Seeing America

by Nancy Crocker

  Henry shut the door and turned on me. “I can’t keep straight which is which. Can you?”

  I smiled. “Well, when they’re walking, Amos is the one with the bad hip.”

  “And when they’re not?”

  “Orville’s got one freckle up on his right temple that’s a little bit bigger and darker than the rest.” The Heverson twins had grown out of the hair they wore in the portraits on the wall and, these days, wore freckles on their heads.

  Henry frowned. “What if they’ve got their caps on and they’re not walkin’ anywhere?”

  “Then all bets are off.” I shrugged. “But they don’t seem too concerned about it.”

  Paul spoke up. “You can’t tell them apart by their voices?”

  Henry and I exchanged a blank look.

  The next morning, I woke up to the smell of bacon and heard one brother and then both of them singing. I would come to learn it was a morning ritual.

  After breakfast, we left Paul on his own in the house while Henry and I traipsed out to the barn after the Heversons and helped them with what little chores there were to be done while the fields were too wet to work.

  By the time we got back, Paul had found their mother’s old upright piano in the parlor and was almost done tuning it. He’d never said he could play, but man alive. As soon as he had all the strings where he wanted them, he sat down and played some stuff that was fancier than anything I’d ever heard. Songs that had lots of notes and no words at all.

  It didn’t take long before Henry was fidgeting.

  I saw the Heversons exchange a look before Amos spoke up. “That’s just wonderful, Paul. Just beautiful. But how about we save some for later? From the looks of things outside, you’re going to be with us a while.”

  He was right. We would come to spend three more nights there before the roads were dry enough for us to move on.

  I had never thought of a house as being happy before, but theirs was. In all our time there, I never heard a cross word spoken.

  We played whist and gin rummy. We all sang songs while Paul played the piano for us. The brothers cooked, and we three visitors started tugging at the waistlines of our pants, filling out like bears before winter.

  But mainly, we kept company. We told the brothers how we came to drive up their lane and everything that had happened to us up until then. “Oh!” they said. “Oh my goodness.”

  They weren’t nearly as keen to talk about themselves as they were to hear new stories, but we did learn they’d lived on this farm their whole lives.

  “Neither of you ever married?” I asked.

  They seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “Why would we?” one of them asked.

  Well, okay, then.

  I’d been halfway convinced, up to that point, that Henry was just plain mean from the inside out. But he minded his manners with the Heversons almost as nice as Paul and me. I think what it was, the brothers just expected everyone they met to act kindly, and not even Henry could bring himself to disappoint them.

  He’d always seemed like he was built out of wires and springs, but at the Heversons’, he started to move more like a lazy cat. Every time one of the twins patted him on the shoulder or draped an arm around him, he practically purred. He walked around with a smile even when no one had made a joke.

  Maybe he’d never been shown that much kindheartedness. Whatever the case, he soaked it up like a sponge.

  Wednesday evening during supper, Amos asked if we’d written home since we’d been gone. We admitted we hadn’t, and he exclaimed, “Why, it’s been”—he counted off five fingers on one hand, and his brother took up and counted off three on his—“eight days. And you haven’t sent word that you’re okay?”

  If I’d been a dog, my tail would’ve been dragging.

  They got up and bustled around the kitchen. “I’ve got some lined paper and some envelopes here somewhere.”

  “Do we still have any stamps?”

  “No, but we need to get some next time one of us goes to town anyway.”

  “Where did all the pencils go?”

  Once they’d found everything, they doled out the supplies, sat down across the kitchen table from us, and smiled, expectant-like.

  Paul spoke up. “Do you have a ruler I could use as a paper guide?”

  The Heversons went wide-eyed. “Why, yes!” Orville said. He rummaged through a drawer and came up with one.

  They were so interested in watching Paul write that it took a while for either of them to notice Henry sitting there staring at the blank page in front of him. His pencil laid on the table beside it.

  “Can’t think of anything?” Orville asked Henry. His voice was gentle.

  “Got nobody.” It sounded like Henry gargled the words.

  I could hear a loose shingle out on the barn clapping in the wind. It was that quiet. I tried to step in with, “But there’s Ellen—”

  “She quit me too.” Barely a whisper.

  After what seemed like a year, Orville said, “Henry, come down to the root cellar with me, would you? I need you to hold the lantern while I look for a quart of cherries. I do believe I’ve got a taste for pie.”

  Paul and I finished our letters and addressed the envelopes while they were gone. All I wrote was Dear Mom and Dad, I just wanted to let you know I’m doing fine. Tell Catherine— I debated. I love her? Hello? Not to take any wooden nickels? I settled for I miss her.

  I sneaked a look at Paul’s envelope while he was addressing it. He had written to Sam. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  When we heard boots on the steps, the envelopes were whisked away from us and put in the secretary by the kitchen door. And then everybody was in the kitchen again, and the Heversons were arguing in their good-natured way over which one of them made the best piecrust.

  They were a marvel.

  Thursday, we knew the roads would be dry enough for us to leave the next day if it didn’t rain again. So that afternoon, we knuckled down and cleaned up the Ford and checked out all its parts. We added some oil to the crankcase and took a gallon of gasoline the brothers offered. Everything else seemed sound, once we got the mud off.

  While we were visiting after supper that evening, Paul asked the Heversons how they got their news, and it startled me—theirs was such a closed-off little world, it had been some time since I’d thought about anything that laid beyond it except the folks in Wakenda. Like those were the only two spots on the globe.

  Amos said, “Why, we take turns goin’ into town for supplies,” and they laughed like it was their favorite joke.

  Paul said, “But seriously. Do you keep up with what’s going on in the world?”

  The brothers got as serious as I’d ever seen them, and Amos said, “No. We do not,” while Orville shook his head.

  Henry said, “Paul likes to read the newspaper.”

  That sat them up straight.

  “I mean, he has somebody read it to him, but he’s like a encyclopedia. Go ahead. Ask him somethin’.” He might as well have been bragging about a pet that did tricks.

  The brothers studied their hands a while before Orville said, “What are you interested in, Paul?”

  “Oh, everything. Politics, world news, sports. I’ve really tried to follow the championship fight coming up. A study in human nature, to say the least.”

  “Fight?” The Heversons looked upset.

  “Well, yeah, surely you know about that,” Henry said. Like he hadn’t first heard of it in Kansas City the week before. “The one with Jim Jeffries and that Jack Johnson.”

  Amos said, “Why are they fighting?”

  Henry guffawed. “Why, to settle the championship! To prove once and for all who’s the best—that the whites is over the coloreds, always have been and always will be.”

  Orville said, “Why?” His expression reminded me of my little sister, Catherine, untarnished by sin from within or without.

  “Well, b-because—” Henry sputtered. He looked ba
ck and forth between them. “We have to . . . We can’t just . . .” He gave up, his mouth still hanging open.

  Every time I looked at him the rest of the evening, he seemed troubled.

  Orville went on like they’d just gotten done talking about the weather. He asked about the route we were taking to Yellowstone, and I brought out our map. The brothers huddled over it and hmmmed and decided we’d gotten off course by a few miles. They told us how to get back to the road that ran parallel along the Central Pacific rail line.

  “That’s where you want to stay,” Amos told us. “If you have trouble along there, at least you know somebody will be along sooner or later.”

  Of course. I should have kept an eye on the train tracks all along.

  But then we would never have found the Heversons. And three days with them was worth running from ten double-barrels.

  Friday morning, we ate all the breakfast we could hold, and the brothers packed a big parcel of provisions for the road. After we had tucked it in with bedrolls all around, there was nothing left to do but say good-bye.

  It wasn’t easy for any of us, but it about half killed Henry. I couldn’t imagine what three days with the Heversons had meant to him. He pulled the brothers together in a fierce hug, and when they wrapped their short bear arms around him, I had to look away.

  When Henry let loose, Orville asked to see my map again. He unfolded it and pointed to the red X he’d made. “We’re right there, son. Right there. Ten days or ten years, the door’s always open as long as we’re alive.”

  And that’s how we left.

  CHAPTER SIX

  For the first couple hours back on the road, we might have been the lead carriage in a funeral procession. I don’t know about the other two, but I had this deep-pitted feeling of dread, like we’d been swinging in a big, safe hammock at the Heversons’ and now we were naked to the world for it to do with us what it would. I drove first and hightailed it to the crossroads where a turn toward the south would lead us to the railroad line. I hoped a better sense of well-being was waiting for me there.

  We got to our intended road just as a train was steaming past, and that did lighten the air a little. We weren’t completely alone for the buzzards to circle over.

  “Gentlemen, I’m going to predict we make Junction City by noon,” I said.

  There was no answer except Henry sniffling and coughing to clear his throat.

  I thought, Damn, we should leave him with the Heversons on the way back, if he’s taking it that hard.

  We did make Junction City before dinnertime, but by then it was clear Henry’s problems weren’t sentimental. He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered, and when I put a palm to his forehead, it was on fire.

  I found a hotel near the middle of town and went in. The man behind the desk told me noon was a mighty strange time to be finding a room for the night. I was beginning to think some older folks tend to distrust bucks our age. I explained to him about Henry being sick.

  He went out front with his hands on his hips. Henry was laying across the backseat and breathing mighty hard for a corpse. That’s how bad he looked.

  The hotel owner was already backing through the door. “I don’t need no typhoid in my hotel. No, sir, boys. You just move on.”

  I said, “Oh, but wait—”

  “Typhoid!” Paul said.

  I tried to take things down a notch. “But, sir, we’re hundreds of miles from home and have to stay somewhere. And there’s no reason to think he’s got the typhoid.”

  “No reason to think he’s not.” He started to close the door.

  I jammed my foot in the opening. “Is there a doctor in town?”

  “Two blocks that way.” He tilted his head.

  I stepped out to look.

  He slammed the door.

  Paul and I hauled Henry into Dr. Osgood’s storefront with his feet barely touching the ground.

  The doctor stuck his head out of a back room. “Be right with you.”

  He came out in a minute, wiping his hands. “No need asking what you’re here for. Bring him back.”

  We laid Henry on a table, and the doctor went about taking Henry’s temperature and listening to his heart and feeling under his arms. “Hmm” was his first opinion. Then he asked, “Has he had any water of questionable cleanliness lately?”

  My mind provided a picture of us three laying on the rocks beside Mission Creek, scooping water over our heads, then one of Henry spitting puddle water the day it had rained and I’d shoved him down. I explained to the doctor.

  “No, not that recently,” the doctor said.

  Paul and I both let out a breath.

  “Think back a week or two.”

  Paul said, “We left home the first of June. Before that he was living in a barn.”

  Dr. Osgood’s eyebrows went up.

  I counted back. “A week ago, he spent two days workin’ at the stockyards in Kansas City.” I knew that was true, but it didn’t seem possible. We’d lived two lifetimes since then.

  The doctor wiped all over his face with his bare hand. “Well, it’s likely just some kind of influenza, although it’s not common this time of year. But this town has buried two this past month from the typhoid, and we’ll have to be sure. Sheriff lets me use the jail for quarantine. Your friend needs to give me some blood to look at and then spend some time as a guest of Sheriff Larkin. You two boys’ll just have to get a room somewhere and wait.”

  “We won’t leave him.” Paul spoke like it’d been put to a vote.

  I was thinking a little distance from Henry might actually be in our best interest.

  The doctor chuckled. “Well, then, you’ll have to share a cell.”

  “We’re all the family he’s got,” Paul announced.

  I’m not sure how I would’ve voted on that one either. But there was no use in arguing just then.

  We could’ve done worse. The sheriff’s wife brought a big supper over and put it on the front desk to come get after she left. Good thing too—someone had stolen our parcel from the Heversons out of the Model T while we were at the doctor’s office. Apparently they didn’t need ratty bedrolls or spare tire casings.

  The jail was like a hotel all to ourselves. A hot, concrete hotel with bars on what few windows there were, and all the hard floor we wanted for sleeping. But it beat sleeping outside with the rest of God’s creatures and would give my bug bites time to heal.

  A big bowl of brown broth came along with our suppers.

  “Aw, let’s eat first,” I told Paul. “It’s not like Henry’s hungry, the state he’s in.”

  He laid on the bunk and shivered and moaned. I couldn’t even tell if he was awake.

  “It won’t help him any to get weaker,” Paul said. “Fever burns up a lot of fuel.” He picked up a spoon.

  I grabbed it away. A poke in the eye with hot broth wasn’t going to help Henry either. I sat as far away as I could reach to feed him.

  The next morning, we had a breakfast of eggs and sausage and cornbread, along with yellow broth for Henry. I felt stir-crazy afterward.

  I told Paul, “I can’t sit around here all day. I’m gonna go for a walk around town. You wanna go with me?”

  He shook his head.

  “All right, then. I’ll be back for dinner. Shouldn’t be any hotter than a boiler in here by then.”

  Junction City looked to be about the size of Lexington, but it was a lot more western in flavor. Men dressed like cowboys more often than not. Spitting tobacco juice seemed to be a popular hobby, and the horses hitched up along Main Street were sharing it with only one car, a Maxwell. I strolled the streets and saw what was there, then ducked into the general store to pick up a Topeka newspaper for Paul.

  When the sun was high enough to make sweat trickle down the back of my neck, I went back to the jail and walked in just in time to see Paul take a bowl off a tray and poke Henry in the shoulder with the spoon.

  “Come on, Henry. Time to get stronger.”
>
  Henry groaned.

  I hurried over to take the spoon from Paul.

  He jerked back like I was trying to steal from him. “Paul . . .”

  He ignored me and ladled a couple sips into Henry, without any hesitation I could see. “Now,” he said, “that’s better.”

  I looked around to see if there was food for us. There didn’t seem to be.

  “Doctor says he’s 99 percent sure it’s not typhoid,” Paul said.

  “When was he here? Why didn’t you send somebody for me?”

  Paul went on like he hadn’t heard. “He’s still standing by it being some kind of influenza, though he can’t say why we haven’t taken it too. He said we may still.”

  Influenza sounded a lot more serious all of a sudden.

  Paul said, “We can’t stay here on the county’s penny anymore, so I asked if there was someplace other than the Typhoid Arms to stay. I don’t particularly want to give that man my business.”

  Neither did I, but I would have liked some say in the matter. Paul went on before I could tell him so.

  “There’s a Mr. Williamson who has a livery stable and smith shop nearby, and he’s got a room in the loft he rents out. It’s none too fancy, but neither are we, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Right?”

  Oh yeah. “Right.”

  Henry had soaked through his clothes, a sheet, and a thin cotton blanket by then. His eyes were closed, but his mouth opened and shut like a baby bird’s while Paul kept the spoon going back and forth.

  “So?” Paul said.

  “So what?”

  Paul scraped the bottom of the bowl. “Why don’t you go check things out with Mr. Williamson before we move Henry?”

  “Right. I was just going to do that.”

  “Um-hmm.” His mouth was set in a white line. I didn’t know what was eating him.