Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  Joey fell asleep, and Frank believed Papa.

  But even so, a few weeks later, he heard Papa say to Mama that he only got thirty bushels per acre this year, and he didn’t know what they were going to do.

  1932

  PAPA HAD five Southdown ewes now (“And I don’t know why I have those”), and then Grandpa Wilmer gave Frankie and Joe each a newborn lamb from his Cheviot flock for a 4-H project.

  Joe said, “Can I name him?”

  “I guess so, if it’s 4-H. Is Frankie naming his?”

  “Patsy,” said Joe.

  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.

  It was hard to carry the pot of water, but, slowly, she did. She went into the boys’ room and closed the door, and opened the window, just in case one of the boys or men walked by and she could call out to him.

  She laid one of the towels on the bed, and bunched as many pillows as she could up by the headboard. When she lifted her dress, she could see her belly tightening and shrinking. Seeing it was more frightening in a way than feeling it. She said, “Angel Mary Elizabeth, look down on your mama and your new brother or sister, and help us make it through this, Lord preserve us, oh, my God!” After that contraction, she crawled forward onto the bed and knelt with her face in her hands. The door did not open, the wind howled through the window, no rain, thank Jesus, and the cold was good, for now—it kept her from passing out. She keeled over onto her side and tried it—she called out, “Walter, Walter! Ahhhhh!” But the wind just rose with her voice. They were far away—she would be shouting to the west and the south, and the cornfield was to the east. She felt tears running down her cheeks, but, really, there was no time for that; the contractions were rhythmic, deep, and quick, and Jesus said to roll over onto her back and arrange herself sitting up on the towel, with the other towel in her hands, and she did. Her belly looked as though it was shivering and rippling, but, then, so did the curtains, and so did the ceiling, and she felt herself pushing—it only took one, and then she put her hand between her legs and felt the crown of the baby’s head and moist hair there, and she pushed again, and here was the whole head and face, and then the right shoulder and the left shoulder, and a boy slipped out onto the towel.

  The labor had been so quick, the pains so sharp and definite, that she wasn’t at all exhausted, and the sight of the baby’s face was so enlivening that Rosanna simply did what she had seen others do, whether with babies or lambs or kittens—she gently wiped the mouth and eyes and nose, and then she picked up the shoelace that she had dropped on the bed, and she tied it around the cord, about six inches down from where it attached to the baby, and then she cradled it—him—in her arms. He was big—seven pounds at least, and blond. Rosanna said, “Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry Augustus Langdon. Wait till they see you!”

  She was looking at Henry’s face. Henry had tried nursing and found it good—God be praised. He latched on like a trouper and got a good dose. Since he was big enough to be due after all, she must hav
e calculated wrong, and she was thinking back when Joey opened the door—sent in for a handkerchief, he was sneezing so much with the harvest.

  It was a blessing that it was Joey, given that he didn’t care about mess and liked baby animals—Frankie was more particular and was always complaining that Joey didn’t straighten up his things. Joey’s face lit up as if nothing strange had happened, and he said, “Mama! Is it a boy or a girl? I’ll run tell Papa.”

  “Yes,” said Rosanna, “tell him that Henry Augustus is here and wants to meet him.”

  Joey was out of the room and the house in about two seconds, and even over the wind, Rosanna could hear his shouts.

  Henry, Henry, Henry, he was Lillian all over, a blessed boy for sure; if they had been twins, they could not have been more similar. Rosanna stroked his crusted hair and stared at his blue eyes. His head wasn’t misshapen at all, and all his little parts were perfect. A prayer just came out as she touched each perfect part—the nose, the eyebrows, the fine threads of hair, the fingers, the toes, the two little heels, which struck her as especially strange and miraculous. Thank you. The silent ecstasy with which she gave thanks reminded her of all the thanks she had given over the years while half thinking of other things or, sometimes, even when she didn’t really feel thankful. The curve of his ear, which she ran her finger along.

  LILLIAN WAS WALKING with Minnie, as she did every day, back and forth to school, down the road toward their house, when Papa passed her in the car, and Granny Mary was in the passenger’s side. Lillian, who had her hand on the back of Minnie’s coat, which Minnie didn’t mind, looked up and said, “The baby is born.”