Some Luck (20 page)

Papa laughed, though Joe didn’t know why, and then said, “Well, what about yours?”

“I want to name him Fred.”

Papa said that was okay.

The lambs, of course, had not been weaned, so Grandpa Wilmer brought two ewes and two lambs over in the back of his new truck the next day. The new animals had bare faces, which made them look strange, but Joe liked that, too—their faces looked framed by the wool on their necks. Papa put the ewes and the lambs in their own pen, and Frankie and Joe fed them. Joe saw within about a day that Frank was going to leave most of the work to him, but he didn’t mind. Every morning, before sunup, he got out of bed and put on his clothes and walked through the dark house, out the back door, through the snow, to the sheep pen, where the two ewes and two lambs greeted him and he greeted them—“Good morning, Fred. Good morning,
Pat, you look perfect today.” The ewes seemed happy to have the feed trough all to themselves. They would go back to Grandpa Wilmer’s after the lambs were weaned. Joe knew to touch the ewes before he touched the lambs, so he did that for a few days. Since they were Cheviots, he touched them on their faces, and they actually seemed to like it. With Southdowns, you could touch them anywhere, but their wool was so thick you had to wonder if they even knew you were in the neighborhood.

On a Saturday after Valentine’s Day, when the lambs (and Papa’s five lambs, too) were between two and three weeks old, Papa said over breakfast, “Well, 4-H-ers, today’s the day.” Joe’s heart sank, but Frankie bounced in his chair.

Joey didn’t like castrating the lambs and docking their tails when they were only two or three weeks old, but Papa said that he would like the screwworms a lot less—a lamb couldn’t feel, or could hardly feel, when his tail was docked, but if and when the screwworm got in there, the lamb could feel it plenty, and it hurt him very much, even if he could be saved, and some could not.

Papa said, “You know, out west, they fry up lambs’ testicles and eat them.”

From the stove, Mama exclaimed, “Walter! Goodness!”

“Well, the Germans do that, too, and I’m sure the Cheeks and the Chicks have tasted their share. Shall we save some for supper?”

“Some what?” said Lillian, looking up inquisitively.

“Go, go!” said Rosanna, and she shooed them out the door.

The lambs’ tails were pretty long—Patsy’s came to below his hocks, and Fred’s was almost that long.

Papa built a fire in the smithing area beside the barn and set two irons into it. His knives (he had two of them) were already sharpened.

Papa and Frankie herded the seven lambs into the pen, while Joe guarded the ewes in the barn. It was hard to tell who was making more of a racket. Once everyone was separated, Papa started running. Frankie’s job was to catch a lamb, throw a rope around its neck, and drag it to Papa. Papa ran to him and helped him; then, at the smithing area, he laid it on its side, and if it was a male, cut into the scrotum, and squeezed out the testicles. By now it was really squealing, but then Papa cut the tail and set the hot iron on it. When it jumped up,
Joe’s job was to run over, grab the rope, guide it toward the barn, open the door, and push the lamb inside without letting any ewes out. By this time, Papa was running back to Frankie.

The hardest part was grabbing the rope. Once he had dragged the lamb a couple of feet, it could hear the baaing of the ewes and wanted to go toward that sound. Joe realized that if he kicked the door of the barn very hard a few times, the ewes would back away, and he could push the lamb through. Seven lambs (and Joe was really, really glad that three of them were female) took just over an hour. When they were finished, Papa told Mama that they were very good boys.

When Joe went out to feed Fred and Patsy at dusk, though, he saw that they wouldn’t come near him. Papa said, “That’s too bad for us, because we’ll just have to catch them, and lambs are fast. We’ve got to put ointment where we cut them or the screwworms will find those wounds and get started. So now you know, boys, that animals are always a pain in the neck.”

But Fred was waiting for him the next morning, early, in the dark, and he let Joe stroke him on the face.

NINETEEN THIRTY-TWO WAS
when Walter switched parties. He did it early in the year, even though Representative Ramseyer was a Republican and no one knew who the Democrat would be. But Walter was fed up with Hoover, whether he was from down in West Branch or not, and anyway, he left West Branch and went to Oregon when he was eleven—though, to hear the Republicans around Usherton talk about it, you would think he had dinner with farmers every day, then went home and plowed the back forty. But Hoover had gone to Stanford and then all over the world, and maybe, as far as Walter was concerned, he didn’t have dinner with farmers ever. So Walter switched parties.

Rosanna was not amused. Their pastor said that the Democratic Party had a greater proportion of sinners and atheists than the Republican Party, not to mention Irish Catholics (as opposed to German Catholics, who were more responsible), which meant not only that they were unredeemed (many in both parties were unredeemed) but unredeemable. She said, “What am I going to say at services when the election comes up?”

“Don’t say anything.”

“Then they’ll know something is wrong.”

“Plenty is wrong, they know that already—they just have to look around.” Actually, by the first of June, not so much was wrong anymore. The rains had been pretty good, if not great, and the oats were tall and green. The corn was in, and the clover crop also looked fine. It was okay, in the end, to be down to five ewes, seven lambs, five milkers, two horses, twenty shoats (who looked to be about a hundred pounds already), and twenty-five chickens. Dan Crest was paying four cents per egg and about as much for butter as he had before the Crash, and the boys were doing fine with Patsy and Fred. It looked like they were going to get electricity at a good price—the electric company had told Roland Frederick that if they were going to connect Roland’s house, they had to connect a few others, too, so Roland would pay, and Walter could pay him back over the next few years. And, of course, Rosanna was now four months along, and everyone liked a Halloween baby—the harvest was over, the house was cozy, and Lillian would be in school along with the boys. Walter’s mother thought six years was a long time to go between babies, and even said so, but Rosanna was mum about what she thought might have been a miscarriage, or even two of them. Drought years, hard times, but now that Walter was a Democrat, he wasn’t so bored with everything. The candidate he liked was Governor Reed, from Missouri these days, though he’d grown up in Cedar Rapids and gone to Coe College there. He was an honest man. Blaine, from Wisconsin, he didn’t like, and John Nance Garner, from Texas, he thought was too much of a character. But everyone said it was going to be Roosevelt, and that was fine with him. He said none of this to Rosanna, or even aloud (and maybe that was superstition), but it made him feel good. Had he ever had a secret in his life? Did anyone he knew? (Probably Frankie, when you came to think of it.) The way their family, their town, and their church went, there was so much gossip that, in all the things they said about one another, something had to be correct. So Walter looked at his wife and his children and his crops and the future, and thought that one good thing about bad times, like the last couple of years, was that regular times looked pretty good by contrast, and the truest sign of regular times was a good rain.

ON THE FIRST DAY
of school, which was the day after Labor Day, Lillian was ready in more ways than one. Of course, she dressed herself carefully in the yellow dress Mama had made for her, and some new shoes that she had been saving, and the blue sweater with yellow flowers around the neck that Granny Elizabeth had knitted. Of course, she brushed her hair, and Mama, who now could hardly move, her belly was so big with the new baby (whom Lillian had decided to name “Cindy,” because she didn’t think Mama would go all the way to “Cinderella”), braided it for her, and she stood absolutely still, so that the braids would lie flat and heavy down her back. She had a hat, too, a straw hat with a yellow ribbon. Frankie went on ahead, but Joey walked with her, and showed her the way—first down the road toward the Fredericks’ farm, where Minnie and the baby Lois lived (Lillian liked Lois, and went to play with her sometimes, even though she was only two), and then across the fields, past the falling-down house where a friend of Joey’s named something Lillian couldn’t remember had used to live, and then over two fences and across a little road to the school. The school was tall and white, and had two front doors, and the first day, after they raised the flag and said Pledge of Allegiance, the girls lined up and went in one door, and the boys lined up and went in the other. The teacher was named Miss Grant, and she had red hair. Lillian whispered “Miss Grant” to herself, the way Mama had told her to do, and by the time she sat in her seat, she knew she would never forget it.

Her desk was in the front row, between Rusty Callahan, who was seven, and Rachel Cranford, who was six. Rachel looked scared, and Rusty picked his nose. Lillian kept her feet together under the desk, and clasped her hands in front of her on its surface. She never took her eyes off Miss Grant’s face, in the first place because Mama had told her to pay attention, and in the second place because she thought Miss Grant was beautiful, and she had never seen hair like hers before in her life. It was curly, and it sprang about as Miss Grant stepped here and there and turned her head and told the children what to do. Lillian thought it was entrancing.

In the late morning, Miss Grant sat down with five of them around a table—Rusty, Rachel, Jane Morris, Billy Hoskins, who was big
(nine), and Lillian herself. She handed each of them a reader, and demonstrated how they were to set the books on the table and open them flat. The books had pictures, and the print was very big. The first page had one word, “Dick.” The page beside it had five words, but most of them were the same words—“Dick,” “see,” and “go.” “See Dick go. Go, Dick, go!” Lillian was entirely familiar with these words—she had been reading them for years in Joey’s books. She flipped the page. All the words were familiar.

Lillian looked around. Rusty and Billy were peering at the books in surprise, Rachel was chewing on her braid and looking out the window, and Jane was looking at her, Lillian. Lillian smiled. Jane smiled.

Miss Grant said, “Try again, Billy.”

Billy said, “See Deck go. Go Deck go.”

“Billy, do you know anyone named ‘Deck’?”

“No.”

“Do you know anyone named ‘Dick’?”

“No.”

“No one?”

Billy shook his head.

“Richard?”

Billy shook his head.

“Well, ‘Dick’ is a name. It’s the name of this boy in the picture. Dick.”

“Dick,” said Billy.

Then he said, “Go, Dick. Go.”

“Okay, turn the page. Jane? What does that say?”

Lillian looked at her page. It said, “Run, Jane, run.” Jane said, “Run jump run.”

“No, Jane. Look again.”

Jane looked again; then Lillian saw her face turn deep red. She muttered, “Run, Jane, run.”

“Better,” said Miss Grant. “Lillian?”

Lillian smiled her nicest smile, holding Miss Grant’s gaze as she turned to the back of the reader. Then she looked down. There were lots of words on the page. In an even and steady voice, Lillian said, “Oh, look, Dick. Here comes Spot! Run, Spot, run! What a good dog you are, Spot! Sally sees Spot run. Jane sees Spot run. Dick laughs.”

At lunchtime, Lillian shared her apple turnover with Jane, and Jane held her hand. The next day, Miss Grant put Lillian in a higher reading group, but Jane was now her best friend.

ROSANNA WAS SURE
the due date was after Halloween, but on October 14, she was standing in the kitchen, doing the dinner dishes, when her waters broke—just rushed out of her and splashed on the floor—and when the first pain came, it was a sharp one, a real contraction. She was to the door between the kitchen and the dining room when the second one came, and at the foot of the stairs for the third one. There would be no climbing the stairs.

So she went into the boys’ room and looked at the beds there—she’d been too exhausted to change and launder the sheets for a couple of weeks, and it was harvest, and both boys were picking corn all day long instead of going to school—they were out there now, in a howling wind, along with Walter and Gus, who was helping them for a day. She paused for another contraction, then went to Frankie’s bed, which was the largest, and flipped the quilt so at least the cleaner side was up. Then she held on to the bedpost for another contraction. But her mind was working like a radio, telling her what to do with absolute clarity.

There were towels, clean ones. She made her way back to the kitchen and got two of those, and the rest of the water she had heated to rinse the dinner dishes. She also got a shoelace—her mother had told her about that years ago, about all the ladies who gave birth at home, and they always tied the cord with a shoelace until the doctor or the midwife got there to cut it. So Rosanna had a clean, new shoelace she’d kept wrapped in a drawer.