Some Luck (13 page)

Frank returned her gaze and shook his head. Then he said, “I’m good, Mama. Miss Jenkins played the piano yesterday and let me sing the verses all by myself. Everyone else did the chorus.”

“Well, stay good, then,” said Mama, before slamming the door. But even after she went inside, he didn’t put his hand in his pocket. At Minnie’s, Mrs. Frederick gave him a sugared doughnut “to keep him warm,” and they trotted onward to the Graham farm. It was cold enough so that the snow was hard, but not that cold. Minnie didn’t try to hold his hand. Frank was not sure she had seen him get pushed down the day before.

He decided that he had to keep quiet, but not strangely quiet,
and he did—he spoke when spoken to and did what he was told, and when something the other boys thought was funny happened, he laughed with them. Already, after only four months of school, he saw that if you didn’t laugh when the others laughed, they hated you all the more. So he was required to laugh when Bobby tripped Alice Canham as she was making her way back from the pencil sharpener. Right after lunch, he had a moment alone in the classroom, during which he set the trap and placed it in his own desk, ready for business.

The problem was that Miss Jenkins lined them up and herded them everywhere—into the classroom in the morning, out for recess, back in, back out, back in, then dressed and out the door for home. Yes, she couldn’t see much, but she would see him go into Bobby’s desk. That night, Frank lay awake in his bed next to Joey, trying to think of something, but he fell asleep.

He had never paid much attention to Bobby Dugan—he’d only tried to stay out of his way—but now he watched him carefully. The first thing he saw was that Bobby rolled and smoked a cigarette with Dallas and Howie during recess, out by the corner of the schoolyard. They did it again after eating their lunches. Frank didn’t know anyone who smoked. He also saw Bobby go into the privy and come out after spending a long time there. When Frank went into the privy sometime later, he stayed long enough to look all around. He stood on the seat on his tiptoes, reached up, and felt where the roof came down to meet the wall. He found the box of tobacco and matches pushed to the back of the space there.

First thing in the morning when he got to school, he went up to Miss Jenkins and whispered that he wasn’t feeling well, and might have to go to the privy. Since it was a very cold day, could he keep his coat on in class? Miss Jenkins felt his head, and Frank said, “Mama says I don’t have a fever.”

“No, you don’t. Well, we’ll see how you feel. If you need to go home at lunchtime, we’ll see.”

When Miss Jenkins had some older kids at the reading table, Frank slipped the mousetrap into his pocket, then he huddled at his desk for the first hour, all through geography. Just at the right moment, he thought, he staggered out of the room and headed for the privy. He went in and closed the door. He climbed onto the seat, carefully set the trap, and placed it on the box of tobacco, a little pushed back. He
coughed a few times and, once back in the schoolroom, staggered to his seat. In the next half-hour, he revived; by lunchtime, he had removed his coat and hung it on his hook.

After lunch, it worked perfectly. Dallas stole Leona Graham’s cookie, and instead of eating it, crushed it under his toe in the snow, laughing; then he, Howie, and Bobby set off for their spot, even though Miss Jenkins called after them. Bobby headed toward the privy on the way. Sure enough, moments after he disappeared, Frank heard a yelp and then some bad words. Miss Jenkins went to the door of the privy, and when Bobby came out with his fingers in his mouth, she said that she would have to make a report to his father. Then she saw the box in his hand, and held out her own. He reluctantly gave it to her. She opened it and saw the papers and the tobacco. She started shaking her head. After that, Bobby didn’t come to school for a month. Minnie told him that Bobby’s dad had him cleaning hog pens the whole time.

WELL
, that dog had puppies. Mama didn’t find them for almost two weeks, but Joe knew they were there. He had been going behind the barn and watching them for ten days by that time. There were five of them—there had been seven, but two died, and Joe dug a little hole under the Osage-orange hedge, on the far side, where he knew no one would go, and wrapped each puppy in a handkerchief that he took out of the washing, and buried them together. Even Frankie didn’t see him or know what he was doing, and for sure, Joe did not want Frankie to find the puppies, so he kept them as the best secret he’d ever had.

The dog was a stray—when it came around during the fall plowing, Mama thought sure it was carrying something, rabies maybe, and she wanted Papa to shoot it, but Papa said it looked like a shepherd of some sort, and then, in the winter, when the sheep were outside, the dog was good at bringing them in. It was brown and white, with one blue eye. Joe petted it on the head when no one was looking, and sometimes the dog swished its long tail when it saw Joe, but the dog seemed to know that their friendship was a secret. He named the dog “Pal,” but he never said that name aloud. After the puppies were born, Joe brought the dog things from time to time—half of
his sausage from dinner, a hard-boiled egg from breakfast, a piece of bacon. Mama didn’t see everything, and neither did Frankie, and that was a fact.

Joe squatted a little ways from the nest the dog had made, with his hands on his knees, and stared. One puppy was almost all white, two were brown and white like the mother, and two were all brown with white toes. Their ears were back and their noses were always pointed in the air, and their tails were very short, like little worms. They whimpered. Papa thought that the dog had gone down the road to find another place to live.

Then one night, Joe happened to kick Frankie in his sleep. Frankie woke Joe up and said, “I know about those puppies. And if I tell, they’ll be drowned in the pond, you’ll see.” But Mama found them on her own—she’d walked around the barn with some shears and a basket, to cut lilacs off the bushes that ran along the fence line. Joe saw her from a distance—he was loitering with his boiled potato in his pocket, waiting for a moment to go see the puppies. But he saw Mama stand up straight and turn her head. She looked up and down and then walked toward the back of the barn. Joe crept along behind her. She set down her basket and went over to the siding where it was broken, and she bent down.

Joe trotted up behind her, and when he saw that she had found the puppies and Pal, he said, “What’s that?”

Mama put her hand on his chest and pushed him backward. She said, “That awful cur had puppies. I thought she’d gone off. Well, your papa is going to have to do something about this!”

“Why?”

“Because there’s just no telling what those things are crawling with—worms, for sure. I knew letting that dog stay around would lead to no good.”

“Papa said she was a pretty good dog—”

“And the next thing you know, she’ll find her way into the house. This is something I’m going to nip in the bud.” She spun around. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing. I saw you—”

“Joey, you are the sneakiest boy I ever saw. Half the time, Frankie gets up to no good, but at least he’s noisy and doesn’t creep around, scaring your wits out of you.”

Joey apologized.

Mama said, “Here, you can carry the basket. I need to get back before Lillian wakes up from her nap.” They went over to the row of lilac bushes, and Joey walked along, holding the basket in both hands, as Mama snipped off the purple flowers with a few of the smooth dark-green leaves and dropped them in. The fragrance floated in the air all around him. As they were working, two cars passed on the road, and their drivers waved—Mrs. Frederick in a Franklin and Mrs. Carson in a Ford. Joey liked cars. Beyond the road, the field of oats was greened over with thick shoots. When she was finished, Mama put the shears in the pocket of her apron and took the basket from him. He said, “I could sell them. The puppies.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sakes. Not in a blue moon.”

“They are good puppies.”

They walked silently for eight or ten steps; then she stopped, turned toward him, and bent down. She said, “How long have you known about the puppies?”

“A long time.”

“Did you tell Papa?”

Joe shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Papa will drown them and shoot the dog.”

“As well he should. Did you ever touch the dog or the puppies?”

Joe shook his head.

“Should I believe you?”

Joe shrugged.

“Well, that’s honest, at least.”

Joe turned away and walked toward the barn. He had to, because he was starting to cry, and Mama hated that. He heard her shout, “Don’t you touch those dirty things!”

He knew he should have confessed about burying the dead puppies, but he didn’t dare. And anyway, he had touched them only with the handkerchiefs and washed his hands many times since that day, which was a week ago.

Back at the barn, Pal was lying in the nest she’d made, and the puppies were lined up along her belly, suckling, brown, white, brown and white, brown and white, brown. He did something he knew he should not have: he said names, though only in a whisper,
“Brownie, Milk, Sugar, Spot, Bill.” Frankie would think they were stupid names, but Joe liked them. He squatted there and watched the puppies for the rest of the afternoon, and Mama could have dragged him away by the ear if she wanted, but she never did. The funny thing was that, when Ragnar and Papa came home to do the evening work, they left him alone, too. At suppertime, he went in the house. Nothing was said about the puppies, though Irma kept tsking over her fried chicken and wouldn’t look at him. Night came, and some Bible reading, and then bed. He knew that when he got up in the morning and went outside the puppies would be gone, and Pal, too. And they were. A little while later, Mama said that Granny Elizabeth had some kittens, and would he like one? There was a pretty calico with a mark like an exclamation point on her back. Joe said no.

A little while after that, Papa sat down with him on the top step of the back porch. He cleared his throat about six times and then said, “Joey, I knew those puppies were there. I didn’t know you knew.”

“I knew.” Then, “They were good puppies.”

“Maybe. Hard to tell. The female might have been useful if she hadn’t had those pups.”

“Mama hated her.”

“Mama didn’t hate her. But Mama knows that a stray dog can have something, something bad. Distemper or milk fever, or even rabies or something like that. Even if you or Frankie or Lillian didn’t get something bad from the dog, the cows could, or the sheep or the hogs. I don’t know, Joey. I don’t know.”

“Did you shoot her?”

Papa didn’t answer.

Joe got up and went into the house.

1928

A
FTER HARVEST
, Walter and Ragnar, with help from Rolf, Kurt, and John, put an addition on the west side of the house, a room for Frankie and Joey, so that Lillian could have their room. Walter couldn’t afford a two-story addition—if the boys wanted Rosanna or Walter, they had to go through the front room and call up the stairs—but Frank was eight by the time it was finished and they moved in, and hadn’t John and Gus been sleeping downstairs, on the back sleeping porch, off the kitchen of Rosanna’s parents’ house, since Gus was five and John was seven?

Walter put two windows in the south side of the addition, and a window on the west side, but no window into the north side. He also studded out a future opening so that one day he could install a door, but just the thought of Frankie with a door to call his own made him nervous. He had not spared the rod, and he had not, therefore, spoiled the child, but Frankie was the most determined child he had ever seen, far surpassing himself, Howard, Rolf, and everyone else on Rosanna’s side of the family. It was as if, when he saw certain things, his brain simply latched on to them and would not let them go. It wasn’t even contrariness. Half the time, Walter could say, “Frankie, don’t do that,” and Frankie wouldn’t do whatever it was, because he didn’t care about it. The other half of the time, it didn’t matter what Walter said, or even what Frankie said.

There was a bucket of three-and-a-half-inch nails. Walter said, “Frankie, leave the nails alone.”

“Okay, Papa.”

“I mean it.”

“Yes, Papa.”

An hour later, the bucket of nails was turned over, and Frankie was sifting through them.

“Frankie, I told you not to touch the nails.”

“I wanted to find something.”

“What?”

“A longer nail.”

“I told you not to touch the nails.”

“But I wanted to find it.”

“I forbade you.”

“But I wanted to find it.”

“Did you find it?”

“No.”

“Now I have to give you a whipping.” And then he took off his belt and grasped the buckle, and holding Frankie by the upper arm, had him take down his pants.

“What did I tell you?” Whack.

“Not to touch the nails.” Whack.

“If I tell you not to touch the nails, you are not to touch the nails.” Whack.

“I wanted to find it.” Whack.

“What do I do if I tell you not to touch the nails and you touch the nails?” Whack.