by Jane Smiley
Frankie said, “May Liz fell down.”
Walter pushed his wet hair out of his face and stepped toward her. “Is she all right?”
No, she wasn’t trying to sit up, though she had said a few words.
“How did she fall down? Was she climbing on something?”
Rosanna said, “I think the back of her head hit the corner of the egg crate.”
“She’ll be fine,” said Walter. “We just need to give her a few hours.”
The vomiting began before suppertime. Walter ran out to start the Ford. He took Frankie and Joey with him, to get them out of Rosanna’s hair. Rosanna wrapped Mary Elizabeth in a blanket and carried her out into the rain, leaning her own body over the baby’s so she wouldn’t get wet. Walter opened the door, and Rosanna slid into the passenger’s seat of the Ford. The boys sat in the back. All the way into town (past Dr. Gerritt’s office and on to Dr. Craddock, who was younger and newer to the area), Rosanna knew it was merely appearance that was moving her forward. Though she was telling the boys that Mary Elizabeth was asleep, so they had to be very quiet, sleep was certainly a thing of the past now.
1926
ROSANNA READ in the paper that Billy Sunday was going to come out from Chicago and do a revival in Mason City—not in a tent, like the old days, but in the theater, and only for two nights. He still came to Iowa fairly often, because that was where he had started out, however many years ago, where he’d played baseball and lived in the orphanage and all, and he still had fond memories of the place and the people.
Father Berger had thought Billy Sunday was the devil, and no one in Rosanna’s family had ever seen him. All the time he was most famous, they acted as if he didn’t exist. But Rosanna got a bee in her bonnet, and it was to take the boys and go up to Mason City and see the famous man.
What was it now, five and a half months since that day, the crashing, thundering day when Mary Elizabeth, such a good child, had passed out of this world for no reason at all? Not a mark on her, and yet she went from talking and running around to lying in Rosanna’s arms to being buried in Walter’s family plot in the space of a weekend, and who was to blame but Rosanna herself? Though no one said that; everybody said the very opposite, in fact—what could she have done, such a freak accident, like that time when … And here was where Rosanna stopped listening. After a month or two, she had garnered massive praise for not succumbing to her grief, but how could you do that on a farm? Never could you say to the corn, you must wait to be harvested; never could you say to the cows, you must put off being milked; never could you say to the boys, don’t get up today; never could you say to the winter weather, I don’t want to build yet another fire.
But she had changed. She hardly ever went into town now—Irma took the eggs and the butter to Dan Crest and got whatever she could for them. She was more particular about cleaning and cooking, and it wasn’t only the winter weather that kept her inside, just as it wasn’t only the farm work that kept Walter out in the barn. If he didn’t want to look at the spot where their child had made that passage from life to death, Rosanna didn’t want to stray far from it. She felt, as soon as she saw the notice in the paper (not thought—she had no thoughts at all, really), that Billy Sunday might give her some new memory, or insight would enter her the way the sunlight entered the windows. Whose fault had it been? Well, obviously hers, but also the fault of the weather, and, beyond that, the heavens. The room had been so dark and so loud.
WALTER DIDN’T MIND Billy Sunday—he’d been to a revival in Cedar Rapids as a boy, a tabernacle affair, a week long (though the Langdons had only stayed three days). Back in those days, Billy still did his patented slide into the middle of the stage (just as he’d slid into home plate those seasons when he was playing in Chicago for Cap Anson). He jumped around and shouted, and Walter had found it entertaining to hear him exhort the members of the audience to “Get on the Water Wagon!” His mother felt that the Sundays may have been a very unfortunate family, and that certainly life was harder in those days during and after the War Between the States, and you had to make your way as best you could, God knew, and Mary Jane Sunday, who had been a Corey, had done the best she could, but, really, they were not the same sort of people as the Chicks and the Cheeks and the Langdons, and so she was immune to his preaching. As Walter remembered, she had sat primly in the tent, glancing around with a small smile on her face. His father had been more susceptible, maybe because of Sunday’s energy and athletic fame, not to mention that his grandfather had been a good farmer over in Story County. After the revival, he had spent a few months reading his Bible in the evenings. But inertia prevailed—they’d gone back to their former religious habits (just enough participation to be able to say they did it, and to keep up friendships with the other members of the church). They didn’t dance (didn’t care for it), but they did play cards (euchre and cribbage), and his father didn’t think that a drop of whiskey from time to time was a damnable thing. That Rosanna wanted to cart the boys all the way to Mason City and then stay in a hotel there (three dollars per night) he thought was strange, but if it got her through this time, he welcomed it, and so did his mother when he mentioned it in town. She said, “She knows what she wants, though maybe she doesn’t know what will work. But if you don’t give her what she wants, she’ll spend the rest of her life thinking that that was the one thing that might have worked.”
Everyone said that Billy Sunday wasn’t the draw he had once been, but as they got closer to the assembly hall, Walter had to be impressed by the crowds streaming around him. He carried Joey in his arms, and he was sorry that he didn’t have a length of rope to tie around Frankie, because Frankie kept disappearing, if only for as long as it took Walter to begin to panic. Rosanna kept saying, “Frankie, hold my hand!” But she was distracted, too. Walter said to her, half joking, “I should have given him his whipping in advance!” but she barely chuckled. A moment later, when Frankie happened to bump into his legs, Walter grabbed his shoulder and said in his strictest voice, “If you don’t stay right with me, they’ll make you stay out, and we’ll go in, and what’ll you do then?”
Frankie looked up at him and said, “Run away!” But he took his hand and stuck by him as they went through the door. Fortunately, just inside the door, a fat man with a handkerchief over his head and his hat on top of that saw Frankie start jumping up and down and said, “Boy, you better be quiet for Reverend Sunday, because he don’t like a lick of noise from the audience, and he’ll send you right out. I seen it happen.”
Frank’s mouth dropped open—more, Walter thought, at the man’s enormous girth than at the reprimand—but Walter took the opportunity to ask him how many revivals he had been to, and the man said, “This is twelve for me. I go to one each year or so. I went to the first one, up in Garner. First time he ever spoke to an audience. That was history in the making.” Suddenly he bent down and stuck his face into Frankie’s and said, “You mind, hear? I’m watching you!” To be perfectly honest, Walter was glad he did. Rosanna was staring at the stage and the choir and all the people. He said, “Rosanna?” one time, but she paid him no attention.
JOE COULDN’T STAND the noise. The giant room they were in was pounding with it, so the first thing he tried was to lay his head against Papa’s chest, just press his ear into his shirt there, put his hand over his other ear, and close his eyes. That was a little better, but then the noise revealed itself not to be just noise, but also shaking and stamping. It seemed like he could hear it through the top of his head and the seat of his pants. When Joe thought of the loudest noises he had ever heard (thunder, lots of cows mooing all at once, Frankie screaming right in his ear), this was still worse. He shifted around so that his other ear was against Papa, but that didn’t work, either. It was a terrible riddle, and it made him want to scream into the noise (he glanced up at Walter’s face, then at Rosanna’s), but he didn’t dare. At least Frank wasn’t bothering him. In the back seat of the car on the way down, as soon as Mama said,
“Now, you boys settle down and try to be quiet for five minutes,” Frankie began with the nail he had, poking it into Joe’s side, right behind his arm. When Joe grunted, Frankie made it go back into his hand, so that when Mama turned around, there was no nail. Then, when Mama was looking out the windshield again, Joe would see out of the side of his eye Frankie sticking his tongue out. Joe knew that Frankie knew that Joe knew he was sticking his tongue out, so it was no use to pretend that nothing was happening. Never once did Mama or Papa think to check in Frankie’s pockets for his weapons. They just looked at him, and he smiled that smile he had, and one or the other of them said, “Joey, for goodness’ sake, quit whining.”
THE MAN ON THE STAGE looked a little like Grandpa Wilmer, Frank thought, except that he hopped around and shouted and threw his arms in the air like there was something really worrying him and he didn’t know what to do about it. Grandpa Wilmer wasn’t like that. Grandpa Wilmer never raised his voice, even when something bad happened, like that time last summer when the yearling bull put his horn through a knothole in the side of the barn and they couldn’t get him out and he broke his neck right there. That had been when they were up there for the threshing, and Frank didn’t think he would ever forget it. It was a Devon bull (Papa told him that), red all over with white horns, not like the browny shorthorns Papa had, a beautiful bull, hanging against the side of the barn by its horn, dead. Dead like May Liz was a month later.
The man on the stage stepped back, and other people in white robes, with books in their hands, sang a few songs. There wasn’t much sun in this place, and there were so many people that it made Frank feel like he wanted to jump up and down, just jump up and down, but that man, the giant who had told him absolutely to be quiet because he was watching, was watching—he was three rows behind and four or five people over, right at the end, so if Frank made noise that man could get up and come get him and drag him out. Frank grabbed the edge of the bench and held it tight, and that kept him from jumping up and down. Right next to him, Joey was crying. He wasn’t making any noise, but the tears were running down and his eyes were closed. Frank was glad that at least he himself wasn’t doing that.
IT WAS INDEED as Rosanna had expected it to be, crowded and a little frightening, but everyone was friendly, and Rosanna felt it—she felt herself disconnect from the irritations of the boys and, for that matter, Walter. She knew Walter hadn’t wanted to come—ninety-some miles and two nights leaving the farm in the charge of Ragnar and Irma. It made Walter nervous. But when Rosanna said, “Then I’ll go by myself,” even though she hadn’t yet learned to drive the car, that made him even more nervous, so he agreed to come for the two evenings and the one day, as long as they got up before five and came straight home Monday morning. What Rosanna said, in order to mask her hopes, had been “Well, it’ll be nice to get away for once. Even if it’s only to Mason City.” And it was. The country wasn’t terribly different from their own, but it was fun to go through the towns, if just for the names—Eldora, Steamboat Rock, Ackley—and the signs pointing to places like Swaledale that she knew she would never see. Yes, they were probably just like Denby, but the names were enlivening.
She had thought it would be harsh and scary, since Billy Sunday was known for his hellfire sermons. But most of the people she eavesdropped on had come more than once. Not only did they know what to expect, they were already saved. Coming again and again, Rosanna realized, was like having an account at the bank. Everyone said once was enough forever, but twice would be more secure, and so on. Hearing the hellfire sermon amounted to hearing about what would happen to others, not oneself. Rosanna thought that was what accounted for the crowd’s unexpected good mood. It was so simple, not at all the hard and empty road that Catholics would have you believe.
She was neatly dressed, with her hair netted in a bun and a plain hat. She had already made up her mind on her own to give up vanity. Considering the quiet life she now led, it wasn’t very difficult. Only this time, when she knew she was going out in public, did her resolution give her trouble. She had prettier dresses and nicer ways of doing her hair and more attractive hats, but that was over for her. And it was a small price to pay. So it was that no one looked at her in this big crowd. That had never happened before, but it was right.
She was grateful to Walter for doing her the favor of holding Joey and having Frankie on the other side of him, so that she could give her attention to Reverend Sunday, who was certainly a dynamic man. There was something reassuring about how he seemed to have seen it all, and these things he was saying were the things he had learned not from books, like Father Berger, but from his own experience. He seemed to be saying that you could do it the easy way or you could do it the hard way, but he was here to tell you that the hard way wasn’t worth it in the end. What was that old story, the Parable of the Vineyard? Rosanna had always thought how unfair that was, that the workers who showed up late got in just the same as the workers who showed up early, but she hadn’t reckoned with the hardships that the late workers had had to endure before they got to the vineyard. Clearly, a day in the vineyard wasn’t terribly easy, but a day outside the vineyard was probably terrifying. She did not exactly listen to Reverend Sunday. It was more that she sat quietly and let his words and actions spark her own thoughts.
It was a show, with singing and a big choir, and other people talking. But that made sense, too. Wasn’t Mass a kind of show? She had never thought of it like that. Except that the thing about Mass was that the show was in Latin. A show in English was better at holding her attention. She looked around. That time was starting that Walter’s mother had told her about, when Reverend Sunday called out to the audience and people stood up and went forward and presented themselves to be saved, and then the audience got more restive with rejoicing. Walter’s mother had said, “Honey, don’t get caught up in that. It’s not very nice. You can be saved perfectly well without making a spectacle of yourself,” and Rosanna had agreed. Now she watched the people moving forward and felt rather sorry for them—there were a couple on crutches, and a boy who was being led by his friend and looked blind. Not everyone was like that—plenty were just normal—but one thing Rosanna was never going to believe in was faith healing. She had to say, though, that Reverend Sunday didn’t talk about healing—he talked more about drinking. She sat quietly.
WALTER HADN’T STAYED in a hotel since his return from Europe, and he’d only stayed in a hotel once there. This place in Mason City wasn’t at all like that place in Amiens where he had stayed while on leave in France (and didn’t know what to do with himself except walk around the town and stare at things that had been there for hundreds of years). And it wasn’t that strange place on the park that didn’t look like any building Walter had ever seen. It was just a hotel, with a bathroom down the hall, one window looking out onto the street, and two beds. Rosanna had Joey in the other bed, and Walter had this bed to himself. They had let Frankie wrap up in a blanket and sleep on the floor, though not between Walter and the door. Frankie was a wild one, no two ways about that. He made Walter and his brothers look domesticated by comparison.
Probably the street was the reason Walter wasn’t sleeping. Cars went up and down the street like you wouldn’t believe, all night long, as if these people didn’t have anything to do during the day, and maybe they didn’t. What did they have to do other than buy and sell the sorts of things Walter produced on his farm—corn and oats, or not those, but pork and chickens and beef and eggs and cream and butter? You walked down the street in a town like Mason City and you wondered what went on there. Walter had become just the sort of curmudgeon he used to disdain his father for being—the farm was the source of all good things, and what you couldn’t grow or make there, you didn’t need. People in town had too much time on their hands, so they built themselves stores and picture shows and even parks, just to be doing something. But really they weren’t doing anything. Just using up stuff. His father’s voice went on in his head, but it sounded like
his own voice, and it was accompanied by a visceral feeling of injustice that Walter wasn’t used to, and probably wouldn’t feel if farm prices were higher. Why, for example, was an egg now worth three cents to Dan Crest, but he had to pay seventy-five cents for two boiled eggs for breakfast in this hotel? He didn’t know many farmers who went anywhere, but those who did were proud of fixing their own baskets of food, and always said it was better than you could get wherever you were going. And it was. But Walter resented that part of it was that if you were a farmer you couldn’t afford decent food, wherever you were going. He fell asleep, and woke up before dawn wondering where he was and what he had to get up and do, but there was nothing. Finally (he could hear by the window), the streets were quiet, but he, of course, couldn’t sleep a wink. There were two alternatives for passing the time—worrying about Ragnar and the outside work, or worrying about Irma alone in the house. As dawn broke, it felt like he opted for both.
WHEN FRANK FINALLY WOKE UP and sat up, he said, “What’s that?”
Mama said, “That’s the town-hall clock, striking eight. You boys slept a long time.”
Papa said, “I was up before dawn.”
“What time was that?” said Mama.
“Not six, anyway. I heard the clock strike six.”
Frank didn’t understand time. Mama and Irma showed him on the kitchen clock how the hands went around. If it had been up to him, he would have put the one at the top. He didn’t understand why the twelve was there. It was like sledding down a hill—the hand should start with one and go down. When he asked Mama about it, she said that he should think of the twelve as also a zero, even though the only zero on the clock was in the ten. He sometimes sat at his breakfast or dinner gazing at the clock and trying to figure it out. Half of what grown-ups said didn’t make much sense, if you asked Frank. For example, he liked stories, but quite often there was some part of the story that just seemed wrong. Irma told him a story called “The Pied Piper of Hamelin.” In it, a man comes and plays such a song on his pipe that the rats are driven crazy by it, and they throw themselves into the river. Frank thought that this was just barely possible. The next thing that happens is that the townspeople don’t pay him. Frank knew that that could easily happen—Papa talked all the time about whether he was going to get paid for his crops or not. The next thing that happened was that the Pied Piper played a song that made all the children follow him out of town and disappear. Only three boys—one who was lame and couldn’t keep up, one who was blind and couldn’t see the way, and one who was deaf and couldn’t hear the song—stayed behind. It was this part that Frank couldn’t accept. What about the boy who just didn’t want to? The boy who was contrary? Irma never mentioned that boy, until Frank had spoken up and said, “I wouldn’t have gone,” and then she just laughed.
