Some Luck (9 page)

Walter couldn’t figure it out—her feet weren’t especially big for
her small size. He and Rosanna had looked forward to her replacing Eloise in the house, but she made Eloise seem like a machine of efficiency by contrast. “It’s like having a fourth child,” said Rosanna. At least she was an easygoing girl, and not demanding. The two of them lived in Ragnar’s bedroom for the time being. Walter thought he could get Rolf and Otto to help him put an addition on the west side of the house in the summer, with its own door. Then Mary Elizabeth would get a room of her own, and Frank and Joe would get something a little bigger, anyway.

Irma said, “Well, the yolk split on one of them.”

Walter said, “That’s fine, just scramble them.”

“You want me to scramble them?”

“Yes, Irma.”

She turned and, after a minute or two, managed to dish a mess of eggs onto his plate, right beside his half-eaten patty of sausage. It did not look appetizing. He picked up his bowl of oatmeal and scraped the remaining bits out of the bottom with his spoon. Truly, he wished that Rosanna would go back to making breakfast, but then what would Irma do? She had no skills of any kind—she had not been raised on a farm, and hadn’t done well enough in school to get a teacher’s certificate. Sometimes, Rosanna put her to cleaning the house, but she was slapdash at that, too, and terribly remorseful when spots and stains she had overlooked were pointed out to her. She said, “Oh, Rosanna, I am meant to be a failure, aren’t I? That’s what my ma always said.” Three weeks it was since Ragnar brought her home.

But Frankie loved her. He skipped down the stairs while Walter was cutting his sausage with his fork and taking another bite. He caroled, “Good morning, Papa! Good morning, Irma!”

And Irma said, “Oh, darling Frankie, there you are. I was just wondering when you would come down and have your oatmeal. See, I’ve sprinkled brown sugar on it.” She glanced at Walter. “Just a tiny bit. Did you have a dream, Frankie?”

“I dreamt that I was sitting up in the maple tree, and the grass was green everywhere, and the limbs of the tree suddenly dropped, and I slid down to the ground.”

“That must have been a happy dream!”

Walter thought maybe he had never asked Frankie about his dreams. Surely Rosanna did that. Walter himself had the most prosaic
dreams in the world, about trying to turn the planter in the corner of one of the fields and getting stuck.

Frank said, “And Jake was in my room, sitting on a chair in the corner.”

“What a funny dream!” laughed Irma. When she laughed, Frankie laughed with her. Frank ate up his oatmeal, and Irma gave him a piece of sausage and a scrambled egg. He ate them and said, “That was good.”

Irma said, “Oh, you are a silly boy!”

Walter pushed back his chair. He said, “Look, the sky is lightening. It might be a nice day.”

Frankie leapt from his chair.

AS FAR AS
Rosanna was concerned, Irma’s useful quality was that she was patient with Joey, who did demand a lot of patience. Perhaps it was simple fellow-feeling, since Irma demanded a lot of patience, too. Rosanna had never been especially patient; she felt herself stamping around the house in a state of permanent irritability, and had even written Eloise a letter down at Iowa State, where she was taking home economics (and doing very well—who was surprised at that?), living in a dorm with lots of girls, and learning to play the piano. To Eloise she wrote, “If I never sufficiently expressed my appreciation for your sense of order and your unflagging energy, I am sorry. I appreciate it now.” Eloise wrote back, “Can you make me a velveteen dress if I send you the pattern? I’m sure Ma would blanch at the very sight of the pattern!
Très au courant!
” Yes, Ma would, thought Rosanna, but she made the dress. It was an easy pattern, and made her, too, feel
très au courant
.

While she did the hem, she watched Irma and Joe with the everlasting box of dominoes, the box that she had given Joe last summer and that he would not let out of his sight. The box itself was shredding, but he wouldn’t let Rosanna replace it. He was also now sporting a bit of tape on his forehead, just above his right eyebrow. There was nothing underneath the tape, but Joey swore that that spot hurt him, and the only thing to ease the pain was a “Band-Aid.” The “Band-Aid” was from a packet that Irma had brought with her. Rosanna had never seen one before, but then it turned out that Dan
Crest was stocking them, too. They were good for little cuts, but the only people in the household who needed them were Joey and Irma.

What Irma helped him do was stand the dominoes on end in not quite such long rows, and then knock them down by touching the first one in the line. It was a good game for Joe, time-consuming, and he was getting better at it—he could set up nine or ten dominoes in a row without knocking them over until he wanted to (or until Frankie knocked them over, but Irma was good, and quick, at stopping that, too). Sometimes, she could divert his attention from the dominoes and get him to practice hopping and twirling and riding his hobby horse from Christmas. She was good at creating a circle around Joey into which Frank could not rush with ridicule, shoving, and kicking. This was because (and Rosanna appreciated this and was not jealous) Frankie liked Irma, too. Irma told Frankie stories, and sometimes Frankie told Irma stories. So Rosanna was willing to do a little more work in order to be free of those particular cares that revolved around her two ill-matched sons.

She did not, however, give Irma much leeway with Mary Elizabeth (who could now be heard calling to be picked up after her nap). Rosanna set down her hemming and, when Irma looked up, gestured to her to keep on with what she was doing. Rosanna had waking nightmares of Irma falling down the stairs with Mary Elizabeth in her arms, or Irma bumping the child’s head on the edge of the cupboard, or stumbling and falling on her. These worries Rosanna acted upon, but kept to herself.

Mary Elizabeth was not as active as Frankie and not as fearful as Joey. She was willing to try some things, but not everything. Rosanna considered that she had a thoughtful look on her face. Once, before Christmas, when she was—what?—ten months old, she had crawled over to a book and picked it up. As Rosanna watched, she opened the book and began turning pages, carefully pressing her tiny forefinger against the corner of the page and pulling it down, and then taking the page between her thumb and finger, and turning it. She hadn’t torn a single page. Now she was standing in her crib, holding her arms out.

Rosanna laid her back down in the crib to change her. She was good about that, too—she had been easy to train (Rosanna always started early and went at it with dedication, because it was better in
the end not to leave it too late). Now she took Mary Elizabeth’s long johns off. They were not wet, so she carried her over to the potty and sat her upon it. Mary Elizabeth was neither a bouncer nor a wiggler. When she had produced, Rosanna handed her a page from last year’s
Farmers’ Almanac
, then helped her with it. Really, she was an agreeable child, and she would make a useful young woman, and wasn’t that the best kind? Rosanna adored her even though she was a bit plain (Rosanna noticed this but never, ever mentioned it and was always maybe too affectionate). She in fact suited her name, Mary (common) Elizabeth (respectable). Should there be another girl, Rosanna thought, she would name her something more elegant. Dorcas? There was a Dorcas in town. Helene? Was there a Helene? But she was one of the Carsons. She had probably started life as a mere Helen. Mary Elizabeth held out her arms, and Rosanna slipped her into the romper suit she had knitted in the fall. Then she gently gripped Mary Elizabeth around the waist while the little girl slipped her feet into her shoes. Once they were tied, Rosanna walked her to the top of the stairs and held her hand as she stepped her way down them. They were steep, steeper than most stairs, so Rosanna was careful to give all of the children plenty of practice but to watch them (even Joey, nearly three, even Frankie, at five—these stairs were no joke).

Downstairs, Joey was waiting for her with his face alight. He shouted, “Mama, Mama! Look!” and gestured at the line of dominoes.

Rosanna said, “How many are there, Joey?”

Joey looked at Irma. Irma’s lips moved, and then Joey shouted, “Sixteen!”

“Sixteen! My goodness, such a lot!”

Joey said, “May Liz! Touch it!”

“Really?” said Rosanna. “You want Mary Elizabeth to knock them down?”

Joey nodded excitedly, and Irma nodded, too. Probably this was Irma’s idea. Mary Elizabeth walked over to the table and touched the first domino; they all fell in a row, and it was really quite exhilarating to see how both children enjoyed it. Rosanna said, “Joey, you’re a nice boy,” and Irma said, “Oh, yes, I think so, too.”

THIS YEAR
, when the sheep-shearing men came to shear the sheep, Frank had a job. You never knew ahead of time when the sheep shearers were going to come—Papa only had twenty sheep, so the shearers would show up all of a sudden one morning, shear the sheep, stay for dinner, and then go on to a farm on the other side of town that had lots of sheep—a hundred, maybe. Always before when they came, Frank had been told not to get underfoot—he could sit on the fence and watch, but he couldn’t climb down into the pen or sneak into the barn, either, in case he got up to something when no one was looking. And it was true that Frank liked to get up to things when no one was looking, even if he did get a whipping for it. But sheep shearing was better than getting up to things. This year, his job was to jump on the wool when they put it into the sack so that they could get a lot in. It was a great job.

On the morning when the sheep shearers showed up, Mama looked out the window and saw they were there, then called to Papa out the back door. It was a sunny day, not at all damp. Papa went to the sheep shearers and talked money to them while Mama found Frank a long-sleeved shirt with a high collar. Before he went out the door, she smoothed his socks up over the bottoms of his overalls and said, “You are going to get a bath today, and I don’t want any fuss about it.” Frank jumped down the porch steps.

Felix and Harmon took turns. Daddy and Ragnar would catch a sheep, put a rope around its neck, and pull it over to the sheep shearers. Felix or Harmon then flipped the ewe over on her back and put her between his legs. First he clipped the hair off her head, then went all around her neck. Then he started on her belly and clipped from top to bottom in smooth rows. The wool fell to one side like a blanket, and the sheep got quieter and quieter, not even baaing, because Papa said that the sheep were glad to be clipped—if you let a sheep go through the summer with all that wool, it might lie down and die. They looked terribly silly without their wool, though—silly and surprised, Frank thought.

Once the fleece was lying out flat on the ground, Papa or Ragnar folded it together and rolled it up, and then put it in the sack. Here was where Frank came in—he climbed into the sack, and while Papa or Ragnar held one of his hands, he jumped up and down all over the wool. He jumped as high as he could, and almost in one place but not
quite. As he did this, the one who was not holding his hand went and caught the next sheep. Frank did not want to rest, because he wanted Felix and Harmon to see what a good jumper he was. At the end of twenty sheep, it was dinnertime, and Frank was warm in the sun, and all the sheep crowded together at the feeder the way they hadn’t been able to before. After the sheep shearers left, Mama made Frank take off all his clothes and take a bath in the kitchen. When he was clean and all dried off, she took him to the window and looked him all over for ticks, and she found a few—two on his back and two on his legs and one in his hair. She held a burnt match tip against them, and they backed out. All the time she was saying, “Ugh, I hate ticks!” and Frank was very good about standing still.

EVERY YEAR
, Walter said that he was going to rip out or plow up or in some way get rid of the Osage-orange hedge that separated the field behind the barn from the back acreage, and every year, he went out there with Ragnar and scratched his head for a minute and then just ended up trimming it. It was, as his father had always said, “horse-high, bull-strong, and hog-tight,” but it limited what he could do with that back field. The problem was that it was dense with thorns, a couple feet thick, and a quarter of a mile long. Every time you wanted to get into the back field, you had to go around it, because, as intended, there was no going through it. It was also a bit unusual for this area—more common down south, Walter had heard, where such hedges had been all the fashion in the middle of the last century (when, Walter supposed—the thought made him smile, it was so ridiculous—all American farmers were going to model themselves on the landed English gentry and farm the same land for generations and also fox-hunt across it). But if you replaced it with barbed wire, you had to keep your eye out for breaks in the fencing, and you had to be there to fix it before any animals got through. No animals got through the Osage-orange hedge. In fact, no animals with a lick of sense went near it. But the thing was so permanent, more permanent than the barn and the house, since it had been planted before they were constructed. Probably old Litchfield, from whom he’d bought the farm, had sited the barn where it was because of the hedge—it meant a quarter of a mile less fence to maintain. As a result, the barn
wasn’t where Walter would have put it. That was another thing that bothered him about the farm. Rosanna liked the house, though.