Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  But it was no secret to Walter as he drove the tractor from one end of the twenty-acre cornfield to the other that a tractor was a pact with the devil. How could it be that when they woke up one morning they found dust caked on the west side of the house, and the air so thick you had to wear a wet bandanna outside, keep all the windows shut, and wipe the inside sills anyway? Iowa had prided itself on not being Oklahoma, but how much of a sign did they need? Of course, he did not reveal these thoughts to Rosanna. So he finished planting in a quarter of the time it normally took—that meant that he was looking to plant more, he was looking across the street at other farmers’ fields, wondering how much they were planting, and how that was going to depress the price of corn if they were all using tractors to plant. There could be a lot of farmers with horses, but not so many farmers with tractors. That much was evident right off the bat. And yet. And yet, with the lengthening days, Frankie stayed longer at the high school, learning about girls, no doubt, but also about kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, and also about the French Revolution and the English Revolution and the American Revolution and the Russian Revolution and the Industrial Revolution and the revolution of the Earth around the Sun and all the other revolutions there had been and would soon be, all kinds of things that Walter didn’t know much about, and all of which would draw Frankie like a moth to the flame, because if there was anything Frankie loved, it was making chaos his business. A tractor was what he and Joey needed to get their work done, and so be it, and perhaps, as Rosanna said, the Lord would provide, as he had all along, and didn’t Walter know that he was just a worrier, always a worrier? So did driving a tractor make more worry, or less? Yes, the horses were not suffering, and you weren’t as close to the dry dirt, but you were driving into the unknown, and at a pretty good clip.

  WALTER HADN’T BEEN to the state fair since before Rosanna came along, and Rosanna had never been—the oat harvest was in August, and there was too much farm work to do. But with the tractor this year, and Walter harvesting the oats with Bob Marshall’s combine in three days, with help only from Frankie and Joey—well, there they were, with free days in August, and Joe got to take his ewe to the fair after all (Walter had been saying, “We’ll see,” all along, and this time they saw something good rather than something disappointing).

  It made Rosanna a little nervous. She was used to Usherton, and had been to Des Moines when she was a girl three or four times, but Frankie would be clamoring to go on all the most dangerous rides, and it would certainly be hot, and how would they get the ewe there? But it turned out to be easy after all. Roland Frederick was taking his truck—and he would take the six-month-old ewe and Joey. His brother, who lived in Cedar Rapids but had grown up on the family farm, had agreed to come for three days and feed both the Frederick animals and Walter’s, because Minnie and her mother were both entered in the pie contest—Lorene with peach and Minnie with blackberry. Lois would go in the car with Walter and Rosanna; Lillian promised to read the two children stories all the way down and all the way back. Frankie had fox money left from the winter (five skins, three dollars apiece), and he promised to give Joey a dollar for the midway. And so, said Walter, if they couldn’t afford it, they would worry about it later, because the chance had presented itself, and were they really not going to give Joey the opportunity to repeat his county-fair victory? They both knew that Joey needed all the encouragement he could get.

  The ewe, named Emily, was a Southdown. Joey had told Rosanna that he preferred the bare-faced Cheviots, “but they’re not in fashion, so you’re not going to win with a Cheviot. When I grow up, though, I’m going to have all Cheviots.” And all shorthorns for both milk and beef, and all Percherons and all Chanticleers. Rosanna hoped that what Walter sometimes said to her wasn’t true—that here Joey was, only twelve years old, and already the world had passed him by.

  Rosanna put on her most comfortable dress—the one with the short sleeves, and the little jacket in case it got chilly at night—her most comfortable shoes, and a simple hat she borrowed from Granny Mary, though that was a mistake: with that hat on, she looked like her mother, only not as good-natured. But as she got into the car, she put away the vanities of the world (which was easy enough as soon as she turned around and saw Lillian, sitting with books on her lap between Lois, a very plain girl, and Henry, beaming). Dan Crest had had a lovely length of sky-blue piqué that Rosanna had pieced out into a dress with a little jacket and then embroidered across the bodice. Lillian’s hair was to her waist now, and her braids were very shiny and neat. Rosanna decided that maybe Lois wasn’t so plain in and of herself, just in comparison to Lillian. She said, “Are you all right, Lois? I like your dress. It’s very pretty.” She smiled. Lois smiled.

  Since it was only fifty miles, and the road led straight there, cutting diagonally across sections, which was rare in Iowa, Walter was soon wondering why they didn’t do this more often. Dan Crest did, the Fredericks did, even his folks had been more than once; some people in their church went every year. Rosanna said, “We’ve got children and business at home, Walter.”

  “So does everyone. Maybe we’re just old stick-in-the-muds. We hardly even go to the movies.”

  “Most movies are sinful.”

  “Well, let’s try some more out for ourselves. Know thine enemy.”

  Rosanna made a face, but it was true that she stayed home much more than her mother, who visited someone or other once or twice a week. When her mother told her, just the other week, that she and her father had gone into Usherton and seen a Bette Davis movie called Of Human Bondage, Rosanna had been a little taken aback. Now she said, “You were talking to Mama.”

  “They see a few movies.”

  “I thought that one sounded horrid.”

  “But we didn’t even see It Happened One Night.”

  Rosanna said, “You know it would terrify me to leave Lillian and Henry with Frankie, my goodness, and Joey. No telling—”

  “Minnie would come over.”

  “I’ll just bet.” Rosanna knew perfectly well that Minnie had eyes for Frankie—it was embarrassing to look at her. Well, she was a plain one, too, though good in every way, and she would make some farmer a wonderful wife someday.

  JOE WAS AMAZED to discover that you didn’t have to stay with your ewe every minute. He had more or less expected to camp there, beside her stall, and stare at her for two days, but the 4-H had its own area, and everyone took turns—there was a schedule, and Joe’s turn was to be later that afternoon, right before supper, and again in the morning. Of course, you had to come and feed and groom your entry, but the 4-H knew that in this crowd a little peace and quiet off to one side, with not so many people coming and going, was actually less irritating to the animals. Emily was a quiet one, easygoing. Joe put her in her pen, which was clean, and gave her some hay; while he was doing this, Frankie came into the area and looked around for him. Frankie had already seen the midway, and was eager to get over there. He held out his hand and said, “I told Mama I would give you a dollar, but that won’t be enough.” There were two dollars in his hand. “Just don’t pester me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t follow me around, and don’t call out to me and don’t—oh, I don’t know—whatever you see, don’t tell Mama.”

  Joe said, “Do I ever?”

  “You don’t dare.”

  Joe shrugged.

  “Anyway, here.” He thrust the money into Joe’s pocket and turned away. Joe actually did want to follow him, but he made himself wait, watching Emily, while Frankie loped out of the area and disappeared into the crowd.

  “That your ewe?”

  Joe looked around. The girl was blonde. She was smiling, and she had a nice sweater on, cream-colored.

  “I have a Southdown, too. Yours is nice. I like the way her hind legs are set. She’s well proportioned.”

  “Thanks,” said Joe, almost as an afterthought. “She won the class at our county fair.” He dug his fing
ernail into the fence rail. “ ’Course, there were only four in the class.” He cleared his throat. He knew he was supposed to ask something, then remembered. “Where’s yours?”

  The girl pointed to a pen across the aisle. “Her name is Poker.”

  “Mine’s name is Emily.”

  “That’s funny. My name is Emily.”

  Joe felt himself turn red.

  “The reason is that my mother had a dog named Emily when she was a girl, and then a horse named Emily, and then me. She says there’s no reason not to use a good name as many times as you can.”

  Joe said, “Your mother sounds like fun.”

  “She is.”

  Joe fingered the dollar bills in his pocket and said, “Want to get a root beer?”

  Emily nodded. She said, “I bet you’re going to win, with that ewe.”

  IT WAS a cold night, cold enough for a coat, but Frank hadn’t brought one. The good thing about it was that he was out on the midway by himself—Papa and Mama had taken Joe and the others back to the room they’d gotten at a boardinghouse, and the Fredericks had left hours ago to have supper with some cousins in Norwalk. There would be hell to pay in the morning—or even in a couple of hours, when Frank tried to sneak into the room without waking anyone up. He had run off just at the very moment when Mama put her hands over her shoulders and shivered, just before she said, “Ah! Well, I guess—” The end of that was going to be leaving the fair, and, sure enough, Frank had watched them from behind the funnel-cake frying stand. They gathered up the family, looked around in vain for him, then gave up and left. If it weren’t so cold, it would have taken longer, so that was something to be thankful for.

  You couldn’t say that the midway was deserted, but in Iowa in August, you expected it to be seventy-five, so you expected to run from ride to ride and be refreshed as each one spun you around, like the Tilt-A-Whirl, or up and down, but it was freezing at the top of the Ferris wheel, with the wind from the west, so Frank was finished with the rides. In an hour, the exhibits would close, too, and Frank had already seen most of them—the pumpkin that was as big as a hog, the rearing horse carved out of butter, the man with the beard he wrapped around his waist, the man-woman—“How Can You Tell? You Can’t!”—and the woman with the fingernails “A Foot Long!” He had watched Joe come third in the ewes and Minnie come second in the 4-H pies (to a mixed apple-blackberry that looked pretty good). He had won Lillian a teddy bear playing Skee-Ball, and impressed Papa (and the man in the booth) by shooting ten duck-targets in a row, until the man said he would pay Frank a dollar to go away, and he did, and Walter laughed for five minutes and said he was going to frame the dollar. They had eaten all kinds of things that made Mama blanch—not only funnel cakes, but candy cotton and hot dogs, and caramel corn and taffy. He had also had plenty of watermelon, and in no order—candy first, meat second, fruit after that. Mama kept her mouth shut, except to say, “Well, pray the Lord you don’t get sick.” He wasn’t hungry, that was for sure.

  The girls were just inside the Hall of Machines, huddling together, getting out of the breeze and, Frank saw at the last minute, sharing a cigarette. When they noticed him, Frank smiled. He always smiled at girls. He was taller than both of them, and he guessed that they thought he was pretty old, because they looked at him not like he was a kid. He walked past them, toward the John Deere tractor with some kind of cultivator hitched to it. Deeres were always green, but under the electric lights, this tractor was eye-poppingly green. Frank put his hands in his pockets and stood back from a couple of farmers in overalls who were inspecting it. One said, “I like a Case, myself.” Frank did not want to hear this perennial discussion, so he stepped back, and right on the foot of one of the girls. She gave a little scream.

  Frank turned around, not taking his hands out of his pockets, and said, “Hey. Sorry. Didn’t realize you were standing there.” He moved away.

  The next exhibit was of a tractor with its own plow, which could lift up at the end of a row. It was a machine that Frank would never purchase, but he gazed at it, cocking his hip to one side, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girls move toward the seeders. They stood there for a few moments, then went to the doorway, where they peeked out and drew back in. Frank turned on his heel and did something that he knew Granny Mary would call “sashaying out the door.” He went on down past the candy-cotton man and the double Ferris wheel. He glanced around. The girls were nowhere to be seen. But the wind was making his nose run, so that was when he made his big mistake—he wiped his nose on his sleeve, just like a rube would do, and right then, one of the girls, the taller one, with black hair, came around a tree, out of the darkness, and startled him. She was smoothing her dress over her hips. She stopped in front of him and said, “Staring at something?”

  “What would I be staring at?”

  “Well, I was taking a piss behind that tree, didn’t you know that?”

  “Nope. Didn’t see you.” And then he said, “Wish I did.” She came up about to his eyebrows, he thought. And she was almost pretty. Eighteen for sure.

  “You’re a smart kid,” she said.

  “Who says I’m a kid?”

  She laughed and pushed around him, then headed down the midway. He watched her, but she didn’t look back. Now he sauntered along, but in two days, he had had a taste of everything, and he had gobbled it all down so fast that it did make him a little sick. At the hotdog stand, he asked the guy frying the hot dogs if he knew what time it was. It was ten-forty-five. Frank yawned.

  A few minutes later, he was crossing the campground where all the cars were parked and the tents were set up. The boardinghouse where Mama and Papa were certainly seething with anger was to the left of where the cars were, and he was making his way through all the vehicles when that girl stepped out from behind something black, maybe a Ford. She said, “Oh, there you are.”

  Frank thought that was a good line. He stopped and tried out one of his slow smiles. The girl said, “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “Somewhere. Not here.”

  “Are you from around here?”

  “We drove over from Muscatine.”

  “That’s way east.”

  “Way east. If you’re cold, you can get in our car.”

  Frank said, “Okay.”

  When they were in the car, which was actually a Dodge, she said, “So—how old are you?”

  “Guess.”

  “Seventeen?”

  “My birthday is New Year’s Day.” He didn’t mention that it would be his fifteenth birthday. “How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” Her mouth made a skeptical “o.”

  The car was not warm, but it was out of the breeze, and with the windows up, he could smell her—a combination of flowers, tobacco smoke, and sweat that was strange. She was sitting by the window. She said, “What’s your name?”

  Frank said, “Joe. Joe Vogel. How about you?”

  “Libby Holman.”

  He said, “That’s a funny name.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  She stretched her leg toward him, heel first, and said, “Look. I got a run.” She took his hand and put the tips of his fingers on the stocking. He didn’t know what a run was, and in the dark, he couldn’t see anything. He said, “Maybe.”

  She said, “You’re cute.”

  “My mom says that.”

  “How about the girls?”

  He shrugged, then cocked his head. “I heard they say that.”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me. I can’t look at myself.”

  “Put your head forward, so I can see you a little in the light.”

  He leaned forward.

  She put his hand back on her leg, and then kissed him, right on the lips. He reciprocated, opening his own lips just a little bit. He slid his hand up her leg, and her leg relaxed. He said, “
Where’s your friend?”

  “Somewhere.” And then she rearranged herself for another kiss. Her jacket and her blouse were open. Her breast was the hottest thing he had ever felt, he thought. She lay back.

  In the end, all he did was touch her and look at her. When he came, his thing was pressed against the smoothness of her skirt, and she sat up suddenly and said, “Ugh.” Then she pushed him away and lit a cigarette, but she didn’t button her blouse or pull down her skirt. She offered him a drag. She said, “How old are you really? Sixteen?”

  Frank said, “Maybe.”

  That got a smile.

  THE FUNNY PART, Frank thought on the way home the next day, was listening to Mama and Papa talk about Joey, who was riding with the Fredericks and the ewe. Papa said, “That girl Emily was a very nice girl.”

  “A little forward, if you ask me.”

  “Nice animal she had, too.”

  “I guess she’s been in 4-H for years. Her mother said they come every year, and her brother always brought calves. Herefords.”

  “That right,” said Papa.

  Frank, of course, was in big trouble, for coming in late, lying, and running off. Mama didn’t know what she was going to do with him. He was sitting in the back seat, and Lillian had fallen against him, sound asleep. Henry was up front, in Mama’s lap, and Lois had gone in the truck.

  Mama said, “I think Joey bought her about five root beers. I don’t know why they weren’t belching the whole time. I guess they went on the Ferris wheel, too. What was her last name?”

  “Stanton. Old man’s got two hundred acres by Lone Tree, south of Iowa City there. He said he’s looking at less than thirty bushels an acre this year. But I guess they’ve had more rain than we have.”

  Mama said, “Well, if she kissed him …”

  Papa lowered his voice. “Maybe it went the other direction. Maybe he kissed her.”