Some Luck (18 page)

Rosanna took her down from the sink and said, “Let’s go find Dula and Lizzie. I think they’ve been getting up to mischief.” As they left the kitchen, hand in hand, Rosanna saw Lillian turn her head to look at the pump. She did feel guilty, a bit. But, then, what was wrong in believing in miracles? Miracles abounded. There were plenty that you could see, and plenty that you couldn’t.

PAPA THOUGHT
that he could get five cows, twenty chickens, and Jake and Elsa through the winter. As for lambs and hogs, well, the hogs had been slaughtered and turned into sausage and ham, as they were every year, and the sheep had gone away, too. If things looked better in the spring—if there was some snow cover—Papa said they could start again with shoats and lambs. It was not that they could go hungry—not only did Mama have pork and beef and chicken stored in the cellar, there were deer everywhere, and turkeys, too. Papa said that all the animals were thirsty and hungry. In a way, it was a mercy to shoot them, if they were coming around, because they had lost all caution. Better to be shot than brought down by a pack of dogs.

Frank was not worried. Minnie Frederick was not worried. It was true that the Grahams, who hadn’t had many animals, only lots of corn and a few other crops, had lost their farm and moved away, before the harvest even, because Mr. Graham didn’t “have the wherewithal” to harvest fields that were parched and dead just to keep them neat—Frank and Minnie tramped through those fields every morning on the way to school. Frank wasn’t quite sure what “wherewithal” was—probably money, maybe horses, maybe gasoline, maybe someone to help him. At any rate, the Grahams were gone, had not even turned up for the first day of school. There were lots of others at school who were not worried—the worried ones must have left, Frank thought.

It was Papa who was worried, though Frank wasn’t sure about what, exactly, and didn’t dare ask. There was a word Papa always shook his head after pronouncing—it was “bank.” Frank wasn’t sure which of the three things that could go wrong at a bank Papa was worried about—the bank “going under,” the bank “cutting him off,” or the bank getting robbed. Of these, obviously, the most exciting was the bank getting robbed, and everyone at school talked about such a thing happening, because Donald Guthrie had a cousin in Ottumwa, where seven or eight guys had stolen sixty or a hundred thousand dollars from a bank in September. Ottumwa was only a hundred miles from Denby, according to Papa. The same gang had robbed a bank in Minnesota in the summer, three hundred miles away. Frank suspected they were getting closer. What Papa said about it was “Lucky to have a hundred thousand dollars in a bank in Ottumwa in this kind of drought, if you ask me.”

Mama said that there was not going to be a bank robbery—the Lord wouldn’t allow it. Frank didn’t see why not, and Papa seemed to agree with him—he said, “Well, he’s allowed plenty of ’em.” Mama said that sometimes Satan got away with things and sometimes he didn’t, but in Frank’s experience, that was true of everyone, even Joey, who hardly ever tried to get away with anything, but had killed a bluebird with the slingshot Frank had given him and gotten away with it—Mama did not allow them to shoot at songbirds. Frank himself got away with so many things that he expected to do whatever he pleased, and he did.

He expected to get away with kissing Alice Canham, and he did. He expected to get away with kissing her sister, Marie, and he did, and when Marie told Alice, Alice wanted another one. Alice was thirteen and Marie was fourteen. Chances were, thought Frank, that he would also get away with kissing Minnie, but he spent so much time with Minnie on the way to and from school that kissing her seemed like maybe not such a good idea, although, on balance, he didn’t see how holding her hand could go wrong.

In order to further chase away any worries that the boys and girls in the school might have, their new teacher this year, Miss Horton, who was maybe eighteen and maybe not—Minnie said she was sixteen and had lied about her age because her family had lost their farm and were living in a shack in Usherton and the money Miss Horton
got from teaching was the only money they had—was helping them plan the biggest Christmas pageant ever, and she had been trying out all of the boys and girls for singing. There was a piano in the school; Miss Horton was the one who tuned it up and got everyone to sing. And it was Miss Horton who said to Frank, after he sang two verses of “Beautiful Dreamer” and one of “Hard Times Come Again No More” (both of which she taught him), that he sounded like an angel, and Frank said, “No one ever compared me to an angel before,” and Miss Horton said, “Well, I can see that, Frank, but you have a lovely singing voice.”

When he told this to Mama, she said that all the Vogels and the Augsbergers were good singers, so no wonder, but she agreed to help him learn the songs he was supposed to sing for the pageant. There were three of them—the whole school was going to do “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” and then Frank, Minnie, one of the plain girls named Dorothy Pierce, and Howie Prince were to do “The Holly and the Ivy,” back and forth between verses. Then, at the end of the first part, or “act,” as Miss Horton called it, Frank was to sing alone—“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” This was a song that Frank did not know, though Mama did. She said, “I think that’s rather a sad song, Frankie.”

Frankie shrugged.

“Did Miss Horton sing it for you?”

“She said she would do that next week.”

“It is not a joyous carol. I would prefer you sang something that affirms your faith.”

“Have you sung it, Mama?”

“Well, yes. Granny Mary likes that one.”

Frankie left it at that.

On Monday, when Miss Horton kept him after school to sing the carol for him (Minnie stayed, too), he found that he liked it, and he got the tune right away. On the third time, he could sing along with Miss Horton, and after the fourth time, both Minnie and Miss Horton had their mouths open.

Miss Horton said, “You sang that with real feeling, Frank.”

“I did?”

Minnie nodded.

Once they were out of the school and on the way home in the
cold, dimming light, she kissed him on the cheek and said, “That’s what you get. But don’t tell.”

“More after the pageant?”

Minnie laughed and poked him in the arm. She said, “You’ll see.”

Well, there was no snow cover yet, which put Papa in a bad mood. After supper and a short Bible reading (lately, they were getting shorter and shorter), he got up and looked out the windows of the front room, as if he could make the clouds come. Each time he sat back down in his chair and picked up his paper or his book, his scowl got deeper. And for once Lillian was fussy. Mama didn’t know why, it looked like. Twice Lillian said “No!”—something Lillian never said. As usual, Joey just sat there. Finally, Frank said, “Mama, you want to hear my song?”

Mama pursed her lips, then said, “Of course, Frankie. I would like to hear your song.”

“What song is that?” said Walter suspiciously.

“His carol for the pageant.”

“That should be harmless, at least,” said Walter. He put down his paper.

Frank stood up and went over to the stove and clasped his hands in front of himself, the way Miss Horton had told him; then he began confidently, “I heard the bells on Christmas day, / Their old familiar carols play, and mild and sweet …” Just there, the same thing happened—there was something about those words, “mild and sweet,” that was delicious and drew him onward. The way the notes seemed to go more deeply into him as they got lower (at “goodwill,” he had to open his throat and chest to get down almost an octave to that note) made him stop seeing his audience. When he was finished, he saw that Mama and Papa were gawking at him. Papa said, “Frankie, you sang that song as if you knew what you were talking about.”

Mama said, “After this year, maybe he does know.”

They exchanged a glance.

“Good boy,” said Lillian.

Mama said, “You know, Opa was a wonderful singer when he was young. He was in a boys’ choir back in Germany that sang for the king.”

“What king?” said Joey.

Mama shrugged. “I don’t know. German kings, who could tell. A Frederick of some sort. Opa had to wear a satin outfit. But when we were children, he sang German songs for us. Then he stopped. I don’t know why.”

“He stopped because of the war,” said Papa.

“Well, yes, of course,” said Mama. “That must be it.” She sighed. But then she reached out and Frankie gave her his hand, and she said, “If you are given great talents, Frankie, you are to use them in the service of the Lord. Do you understand?”

Frankie nodded, of course, but he didn’t understand at all, really.

1931

W
ALTER WAS DOING
a thing that he knew he shouldn’t, but since he didn’t have many animals to take care of for the time being, he couldn’t help himself—he was walking down to the creek just to check how it was flowing. Frankie and Joey were at school, studying about something entirely unrelated to farming, he hoped, and Rosanna was cleaning up after dinner (poached eggs on toast and some fried potatoes). The afternoon was sadly clear and bitter cold, especially brilliant to the west, which was where all things good and bad came from. There was snow, but his boots went right through it. He tried to ignore this.

If you’d asked Walter how many things about the now mercifully passed year of 1930 he’d found shocking, he would have said that nothing shocked him, but that was not true and he knew it. The question was not what was shocking, but what was not shocking. For example, he had been shocked when his corn yield turned out to be thirty-five bushels an acre—the crop had looked so bad that he had expected it to be lower, more like thirty, or less. After ten years of forty to forty-four bushels an acre, maybe he was just spoiled. And then, after the Grahams left, a farm not half a mile away, he and some of the neighbors, hating to see the crop just standing there, had gone to the bank and asked to harvest it and divvy it up. The Grahams got twenty-one bushels to the acre. That shocked everyone, but they
didn’t talk about it among themselves—bad luck to do that. Walter could see the Graham house now, and the Graham fields. Walter hurried his steps to get out of the sight of those windows, flat and dark against the brightness of the air. Two on the other side had been broken by someone or something—maybe birds—and Walter had gone over and boarded them up, but that made the place look done for, made you want to peep inside and see the sofa and the dishes they had left behind. Even clothes and shoes.

The oat crop had been worse than the corn crop, more’s the pity for the horses and the cows, but the real shocker was that, with all the news about the drought (and it was worse to the south and the west) that they’d gotten over the radio, through gossip, and in the papers all year, prices had still dropped. How was that? Walter wondered. A bad crop year was supposed to be good for someone, and yet last year, 1930, had been good for no one. Of course, his father laughed. He could afford to laugh—he owned his own farm free and clear—but, more than that, his father always laughed at farming and what a joke it was on the farmer.

Rosanna said, “So—no one can buy food because of the Crash, but does that mean they are just going to let the people starve? Why don’t the churches buy it up? Or some rich people? The food is there, the people need it. Are they going to let it rot in the bins while people starve?” And, irritated, Walter said, “Yes, probably they are, Rosanna.” She found the Grahams’ empty house an abomination for the same reason. She said, “People are roaming the roads and living outdoors in the cold and freezing to death, and that house is sitting empty.” But there was no answer for her that Walter understood well enough to make. She would say, “I gave away my chickens. I even gave away my eggs. Better that they feed someone than get thrown on the trash heap!”

Walter said, “You are a Christian woman, Rosanna.”

So he’d paid his mortgage (just barely) and saved enough seed for the spring (just barely), and they could make it through another year, but what were they going to do for shoes for the children (yes, he had thought of rummaging through the Grahams’ junk) and bits of harness that broke, and how were they going to hire someone to dig the well by the house deeper? For two months now, Rosanna had gotten
hardly a drop out of it—Walter and Frank carried water from the well by the barn, which was still producing, though not at the rate it had been. The Graham farm was just a little higher than his, and he suspected that the reason they left had as much to do with the wells as with the crops—that farm had never had as good water as the farms around it.

He also had no sense at all of how things were going to go in the coming year. His hopes had risen right around Thanksgiving with a pretty good snow, maybe six inches, but ice and rain a day later had washed it right away. Then another rain, and he’d felt bleak until, around the middle of December, there’d been five inches, and then another inch and another—a week of snow, until, finally, there were twelve inches on the ground, which made it hard to get to Frank’s pageant, but when they were
at
the pageant, Walter could not believe the exhilaration all around. When Frank sang his carol, yes, he did a good job, but you would have thought he was Al Jolson, the way all the parents in the audience jumped up and clapped for him. It probably hadn’t been good for Frankie, but Rosanna was happy, and even though you could almost see Frank’s head swelling, Walter had refrained from dampening their pleasure. Well, the snow was still there, hadn’t melted, giving the fields a rest and a promise.