No Promises in the Wind (16 page)

“She's a nice girl.” I felt sorry about that first thought that called her homely.

“That's right. She's a good little kid.” He straightened the covers over me and smoothed my pillow. “She'll look in on you once in a while during the day when I'm gone, she and Gramma. They'll see that you get your medicine and are well fed.”

We didn't speak for a while. Then I asked what was foremost in my mind. “Lonnie, do you think we'll find Joey?”

“I'm pretty sure we will. He can't be too far away. It's only three days since we picked you up; he can't travel very far in three days. I notified the police this afternoon while you were asleep. They're looking for him in Omaha and Lincoln—in the smaller towns in this area too. We'll find him. That little squirt can't shake us like this. He's getting too big for his britches.”

“He had a right to leave me, Lonnie. I was mean. I don't know what made me do what I did. But Joey didn't understand. He didn't know how sick I was.”

“I guess not.” Lonnie was looking at me thoughtfully. He nodded as if agreeing with some private thought. Then he slowly wound an alarm clock and prepared to go into his bedroom. “Do everything you can to regain your strength, Josh. And don't worry. I'm going to find that boy for you.”

I lay awake for the rest of the night thinking about Joey, wondering and hoping. I wondered if the time would ever come when I could have peace of mind again.

Lonnie was gone when I woke up the next morning, but his mother came over and fixed breakfast for me, washed me, and gave me my medicine. She was kind, but a quiet and rather grim-looking old lady. I found that she was almost deaf which made her seem more remote than she possibly was by nature. She left as soon as she had made me comfortable, and I was alone until Janey came over bringing a small radio with her.

She looked different. She was still wearing the loose shirt and blue denim pants that must sometime have belonged to a boy, but her hair wasn't braided as it had been the night before; it hung loose, tied back with a red ribbon. It looked nice, bright brown and bouncy with curls at the ends. Her cheeks were flushed when she said hello, and the soft color kind of played down the freckles. Actually she looked pretty nice. She made me realize that I must look like a tramp, and at first I was self-conscious and embarrassed.

She put the radio down on a table near my bed. “I'm supposed to listen to Mr. Roosevelt's inaugural address—my civics teacher gave us this for an assignment. I thought maybe you'd like to hear it too.”

I had forgotten about elections and presidents and inaugurations. For months I hadn't thought about much of anything except where we'd find food for the next meal, where we'd be able to sleep without freezing. I didn't for one minute suppose that anything happening in Washington, D.C., might in any way affect my problems. But this was the fourth of March 1933, and I was willing to listen to anything that would take my mind off Joey for the moment.

The announcer was describing the scene in Washington when Janey tuned in the station. The day was gray and bleak out there, he told us, but in spite of the chill wind there were nearly a hundred thousand people on the streets and the grounds around the Capitol. It was a crowd of tired and grim faces—I could well believe that—a crowd amazingly quiet for such a huge gathering.

He described the procession coming down Pennsylvania Avenue—there was the car carrying the outgoing president, Mr. Hoover, and the president-elect, Mr. Roosevelt. “President Hoover's face is stern and unsmiling,” the announcer said. “He doesn't wave or pay any attention to the crowds.”

“People have been rough on President Hoover,” Janey told me quietly. “They blame him for everything. You know very well that no one man could have made all this mess. Why do they have to pin it all on Mr. Hoover?”

I shook my head, hoping she would be quiet so that I could hear more. The announcer went on, “Those near him say that Mr. Roosevelt seems preoccupied with his thoughts. He and Mr. Hoover are not conversing; the president-elect seems to share President Hoover's attitude of brooding.”

We listened for a long time to the announcer's description of the scene. Then, at last, he told us excitedly that Mr. Roosevelt was walking slowly down a ramp, leaning on the arm of his son for support. “He's crippled, you know,” Janey whispered to me. “Lots of people don't realize it because he never talks about it, or acts as if he's any different. But he is. Polio. He can't walk alone.”

The announcer's voice had become very tense. “The Marine Band has just finished playing ‘Hail to the Chief,' ” he said in a low, but excited voice. “Charles Evans Hughes, chief justice of the Supreme Court, is awaiting Mr. Roosevelt's approach to the lectem—gray, splendid old Mr. Hughes, who was himself so nearly president in 1916—”

“Did you know that?” Janey asked me, her voice excited too. “People were actually saying ‘President Hughes,' and then the last votes came in that elected Woodrow Wilson.”

Finally she was quiet, and I could hear the announcer again. “The wind is blowing Mr. Hughes's white hair—Mr. Roosevelt is very pale he is at the lectern now—he is placing his right hand on the Bible—”

I felt tense and strangely moved. Maybe it was because I was weak, but as I heard the strange voice, so different from the voices I had heard all my life—when I heard that voice repeat the oath of office after Chief Justice Hughes, I felt tears come into my eyes. The unfamiliar words had a sonorous ring: “I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear—that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States—and will, to the best of my ability—preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States so help me God.”

Janey pretended not to notice that I was deeply moved. She sat like a boy, astride a chair with her hands clasped loosely over the chair's back. “All right, Mr. Roosevelt,” she muttered, “I made Lonnie vote for you. Now let's see what you can do.”

The new president was speaking. “This is a day of national consecration ...” he said. I wondered what Mr. Hoover was thinking. I went on listening, not understanding all of what he said, then suddenly aware of something that seemed very personal to me. “... the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror—”

“Not unjustified, Mr. President,” I thought. “The terror has not been unjustified.
You
don't know.”

Then back to the speech. “The Nation asks for action, and action now.... We must move as a trained and loyal army, willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline—”

Janey jotted down a few notes to take to class on Monday, and we listened until the speech was finished. Then she snapped off the radio and looked at me. “Well, what do you think?”

“I didn't understand all of it,” I said, “but what I understand makes me hope a little. It seems that he has plans, that he's going to do something about the trouble we're going through.”

“When Lonnie talks to me about Roosevelt, he says, ‘Maybe—with a capital
M
and a question mark.' Lonnie's not sure. But me—I've got a lot of confidence in the man. I don't know why, but I just have a feeling he's going to do some good for us.”

She looked so funny—so half-plain and boyish, so half pretty and girlish. Her face was very serious. “I wish I could help him. I wish I was a woman and he'd ask me to join his cabinet. I'd like to pitch in and help him get things really moving.” She looked at me suspiciously. “You think I'm some kind of a nut, don't you?”

“No, I don't. Honest I don't.”

“You were smiling. It's the first time I've seen you smile.”

“I guess I'm just naturally a little sober looking.”

“You're like Lonnie. He's sober-looking too, but he always grins when I get excited over politics.”

“That's because most girls your age don't think much about politics.”

She nodded. “I know. Most of the kids in my class think I'm an oddball.”

“I don't suppose many girls tell their uncles how to vote, do they?”

She grinned at me a little sheepishly.
“That
was something of a slight exaggeration,” she admitted.

“But Lonnie does do just about what you tell him to do, I'll bet.”

“Just about,” she agreed, her lips pursed slightly. “Gram says I wind him around my finger, but I don't. I don't want to dominate people. I just like to
convince
them.”

That made me laugh. It seemed so long since I had laughed that I was surprised at myself. Janey looked pleased.

“You're lots better,” she commented.

“You make me feel lots better,” I told her.

That made her blush deeply, but she didn't act skittish or silly. She just sat there studying me for a minute. Then she said, “Lonnie had a boy once. The night we drove over to pick you up, he told me that you're exactly the age Davy would have been.”

I didn't feel that I should talk about Lonnie's boy so I said nothing. After a while she continued. “I loved Davy so much—and Aunt Helen. She was just about a real mother to me. After Davy died, she was never the same, though. She didn't seem to love me the way she used to, and I guess something happened between her and Lonnie. Gram won't talk about it, and I sure don't ask Lonnie things that are none of my business. I think about Aunt Helen, though, and I get a deep, lonesome feeling for her sometimes.”

We talked for a long time that afternoon. She gave me medicine when I coughed a lot, and saw to it that the fire kept going so that the room stayed warm. She was more than a year younger than I was, and in some ways she seemed as young as Joey; then again at times she might have been older than I was.

We played two games of checkers at which she beat me unmercifully the first time and rather obviously allowed me to win the second time. After that she read aloud—the newspaper mostly, and her voice was nice. I closed my eyes and listened for a long time; then I slept, and when I woke up, she was at the stove fixing something for supper.

As I watched her, I thought of Emily. She was not as beautiful as Emily, not anywhere nearly as beautiful. Still there was something about her that was warm and friendly. I wondered idly if I'd ever fall in love with Janey. I didn't think so, but I found myself wondering. I said, “Janey, do you ever wear earrings?”

She didn't even turn to look at me as she answered. “I'd feel like a fool in 'em,” she said shortly. That seemed to settle things. The girl that I loved would have to wear earrings.

Then I thought of Joey, and such things as earrings and girls, even Lonnie and security, all seemed less than nothing.

I
lay awake night after night during that time of convalescence, hurting at thoughts about Joey. I tried to think of other things, tried to tell myself that of course Lonnie would be able to find Joey, that we'd get things smoothed over, that we'd find a place where we'd be safe and comfortable together. I tried to make plans for our future, Joey's and mine, but it was no good. Memories crowded in to make me lonely and depressed. I thought of Joey and Howie down at the corner of Randolph and Wabash in Chicago's Loop, Joey singing a little off-key now and then, Howie playing the banjo and grinning at Joey as if they were carefree and well-fed, as if they were just having a lark before they went home to security and a good warm supper. My memories darted here and there: Joey giving me a big wink from the back seat of Charley's Cadillac, Joey beaming at Emily when he handed her our box of dimes, Joey's eyes blazing at me that last night when he told me I was mean and could go to the Devil.

Every evening when Lonnie came home my eyes asked him the same question; I didn't need to put that question into words. And every evening he shook his head, the discouragement he felt showing in his face and the slump of his body. He checked the detention homes—someone might have discovered that Joey was on his own and have turned him over to the local authorities. He checked with the police in every town within a radius of fifty miles. They hadn't found a trace of Joey.

“He may have hitchhiked back home,” Lonnie speculated one night. “There are a lot of trucks leaving here for Chicago. It would have been a smart thing for him to do—and Joey's smart. That just may be the answer.”

I didn't believe it. I couldn't argue too strongly that Joey still loved me, but somehow I was convinced he was looking for me, that he would have refused to run home like a frightened little boy, admitting he'd broken with me and couldn't make it alone. This was not Joey's way, though for his own safety I might have wished that it was. However, Lonnie was firm about following up every possibility, and so I gave him our home address and he spent a long time that evening in writing a letter.

Janey often helped me out of my dark moods, coming over to see me almost every afternoon. Toward three o‘clock I'd listen eagerly for the bang of the front door in the house next to Lonnie's, a bang that meant Janey was home from school. Then a short time later—just the time it took for her to discard her school dress and get into something more to her liking—she would appear, slender and agile, in boyish clothes, her pretty hair blowing in the wind. She would come running into the kitchen where I lay, sometimes with hot rolls fresh from Gramma's oven, sometimes with crackers and peanut butter, and we'd eat together and have glasses of milk or the remainder of the morning cocoa that Lonnie left on the stove for us.

She made me talk, whether I wanted to or not. She wanted to know about my music, she questioned me about the things that had happened to Joey and me since we left home, she wanted to know all about Kitty, about Howie, about Edward C. She would draw up a chair beside my bed, sitting astride it and listening attentively to everything I told her.