Some Luck (34 page)

Papa had to go to another farmer and buy a part for the oat thresher, and he told Henry to come along. As soon as they drove in the lane and pulled up beside the barn, Henry saw that there were boys here. One was a little older than he was—dressed in overalls, no shirt, barefoot. The other was big, at least twelve, and dressed the same way. The minute they got out of the truck, the farmer said, “Well, now, I meant to find that thing and I forgot all about it. It’ll just take a second. What’s your boy’s name? Henry? Henry, you go off with Sam and Hike here. Boys, half an hour of peace, please.”

Sam was the younger boy, Hike the older one. As soon as they were out of sight of the barn, Hike kicked his brother in the backside, and then laughed. Sam turned on him and punched him in the stomach. It was Hike who started to cry. Henry slowed down, and the other two got pretty far ahead. They turned around. But they didn’t run at him—Sam just called out, “Don’t mind Hike. He’s just slow.
He can’t even read.” Henry didn’t like to, but he caught up. They were heading toward a field where horses were grazing, and he liked horses. He counted them; there were six, four chestnuts and two blacks. Hike and Sam climbed on the fence, and then Henry did, too. The three of them hung their elbows over the top rail, and Henry said, “What are their names?”

Hike said, “Daisy, Rose …” He paused.

Sam added, “Daffodil, Iris, Hawthorn, and Poppy. Ma names them. She likes flowers.” Iris and Daisy, two chestnuts with white blazes, came to the fence, and the boys petted their noses. Hike said, “Let’s go to the ravine.”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “There’s something there.”

“What?” said Henry.

“Another horse,” said Sam.

But the horse was dead. Henry could see that from the rim of the ravine. It was lying there, a big white, bulky, fly-covered mound. It was scary and repulsive—the eyes were gone, the hanging tongue was black, and the coat was crusted over with something. Only the tail was strangely graceful—long, pale, and curving across the dry dirt. “Something’s going to happen,” said Hike.

“What?” said Henry.

“You’ll see.”

The two boys ran down the slope of the ravine and picked up sticks. Sam shouted, “Come on!”

Henry made his way down, sliding as best he could on his heels. It was almost midday, and the sun, high in the summer sky, was pouring heat into the ravine, which was full of other trash, too. Henry tried to step carefully. The other two boys ran around barefoot, even though there were nails everywhere, and wooden boards broken into splinters, and sharp stones, and parts of all sorts of things sticking up. But they took their sticks and scurried about the horse anyway, poking it and whacking it. Sam shouted, “Get a stick! There’s some over there!” He pointed, but Henry didn’t do anything, just stood for a minute by the horse’s head, then stepped away from there, so that he wouldn’t have to look at the eye sockets. Surprisingly, the horse didn’t smell very terrible—but it was huge, much bigger than the horses in the pasture. The boys were particularly intent on beating
it across the belly, hitting, then poking, then hitting, then poking. There seemed to be a plan, and it wasn’t until the horse exploded that Henry understood what the goal was.

Hike had been beating the belly just in front of the back leg, and then he smacked it furiously one time and poked it leaving a hole. The hole made a sound, and then a line along the bottom of the belly ripped open, and gas and liquid leapt out, the belly ripped in another spot, and more gunk poured forth. Most of it flowed, but some of it popped, and bits landed on all of the boys, including Henry himself. It was the worst thing he’d ever smelled, and it was on him in stinking dots. Hike and Sam started laughing and jumping around, even though it was on them, too. Henry thought he was going to pass out and fall down.

Papa’s head, and then the head of the farmer, appeared above the rim of the ravine, and the farmer shouted, “Goddamn you boys! I told you to stay away from this dump! I am going to whip the hides off you! I say stay away, you don’t think I mean stay away?” He came sliding down the slope, and Sam and Hike ran up the other side, dropping their sticks on the way. Henry could see Papa and climbed up to him. Papa said, “Let’s go. Never should have come here. These are lowlifes here. Didn’t even have the part, and tried to sell me six other things. That stinks!”

He told Henry to take off his shirt and throw it in the back of the truck. When they got home, he sent him to the spigot by the barn and had him scrub it. Henry did it pretty well, he thought. But he doubted that he would wear that shirt again.

Over supper, Joey asked if Papa had found the part, and when Papa said no, Joey said, “Did you see Jake?”

Papa said “Nope,” and Henry said, “Who’s Jake?”

“Our horse we had. We gave it to them to pull a buggy. If I’d known you were going there, I would have come along—”

But Papa was biting his lip, and then Mama said, “What, Walter?”

“They had horses,” said Henry. “They had four chestnuts and two blacks. The boys were mean boys.”

“Not worth talking about, you ask me,” said Papa, and that was the end of that.

But when it was dark and Henry was getting into bed, Joey
appeared in the doorway of his room—something he never did, Joey never came upstairs—and he said, “They didn’t have a white horse?”

Henry didn’t say anything, but he must have grunted without meaning to. Then Henry said, “Something bad happened.”

Joey sat on the bed. “Tell me.”

“I couldn’t stop them.”

“What?”

“They were beating the white horse with sticks. He was dead and down in a ditch, and they beat him until—”

“Until what?”

“He didn’t have any eyes.”

“Until what?”

“Until he blew up, kind of. His stomach. It got on me.”

Joey put his hand over his face and nodded. Henry could see that he was crying. Henry had never seen Joey cry. Joey said, “You didn’t have to stop them. It’s okay, Henry.”

But Henry cried anyway. Joey left the room. Henry cried for a pretty long time, then fell asleep. He wished he had taken a bit of the tail, just a few hairs, which he could have given to Joey.

EVERYONE HAD SAID
how much Lillian would like the high school. Mama and Granny Elizabeth had sewn her just the outfits she wanted, ones she’d seen in a magazine, and she had cut her hair (putting her braids, which were twenty-two inches long, away in a drawer). She wore a smoother hairdo now, still bright blond, but she had to roll it under every night and sleep on it. She could not say that the girls and the boys were mean to her—in general, they ignored her, didn’t look at her at all. An odd thing to know was that she was short, that when she walked down the hall she was merely part of the crowd, that her greatest efforts simply raised her to the level of most of the others. She, who had been told for her entire life that she was an angel and a beauty and a darling, wasn’t any of these things—she was one of many girls who were blonde, a little bigger in the hips than in the bust, a girl who had to watch out where she hemmed her skirts for fear that her calves would look unattractive.

And she, whom adults loved, was not the adored of her teachers, either. They considered her a decent student, for a girl, but, according to the ones who remembered him, nothing like Frank. Frank had been a phenomenon—totally ignorant of some of the simplest things, like the fact that London was in England, but totally capable of learning. Once he saw a map of Europe, and England, and London, and read an assigned book,
Oliver Twist
, he could tell you exactly where Oliver started out, where he went, and where he ended up. Yes, he had a “photographic memory,” that was part of it, but he understood what things meant, too. That’s what the English teacher said, anyway. The chemistry teacher saw her name on the class list and told the class about the time her brother Frank blew a window out of the classroom with a nitrogen experiment of some sort.

Jane was taller than she was now, by half a head, and thinner, too. She had been used to thinking of Jane as “malnourished,” as Mama would say, but now that she was in high school, she saw that Jane was rather elegant-looking—dark and flat-chested. All the girls preferred to be flat-chested with slim hips. They liked Bette Davis, of course, but also Barbara Stanwyck, blondes who were not really blonde, and who didn’t look at all like they did, farm girls, Iowa girls. Even Margaret Lindsay, who was born in Iowa and had started out as Margaret Kies—wouldn’t that be German?—didn’t look like any of the girls in the high school. “Jane Morris” was a good name for Hollywood, and their very first semester, she tried out for a part in the play. She didn’t seem to be daunted when she didn’t get it, either. When the other kids laughed in her audition, she didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Lillian cared on her behalf, but didn’t say anything. Jane did have a way of lifting her head and flaring her nostrils that said, “I’ll be leaving this town very soon,” which made Lillian laugh.

At the high school, Lillian missed Henry. Henry was eight now, and such a chatterbox. Lillian was sure he was driving Minnie crazy. She wished that Minnie would go to the school board and report that she couldn’t possibly teach at the school without Lillian to help her, and then Lillian could go back there and be of some use, instead of wandering the halls of the high school, wondering why in the world she had to grow up.

FRANK WAS HAVING
lunch in Ragnar’s café with Lawrence, Hildy, and Eunice. Frank didn’t go to Ragnar’s café all that much, because Ragnar tended to watch him from across the room and ostentatiously leave him alone, but Lawrence liked the steak with popovers. Hildy was Frank’s girlfriend, a sophomore in his ancient-history class, from Decorah, far in the northeast corner of Iowa. She spoke Norwegian at home (it sounded like everyone in that town did), and she spoke Norwegian to Ragnar, who was charmed by it. But everyone was charmed by her—she was a beautiful girl—great ankles, terrific knees, slim waist, nice bust, broad shoulders, long neck, glamorous smile, eyes so blue that they seemed to spring out at you when she opened them. When Frank and Hildy walked down the street, heads did turn. Maybe she was better-looking than he was—and he considered that a good thing. She was crazy about Frank—they both knew it. He was playing it cool. Lawrence was here with Eunice. Eunice was from St. Louis, Missouri, of all places, and she never let you forget it. How she had gotten to a place like Iowa State, she couldn’t imagine. She was a Tri Delt, majoring in finding a diamond ring.

The first time Lawrence put his hand to his jaw was after he took a bite of steak. A few minutes later, he said, “Hey, ouch!”

It was Hildy, not Eunice, who said, “What’s the matter?”

“My tooth. My tooth is stabbing me.”

They ate a bit more; Frank had the fried chicken, which was exactly like Mama’s, but with fried potatoes, not mashed. Finally, Lawrence just dropped his fork on the table and said, “What is happening?”

The Flying Cloud was parked outside, and the four of them piled into it, but Lawrence said he was in too much pain to drive, so Frank drove. In the back seat (he could see in the mirror), Lawrence was sitting up, and then he fell over with his head in Eunice’s lap. Frank also saw in the mirror that she looked down with no expression on her face at all, and then cautiously stroked his hair. They drove around Campustown, looking for a dentist.

The dentist they found, somewhere up Hayward, was not working—he was cleaning his office, since it was Saturday, but one look at Lawrence in the back of the car, and he opened the door and stepped aside. They more or less dragged Lawrence in and set him in the chair. The dentist said that he had an impacted wisdom tooth, and
that he needed to go to Mary Greeley. That was over on the other side of town, east on Lincoln Way and across the tracks. It was a bright, cold day, almost time for Christmas break. Over lunch, they had been talking about whether they liked to go home or not. Hildy had said that Christmas in Decorah was a real celebration, like Christmas in Norway—candles, that sort of thing. Frank drove the Flying Cloud through the crossing, and up Douglas. He turned in at the hospital driveway.

Well, Lawrence was dead by Monday morning. Eunice told Hildy, and Hildy showed up at Frank’s room on Welch before breakfast, and told him. The two of them stared at each other, and Hildy started crying. Frank said, “Didn’t you ever have anyone in your family die?”

“Not since before I was born.”

“My sister died when I was five. She was jumping around during a rainstorm, and the thunder clapped. She fell down and slammed the back of her head on the corner of an egg crate.”

Hildy said, “Oh, Frank!”

“I always wondered if it was me fiddling my heels on the rug that made her lose her balance.”

“You did? You did always wonder that?” Hildy sat down in his lap and wept with her head against his chest. “How can you die from a tooth?” she said. “How can God make that happen?” Frank said nothing, but tightened his arms around her. On a farm, you knew that you could die from anything, or you could survive anything. “Why?” was a question that his relatives never asked—they just told the stories, clucked, shook their heads. He said, “Okay, Hildy. We are going to walk up Hayward and find that dentist and ask him. We’re just going to do that.” Hildy was so distraught that he had to button her coat and tie her scarf. He made her walk down the stairs, out the door, to the left, over to Hayward, up the street. Forthright, warming steps. He put his arm around her waist, but he did push her forward, between the snowdrifts.