After Hodge stomped down the steps, Temple turned to Etha. “Sorry you had to witness that.”
She hurried over and hugged him hard about the waist, nestling her head in the bony valley of his sternum. Temple wrapped his arms around her, murmuring, “My old sweetie,” into her soft hair.
She took his hand and led him inside. “It’s been a long day.”
As Etha had predicted, neither she nor Temple had any appetite. But when she brought Frank’s tray over to the cell, he beamed and dug right in. Florence asked if she could come over and make a cup of tea.
“I’d be glad to bring you one,” Etha offered.
“Thank you.”
Etha dropped her voice: “I know the Hinchies have an extra room for patients who need watching overnight. I’m sure they’d let you stay as long as you need to. Should I call Minnie?”
Florence nodded. Then she turned to Frank. “May I come back tomorrow?”
“I’d be grateful.”
* * *
Temple and Etha retired to the parlor to wait until it was time to go downstairs for the returns. For a while they listened glumly to a dull musical program, stalled a bit longer, and then Temple said, “Guess it’s time.”
The wide courthouse foyer was packed with party backers, clerks, farmers, teachers, and old-timers—all refreshed after time spent in their various watering holes. Doll was there along with his wife Carrie, who tottered along after him in high heels.
Within the next half hour, the lobby was swarming with bodies. Etha spoke briefly with Lottie but then her gut cinched up and she retreated outside. The night sky was still. Sitting on the top step of the courthouse, she drew in the slightly cooler air.
From the shadowy street, a slight figure approached at a trot. It was Carmine.
“Had to see how the election comes out,” he said, dropping onto the step beside her. “Ran all the way here.” He wiped his brow on his sleeve.
“Feeling pretty blue,” Etha said. “I was just thinking that if Temple loses, I won’t see you anymore after November.”
Carmine blushed. “Ah, ma’am, I won’t let that happen. After I finish with the CCC, I can hop a freight to visit you wherever you land just like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Etha shook her head. “I don’t want you hopping any more freights. You should settle someplace and build a life.” She inhaled the grassy scent of a young boy that still clung to Carmine, despite his years. Then she abruptly slapped him on the thigh. “What about curfew?”
“This is more important. Besides, what are they going to do to me? I’ve already been arrested for murder. Can’t get worse than that.”
“There’s my old sweetie.” Temple’s boots creaked as he sat down on Etha’s right. “I’ve been a-looking for you.” He tipped his hat toward her companion. “DiNapoli.”
“Sir,” Carmine replied respectfully. Then, rising, he said he’d wait for the announcement inside and dashed up the steps.
Etha pressed a hankie against her eyes and snuffled. Temple put his arm around her and drew her close. “You all right?”
Etha blurted, “I guess I didn’t realize how attached I’ve become to everything here.”
Temple tucked her hand in his. At that moment the door behind them was yanked open and Viviane stuck her head out. “They’ve got the results.”
* * *
Inside, Judge Layton was standing beside the Great War memorial plaque, rapping a table with his gavel. “Quiet, please!” he shouted in the stony tone that had made many a bootlegger quiver. “We have the results of the five primaries. We will start with the post of county treasurer, which was uncontested . . .”
He droned on through the outcomes, meticulously reading each in measured tones and giving the vote count, even though the only contested office was that of sheriff. “And finally, the results of the primary election for sheriff,” he announced. Etha squeezed her husband’s hand. “The vote tallies are: 248 for Vince Doll, 270 for Temple Jennings.”
There was stunned silence. Temple reared back in surprise, then swept Etha up in a huge embrace. The Doll camp was clearly in shock. “Had it all sewn up,” more than one campaigner mumbled. Temple’s supporters, for he must have had some, seemed almost as confounded.
Hank Stowe approached the sheriff and his wife with his reporter’s notebook in one hand. With the other, he gave Temple a heavy pat on the back. “Any comments for the press?” he asked with a grin.
Temple guffawed. “Didn’t expect this, that’s for sure.”
“I didn’t either until early afternoon,” Hank said.” I stopped by the courthouse here to talk to the folks in line. A good many heard about your remarks last night at the Idle Hour. Either were there in the flesh or got the word from someone who was. Seems your argument against deputies working on commission hit home.”
“I’m mighty grateful.”
Hank said, “And you owe some gratitude to Commander Baker. Seems he was in the same regiment as Mac Williamson, the attorney general. Got him to endorse you at the last minute. My job shop printed up handbills with Williamson’s testimonial.”
“I’ll be.”
“Baker asked for volunteers among his CCC boys to pass them out. Any idea whose hand went up first?”
Temple shook his head.
“That kid you arrested.”
Folks pressed around the sheriff to offer congratulations. Etha pushed her way through to Minnie and Lottie, who had settled on a hard wooden bench.
Lottie jumped up and kissed her on the cheek. “Here I was, sort of hoping you and Temple would be moving to Oklahoma City with me. But I’m happy for you.”
Minnie issued a salute in agreement. “The first thing you need to do when you get there, Lottie, is buy me a new pair of shoes. I can’t abide these a minute longer.” Stooping, she drew off her pumps. Two pieces of cardboard flopped out. “I mean, really.”
Eventually, the crowd trickled down to a couple of dozen folks quietly chatting. From the sheriff’s office, Ed and Viviane emerged, holding hands. As they approached, Etha, who had rejoined Temple, whispered, “Something’s up.”
Ed, whose slicked-down hair was slightly ruffled, wore a dazzled expression. “Sir, I wanted you to be the first to know that I have asked Viviane to be my wife, and I can’t believe it but she has accepted.”
“Of course she did,” Etha said stoutly.
Temple slapped the deputy on the back. “You lucky dog.”
Viviane, who was hanging back shyly, was pulled forward by Ed.
“You must let me play at the service!” Etha said, hugging the young woman’s narrow shoulders. “And I have fried chicken upstairs just waiting for a celebration dinner,” she continued, taking in Temple and Ed. “We can toast your engagement and the primary.”
“Fine with me,” Temple said. They all trooped up the steps. Temple stopped halfway. “Is DiNapoli still here?”
“I believe he’s talking to Hank,” Etha replied.
Temple looked over the railing and saw the crop of dark hair, the denim uniform. From this angle, the kid looked less like Jack than ever. But Etha saw something there, and even if the kid was just his own self, Carmine and Etha were clearly devoted to one another. Temple realized that, for the first time in many years, he was not harboring, way in the back of his mind, the thought of uprooting and starting afresh yet again. It was a yearning from long ago when the flood came through Johnstown and his father decided to pack up the family and flee. Jack’s death stirred it up harder. But now it seemed clear that staying put and rebuilding was better than running. He considered that always facing forward, like a horse pulling a plow, was not the only way or maybe not even the better way. What came before continued to color the present, even if you pretended it didn’t. Look at Frank, for God’s sake.
“I’d like him to join us,” Temple said to Etha, and trotted back down the stairs.
Etha watched from above as her husband laid a hand on Carmine’s shoulder.
> And so the night ended with a string of toasts. To Ed and Viviane. To the election. To Etha’s pie and to Carmine’s exoneration. After the guests filed out, with handshakes and hugs and a restrained pat on Carmine’s back by Temple, the sheriff and his wife decided the dirty dishes could wait until morning. As they lay side by side, the heat of the day finally lifting, Temple brought up their son.
“I know you’ve been wanting to get to Peoria to see the grave. Let’s do it. I’ve earned a bit of time off.”
Etha studied the ceiling. “You know, I don’t need to do that now. Maybe later, but not now.”
“All right. But whenever you say, I’m ready. My thinking’s changed somewhat. I’ve come around to seeing there is nothing wrong with staying put or even looking backward every once in a while.”
Etha scooted over, fitting herself against his long form. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
The bedroom air thickened. Above them, the clock struck the hour, rattled the china cupboard, but neither stirred. And then, deep in the night, Etha suddenly awoke. Small splatters hit the window. Rain! She nudged Temple’s back.
“It’s raining,” she whispered.
He continued to breathe the heavy air of sleep.
“Wake up!”
Temple sighed. “What?”
“I said it’s raining.”
“So?”
“So come on.” She stripped the light sheet from his legs and pushed her feet against his back.
“Hey!” He twisted around, squinting. “I heard you. It’s raining. Good. Go back to sleep.”
“It hasn’t rained a drop in eight months.” She pushed harder. “Get up.”
“Oh, Etha.”
“Come on. You can get right back in bed. I promise.”
“And I’m not going to get any more rest until I’m up?”
“That’s right.” She was out of bed, pulling on his arm.
“All right, all right. Hold your horses.”
Etha was as excited as if it were Christmas morning. In the quiet darkness, they descended to the first floor, their bare feet slapping on the treads. Temple still groggy, Etha as alert as a chimney swift. The wide foyer was empty. Etha twisted the lock, yanking on the tall wooden doors. Drops of rain spattered the granite stairs.
As Jackson County slept, Etha took Temple’s hand. They smiled gently at one another, turning their faces to the sky. Small drops splashed against their foreheads and eyelashes and ran down the sides of their faces and into their ears, as tears sometimes do.
* * *
From the third floor, Frank peered out the cell window. He watched the woman in a white slip twirling on the shadowy lawn. He watched the bare-chested man in pajama bottoms sweep her into a waltz. Why, that’s me and Floss, he thought, smiling. Me and Floss.
Acknowledgments
This book was inspired by The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), in which he tells the stories of those who stubbornly stayed on the land during the 1930s, despite the devastating dust storms that stripped away the topsoil and, soon after, the farm fields, schools, churches, and entire communities. Many thanks to Egan for shining a light on these brave and enduring souls.
I am deeply indebted to the tireless, supportive, and whip-smart folks at Akashic Books: Johnny Temple, Ibrahim Ahmad, Johanna Ingalls, Susannah Lawrence, Alice Wertheimer, and Aaron Petrovich. None of this would be possible without you.
Thank you to the fearless imprint, Kaylie Jones Books—for humbling me, filling me with gratitude, and encouraging me to grow as a writer. Special thanks to KJB’s irreplaceable Lauren Sharkey and to Jennifer Jenkins.
And no thanks are enough for the courageous Kaylie Jones—my teacher, publisher, and friend. Edith Wharton once wrote, There is one friend in the life of each of us who seems not a separate person, however dear and beloved, but an expansion, an interpretation, of one’s self, the very meaning of one’s soul.
And finally, I am lovingly grateful to my wonderful family that now stretches farther and wider than I ever imagined.
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CHAPTER ONE
BROWN CANVAS
THE BREEZES OF MACOMB COUNTY usually journeyed from the west, blowing past and moving quickly onward, for the county was just en route, not a final destination. On this particular night, the wind gusted inexplicably from the east, rushing over fields of bluestem grasses, which bent their seed heads like so many royal subjects. A queen on progress, the currents then traveled above farmhouses barely visible behind the tasseled corn, and swept down the deeply shaded streets of Emporia, where they finally reached the great tent, inflating the canvas walls with a transforming breath from the wider world.
The farm wives had staked out choice spots under the brown canvas; an area clear of poles but not far from the open flaps where they might feel the strong breeze that relieved the oppressiveness of the muggy August evening. The ladies occupied themselves with their knitting needles or watched the crew assembling music stands. Some fretted about sons, already drafted for the European trouble and awaiting assignment to cantonments scattered across the country. They pushed back thoughts of the steaming canning vats they faced when the weeklong Chautauqua assembly of 1917 concluded. All they would have to get through another dreary winter were the memories of the soprano’s gown of billowing chiffon; the lecturer’s edifying words; the orchestras and quartets.
The strings of bare bulbs that swagged the pitched roof were suddenly switched on. The scattered greetings of “Howdy-do” and “Evening” grew steadily as the crowd gathered, burdened with seat cushions, palmetto fans, and white handkerchiefs. Leafing through the souvenir program, they scrutinized the head-and-shoulders photograph of the evening’s speaker, a handsome woman wearing a rope of pearls. She was described as a well-known author, advocate for wholesome living, and suffragist. What exactly was this lecture—“Barriers to the Betterment of Women”—about? Some expected a call for more female colleges, others for voting rights.
Then Marian Elliot Adams, a tall and striking woman in her early thirties, swept onto the stage. She wore a rippling striped silk caftan and red Moroccan sandals. With dark eyes and dramatically curved brows, her appearance hinted at the exotic. In ringing tones, she announced, “I am here tonight to discuss the restrictive nature of women’s undergarments.”
Hundreds of heads snapped back. The murmurs of the crowd, the creaking of the wooden chairs, stopped abruptly. Even the bunting festooning the stage hung motionless, as if it had the breath knocked out of it.
Marian’s gaze swept across the pinched faces, assessing the souls spread before her, and she concluded that they were the same people she’d been lecturing to for the past three months. There was the gaunt-cheeked elder with his chin propped on a cane; the matron with the bolster-shaped bosom; the banker type in a sack coat; the slouching clerk with dingy cuffs. Just like last night and the night before that, stretching back eighty-three straight nights—these strangers she knew so well.
She’d begun her odyssey on June 1, as she had for the last seven summers, driving a dusty Packard to villages across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, opening each town’s weeklong series of talks and entertainments, and then moving on. In her wake followed orchestras, elocutionists, adventurers, sextets, chalk artists—whatever the Prairieland Chautauqua Agency felt would meet the standards of improvement and inspiration demanded by each hamlet’s subscription committee. Marian was relieved she didn’t have to stick around and watch the hodgepodge of entertainers following her. She and her fellow orators, she often said with a hint of irony, were the only ones true to the original Chautauqua ideal. During her brief respites from the ro
ad, she’d often settle in at her favorite Greenwich Village tea house and laughingly query fellow patrons, “Would you believe it? Me, an agnostic since the tender age of ten, toiling for Chautauqua?”
A half-century before, a group of Methodists had erected open-air pavilions beside the placid waters of Lake Chautauqua in western New York, as an educational retreat for Sunday school teachers. From “Mother Chautauqua,” as the institution became affectionately known, reading courses for adults quickly sprang up across the country. Later, commercialized ventures known as Tent or Circuit Chautauquas, and connected to the original in name only, took up the cause of bringing edification and culture to the rural heartland. Circuit Chautauquas, organized by Prairieland and other booking agencies, moved from town to town, following an established itinerary. When traced on a map, the various circuits looked like a child’s connect-the-dots drawing, linking isolated hamlets and farming communities in the Midwest, South, and West. An easterner, Marian saw the circuit as an opportunity to bring modern thinking on women’s causes to Middle America’s backwaters. This night, as she launched into her talk, she took comfort in knowing that more than five hundred other Chautauqua lecturers were mounting platforms in five hundred other byways.
She smiled broadly and asked, “Why is dress reform so necessary for the modern woman?”
The audience members, recovered from their initial shock, took up their palmetto fans, repositioned their legs, and settled in.
“Because clothing constitutes both a real and symbolic hindrance to women taking their rightful place in our country’s civic, occupational, and educational realms. Did you know that a woman, preparing to go out in public, routinely dons twenty-five pounds of clothing? Twenty-five pounds. Imagine! And of that, almost all of it is hidden from view. And almost all of it serves no practical purpose. Beneath every dainty shirtwaist and skirt lie layer upon layer of restrictive undergarments.”
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