If It Rains

by Jennifer L. Wright

  It was now or never. I reached the door within seconds. The knob slipped in my sweaty hands, slowing me for just a moment.

  But a moment was all Henry needed. He grabbed me from behind and threw me to the floor. I thrashed beneath him, but he settled his weight on my legs, silencing me. He pinned my arms easily with one hand, slapping me across the face with his other.

  I cried out, feeling blood trickle from my nose.

  He raised his hand to strike me again.

  “I’m pregnant!” I screamed.

  He grabbed my hair, pulling my face nearer to his. “What?”

  “I’m pregnant!” Tears rolled down my face. “I’m pregnant!”

  His fingers unfurled from my hair, sending my head crashing to the floor. He stared at me, chest heaving. For a moment, I feared he didn’t believe me. He remained on top of me, his weight crushing me, his eyes revealing the struggle within. Finally he rose, his hands careful not to touch even the folds of my dress. He did not help me up. Instead, he walked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

  In the silence after his departure, I lay on the floor, hands across my face, and sobbed, tasting blood as it mixed with tears on my lips.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  KATHRYN

  “You want some?”

  The growing darkness made it hard to see what Bert was offering, but I knew the smell immediately. Bread. And cheese. The man had cheese. What kind of man hopped train cars but could afford cheese? And why hadn’t he offered that before those revolting sardines?

  I wanted that cheese more than anything in the world. But even my stomach wasn’t enough to make me forgive him. “Don’t be acting like you care,” I spat. “You left me to the bulls, you lily-livered rat.”

  He leaned back, stuffing a wad of bread into his big mouth. “I pulled you up.”

  “You pulled your bag up.”

  “Oh, like you’re so high-and-mighty,” he huffed, his fingers glistening with spit. “You’re the one who almost got us caught in the first place, singing your little song. What in the world were you thinking?”

  I lifted my chin and stuck my hands under my armpits.

  He rolled his eyes but tossed a chunk of cheese and a lump of bread in my direction.

  I snatched both before they could roll out of the car and turned my back. I would eat because it was stupid to waste food. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me do it.

  “You’re horrible, you know?”

  “Yeah, well, your pants are still wet.”

  That shut him up for a little while.

  I moved closer to the open door, allowing the last of the fading daylight to wash over me. The sky was orange with building clouds, the air damp on my skin. Rain was coming. Even in the dim light, I could see the green. They’d obviously had plenty of it. So Frank Fleming was wrong—the drought wasn’t everywhere. But even that realization brought me no relief.

  Bert settled across the doorway from me. I wished he wouldn’t.

  “So what’s in Indianapolis for you?”

  “Don’t talk to me.” Not talking to him made it easier to stay mad at him. To pretend that my foot hadn’t slipped and he hadn’t caught me. That he hadn’t stopped me from jumping up from the roof before the danger passed. It was easier that way. Easier to just be mad at him for leaving me in the first place, for making me jump when I knew darn well I couldn’t do it, for forcing me to realize I could.

  He rolled his massive shoulders, eyes jerking at the corners, and turned to watch the sunset. “Well, for what it’s worth, I want to say thank you for saving my bag. Because unlike you, I was taught some manners.”

  I scowled. “I have manners.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And I had to save your stupid bag. You were carrying on so much, you were gonna get us both caught. What’s so important about that stupid bag anyway?”

  The bag had not left his side since the incident on the train roof. Even now, it sat in his lap, its strap coiled around his neck like a snake. Bert hesitated a minute before yanking open the silver zipper, pulling a small object from its depths. “This,” he said, brushing dust from its side, “is what was so important.”

  A camera. Black and silver and beautiful, with knobs and buttons everywhere. I’d never seen one up close before. I leaned in and then back, arms across my chest, pretending to be unimpressed. “Oh.”

  “I’m a photographer for the Farm Security Administration. Do you know what that is?”

  I nodded, even though I didn’t.

  “I take pictures. Or rather, I’m supposed to take pictures. Of the dusters and the people. Show everyone how the government is fixing it.” There was an edge to his voice. He reached into the bag and pulled out a few photographs, holding them out to me. The wind whipped at their corners. They were going to blow away. And he didn’t seem to care.

  I grabbed them, holding them tightly with clammy fingers, and scooted away from the door. It was darker back here, but I didn’t need the light to know what the pictures showed. People with masks and flashlights. Cars dodging drifts in a town square. Stores and homes boarded up, barely visible beneath piles of dust. A road empty as a black blizzard rose into the sky like a monster. And a herd of cattle, dead, rotting, reduced to bones from starvation.

  They were pictures of home. Of Oklahoma. Or somewhere very close to it. The new Oklahoma, the one we’d all created. Things had been bad in Boise City. I’d seen it every single day with my own eyes. I’d lived it. But somehow seeing it here in black-and-white made it much, much worse.

  I thrust them back toward him, an ache spreading from my chest.

  “I wasn’t supposed to be taking these pictures. I was supposed to be showing the good stuff. ‘Look how we’re helping’ kind of thing. Make people feel good about their tax dollars at work.” He shoved the photos back in his bag with quivering fingers. “But there wasn’t any good stuff to be found. Those folks in Washington, they don’t have any idea how bad it is. They think it can all be fixed by throwing a little green that way. That it has been fixed.” He snorted. “There’s no amount of money in the world that can save the Plains. It’s over. No matter what Roosevelt thinks.”

  He rubbed his temples, causing the hair on his cheeks to move up and down. “I was supposed to be back two weeks ago. But I can’t turn these in. FSA’d be in a whole heap of trouble, starting with me. No, no. I can’t do that.” He shook his head, his long hair whipping in the wind. “I gotta come up with a plan first. Find a new job or take some new pics. But in this economy? Not likely. Maybe . . .”

  But I wasn’t listening. Blood pounded in my ears. The train car seemed to tilt. “What did you say?”

  “Huh?” Bert’s hands were in the air, his mouth frozen in midsentence.

  “What did you say? About the Plains?”

  He shrugged. “You saw the pictures. What’s money gonna do against Mother Nature? The Plains are a lost cause. Dead.”

  Black spots floated in front of my eyes. Heat rushed up my spine. It was a lie. A yellow-bellied lie from a twitching Nancy scared of his own pictures.

  I clenched my hands at my sides, prepared to swing, only to find my arms wouldn’t work. Instead, all that rage—at Frank, at Bert, at Helen, at God—flowed from my eyes, pouring down as hot, angry tears.

  “Kathryn, whoa. What—?”

  “What about us?” The words were soft, muted by my tears and drowned by the rattle of the rushing train. And yet they echoed into the night. “Where are we supposed to go?”

  “Kathryn—”

  “What about me?” I said, louder. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Everything I’d seen, everything I’d done. I’d thought fixing myself would help. Then the rains would come and make things right. But the truth was bigger than my foot. Bigger than the drought, bigger than dust. The truth was right here. In this train car, in Bert’s words, in his stupid, heartbreaking pictures. The truth was in the ruin, in the failure, in th
e abandonment I could never shake.

  “Kathryn.”

  “No.” I shook my head. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. My questions were not his to answer. I’d come so far, endured so much, and this man—this spineless, self-centered, pants-peeing man—would not be the one to tell me it was over. “You’re just gonna run, let us all waste away because you’re worried about what might happen to you? If you show some stupid pictures? But what about me?”

  Bert shifted, tucking one leg under the other. “Now hold on just a minute. I didn’t make the dusters.”

  My throat burned as misery morphed into full-blown fury. “No. Now you listen to me! Lots of folks are running scared of things they have every right to be scared of. But you ain’t never been crippled. Ain’t never been suffocated in a duster. Never gone hungry or watched people die from the ground you walk on. You ain’t got any right to be scared too! You ain’t got any right to say quit!”

  Bert opened his mouth and then closed it again, face trembling beneath all that stupid red hair. Then he slumped back, his chin resting on his chest.

  I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “You’re nothing but a fat, selfish coward.”

  “You’re an Okie, aren’t you?”

  “What?”

  A glance. His back straightened. “You said us. ‘What about us?’ You’re one of them. An Okie.”

  That word. Spoken just like the outsider he was. “What’s it to you?”

  “Are you fleeing the drought?”

  Fleeing. That word was worse than Okie. It hit me like a punch in the gut. “I ain’t fleeing nothing.”

  He clicked his tongue and wagged one thick finger. “I shoulda known. A girl your age hopping a train by herself. You aren’t normal stock. I’ve been around enough Okies to know ’em when I see ’em. Either spitting fire as they march away with their tails tucked or else wasting taxpayer money, clinging to a land not fit to be clung to. Stubbornest darn people I ever met.” The corners of his mouth curled slightly.

  I glowered at him and turned my back, staring out the open door.

  The last of the sun had disappeared behind the hills, and pinpricks of light were starting to peek out from the purple sky. Stars. They’d been there every night of my journey, and yet somehow I hadn’t noticed them. But tonight they were brighter than ever. Breaking through the night sky, demanding to be seen. As if Pa himself were right there with me. My thoughts swirled to the last night we’d spent together before we’d been separated. To his words and my own, the ignorance and idiocy of my misdirected anger. My naiveté about a world he’d tried to protect me from, the world that had already broken him.

  Despite everything, he’d tried to be a star . . . for me. And I’d pushed him away.

  Every ounce of fight leeched from me like water from an Oklahoma field. I suddenly felt very, very small again.

  “My pa and I got separated in a duster.”

  I said it to the sky, but it was Bert who answered. “So you are an Okie.”

  “I’ve been trying to catch up ever since.” It was both an answer to his question and not. I pulled at a thread on my dress and watched as a star shot across the sky, flaring and fading within seconds. “The night before I got lost, he told me a story. He said the stars make no noise, but you still notice ’em, right? You notice ’em because they shine out in the blackness around ’em.”

  Bert glanced out the open door, fiddling with the zipper on his camera bag.

  “You folks out east, you think it’s so easy just to quit. To walk away. But you can’t see the stars because you ain’t never seen the dark.” I leaned against the wall and scratched at a scab on my knee. “This drought, this depression . . . we’re in the blackness. We can either shine in the dark or be overcome by it. Sometimes shining means staying. Other times it means going. But it never means to quit.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bert’s head cock to one side, trying to meet my gaze. I stared straight ahead.

  “My pa done made the hard choice to leave. For Helen, for me.” I choked on the words. “But it was the right choice for now. The brave choice. It was his way of not quitting.” I gestured to Bert’s bag, swallowing the lump in my throat. “And those people in your pictures? They’re making the hard choice to stay.”

  I finally met Bert’s stare. “Don’t you see? It ain’t stubbornness. It’s courage. They’re the stars in the night. Folks like you—” and like me—“are just too stupid to understand it.”

  I didn’t want to be sitting here with him. I wanted more than anything to be with my pa. To tell him I was sorry. To tell him I understood. To tell him that I wanted to be a star, that I wanted to be brave. To thank him for being a star, even when my own blackness was trying to swallow him. “We just have to keep going,” I said quietly. “No matter what.”

  Bert said nothing for several minutes, the steady clack of the rails the only sound in the night. “I reckon we’ll be in Indiana by tomorrow afternoon,” he said finally. “We better get some rest.”

  Rest. As if rest would ever come. For me, for any of the Okies. But for now, I’d give him sleep. Because tomorrow I’d be in Indianapolis. Tomorrow I’d see Pa. And tomorrow I’d finally get a chance to meet the doctor, fix my foot, and keep going, no matter what men like Bert said to do.

  Indianapolis was a lot like Kansas City. Same big buildings. Same crowds of people. Only the smell was different. Instead of fish, it smelled like manure.

  The train slowed as it entered the outskirts of the city, though not enough to make jumping seem like a good idea. Bert leapt first, rolling the way he’d told me to do, and then scrambling to his feet and jogging beside the car. “Jump, Kathryn!” he panted. “You can do it!”

  I thought I’d be afraid. Maybe I should have been. The ground blurred and the car wobbled, making it impossible to steady my feet. But I’d come this far. There was no way I was slowing down—or getting caught by a train bull—now. I closed my eyes and ran, feeling the ground give way under my shoes. For three glorious seconds, I was flying. And then Bert’s massive hands were on my arms and a sharp pain shot through my leg as I slid into gravel. My eyes fluttered open just in time to see the last of the train cars rumble past.

  “Alright?”

  I sat up, examining a fresh gash on my leg. My butt felt like I’d been kicked by ten horses at once. But nothing was broken. And there were no train bulls in sight. “Yep.”

  He slung his bag around his neck, eyes skyward, stuffing his fingers into his pockets. His mouth was twitching again.

  I craned my neck, trying to figure out what he was looking at. Weren’t nothing but a few trees and a row of scraggly houses. Abandoned, by the look of them. But then I realized it wasn’t what he was looking at. It was what he was trying to avoid looking at. Me.

  Of course. Weren’t like we were friends. Weren’t like I even wanted to be. I straightened my back, wincing at fresh bruises, and turned on my good heel. “Oh. Well, be seeing you. Or not.”

  “Where you going?”

  The tall buildings were straight east. Less than a mile by the looks of it. If Kansas City taught me anything, it’s that people in cities were always near the tallest buildings. “I’m going to find my pa. I done told you that.”

  “By yourself?”

  I spun around, surprised, then irritated. “Now you want to pretend you care about me? Didn’t think twice about leaving me for the train bulls, but you’re worried about what a couple big buildings will do?”

  Bert’s mouth jerked to the side. “It’s not the buildings I’m worried about. The city is no place for a little girl on her own.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “Good thing I ain’t a little girl, then. I’m an Okie.”

  “Kathryn.”

  I didn’t wait to hear what he had to say. I spun back around and marched in the direction of the buildings. My foot ached within minutes. But I wouldn’t let myself limp. Not when I was this close. And not when that fool photographer kept f
ollowing me.

  His footsteps echoed, even as the noise increased and the traffic became thick. I wove through the crowd as best I could despite the throbbing, trying to lose him. He didn’t take the hint.

  Frustrated, I stopped and jabbed one finger into his barrel chest. It hurt. “Why are you following me?”

  He scratched at his beard, panting. “I’m not. I’m going this way, too.”

  So he was a coward and a liar. I let out a grunt and kept walking.

  A single beat and his heavy breathing was behind me once more.

  We pushed further into the city. Across a wide boulevard, the buildings seemed to sprout up suddenly, brick and concrete behemoths where before there had only been squat houses. Just like in Kansas City, hundreds of people milled beneath them, walking and chatting, going about their business as if nothing loomed over them but sky.

  I strode toward one of them, trying not to drag my aching foot. “Excuse me, sir?” An elderly man. Gray suit, black cane, white mustache. Old. Safe. Surely he’d help. “I was wondering if I could bother you for—”

  The man recoiled. “I don’t have any spare change!” he snapped.

  I frowned. “I’m not asking for money. I’m wondering if—”

  But he had already scurried away, glancing over his shoulder as if I’d slither up behind him and bite.

  My face felt hot, my chest tight. And there was Bert, his back against the side of a building, pretending not to be watching.

  I squared my shoulders and looked away. Up ahead was a woman dressed in blue, a polka-dot hat on her head. But not just any woman, I realized as she turned to the side. A woman with a baby buggy. A mother! I limped toward her. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  The buggy squeaking with the effort, the woman quickened her pace.

  Thinking she couldn’t hear me, I tried to do the same. “Ma’am!”

  She didn’t even look in my direction. She just kept walking—no, running—toward wherever it was she was going. Toward anywhere away from me.

  I stopped, breathing hard. I couldn’t catch up. My foot seized, and I steadied myself against the nearest lamppost. Behind me, warm light spilled from a window. Through it, I could see baskets of biscuits, mounds of rolls, and lines of colorful iced pastries. A bakery.