Some Luck (26 page)

ROSANNA RARELY LISTENED
to the radio, but she did know, if only dimly, about the Labor Day hurricane down in Florida somewhere. Who in Iowa thought about Florida? People in Iowa had problems of their own—maybe not dust storms like the ones out in Nebraska
and Oklahoma, and maybe not heat like in Texas, but if you got up in a sweat every morning after barely sleeping all night, and there was no rain for the crops and not much water for the animals, and the children were crying, and when Henry, so beautiful, fell and cut his lower lip and you couldn’t afford to take him to the doctor but had to boil a needle and a length of silk thread and sew it up yourself, with him lying on Lillian’s lap and screaming, and Lillian herself streaming with tears, well, you had to wonder if a slow demise was preferable to a quick one, didn’t you?

But Pastor Elmore knew all about the hurricane, and he saw it clearly as God’s will. His cousin was at the work camp there for war veterans, and was lost, presumed dead now, six days later. Pastor Elmore was sweating already before the sermon, given how hot it was, and all the ladies in the congregation were sitting there with their collars open, fanning themselves. Walter had his handkerchief on his head to keep the sweat from pouring into his eyes, and Henry was asleep on her lap—that scar was one he would have for the rest of his life, but after sewing it, she had put bag balm on it and some leaves her mother had, and it wasn’t his arm or his eye or his leg, was it? Only Lillian was neat and calm. She was a marvel. Joey and Frankie had stayed home to look after the animals—they were lost to the faith, maybe—but just as Rosanna was thinking that she was too tired to care right this very minute, Pastor Elmore roared out, “ ‘On that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened!’ And why was that, my friends? Why did the Lord see fit to destroy his own creation, like a sculptor who smashes his clay with his fist, or a painter who slashes his canvas? Why, because it wasn’t right and good! And does the pot revile its creator for this? And does the painting weep?
No!
And so we must accept that the Lord is getting mighty close to that state of dissatisfaction he found himself in when Noah was six hundred years old. Did you know, my friends, that there is no record of such a hurricane as struck those islands in Florida seven days ago? The first of its kind!
What
does that tell you? And, my friends, look around you. Are your crops thriving and your cattle fattening?
No
, they are not.

“Let me tell you about my cousin. My cousin was not a bad man. His name was Robert, and he was a kind and gentle boy when I first
knew him. He was not a boy to tease a cat or trap a bird, but neither was he right with the Lord, and his life was on a downward path. He came home from the war a drunkard, and his mother died of the grief. Nor was he a mean drunk, my friends. If he had a dollar, after spending what he needed to on a pint, he would give it to you, and no thanks necessary. But his wife didn’t know him, and his children didn’t know him, and he wandered off, from Ohio to Missouri to Texas to California to Florida, hardly a word to his family, only a card from time to time to say where he was, and last spring he was in Florida, clearing swamp, and three weeks ago he was there, too. But the Lord was having none of it. The Lord is just about to that point he was with the Nephilim—sick and tired of the sin. And so he is sending us warning after warning. Did every single Nephilim man, woman, and child offend him? I doubt it. I am sure there were good Nephilim and kind Nephilim like my cousin. They were, it is said, the sons of God, as are you and I. But they were sensuous and irresponsible, and so God saved Noah and his sons and their families, and he saved some animals, and he smashed the rest.

“Now, you are saying that God gave Noah a promise never to do such a thing again, and that is true, but neither did he inundate the whole world—just a bit of it there in Florida. And I am telling you that this is a warning to you and to me.…”

Rosanna dabbed her upper lip with her handkerchief, then patted Henry’s forehead. Lillian was taking in every word. She was almost nine now. It occurred to Rosanna that maybe Lillian did not have to hear this—she was already careful to be good at all times and in all ways. Did she need to know that being good wasn’t good enough? When you came right down to it, Rosanna thought, being a Catholic was more reassuring for a child—it made sense to confess your sins, do your penance, and have a clean slate. Rosanna didn’t think about her childhood much—no time for it—but maybe going to St. Albans had been easier than this. If a child thought a priest or a pastor was the voice of God, then at St. Albans the priest droned on every week in the same Latin gibberish and the rules were clear. Here, the pastor was very excitable and full of inspiration—Rosanna knew that he wouldn’t have talked about the hurricane or Noah or the Nephilim if his cousin hadn’t been killed. She looked at Walter. He had his elbow
on the end of the pew and his hand over his eyes. He could make it no clearer that, whatever he said, what he thought was that she had gotten them into this congregation, and it was up to her to get them out.

The pastor boomed out again: “My friends, who can say where it will end? Who can say when the Lord will at last be pleased with us?”

Walter shifted in his seat, and Lillian took his hand. Rosanna saw him squeeze hers. Right then, Henry woke up and coughed. Rosanna knew a sign when she saw it. She poked Walter and cocked her head toward the entrance. Walter took her meaning as if he had indeed been waiting. As one, they got up quietly, and eased out in Walter’s direction—thank the Lord, not the center aisle but the right-hand one—and they walked toward the door without looking back or looking down at any of their fellow worshippers. Behind them, Pastor Elmore said, “My friends, I think, humbly and even with thanks, that we should be prepared for just about …” The door swished closed behind them, and they were out on the porch.

1936

F
RANK WAS SITTING
in his seat in the fourth coach (right behind the dining car). Out the window, there was nothing to look at but snow, snow, snow. That was the way it had been all winter—at home, the drifts on the west side of the house were above the roof of his and Joey’s room—when you looked out the window you saw a crystalline white wall. This snow was blowing, but it was still utterly white, and Frank could feel the train slow. He had been on the train for three hours, so maybe they were almost to Clinton, maybe not. The last stop, where the stationmaster had put the flag up for some folks who got on and then passed through to the sleeper, was DeWitt.

The reason Frank found himself on the train, the Challenger, the newest and best train on the Chicago and Northwestern line, was that Mama just could not put up with him any longer, though what she said was that he had to go to school, there was no way around it. Maybe it wasn’t so important for Joey, but Frankie needed school. The idea that he would go to school in Chicago had rolled across the table as a silly thought at Thanksgiving, when Eloise came home with Rosa and Julius. Already by that time, Frank had missed six days of high school, off and on, because of snow, and Mama was plenty steamed about it—steamed at Papa, it seemed, as if the blizzards were Papa’s fault. “Well, send him to me in Chicago,” said Eloise, and Mama said, “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”

But between Thanksgiving and Christmas he had missed nine days, four of them because the school itself was closed when the water pipes burst. Grandpa Wilmer and Granny Elizabeth and all the oldest people Frank knew said that they had never seen a winter like this—it wasn’t just that there were layers of snow on the ground, five feet in some places, not including the drifts, but it was deathly cold and windy, too. Papa’s cows and sheep and hogs hadn’t been out of the barn for any reason in two months. “Are we living in Minnesota now?” exclaimed Mama. But Papa said it would turn out fine in the end, because the drought was over. At Christmas, Eloise issued her invitation again—yes, the snow was deep in Chicago, too, but she and Julius had a big apartment a block from the high school. Frank would like it, she thought. And Mama said yes.

The train came to a halt, but there was no town to be seen, even dimly. Frank looked around at the other passengers—there were twelve of them in this car, a family with three kids, two ladies, and the rest businessmen. The ladies kept talking, and the businessmen kept reading their newspapers. Only the kids gawked at the windows. The car was quiet. Frank got up.

The wind in the vestibule was sudden and breathtakingly cold, even though it was surely no sharper than Frank had felt many times heading home from school. As Frank pushed and pushed on the door into the dining car, he felt a moment of panic. In the dining car, there was more news—the locomotive had run up against a huge drift. Crews were coming. No telling how long it might take. Frank eavesdropped on a man asking the porter “whether you expect supplies to hold out.” Since he had a glass of whiskey in his hand, Frank figured that was the supply that he meant.

“Yes, suh. I expect they will hold out for a week, suh.” The porter was the first black man Frank had ever seen. Mama had told him that he would see plenty of black people in Chicago, and that he was to avoid antagonizing them by looking them in the eye, and that only low-class people called them “niggers,” and that that word was another thing they didn’t like, so to be careful. They were to be called “colored.” But it looked to Frank like it was the porter who was being careful. Frank bought a chicken sandwich from him for a quarter, avoided looking at him, and went back through the vestibule to his seat. It was disconcerting how warm and still the interior of
the coach was, compared with how wild and cold the weather was. Frank picked up his book—he was reading
Robbers’ Roost
, by Zane Grey. He had gotten it from one of the guys at school, and he planned to send it back before the guy realized it was missing.

The conductor did not say what “held up” the crew, but by the time it was dark, and everyone knew they were stuck at least until morning, things in the coach weren’t quiet anymore. Two of the children were crying, and the two ladies were tutting and shaking their heads; one of them said in a low voice (but Frank was used to listening to low voices), “If we make it till morning … but you heard about that train in New York. Mumble-mumble frozen to death.” Frank could hardly keep himself from looking around, but he didn’t dare. If he did, they would lower their voices even further and he wouldn’t learn a thing. One of the businessmen kept pushing a button next to the window, but the conductor didn’t come. And then the lights went out. Frank set down his book, but still there was nothing to see in the pale, snowy darkness, least of all “crews.”

Not long after the lights went out, the conductor did come through with a flashlight, and he had two porters with him. He announced that the Chicago and Northwestern Railway was very concerned about the comfort of its passengers, and that since there were berths available in the sleeper car, it had been decided that coach passengers would be allowed to make use of those berths for the night. Other passengers had chosen to bunk down in the dining cars and the bar car (one of the businessmen laughed at this), and perhaps, given the comfort of the seats in the coach, others would prefer to stay where they were. If so, the railroad would be happy to supply them with blankets and pillows. Crews were ready to get to work before dawn, but the drift was a large one—not so high, but extensive and difficult to clear.

It was one of the ladies who said to Frank after the conductor left, “Son, you better claim one of those berths, because at least you can insulate yourself in there. We heard of a train near Buffalo—it was the coach passengers who froze to death. You come with me.” The two ladies led Frank to the conductor, and declared that they wanted upper berths (“because heat rises”) and also one for their nephew here. The conductor was in no mood to argue.

His night in the berth was a strange one—maybe he had never
been in anything that felt so much like a hole in the ground. He could open his eyes and see the window, but as soon as he closed them, he sank again. When, in a dream, he thought Joey poked him, he threw out his arm and hit a wall. That woke him up. And then, lying there, he was as sure as he could be that he was going to die—that on this train, unlike the one in New York—not Buffalo, near Rochester, was it—everyone would freeze to death, and it didn’t matter that he was perfectly warm. The freezing part seemed to have more to do with being three hours from home and three hours from Chicago, as far as he could be from everything and everyone he knew, than it did with mere temperature. “Hell’s bells,” he said aloud, “I miss Joey.” And he did. His head touched the wall, his feet touched the wall, his hands touched the wall, and only a curtain hung between him and falling out of the berth into the aisle. If it hadn’t been for those dead passengers in Rochester, he would have gone back to his seat.

But the train was moving by sunrise, had already, in fact, crossed the Mississippi, a sight Frank was sorry to have missed. They were at Union Station in Chicago by nine, and Frank’s breakfast (eggs, bacon, an orange) had been free. He had thanked the two ladies for “saving” him. When they pulled in, he was picking his teeth, something that he saw one of the other passengers do and that he thought looked very urban. He looked out the window and could see Eloise running down the platform. When he got off, the first thing she said was “Frankie! What in the world would I have told your mother!”