Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  After lunch, it worked perfectly. Dallas stole Leona Graham’s cookie, and instead of eating it, crushed it under his toe in the snow, laughing; then he, Howie, and Bobby set off for their spot, even though Miss Jenkins called after them. Bobby headed toward the privy on the way. Sure enough, moments after he disappeared, Frank heard a yelp and then some bad words. Miss Jenkins went to the door of the privy, and when Bobby came out with his fingers in his mouth, she said that she would have to make a report to his father. Then she saw the box in his hand, and held out her own. He reluctantly gave it to her. She opened it and saw the papers and the tobacco. She started shaking her head. After that, Bobby didn’t come to school for a month. Minnie told him that Bobby’s dad had him cleaning hog pens the whole time.

  WELL, that dog had puppies. Mama didn’t find them for almost two weeks, but Joe knew they were there. He had been going behind the barn and watching them for ten days by that time. There were five of them—there had been seven, but two died, and Joe dug a little hole under the Osage-orange hedge, on the far side, where he knew no one would go, and wrapped each puppy in a handkerchief that he took out of the washing, and buried them together. Even Frankie didn’t see him or know what he was doing, and for sure, Joe did not want Frankie to find the puppies, so he kept them as the best secret he’d ever had.

  The dog was a stray—when it came around during the fall plowing, Mama thought sure it was carrying something, rabies maybe, and she wanted Papa to shoot it, but Papa said it looked like a shepherd of some sort, and then, in the winter, when the sheep were outside, the dog was good at bringing them in. It was brown and white, with one blue eye. Joe petted it on the head when no one was looking, and sometimes the dog swished its long tail when it saw Joe, but the dog seemed to know that their friendship was a secret. He named the dog “Pal,” but he never said that name aloud. After the puppies were born, Joe brought the dog things from time to time—half of his sausage from dinner, a hard-boiled egg from breakfast, a piece of bacon. Mama didn’t see everything, and neither did Frankie, and that was a fact.

  Joe squatted a little ways from the nest the dog had made, with his hands on his knees, and stared. One puppy was almost all white, two were brown and white like the mother, and two were all brown with white toes. Their ears were back and their noses were always pointed in the air, and their tails were very short, like little worms. They whimpered. Papa thought that the dog had gone down the road to find another place to live.

  Then one night, Joe happened to kick Frankie in his sleep. Frankie woke Joe up and said, “I know about those puppies. And if I tell, they’ll be drowned in the pond, you’ll see.” But Mama found them on her own—she’d walked around the barn with some shears and a basket, to cut lilacs off the bushes that ran along the fence line. Joe saw her from a distance—he was loitering with his boiled potato in his pocket, waiting for a moment to go see the puppies. But he saw Mama stand up straight and turn her head. She looked up and down and then walked toward the back of the barn. Joe crept along behind her. She set down her basket and went over to the siding where it was broken, and she bent down.

  Joe trotted up behind her, and when he saw that she had found the puppies and Pal, he said, “What’s that?”

  Mama put her hand on his chest and pushed him backward. She said, “That awful cur had puppies. I thought she’d gone off. Well, your papa is going to have to do something about this!”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s just no telling what those things are crawling with—worms, for sure. I knew letting that dog stay around would lead to no good.”

  “Papa said she was a pretty good dog—”

  “And the next thing you know, she’ll find her way into the house. This is something I’m going to nip in the bud.” She spun around. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. I saw you—”

  “Joey, you are the sneakiest boy I ever saw. Half the time, Frankie gets up to no good, but at least he’s noisy and doesn’t creep around, scaring your wits out of you.”

  Joey apologized.

  Mama said, “Here, you can carry the basket. I need to get back before Lillian wakes up from her nap.” They went over to the row of lilac bushes, and Joey walked along, holding the basket in both hands, as Mama snipped off the purple flowers with a few of the smooth dark-green leaves and dropped them in. The fragrance floated in the air all around him. As they were working, two cars passed on the road, and their drivers waved—Mrs. Frederick in a Franklin and Mrs. Carson in a Ford. Joey liked cars. Beyond the road, the field of oats was greened over with thick shoots. When she was finished, Mama put the shears in the pocket of her apron and took the basket from him. He said, “I could sell them. The puppies.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sakes. Not in a blue moon.”

  “They are good puppies.”

  They walked silently for eight or ten steps; then she stopped, turned toward him, and bent down. She said, “How long have you known about the puppies?”

  “A long time.”

  “Did you tell Papa?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Papa will drown them and shoot the dog.”

  “As well he should. Did you ever touch the dog or the puppies?”

  Joe shook his head.

  “Should I believe you?”

  Joe shrugged.

  “Well, that’s honest, at least.”

  Joe turned away and walked toward the barn. He had to, because he was starting to cry, and Mama hated that. He heard her shout, “Don’t you touch those dirty things!”

  He knew he should have confessed about burying the dead puppies, but he didn’t dare. And anyway, he had touched them only with the handkerchiefs and washed his hands many times since that day, which was a week ago.

  Back at the barn, Pal was lying in the nest she’d made, and the puppies were lined up along her belly, suckling, brown, white, brown and white, brown and white, brown. He did something he knew he should not have: he said names, though only in a whisper, “Brownie, Milk, Sugar, Spot, Bill.” Frankie would think they were stupid names, but Joe liked them. He squatted there and watched the puppies for the rest of the afternoon, and Mama could have dragged him away by the ear if she wanted, but she never did. The funny thing was that, when Ragnar and Papa came home to do the evening work, they left him alone, too. At suppertime, he went in the house. Nothing was said about the puppies, though Irma kept tsking over her fried chicken and wouldn’t look at him. Night came, and some Bible reading, and then bed. He knew that when he got up in the morning and went outside the puppies would be gone, and Pal, too. And they were. A little while later, Mama said that Granny Elizabeth had some kittens, and would he like one? There was a pretty calico with a mark like an exclamation point on her back. Joe said no.

  A little while after that, Papa sat down with him on the top step of the back porch. He cleared his throat about six times and then said, “Joey, I knew those puppies were there. I didn’t know you knew.”

  “I knew.” Then, “They were good puppies.”

  “Maybe. Hard to tell. The female might have been useful if she hadn’t had those pups.”

  “Mama hated her.”

  “Mama didn’t hate her. But Mama knows that a stray dog can have something, something bad. Distemper or milk fever, or even rabies or something like that. Even if you or Frankie or Lillian didn’t get something bad from the dog, the cows could, or the sheep or the hogs. I don’t know, Joey. I don’t know.”

  “Did you shoot her?”

  Papa didn’t answer.

  Joe got up and went into the house.

  1928

  AFTER HARVEST, Walter and Ragnar, with help from Rolf, Kurt, and John, put an addition on the west side of the house, a room for Frankie and Joey, so that Lillian could have their room. Walter couldn’t afford a two-story addition—if the boys wanted Rosanna or Walter, they had to go through the front room and call up the stairs—but Frank was eight by the tim
e it was finished and they moved in, and hadn’t John and Gus been sleeping downstairs, on the back sleeping porch, off the kitchen of Rosanna’s parents’ house, since Gus was five and John was seven?

  Walter put two windows in the south side of the addition, and a window on the west side, but no window into the north side. He also studded out a future opening so that one day he could install a door, but just the thought of Frankie with a door to call his own made him nervous. He had not spared the rod, and he had not, therefore, spoiled the child, but Frankie was the most determined child he had ever seen, far surpassing himself, Howard, Rolf, and everyone else on Rosanna’s side of the family. It was as if, when he saw certain things, his brain simply latched on to them and would not let them go. It wasn’t even contrariness. Half the time, Walter could say, “Frankie, don’t do that,” and Frankie wouldn’t do whatever it was, because he didn’t care about it. The other half of the time, it didn’t matter what Walter said, or even what Frankie said.

  There was a bucket of three-and-a-half-inch nails. Walter said, “Frankie, leave the nails alone.”

  “Okay, Papa.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  An hour later, the bucket of nails was turned over, and Frankie was sifting through them.

  “Frankie, I told you not to touch the nails.”

  “I wanted to find something.”

  “What?”

  “A longer nail.”

  “I told you not to touch the nails.”

  “But I wanted to find it.”

  “I forbade you.”

  “But I wanted to find it.”

  “Did you find it?”

  “No.”

  “Now I have to give you a whipping.” And then he took off his belt and grasped the buckle, and holding Frankie by the upper arm, had him take down his pants.

  “What did I tell you?” Whack.

  “Not to touch the nails.” Whack.

  “If I tell you not to touch the nails, you are not to touch the nails.” Whack.

  “I wanted to find it.” Whack.

  “What do I do if I tell you not to touch the nails and you touch the nails?” Whack.

  “Whip me.” Whack.

  “Why did you touch the nails?” Whack.

  “I wanted to find it.” Whack.

  “Are you going to do that again if I tell you not to?” Whack.

  “No, Papa.” Whack.

  But of course he did. Nails, after all, were not the same as crawling under the front porch, or climbing to the very top of the tree, or standing on the roof of the house, or dropping from the hay loft (where he was not supposed to be in the first place) onto Jake’s back. What would happen if they got electricity (that was the rumor lately, especially since they were so close to town; it was expensive but worth it, everyone said), Walter could only imagine. For Frankie, the wires would be a constant temptation just to try this with a screwdriver or that with a fork. It seemed as though Frankie had to be taught every single lesson in every variation. And, yes, Miss Jenkins, over at the school, said that Frankie was the smartest child she had ever seen in her life, and was on to division, not to mention training for the spelling bee at the end of the school year (“And I do not know who is going to give him any competition”). Certainly, he went to school willingly and even enthusiastically every morning, so that was something to be thankful for.

  Walter didn’t know what to make of his two boys. If you looked at it a certain way, then the one who needed the beatings to toughen him up, namely Joey, never did a thing to earn a beating, because he hadn’t the gumption, and the one who got the beatings learned nothing from them. Looking back on his own childhood, Walter saw a much more orderly system: His father or mother told them the rules. If they got out of line, even not intending to, they got a whipping to help them remember the next time, and they did remember the next time, and so they got fewer beatings, and so they became boys who could get the work done, and since there was plenty of it, it had to get done. That was life, as far as Walter was concerned—you surveyed the landscape and took note of what was needed, and then you did it, and the completed tasks piled up behind you like a kind of treasure, or at least evidence of virtue. What life was for Frankie he could not imagine.

  What life was for Lillian was color. As soon as the boys moved out of that bedroom, Rosanna drove into town and went to Dan Crest’s and bought a half-gallon of pink paint, and then she painted Lillian’s walls pink. When the paint was dry, she put up curtains she had made, pink and white stripes with white ruffles all around the edge. Then it turned out that Granny Mary and her sister had spent the whole winter braiding and sewing a rag rug—pink, white, and green, for Lillian’s room, an oval ten feet long—and his own mother had crocheted her a pink bedcover. Rosanna then framed profiles of people and animals she had cut out of paper—a farmer, his wife, a cow, a horse, a pig, a lamb, a rabbit, a squirrel, a fox, and a bird—and hung them on the walls. It took her two full days to fix up the room.

  For certain, it was now the nicest room in the house, nicer than the front room, even. But this was not for the neighbors. Walter could see that when he stopped at the top of the stairs on the morning the room was finished and watched Rosanna through the doorway, holding the seventeen-month-old Lillian on her hip and going from picture to picture, saying, “And on his farm, he had a what? A pig! Yes! What a good girl!”

  ROLAND FREDERICK GOT himself a tractor. It was a Farmall, gray, small, and nimble, with the two front wheels close together, kind of like a tricycle, and Walter could hear it when the wind was right. Two times in the same week, when he was out in the field behind the Osage-orange hedge, he could see it, too, making its compact and noisy way across Roland’s western forty acres. The next time he went to town, he got the story.

  The Farmall man, coming into Denby, looking around and seeing who had the biggest house and the nicest barn, had offered to let Roland try the tractor out for a week. He ended up leaving it there for ten days, and, not having heard from Roland, he took a driver out to get it and drive it into town. But Roland was nowhere to be found, and the tractor, sitting in front of the barn, couldn’t be turned on—no gasoline—so the Farmall man left Roland a note, saying he would be back the next day.

  Sure enough, that very afternoon, Walter saw and heard Roland—moving rather fast, Walter thought—finishing up his planting, and without any horses or help. It was a lot of noise, but Walter was impressed. His own farm was only half the size of Roland’s, and he planted much less corn, but he and Ragnar were not more than half done—the wires were up for the last part of the field, but he hadn’t drilled the corn yet. After watching Roland, or, rather, the tractor with the minuscule bent figure of Roland sitting in the seat, make its way across the horizon, he went into the barn.

  Of course Jake and Elsa were there, and of course they nickered to him (it was suppertime, at least as far as they were concerned). Elsa was fifteen this year and Jake was thirteen—grayed out now, almost pure white. His father had given them to him when he came back from the war, and they were six and four then, strong, handsome, darkly dappled, and well behaved, a prize team. That very year, Roland Frederick had had a team of young Shires drag his plow into a deep ditch. One of the horses had broken a leg, and the plow had been rendered unusable—Roland had had to borrow someone else’s to finish for the year. Walter and his father had considered themselves a little superior to Roland that time, because they had the sense to breed Percherons, and good lines, too. In fact, given Roland Frederick’s lack of feel for horses, it wasn’t a surprise that he was riding the first tractor Walter had ever seen. Walter went back outside and watched until he couldn’t make out anything more in the twilight, and then headed to the house for supper.

  He couldn’t imagine what a tractor might cost. A thousand dollars? If so, that was a year’s income for him, minus the $268 he had spent on putting up the new addition to the house. And even though his father was talking about getting
out of the horse-breeding business, Elsa wasn’t that old—he could either put her in foal to his father’s stallion now, and have himself a horse ready to work in four years, when Jake was seventeen and Elsa was nineteen—or he could buy one or two of his father’s colts and raise them. Just thinking about these ideas was reassuring. How long would a tractor last? No one knew. He washed his hands in the pail of water Rosanna had left by the dry sink on the back porch, and kicked off his boots, thinking with satisfaction that he had things figured out.

  At the supper table, over Rosanna’s meatloaf, he said to Frankie and Joey, “Did you boys see Mr. Frederick’s tractor?”

  “I heard it,” said Rosanna. “Noisy thing! Don’t know how he can stand sitting on the seat in the middle of all that racket.”

  “I saw it,” said Frankie.

  “How’d you manage that?” said Walter.

  Frankie shrugged.

  Up in the hayloft, thought Walter, but he didn’t press it. He said, “What did you think?”

  Joey said, “Is Mr. Frederick going to shoot his horses now?”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Rosanna.

  “Send ’em to the slaughter, more likely,” said Ragnar.

  “He’s only got two, and they’re old,” said Walter. “If he buys that tractor, he can turn them out. He’s got plenty of grass for two horses in among the cows.”

  “If we got a tractor, would you shoot Jake and Elsa?” said Joey.

  “No,” said Walter. “Anyway, I prefer horses. This is what horses do. You boys listening?”

  Joey and Frankie nodded.

  “Every spring, horses pull the plow and then the planter, and so they plant their own oats. In the summer, they pull the thresher. What’s the thresher, Frankie?”

  “The thresher takes the oats from the straw. This summer, I’m going to ride the thresher, and make the oats go into the wagon.”

  “That’s right. So, when the oats are threshed, then the horses are fixing their own supper, and when the oats and hay are hauled to the barn, the horses are putting their supper away. Then what happens?”