway train while he remained frozen to the tracks.
The Baltic countries had simply vanished, as if some wizard had put a kingdom to sleep for a hundred years. How long would this Communist spell last?
His small flask of whiskey helped on days like this.
A train whistle moaned, and Antanas looked up as if it were speaking to him. He had grown to hate everything about trains—the tracks that slashed the land, the shriek of whistles, the stench of oil, and the rhythmic clang-clang as they rumbled by. He had hated them from the first time he heard them when he was six and the railroad line came through a corner of his father’s land.
At first he had been excited as he watched men laying down tracks. His father had been happy to get a good price for such an unusable patch. The day the first train was to arrive, people from three villages gathered on the small platform waiting to witness the momentous event. Antanas would have been the first one there had his father not told him to run an errand first. Delayed by his chore, he ran down the dirt road, but Old Juska got in his way with his cart and sluggish horse. The old man hadn’t heard about the train and so was in no hurry to get to the Tuesday market to sell his surplus vegetables. He rode, biting pieces of hard cheese and peacefully singing snatches of a song about a girl with flaxen hair weaving a wreath of rue. The road was narrow, with a pond on one side and dense bushes on the other, making it impossible for Antanas to squeeze by the cart. He was frantic about missing the train’s arrival.
“Hey, grandfather, can’t you move a little faster,” he yelled, but Juska was either deaf or stubborn. Impatiently, Antanas walked behind the cart, muttering angry curses under his breath, until they got to the next bend in the road where the station was finally visible. The old man stopped his cart to see why so many villagers were gathered. Old Juska stood up when he heard the rumble and saw the giant black engine turning the bend, like the devil himself, heading toward all those poor people waiting like lambs at the slaughter. Just then the engineer sounded his whistle like a chorus of demons. When the locomotive came slithering down the track like an oiled dragon, brakes squealing like a stuck pig, the old man grabbed his chest and let out a cry. The black dragon was belching smoke from the mouth of hell itself.
Antanas stared wide-eyed at the train, afraid to move any closer. He heard the old man gasp and saw his eyes bulge as he fell from his cart. His spooked horse turned and ran to escape the noise, leaving the old man dying.
Antanas had never forgotten that old man, and now, all these years later, it seemed to him he heard Old Juska’s song still ringing in his ears. He had cursed the old man’s slowness, while Old Juska had left him with a loathing of the infernal trains.
Antanas looked at his hands and realized that they now looked just like Old Juska’s hands. His job was to repair the boxcars—tearing down the rotten or broken slats of wood and replacing them. Most of the work was done outside in the sweltering humidity of a Chicago summer or in the arctic winters when the workers kept a garbage can burning with scrap wood to keep the frostbite away. Sometimes he did
odd jobs like helping Tomas uncouple the trains. One winter he slipped on the icy metal and broke his leg. Tomas crushed his thumb while helping him. This year Mike, the Irishman, lost a leg under the tracks.
The boxcars reminded him of the ones the Russians used to send Lithuanians to Siberia at the end of the first occupation in 1941. In June, the deportations began. They rounded up Mr. Lankutis, the nervous and irritable mayor; his deputies; Mr. Valaitis, the fastidious judge; the reclusive Tutlys family with their newborn; the merchants, Klein and Rosen with their families; and many thousands more on those June nights. Many teachers disappeared after the NKVD came knocking on doors. Young men and old hid in the woods. Antanas watched with his father, who shook with rage as the boxcars filled with neighbors and friends. They could see their frightened eyes begging for help. The Bolsheviks with their rifles, black leather jackets, and caps, showed no emotion on their stone-like faces. When the doors slid shut, the remaining neighbors and friends stood by helplessly wringing their hands until the trains began their long journey east. Cries to God, shouts of farewell, angry curses, children screaming—it was all too painful to bear. And with each trainload, Antanas wondered when he would hear the nocturnal knock on the door.
Then one morning he heard the planes overhead and turned to his neighbor, who asked, “Oh, you think the war has started?” The deportations stopped once Germany crossed the border into Lithuania, and everyone rejoiced—everyone but the Jews, who trembled at the sight of German soldiers. At first many in the country thought the Germans would liberate them from Russia. The Nazis did—and then they occupied it. The war raged on. Antanas was again a silent witness as German soldiers, along with the police, rounded up Jewish families and marched them away. He saw Mr. Weber, the dry goods store owner, who looked bewildered as his wife asked the rabbi where they were going. The rabbi, standing in his long black coat with his small brown suitcase, said nothing, only shook his head. Big Isaac, who sold ropes of bagels outside the churchyard, walked out of his house as ordered, and Antanas asked him if they were going to Siberia like the last group. Isaac frowned and said he didn’t know. A policeman told Antanas to move along.
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