No Promises in the Wind (19 page)

At two o'clock Joey awoke and I fed him some soup that had kept warm on the back of the stove; at six I was up making a hot cereal for him, but Gramma came over and made me go back to bed while she finished the cooking and, with many little murmurs of sympathy, gave Joey his breakfast.

Joey began to recuperate immediately. With each meal we could see new brightness come into his face, new light in his eyes. Janey became his special nurse, and I sometimes caught a twinkle in my young brother's eyes, a twinkle that seemed to crow over me as Janey hovered above him, feeding him, reading to him, pampering him as much as he would allow.

Mrs. Arthur, the woman who with her husband had taken Joey into their home the night Lonnie found him, came to visit him on his third day with us. She was an attractive woman, nicely dressed and smelling faintly of a perfume that was like spring flowers. She exclaimed over Joey and cried a little as she sat beside him. Finally she turned to speak to me as I stood at the head of his bed.

“You are the brother he was looking for—you are Josh?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I could have kept Joey for a while—I could have had the joy of nursing him back to health if he hadn't been so anxious to see his brother.” She looked at me almost resentfully although she smiled.

“We're very grateful to you, ma'am. I can't ever thank you enough for what you did for Joey that night.”

Her face relaxed somewhat. “Mr. Bromer told us a great deal of what you boys have lived through this winter. He mentioned that you play the piano quite well.”

“I—I enjoy playing,” I answered.

“How long have you studied?”

“My mother gave me lessons until a couple years ago when we had to sell our piano. Since then I've learned on my own.”

“Oh,” she said, and looked down at her gloved hands as if she took little stock in the kind of lessons one learns from his own mother.

Then Joey spoke up. “If you'd hear my brother play, you'd understand, Mrs. Arthur. He's really top-notch.”

She smiled down at him. “Then I'd like to hear him play, Joey; maybe when you're well, you and your brother and Mr. Bromer's niece can come to my house and we'll hear Josh play. Would you like that?”

He nodded, delighted. I didn't feel so enthusiastic myself. I had a feeling that she was a woman who would have suffered if music familiar to her was subjected to a little improvisation, a beat that was a little different. But I thanked her. “Yes, I'd like to play for you,” I said, but I didn't think it likely that I ever would.

She left books and games for Joey, some special things to eat and some articles of clothing that she said had once belonged to her own children, but which looked suspiciously new. She also brought his old jacket, the twenty dollar overshoes, and the knife with Pete Harris's initials in the handle. And, carefully wrapped as if she knew it was precious, was Howie's banjo in a large cardboard box.

During the next few days when Joey and I were alone, I got out pen and paper and began the letters I needed to write. I wrote home first of all. In the beginning I wrote, “Dear Mom”; then after a long time I added, “and Dad.” I told them how Joey had been found, how fast he was recuperating, how comfortable and safe we were with Lonnie. I didn't say that I'd been homesick, that I wanted to bring Joey home soon. I couldn't quite say that, but I felt that my letter would certainly reassure them. I told them a little about Janey; I sent our love to Kitty.

After that I wrote to Edward C., and then to Emily. I didn't know whether she was Mrs. Pete Harris or not; I simply directed the letter to “Emily in care of Pete Harris.” She had asked me to write to her, and I wondered what I would ever have to say to her. I found that it wasn't hard. I used up page after page in telling her the whole story—in sharing my anxiety and then my joy with her.

We were a happy family during those last weeks of March, so happy that I almost forgot the loneliness for home which I had felt earlier. The attention of all of us was centered upon Joey, and our common concern over him made us a tightly drawn little group. Lonnie was especially cheerful these days. He would come home bringing treats for supper—oysters because they were Gramma's favorite food, ice cream because that was Joey's. One night when I had lost all traces of my cough, he took Janey and me to a movie, leaving Gramma and Joey at home with a big bowl of popcorn he had fixed for them.

He spoke of us as his three kids. He would ask Janey to read aloud in the evening, and we would sit around the table listening, Lonnie on the old couch, resting his arm around Joey's shoulders. I noticed Gramma watching him on one such night as she stood at her ironing board. There were tears in her eyes.

As I grew stronger, I began to think more and more about getting a job. The bread of charity choked me a little now and then; I felt that the proudest moment of my life would come when I could begin to repay Lonnie for what he'd done for us. And when all was repaid—then, perhaps, home. Perhaps. I wasn't quite sure, but I thought that home was what I wanted.

Lonnie recognized my restlessness and need for work. “Sure, sure, Josh. I'll keep my eyes open; something might turn up. We've got to be careful, though. You've lost twenty pounds this winter. I can't let you take on too much until you're husky again.”

And then one evening Mrs. Arthur appeared again. She asked Lonnie if she might pick the three of us up and take us to her house for lunch the next day.

Lonnie smiled at her. “Are you sure you want Josh and Janey, or just this lady-killer here?” he asked, indicating Joey.

She was a pleasant woman, ready to laugh. She said, “Joey is my first love, yes, but I want the others too. I want to hear Josh play just to see if what his little brother says about him is true.”

Lonnie loaned me a decent shirt, and I carefully pressed the old trousers Pete Harris had given me. Joey was fairly well supplied with the clothing Mrs. Arthur had brought him earlier. Janey, of course, had no problems. She wore her best blue cotton dress and tied her hair back with a band of blue velvet. Her costume brought praise from the three male members of her family, a praise that deepened the color in her cheeks, overcoming the freckles and making her very pretty.

Mrs. Arthur picked us up at eleven o'clock. She had a friendly way about her that put us at ease as we drove along and stopped finally at a house in a neighborhood obviously much wealthier than the one in which Lonnie lived.

The Arthur home seemed magnificent to us, but the great piano in an alcove off the living room was the one point of interest as far as I was concerned. I walked toward it, forgetting the other three, unaware at first that they stood watching me, smiling at my fascination with the beautiful instrument.

“We will leave you and the piano alone for a while, Josh,” Mrs. Arthur said, coming over to my side. “You may want to get your hands accustomed to the keyboard again before you play for me. Go ahead. It's all yours for the next hour before we eat.”

It was the finest instrument I had ever touched, and the beautiful resonant tones that responded to my fingers thrilled me so much that I forgot everything except my own delight. I roamed the keyboard for a time, softly at first and then with mounting excitement.

I had improvised upon a love theme for Emily down on the carnival grounds, but as I sat at Mrs. Arthur's piano, my improvisations covered a wider scope. It was as if a long story passed before my eyes and became music somewhere inside my brain. I forgot where I was, forgot that someone might be listening, and I played as I watched Howie's body carried down a long track; I played as I remembered a boy standing humiliated before a pretty girl who told him she was sorry he must beg; I played as I relived the fear of cold and hunger, the anguish of losing Joey, and finally the surge of gratitude that the world had righted itself for me, had restored my confidence.

When I was through, I realized that Mrs. Arthur and Janey and Joey were standing near me. Janey's eyes were large and grave when I looked up at her.

“I don't know you, Josh,” she said just above a whisper.

Mrs. Arthur stood there looking at me. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. Finally she said, “You were improvising, weren't you?”

“Yes,” I said. I thought she probably didn't like it.

“And you've only had lessons with your mother?”

“Yes. She's a fine teacher, though.”

“I believe you, Josh.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “You'd like a job playing somewhere, wouldn't you?”

“I don't think you can imagine how much I want a job like that.”

“Well”—she looked down at Joey's face which was full of pride for me—“we'll have to see, Joey. We'll have to see if we can't find a job of some sort for your brother.”

I don't remember much about the lunch. It was delicious, whatever it was, and served on thin china that Janey could later describe to Gramma in detail. Mrs. Arthur was gay and pleasant; Joey and Janey were at ease and chatted with her all during the meal. I alone was silent. It seemed as if I were in a dream, and I only came out of it when the others teased me. Mrs. Arthur smiled at me. “It's a promise, Josh. I'll find someone who will pay for music like yours.”

That day marked the point when the dream Howie and I had shared began to take form. Within a week Mrs. Arthur came over to see me.

“I've talked to a lot of people, Josh. Last night my husband and I talked to the manager of a very fine restaurant here. The manager, Mr. Ericsson, is a friend of my husband's. We persuaded him it would be a good idea to feature music from six until midnight, creating a job for a boy and doing a good thing for himself too. I told him quite a lot about you—how much I liked your music—and since he respects my knowledge of music, he wants to hear you play tomorrow afternoon. I'll drive you over.”

It was as if a long nightmare had given way to a fairy tale. Mr. Ericsson liked my playing. The salary, in comparison to the five dollars a week which I had received at the carnival, seemed princely to me. Mrs. Arthur took me to a shop and fitted me with an appropriate suit and shoes; she wanted to give them to me, but I jotted down the costs and prepared to repay her as soon as I had money. Begging had left its scars, scars that hurt again even at the kindliest of gifts.

My work at the restaurant gave me a great deal of satisfaction. There was no silly clowning to be carried out as had been necessary to the job down at the carnival. I was a well-dressed, poised young man who played as I wanted to play, who responded courteously to requests.

One point bothered me at first, but, of necessity, I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind. Mr. Ericsson had placed a printed page titled “Our Wild Boy of the Road” inside the menu covers. There the diners could read about Joey and me, about the fact that we left home because our family didn't have enough to eat. There was a detailed account of the begging, of the freezing and starving we had endured. It shamed me at first. Our troubles were a drawing card like poor Ellsworth's flippers that had grown instead of arms, like Madame Olympia's mountain of flesh, like Edward C. Kensington's dwarfism and the pitiful hump on his back. But it was not a time for sensitivity. A job was so precious a thing, so much a gift right out of Heaven, that I had no right to protest. I didn't tell Joey about it, though, nor Janey. But one night I told Lonnie. His lips tightened, and his eyes looked angry for a moment. But he didn't say anything.

It wasn't long until Mr. Ericsson decided to feature Joey with me. There had been an account in the papers as well as on the radio of the boy who looked like “a half-famished angel” clasping a banjo in lieu of a harp. People wanted to see the younger “wild boy.” And so, after I had worked with him for hours, helping him to accompany me when I played some old or popular ballads, Joey stood beside me on the platform, singing and playing ringing chords on Howie's old banjo.

He was a great attraction; his fragile appearance and beauty as well as a natural gift for comedy made him an immediate hit. Diners didn't care if he stumbled over the chords occasionally. There would be a little flurry of laughter when his voice suddenly wandered off-key; then when he grinned widely and got himself straightened out with some help from me, he'd receive a burst of laughing applause.

Joey accepted his success as casually as he accepted the fact that most people loved him at first sight. It was just a fact of life to him; nothing to get excited about. But to me, our success was so marvelous a thing that I couldn't get used to it. Several times I woke up in the night and for a second I thought that I was somewhere out in the fields or in the train depot of some lonely little town and that I'd had a dream of something too wonderful to be true. The wonder eased that loneliness I'd felt for home the night of Joey's return. Home kept receding from my mind as the nights passed, gay, pleasant nights when I played for well-dressed, happy people who could afford to dine in beautiful restaurants. And then at the end of the week there was a check—money to pay our debts, money to make us feel confident and secure.

We sent money home from time to time, and we gave almost all the rest of it to Lonnie. He accepted it without comment, but I had the feeling he was not using it to help with household expenses.

“We owe you this money, Lonnie. It's yours. We don't want to be leeches on you.”

Lonnie was almost curt with me. “People don't want to be paid for some things. Sure, I'll keep a little money for medicines and extra expenses. I do that because I like the way you boys fight to keep your self-respect in money matters. But don't ask me to take money for the food you've eaten or the bed you've slept in. You know about my boy; you must know how I feel about you and Joey.” He folded and refolded the bills I'd given him. “You boys will need this when you go back to Chicago,” he added.