WLT (14 page)

If he were rich, Francis would buy a mansion in Minneapolis for the five of them, and a piano, and a pony. But they would stay good people, not become snooty like the rich people on WLT. The radio shows took place in small towns like Elmville, Lakeville, Park Rapids, Parkerville, but rich people often came there and got their comeuppance. A hard-hearted millionaire was stranded in For-estville by a flood that washed out the highway and swept away his roadster like it was a toy, and he learned the value of patience, on
The Hills of Home
, and learned that pain, when past, is a sweet pleasure. He sat in Mother Sundberg's kitchen, wet and cold, wrapped in a blanket and drinking hot coffee, and took a deep breath and said, “Life was never so good to me as it is right now at this moment, good people.” And he meant it. Bumbling nobility like the Duke of Worthington arrived in the middle of the night, in agony, suffering from terrible gout from stuffing himself with goose liver, and was helped over to Doc Winegar's office and treated to a good talk about Tomorrow Is Another Day and how helping others helps to take your mind off your own troubles. “I reckon we don't look like much to you, Your Lordship, a one-horse town with a passel of folks who don't know much about books or plays or paintings, but people here sure know a few things about living,” and the Duke harrumphed and said, “I am deeply obliged, my good man.” Bigwigs were always taught a lesson by the good people, and usually they responded well, like the tycoon who learned the true meaning of Christmas and gave Fritz and Frieda a diamond as big as her knuckle. Then Babs dropped it on the ice as she crossed Lake Marcia and though they scraped the ice again and again, it was never found, and it sank in the spring melt.

“Oh, it was never meant to be!” Frieda cried. “We were never meant to be anything other than what we are.” The other folks arrived at the same conclusion. Better to be happy with what you have than to aim high and become vain and miserable. The highest branch is not the safest roost. As Dad said, “It's awful hard to carry a full cup.”

O
n
The Parkers of Parkerville,
the Highball Express derailed in a howling blizzard and slid into a ditch, and the famous Hollywood producer Mel DeMille was awakened in his baby-blue Pullman bedroom by snow drifting across his face and was hauled out by pig farmers and dumped in a haywagon and covered with gunnysacks and carried to town. He stood shivering next to the stove in the General Store, griping and groaning —“Get me out of here! Call my office! Tell them to rent a plane, a car, I'll pay anything, but I'm getting out and I'm getting out
tonight!
I'm not going to be stuck in this lousy two-bit tank town! I've got movies to make! I'm supposed to be in Louis B. Mayer's office in
eight hours!
Mr. Mayer himself! Eight hours!”—“Shur,” said Mr. Ingebretsen, the mayor, “and it's only a block from here, so take it easy, there's plenty of time!” when in walked Dorothy, Pop Watkins's lovely daughter.

“There's a room for you at the hotel, sir,” she said, smiling in a way that made Mel DeMille's eyes go out of focus. “Come, I'll show you the way. It's a nice big room. I made it up myself.”

“My dear girl,” Mel DeMille whispered, “who made
you
up?”

“I must have you for my next picture!” he cried. He took her little hands in his big paws. “A twist of fate has led me to you, to offer you a new life—no, not I—the
American people
are offering it to you, for they need the sunshine in your face, the laughter in your soul—Miss, whoever you are, wherever you come from, paradise or the planet Venus, you're no hotel chambermaid anymore, you're—a
star
.”

So when the storm stopped and the Highball was back on the tracks, ready to head for Hollywood, Dorothy was set to go. She had sewn herself a new dress and said goodbye to Bob, Ma, Pop, Spot, and her night job at the Hob Nob Bakery. They were all proud as punch, and she promised to never never forget them. “I owe it all to the people of Parkerville. You believed in me! And now my dream has come true. And now I go forth. But I carry you in my heart and in my prayers,” she told the crowd in the highschool gym on Dorothy Day. But the next morning Pop woke up sick with the grippe and took a bad turn and lay feverish, hallucinating, clinging to a pillow and moaning “Dorothy. . . . Dorothy. . . Dorothy,” and she realized how much they needed her and she tore up her movie contract. “No! No!” cried Mel as the train started to chugga-chugga-chugga. He stood in the Pullman door, pleading, “Dorothy, think of the American people!” as the train glided away, chooga-chooga-chooga, and he watched the platform where she stood, so lovely, so pure, waving, getting smaller and smaller. “Don't cry,” she told her bedridden pop after the fever broke and he begged her to go and seek stardom.

“The Bible says to comfort the sick, not to go off and be a big shot. And I'd rather stay here with you and Ma than live in the biggest mansion on Wilshire Boulevard.”

All the Withs heard the Dorothy episodes except Daddy, who was working the overnight run to Bismarck. Jodie sat on the couch and wept when the Parkerville folks came and shook Dorothy's hand and muttered that, gosh, it was good to have her back, and Dorothy said, “Be it ever so humble, there's nobody worth being except exactly who you are.” But Francis thought it was dumb. When the bell rang and the steam hissed as the Highball pulled away, Francis knew that he would've gotten on that train with Mel right then. “
Last call for the Highball Express, with stops in Riverside, Hill City, Big Lake, Lakeville, Center City, Wheatville, River Falls, Littleton, Parksburg, Green Rapids, Park Rapids, Greenville, and Hollywood. . . . Board!
” Then the train pulled away, and soon the whistle blew away far away in the distance as it raced west. You were dumb not to go if you had a chance to. If you didn't like it there, you could always come back.

Francis's daddy died a few weeks later.
October 5, 1939
. He was killed in the crash of Engine No. 9, on a straight dry stretch of track near Tyler after he was called at 2 a.m. to go out and sub for Mr. Ratliff. He must've fallen asleep at the throttle and the engine jumped a switch and went down into a ravine and rolled over, bursting a boiler, and the crew was cooked in the hot steam so that the flesh fell off their bones. At school, a few days later, the children made up a song about it:

The news about Daddy came at dawn, via Cliff the night man at the depot who burst in the front door and stood at the foot of the stairs yelling, “Missus! Missus! Your husband's dead!” Even when Mother ran out on the landing, Cliff yelled. “They're all dead, missus, the train burned up! It's horrible! Gene and J.L. went and looked, it's just frightful. Your mister's dead and all of them!”

The boy lay in his warm bed and listened to the bad dream. A person's daddy did not just go off to work and die, it didn't happen like that.

His mother shrieked. “Where is he! Where is Benny?”

“You can't go there, missus. The district superintendent is driving over himself from Fargo. His name is Flynn, I think, or Finnegan, but anyway, he'll see to it. You stay put. Dave just sent me down here to make sure you're okay. Dave and me, we got the news about an hour ago from a farmer name of Pisek? the Piseks out around Tyler? He said he heard an explosion and looked down the hill, there was a fire on the tracks, and he heard voices screaming. He run down there and he said you could tell by the smell there were people in there, but it was so hot it burned his eyebrows off. So there's no point you going over there. They'll take care of it. You got any coffee, missus?”

The boy lay waiting for his dad to come clumping upstairs and end the dream. Francis'd close his eyes and his dad'd say, “You're not asleep, you're playing possum, you little skeezix,” and sit on the bed and Francis'd screw his eyes closed tight and wait for the first little poke in the ribs. His dad leaned down and he smelled of smoke and coffee. “You little squirt,” said the voice by Francis's ear, “you bugger, you.” The boy started giggling even before the poke. Poke, poke. Then his dad gave him a hawkeye on the kneecap, put his arms around him, and gave him a big fat buzzer on the neck. “There. That'll teach you to play possum with your old man, you skeezix. You gonna get up for breakfast now?”
Yes,
the boy cried,
yes, yes, yes
. “Oh no you won't,” said Daddy and gave him another buzzer. Then he lay down beside him as the sky got light and told him about Grampa riding the train down from Winnipeg with his new bride, Mathilde, who he had met the day before. Grampa came on the boat from Aalborg many years ago. Grampa went to Mathilde's father's store to buy groceries, and Mathilde thought he was a Polack. She said to her father, “Han lugter lige som et stykke gammel ost, men for søren, hvor er han flot,”
He smells just like a piece of old cheese but damn he is handsome
—and Grampa smiled and said, “Synes du det?”
Do you think so?
She was so embarrassed she ran out the back door and Grampa chased her, trying to comfort her. He stayed for dinner, and the next morning they got married. Grampa lived in his own room now and he only came out for breakfast and supper, he didn't recognize anybody, he thought he was eight years old, living upstairs from his dad's bakery.

Francis was not afraid, even when his mother called to him in a strange voice, it wasn't real, it could still be changed, but then Jodie stood in the door, holding a kerosene lamp. She whispered, “Franny, Daddy is dead.” And that did it. That made it true. Her saying it, and the smell of kerosene.

Grampa came out and saw them in the kitchen, Jodie and Franny sitting with tight faces, their hot red eyes, waiting for Mother to come down and tell them something, and he said, “Hvor er Benny?” He knew something was up. He sat down and asked for a beer and Franny got him one, and a glass, and set it on the table in front of him. He motioned to wipe his mouth and Franny brought him a napkin. Even though he was crazy, Grampa still liked things to be just so. He poured the beer, which Daddy brewed in the basement for him, and drank half of it and carefully wiped his gray moustache. He folded the napkin and set it down, and put the glass on it, and set his big hands palms-down on the table, waiting.

“Daddy is dead, Grampa,” Jodie said. “He died on the train.” But Grampa couldn't hear her, of course. Grampa said, “Vaer sa venlig at give mig et stort stykke ost,” so Franny brought him a big piece of cheese. “Tallerken,” Grampa said.
Plate
.

Mother came down the stairs slowly and stepped into the kitchen as if she wasn't sure where it was, and said that she was going to get somebody to drive her to Tyler to see to their poor father. “I don't want them to leave him lie out there all night,” she said, “and that's exactly what they'll do if it's left up to them.”

She turned to reach for the telephone on the wall and knocked the sugar bowl off the shelf and it smashed on the floor.

When Grampa saw it shatter and saw the broken pieces of crystal glittering in the sugar, he finally understood that everything had fallen apart once and for all. He cried without hiding his face. He cried hard, his handsome old face turned toward her.

Benny, Benny
.

She said, “Grampa, you go to bed and get your sleep, we're taking you to Fargo tomorrow. I got all I can do to take care of myself and the children.”

A
unt Emma and Uncle Charles arrived a few hours later from Brainerd and Mother went to bed. That was on Friday. She made an attempt to get up on Sunday and again on Monday, for the children's sake, but she was too weak to stand so she lay on her side and sobbed with abandon. He was a good man, the only one she ever loved, her life was over now, she had nothing left. “Might as well bury me next to him, Emma! Might as well!” Francis's words that day were
reprehensible
,
pallor
,
niggardly
,
lickspittle
, and
coax
. He asked Uncle Charles if “niggardly” comes from “nigger” and Charles frowned. He was a slight, sad man with his brown wool suit and galluses, his moon face and his pale puffy hands, who had a delicate stomach and couldn't eat certain foods, such as tomatoes or beans, and had to have his meals come precisely on time. “This is a great tragedy,” he told Francis, “it's no time to talk about things like that.”