Seeing America

by Nancy Crocker

  “It was written in the book,” he said, “but Henry’s the one who turned the page.”

  I thought about that until the sun came up.

  The next morning, we had a little service at the graveyard on the edge of town. There were twenty or so black folks gathered around the hole in the ground, and I nodded to as many as met my eye. Paul and I and the sheriff standing guard with his gun drawn were the only white faces there. We hadn’t thought to ask for a preacher, but I was pretty sure that was okay. If I understood anything at all about the person Henry had turned into, this group came closer to his idea of what God was about.

  Someone said a few words and some sang a spiritual, but I don’t remember yet what it was. I was concentrating as hard as I could to freeze the whole scene. Make it something like a crystal I could take out later and thaw when it was safe. When I was somewhere by myself.

  When there was nothing left to do but fill in the dirt, I nodded a few times more in the general direction of the colored people. Then I took Paul’s elbow and walked straight to the telegraph office.

  The operator perked up when he saw us. “There you are. Your money’s here. Fifty dollars.”

  Fifty dollars was more money than I’d ever seen in one place before Paul bought the Model T. Dad laying out that kind of cash, without me asking for so much as a nickel, was a fair indication of just how worried he was.

  I understood. I’d found out for myself how hard it is to let go when you think you’re the only one who can take care of everything.

  But I’d also had to face the fact that the only story I could ever write was my own. I couldn’t take over for somebody else any more than I could erase a single thing they wrote. No matter how much I wanted to.

  And I hoped Dad would come to accept that fact too.

  “Send the money back,” I told the telegraph operator.

  He looked confused.

  “Send it back with this message: ‘Going on to Yellowstone stop. Do not need money stop.’” I paused.

  The operator looked up when he was finished writing. “Is that all?”

  “No,” I told him. “Add this to the end: ‘Thank you stop.’” I turned to Paul and saw him smile for the first time in days. I smiled back, sure he could feel it.

  “Are you sure?” The operator wore a frown and tapped on the paper with his pencil.

  I took Henry’s money out of my pocket and peeled off a bill. “Yep.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Two days later, the seventh day of the seventh month and our thirty-seventh day away from home, Paul and I stood elbow to elbow at a wood railing and watched a geyser spew water a hundred and fifty feet into the air above Yellowstone National Park. I knew we both saw it, just in different ways.

  All around us, steam rose from cracks in the earth. I counted twenty-five separate plumes before I gave up. The big one in front of us, Old Faithful it was called, ended its show and sprinkled our faces with moisture as it went back to sleep for another hour or so.

  We stood and kept company with our own thoughts for a while.

  Then Paul said, “I’m going to teach.”

  It came from so far out of the blue I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. “Say what?”

  “I’m going to teach. If they’ll still have me—and I think they will—I’m going to go back to St. Louis and teach at the school.”

  He’d said before that would be like giving up, like going back to the only place other than Wakenda where he knew his way around.

  “I know what I said.” He nodded like I’d reminded him out loud. “But that was before Denver. Before Rae Ann.” I waited for him to mention Evangeline. “I really enjoyed working with her, John. Teaching her to read. It felt so worthwhile. Like it really counted for something. I’ve thought about it a lot since then.”

  I nodded. I could see him doing that—working with blind kids, teaching them there was a world out there waiting for them to do whatever they wanted with it. Showing them how big their lives could be.

  What I couldn’t see was him back in Wakenda, living with his parents. Treated like a liability by people who had no idea who he was or who he could become. People with no idea what he could accomplish.

  Then it came to me that I was describing myself as much as Paul. A jolt went through me and lodged someplace I’d never felt before.

  And while we stood there, an idea that had first sprouted at the telegraph office in Wheatland took hold and grew wings. I drew in a deep breath, held it a second, and said it. “They’ve got colleges in St. Louis, right, Paul?”

  He said, “Sure. There’s Washington University and Saint Louis University and—” He turned to me with a wide smile. “I thought you couldn’t pay for college.”

  I grinned back. “So what? If I’m smart enough to go to college, surely I can figure out something.”

  “So what?” he echoed, and then we were both laughing and yelling.

  “So what? So what? So what?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder, and we turned our backs on one of the biggest wonders known to mankind—a miracle of nature that would repeat itself as long as there was a world around it. Like the great comet and all the other clockworks of the universe, it would tell its story without needing us or any other mere mortals there to turn the page.

  We walked out to the road and, in a ritual second nature to us, cranked the Model T back to life.

  Acknowledgments

  I started the research for this book in 1990. Louis Tutt, then superintendent of the Missouri School for the Blind, was a kind and patient resource. A wonderful group of women volunteered at a Ford library within the Dearborn, Michigan, Central Library in that era, and I called them many times. They always set me on the path to the information I needed.

  Several authors unknowingly contributed to this book as their works became resources. Geoffrey C. Ward’s Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson was invaluable. The Ken Burns film based on that book, as well as his documentary Horatio’s Drive: America’s First Road Trip, offered more insights. I read and reread Floyd Clymer’s Model T Memories, and the publishing arm of the Ford Motor Co. itself—Books About Ford—made it possible for me to own a replica of the original Model T instruction book, an official account of “The Story of the [First Transcontinental] Race,” and many other documents. About.com provided a trove of archived newspapers from small towns in Missouri that put me right there in 1910.

  You people! You know what you did and why I thank you: Dan Roettger, Phil Freshman, Ron Kidd, Barbara Felt, Peter Barber, Neil Ross, Paul Fey, Kimberly Finch, the other eight Six Chix, George Clipner, Lu Oros, Bill Wilkins, and Duane Daugherty.

  To the people at Medallion Media Group: you have been nothing short of wonderful. Ali DeGray, Emily Steele, Helen Macdonald, James Tampa, Arturo Delgado, Brigitte Shepard, and others who have contributed behind the scenes—thank you.

  Alec Shane at Writers House: you continue to amaze me. In a good way.

  Most of all, I thank my grandfather for the story and my dad for teaching me how to tell one. I know you’re both still there, just not where I can see you.

  Nancy Crocker is a Missouri native who started her career as a singer, having performed alongside Loretta Lynn at age thirteen. Her written work has appeared in the American Heritage Anthology, and she is the author of the picture book Betty Lou Blue, published by Dial. Her first novel, Billie Standish Was Here, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007 and was a Booklist Top 10 Novel for Youth, a Kirkus Editor's Pick for Best Books for Young Adults, a 2009 TAYSHA Reading List selection, and a New York Library’s Book for the Teen Age selection. She now lives in Minneapolis with her husband and son.

 

 

 
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