I Will Send Rain (20 page)

I hope that you are safe, though I wish you were with me here. I would read to you if the light held. I have a copy of
Pride and Prejudice
somewhere in the boxes of books I haven't unpacked since I arrived at this outpost as a younger man. Have I told you that I imagined myself some kind of cowboy when I left Chicago? I still don't have any idea how to ride a horse. And truth be told, they make me sneeze.

I am a planet spinning out of orbit, Annie. I think of you and only you. Church today was devastating for me. You pulled away. What did it mean? I have gone over each gesture, each word, again and again. With so little time to talk, my imagination is fertile and predatory. Are you thinking of me too?

My brother has sent word that my father is sick. He is dying. I haven't told you about my father. He is gentle and hardworking—he owns a creamery—though when I was young I found him maddeningly small in his vision. Fulfill orders, eat at six, one beer with the newspaper, bed at nine. Ideas and ambition might as well have been pillow fluff. Maybe all sons feel this way about their fathers at some point, even favorite sons. Maybe it's part of growing up and finding one's own way. But I was mercenary. Not only did I choose to not work beside him as my brother did, and become a newspaperman instead, which he found a dishonest profession, I left, without a thought about what it might do to him. And worse, I've never gone back to visit, after all these years. It is hard for me to admit this to you now.

I am going to Chicago. I don't know for how long. And here's the crazy notion that I can't wrest from the coyote's mouth. I want you to come with me, for a few days. Okay, there it is, finally, why I wanted to write to you. (In my old profession, that's what they call burying the lede.) I would like to walk around the city with you on my arm. I would like to show you Lake Michigan. I would like to take you to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Can you believe they have a gorilla from Africa? I would like to take you on your first streetcar. Think about it. You don't need to tell me it's not the right thing to do. But we live only once, as far as I know, and happiness should count for something, shouldn't it?

I know there are your children to think about. But a few days is what I'm asking.

It sounds like the roof is being yanked off by the wind. This storm seems different, darker and dirtier, if such a thing is possible. I'm sorry for the smudged paper.

I love you, Annie Bell. I wanted to say that to you at the church but I was a coward in the shadow of your troubled face. I love you. Come away with me.

—Jack

*   *   *

T
HE MAYOR CAME
down from his office, where he had spent the night of the storm, and walked out into a glorious day. He waved to Edward Banks who swept off the sidewalk in front of the post office. Jeanette, her hair pulled back in a scarf, wiped down the windows of Ruth's. There was a cool edge to the air, just a hint when the wind blew, which made him balloon with hope. The letter was folded in his shirt pocket. He had willed himself not to reread it for fear he would lose his nerve. He had yet to come up with a good excuse to drive out to deliver it, but he was undeterred. His heart was charging ahead, and he had no choice but to follow.

Jack sighed as he took in the state of the town, a layer of new dust, his own car tires half buried, a roll of barbed wire in the middle of the road. He had ten minutes before Jeanette would flip the sign to Open, so he kept walking. At the church he saw the blown-out window, but as he walked around to get a better look, there was Samuel's car, a small dune wedged against its rear. Samuel was here, and Annie was surely there.

He turned around and started to run.

 

CHAPTER 12

Annie lay awake in the dark morning, her limbs sunk into the bed. She was alone. She heard the door slam as Birdie went out to the barn for chores. Must you, Barbara Ann? she thought, before she remembered to be easier on her daughter. Remember, she told herself, what it was like.

When she'd taken her one and only trip to Kansas City, she had been Birdie's age. Her father had been invited to a Presbyterian council meeting, and her mother, in an uncharacteristic moment of vigor, had insisted they accompany him. Seventy miles in a hot and crowded train, but Annie didn't mind. A big city. Another state, even. She tried not to let on about her excitement to her parents, but she could not hide her upswing in mood.

“Nice to see you smiling,” her father said. “Life is not too unbearable today, I gather. ‘I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.'”

From her window, Annie watched the large industrial buildings begin to crowd the landscape as they neared Missouri.

“Maybe you can pick out a new dress for Annie while we're here,” her father said to his wife. He pushed his round wire glasses up on his nose. “That one's a little short, don't you think?” As if she were not sitting right across from him.

“Yes, Reverend,” her mother answered.

Reverend, Annie thought, like she was just another one of his fawning parishioners. What about a husband and a wife? What about love? It was no wonder her father had looked elsewhere.

“I read where each chandelier in the terminal weighs over thirty-five hundred pounds,” he said.

“Isn't that interesting,” her mother said. Her voice was feathery light, but her tone was flinty underneath.

“Let's not forget to look up when we arrive. Nothing like it back home.”

When Annie stepped into the station's vast atrium, she felt as if the floor had dropped. She did look up, at all the dazzling crystals and starburst lights. She breathed it in until she was dizzy.

“I'm afraid I'm running short on time,” her father said. “We'll meet back here. Five o'clock. Your watch is wound, Sarah?”

Her mother nodded. He patted her arm and left them.

Outside, the buildings rose fifteen stories in the sky and electric streetcars clanged. Annie felt herself expand. But her mother grew timid, stuck on the top step, stunned by everything moving around her.

“Can we ride on one?” Annie asked.

Her mother shook her head. “No, no. There's a café,” she said, grasping Annie's hand.

Inside, women chatted and laughed, perched at tables in their brightly colored dresses, parcels at their feet. Annie ordered chocolate cake, which arrived on a gold-rimmed plate garnished with a strawberry rosette.

“Isn't this fun, Mother?” Annie picked up the strawberry, marveling at how it had been carved into a flower.

“It's quite loud in here,” she said.

Annie let a bite of cake melt in her mouth, a small bite to make it last and last. But across from her, her mother frowned at the close chattering voices, the scurrying waitress, and sipped her tea. She seemed to be winding herself tighter and tighter, shrinking into her high-necked white dress. Her pale fingers twitched against her teacup.

“You remember the Thurgoods' son,” her mother said. “He's just begun seminary.”

Annie didn't answer. She did remember the Thurgoods' son from when they were kids—a nice quiet boy, his hair slicked into place—but she was unwilling to be drawn in by her mother, uninterested in her matchmaking. Her mother cared that he came from a moneyed family and that he would be a minister. She did not care about what would make her daughter happy. And then Annie began to feel the familiar confinement push in again, of her narrow Kansas life, of her mother thinking she knew best. The café at once felt stuffy, closing in, so small Annie thought she could touch wall to wall with her outstretched hands.

“William. A couple years older than you. He used to come to children's Bible study.”

Annie still did not answer. She shook her foot and watched the activity of the city beyond the bright window and wanted to burst out through the door.

“You'd like him.”

Annie snapped her gaze back to her mother. You don't know anything about what I'd like, she thought. But she would bide her time, figure out what was next. She'd smiled close-lipped and false, and had said, “Let's go, Mother. There's a shop across the way.”

It had been twenty years, but Annie could still feel that flinty defiance she had felt then. She sat up in bed and swung her feet around to the gritty floor. She feared Birdie had already locked her out the way she had done to her own mother. But at least Annie knew her daughter wanted to see the world, see something beyond the farm. Annie had felt that once, too. With Cy gone, Birdie still had a chance, if only she would take it.

*   *   *

F
RED'S DOOR WAS
closed. Annie turned the handle and stepped inside. It was like an eerie twilight, the windows covered. The whistling gurgle that met her sounded like an old steam tractor trying to turn over. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

“Fred,” she said, shaking his shoulders, “oh, Fred.” The dust rose in an airborne halo around him.

He sputtered awake and, after his body stilled from the coughs, he smiled.

“You sound terrible,” she said. “You need cough syrup.”

In the kitchen she mixed a drop of kerosene in a spoonful of sugar, the solvent vapors burning her nose. Fred hopped into a chair, his hair powdery, his lips drained of color.

“Take it all at once,” she said, handing him the spoon.

He reared back with the smell of it and shook his head.

“That wheeze is bad. Go on.”

Fred scrunched his face and choked it down, then gulped water to rid his mouth of the taste.

“I'll make pancakes,” Annie said.

Fred's eyes watered. He hated this cure. His belly burned. He could feel his breathing ease, though, or he imagined it at least, the kerosene snaking into his lungs, clearing out the passageways.

“Get your mask on,” his mother said.

He rolled his eyes and looped the limp mask around his ears. From the window, the rising sun showed a sky washed clean.

“Pop?” he wrote in the dust on the table.

“Stayed with Pastor Hardy. I expect he'll be home as soon as he can.”

Fred was itching to get back to the boat. The hull was taking shape, barely contained by the barn. He loved working with his father, who was transformed in the smoky lantern light. He didn't say much, but he trusted Fred to do things right. To measure and steam and saw and set and sand. It would be the first boat Fred had ever been on. Sometimes when he was alone in the barn, he would overturn a milk crate and sit in the boat and imagine the rocking waves and surges lapping the sides. He would be the one gripping an oar to help steer them through the storm, his sister saying, “You can do it, Fred. Save us.”

Us. He'd forgotten about the baby. He glanced at his mother, who of course didn't know. His mind jumped to his mother's apron, the one he'd found at the old house, but that and the mayor's visit, he could not make it all fit together right. He didn't like keeping secrets, and all of a sudden he had a whole handful of them. He rose to go find Birdie.

“Where are you going?” his mother asked.

He pointed out to the barn.

“Tell your sister it's breakfast time.”

*   *   *

T
HE MORNING WAS
blessedly cool, as if the heat had finally worn itself out. Dawn had broken, but it was still dark in the barn. Greta's flank was warm against Birdie's cheek as she washed the cow's udder.

“It would be okay if you kicked me, honey, just this once,” she whispered. “One swift one. Right here.”

Greta lowed and stomped her foot, ready for Birdie's fingers to give her some relief. Birdie waited, hoping the cow would get mad enough. But Greta just made a lot of noise. So she started on the milk, the stream clanging into the pail.

Did Cy ever wonder about what she was doing? That was the worst thought, that he never thought about her at all. She closed her eyes and concentrated and thought, “Cy. Can you hear me? There will be a baby.”

She now had the smallest beginning of a belly, a slight rounded fullness down low. She knew the baby existed, of course, but it was an idea, like gravity. It had no connection to an actual thing that would tear its way out of her. It was not a he or she. It had no face, no heft. She imagined the screams, the groping fingers of a baby that was not hers. She knew she was not a mother.

Life was mostly about remembering or waiting, Birdie thought. Remembering when things were better, waiting for things to get better again. There was never a now, never a time when you said, “This is it.” You thought there would be that time—when you turned sixteen, when Cy finally kissed you, when school got out—but then you ended up waiting for something else.

Now she dug her heels in against the passing of each day. She thought about the things that might make the baby go away. A knife slip. A punch. Getting pummeled by dust and debris. Women miscarried all the time. Why couldn't she? She prayed to God to take the baby away, but she knew it wouldn't work because that was not something you could ask for. What should she pray about, then? She prayed and prayed. God, do something.

Maybe she could move away and pretend she was a widow. Someone would marry a widow with a baby. There was no shame in that. “He was a good man. Died in a thresher accident,” she heard herself say. No one would ever have to know. She would never come back to Mulehead. She would miss Fred. There would be that. She would be sorry to miss him grow up.

Birdie knew what she could not do. Turn out like Mary Louise VanCamp who'd given birth four months after marrying that Bible salesman. People in town called her Mary Louise VanTramp. There was something wrong with her son, but no one ever knew what. His eyes bulged out of his head and he ate dirt. Mary Louise had moved back in with her parents when the salesman disappeared. Pitiful. Shut away on a ranch out near Kenton.