Some Luck (17 page)

Frankie said, “What’s wrong, Papa?”

Walter wiped his brow. “Not much. Nice day, huh?”

Frankie said, “When we’re done, can I go shoot frogs?”

“Down at the creek?”

Frankie nodded.

“I suppose so. Maybe I’ll come with you.” Walter hadn’t been down to the creek in two or three weeks, and he wanted to see how it was running.

But it wasn’t running very high, and there weren’t any frogs. No frogs was a bad sign.

Rosanna didn’t think much of his worries. She and Joey had two flocks of chickens now, fifty hens in each, and she was feeling rich, because a new café in town had made a deal with her and her alone
to supply them with eggs and butter. The owner of the café, down from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was a German man whose real love was pastry—he could make those old-country treats, schnecken and strudel and even baumkuchen, and he said that Rosanna’s eggs and butter were as good as any he’d seen in Bavaria. He expected the citizens of Usherton to storm his establishment once he had it going. Joey was good with both the hens and the eggs—he didn’t mind candling, which was a tedious business, and of course the hens seemed fond of him. Rosanna had gotten herself a new type of chicken from Canada called White Chanticleers. Walter thought they were a little picky, and they didn’t like to be confined, which meant that they were underfoot a good deal, but they had almost no combs or wattles, and were good outdoors even in winter, even when there was snow and ice. The best part about them was that you could mistake a roasted mature White Chanticleer for a small turkey—it would be that big. And the meat was tasty. Dan Crest was paying her four cents per egg, and the German man—his name was Bruno something, Bruno Krause—was paying her five and a half. Walter was delivering eggs every few days, four dozen, and three pounds of butter. So two good things—the corn planted after all, in spite of his worries, and a new source of income with this Krause fellow—and yet he lay awake looking for the worm in the apple, as his mother would have said. Rosanna was even talking about buying them a new bed—not a rope bed, but one with actual springs, so that they wouldn’t slide every night into the center and have to hoist themselves out. Walter turned over, and thought that if they got a new bed he would probably find something wrong about that, too.

LILLIAN WAS SITTING
in her chair—she no longer used the high chair, because she was three and a half now, and good at sitting still, right where Mama had put her, and eating what was set in front of her. Or she was usually good at that; today, all she wanted was the tapioca pudding and the strawberries. Even though she was wearing only drawers and a loose smock, and had her hair tied out of her face, it was too hot to eat anything else. All the windows were open, and the dust hung in the air. Mama said, “Goodness me, praise the Lord, please give us just a bit of a breeze!”

Lillian yawned, and Mama said, “Well, you can have your nap on the sofa, darling. It’s roasting upstairs. I hope it cools off before bedtime; I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”

She came over, and Lillian held out her hands for Mama to wipe, and then Mama washed her face. The cloth was cool on her cheeks and forehead. Lillian yawned again. Mama picked her up and carried her into the front room. Lillian wandered over to the toy box and picked up Lolly, who was the cuddliest of her dolls, even though her hair had all come out, while Mama laid a sheet over the sofa, and then Mama took off Lillian’s shoes and socks and set them by the arm of the couch. Mama smoothed down her smock and took her hair out of its tie. When Lillian was lying quietly, Mama kissed her on the cheek and said, “Just an hour, while it’s so hot. Maybe it will cool off later.”

Lillian lay on her back with Lolly in her arms, looking up at the ceiling. It was dim at this end of the room, bright at the other end. Sometimes, the shadows of the trees outside quivered on the ceiling, but they only quivered. It was like looking into a pail of water and seeing the surface of the water move. Mama sat down and picked up her darning. She was doing some socks. Lillian heard the squeak of the rocking chair as it went back and forth, back and forth. One thing to think about was King Midas. Mama had read her that story only the day before, and when she came to the end, Lillian had cried, so Mama had said she would never read it again. The picture of King Midas that Mama had showed her looked regular—he had long hair, like Jesus, but also a crown. He looked nice. But he wanted a strange thing, which was for everything he touched to turn to gold. Lillian had seen that this was a bad idea from the beginning—all she had to do was touch her sausage, which was what they had for supper last night, in order to understand that having everything turn to gold at a touch would be horrible rather than wonderful. But King Midas persisted, then changed his very own child, who was a girl like Lillian, into a golden statue. And there was no turning back once it was done—Jesus did not show up to redeem King Midas, because, according to Mama, Jesus hadn’t been born yet. So that little girl, whatever her name was, was done for, and that was what made Lillian cry. Mama said, “Well, Midas learned his lesson,” and stroked Lillian’s hair until Lillian stopped crying, and the two of them prayed to Jesus that they might learn their lessons sooner rather than later,
and that they would be gentle lessons rather than hard lessons. But Midas stuck in Lillian’s mind. Mama said, “Sweetheart, you have quite an imagination, I must say.”

Lillian was still awake, or half awake, and Mama began to sing a song: “Fair waved the golden corn, / In Canaan’s pleasant land, / When full of joy, some shining morn, / Went forth the reaper band. / To God so good and great / Their cheerful thanks they pour, / Then carry to His temple gate / The choicest of their store.” Lillian liked the word “corn.” Corn was yellow and sweet. She liked it on the cob and off the cob, and she liked holding a cob out to Jake and Elsa, and having them bite off the kernels and eat them. She also liked the words “joy,” “shining,” “cheerful,” and “morn.” The tune went up and down, and made her sleepier. Mama went on, “In wisdom let us grow, / As years and strength are given …” Her voice was low and almost tuneless. Lillian fell asleep.

THE MOMENT
when Rosanna knew she’d been living in a fool’s paradise was the moment she pumped the second basin of water. She had already undressed Lillian and set her into the first tub of water to cool off—it would certainly be a hundred out there, at least—and Lillian was paddling mildly and dipping a couple of spoons in and out of her bath. She was half talking to Rosanna. As she said, “Lolly and Lizzie need a nap,” and Rosanna answered automatically, “I’m sure they do, they were up late last night,” the water that spurted out of the tap over the sink fell brown and thick into the pail, and then stopped. Rosanna had never seen a well go dry before. She set the pail down into the sink and put her hands on her hips. Her hands were trembling.

The farm had three wells—one beside the barn, this one by the house, and an old one that had been capped some years ago, not far from the chicken house. Rosanna had no idea how deep this well was, or how it compared with the others—sometimes that didn’t matter, water could be deep or shallow. She glanced over at Lillian. The tub the girl was sitting in was not at all large—it had a flat bottom and flared sides about twelve inches tall, and Lillian was sitting with her legs crossed. The water, which was clear, came up about six inches. In the hot weather, Rosanna had been letting her sit in the water every afternoon, just to stave off any fevers or heat strokes that might
be going around. Walter and the boys had a pail outside, too, in the shade, that they dipped their bandannas in before wrapping them around their heads under their hats, or wrapping them around their mouths and noses to keep out the dust. The other thing Rosanna had taught the boys to do was to dip their wrists in the water and hold them in there long enough for the blood to cool.

Well, obviously, the first thing was to pray, so Rosanna set down the pail and went over to Lillian, and knelt beside her. She said, “Dear Lord.”

And Lillian said, in a singsong voice, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray—”

Rosanna couldn’t help smiling. She waited for Lillian to finish, and went on: “We see that you are preparing a trial for us. The signs and the symbols are all around us—you give us no rain, and now you have dried up our well. Our crops are thirsty, Lord. We dole out little drops of moisture to them every evening, and they drink them up, but still they look yellow and dry.” She was thinking of the beans. “We thank you for your past generosity, and we apologize if we have seemed ungrateful, if we have sat down to your bounty without lifting our voices in your praise. We understand that we became proud and flaunted our pride and were punished.” Now she was thinking about how Bruno Krause had come and gone—no customers could afford to pay for such luxuries—and she had had to slaughter half of her chickens and given them away, and though at first the experience was a bitter one, it showed her that there were people, and not just bums and vagrants, but people in Denby and Usherton who hadn’t the wherewithal to buy a chicken. There were people who were starving in the midst of plenty, as it said in the Bible somewhere. “We know that the trials you send us are proper tests of our faith, and we hope to pass those tests, dear Lord.” Now she was thinking that Dan Crest was giving her almost nothing for her butter, good as it was, but he said that people didn’t care about quality when they could hardly afford to eat—he himself almost went out of business, and it could still happen if the drought—yes, he used the dreaded word—didn’t end soon, he had no idea what was next and neither did Hoover or anyone else. The oat and barley fields were brown, and there weren’t many farmers like Walter and his father, who had some from the year before. The corn looked like green sticks thrusting out of rock, it was
that dry. She gripped Lillian’s hand a little too tightly, and Lillian pulled away. She opened her eyes. Lillian said, “Mama, I’m scared. You scared me,” and Rosanna coughed and said, “You pray, Lillian. The Lord will listen to you, I’m sure.”

“Pray what?”

Rosanna thought for a second, then said, “Darling, just close your eyes, and say, ‘Dear Father, please have mercy upon your children and keep us and protect us. If there is anything we have done to offend you, we give you our apologies.’ Say that.”

“What are ’pologies?”

“Saying you’re sorry—you know, like when you make a mess and Mama has to clean it up.”

“Did I make a mess?”

“No, honey, no, you didn’t. I don’t know who did. But sometimes you have to say you’re sorry and you don’t know why. Do you understand?”

Lillian shook her head.

“Someday you will. We don’t know all the things the Lord sees. Sometimes he sees things that we don’t, and they make him sad and angry, and so we have to say we’re sorry anyway.”

“Okay.” But she still seemed doubtful.

Rosanna began again, “Dear Father.”

“Dear Father.”

“Please take mercy upon us, your children, and help us.”

“Please help us.”

Rosanna didn’t correct her. “If we have offended you by doing something, we are sorry.”

“We are sorry. If—if we did a bad thing that we didn’t know.”

“Darling,” said Rosanna, “it might be that someone else did a bad thing, but it’s good if we apologize for it. Like Jesus.”

“Like Jesus?”

“Well, Jesus never did a single bad thing, but when he was crucified, he made up for all the bad things that other people had done. That’s why he was crucified.”

Lillian looked at her for a moment, then went back to moving her fingers in the water, and Rosanna wondered if she had gone too far. It was always a shock for a child to find out—to truly understand—what had happened to Jesus. Rosanna remembered clearly her own
reaction of brooding over it for some weeks around Easter, and asking questions: Nails in his palms? Nails? He fell down three times and nobody at all helped him? Where was the Good Samaritan? In fact, it was better to have a rather thoughtless child like Frankie, who listened, then forgot about it. Who at ten still sang “Round John virgin” without recognizing that those words made no sense.

Finally, Lillian said without looking at her, “Did you do a bad thing, Mama?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Did Papa?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Frankie?”

She hesitated, but certainly this was true: “Not that I know of.” Then, “At this point.”

“Joey?”

“I can’t imagine Joey or you, Lillian, doing a bad thing or thinking a bad thought.”

“What is a bad thought?”

Rosanna regretted even beginning this. She said, “Hating someone.”

“Do you hate anyone?”

“No, and neither does Papa or Frankie or Joey, or you. Lillian, I don’t know why there isn’t any water, but the Lord will provide if we pray to him.”

“Isn’t there any water?”

“Well,” said Rosanna, “let’s see.” She stood up and lifted Lillian out of the tub, careful to retain as much of that water as she could—for plants, and maybe even animals. She dried Lillian with a towel and walked her over to the pump. Rosanna picked Lillian up and set her beside the sink, then picked up, not the pail with the muck in it, but a pot she used for boiling egg noodles. She set it under the spout of the pump, lifted the handle, and pushed it down, then did it again. Water—clear water, and cool—spurted into the pan, and she pumped again. Soon she had about three quarts—the pot held four quarts. She realized that she had panicked. Dimly, in fact, she knew how a well worked—a well was a deep hole into an aquifer. Water seeping through surrounding rock and earth filled the hole, and every well had a capacity—a gallon a minute, or two, or ten, or whatever.
But Rosanna had never in her thirty years seen anything come out of a spigot other than water, and so she had looked at the muck and panicked. Lillian was staring at the water, and Rosanna gave in to temptation and said, “Well, darling, it’s a miracle. We prayed for the water, and the water came.” Rosanna knew that Walter would disapprove of misrepresenting things in this way, but the words just came out of her mouth. Lillian stared at the water and said, “A miracle.”