Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Ethel Corcoran. Martin Fisk. Gert Hanke. Len Hart. Old, young, old, old. To all of them, Rosanna raised her whip and smiled and called, “Hey!” And then she was in front of Crest’s, and she shouted, “Whoa!” to Jake, who had anyway already stopped by the hitching post, where some boys were pitching pennies against the wall of the store, shouting and jumping about. Rosanna got out and tied Jake to the post, right between a Ford and a new Chevrolet coupé. “Coupay!” said Rosanna to herself as she lifted out her crock of butter. Dan Crest came to the door of the store and opened it. He took the crock from her hands. He said, “So sorry we didn’t see you last Saturday, Mrs. Langdon. Four — count ’em, four — of your best customers were in here, looking for your butter. You know Mrs. Carlyle? She won’t make a pie crust without it.”

“I use lard myself,” said Rosanna.

“Well, she’s French on her mother’s side,” said Dan Crest.

He set the crock on the counter and said, “I hope there are eggs, too?”

“Only three dozen.” said Rosanna. “I candled them all myself, and they are large. I cleaned them again this morning.” When she went out to get the crate, one of the boys who had been pitching pennies was petting Jake on the nose. She said, “Rodney Carson, you make sure nothing happens to Jake and I’ll give you a nickel.” A nickel was equal to one egg, if she took it in trade. If she asked for money, she got four cents. But she got five dollars for the butter, and six in trade. Rodney Carson said, “Okay, Mrs. Langdon. Jake is a nice horse.”

“Yes, he is,” said Rosanna. It was lovely how even the most elementary social intercourse lifted her spirits. Especially this time of year, when the farm was as dirty as could be, with thawing and freezing and damp everywhere. Just to put on your clean clothes and your clean shoes and your nice gloves and your best hat and drive the buggy out onto the road — well! She said, “I’ll be back in a bit, Rodney.”

By the time she set the crate on the counter, Dan had the sweating block of butter out of the crock and was weighing it on his scales. Ten pounds. He said, “Well, I’m giving some of the other ladies only forty cents a pound, Mrs. Langdon, but I’ll offer you fifty, just because it’s in such demand. Of course, the time of year means it doesn’t quite have the flavor …”

“I think you’ll find mine does,” said Rosanna, with a discreet toss of her head. “Our cows have very good hay, especially this year.” Then she said, “Do you mind?” And she walked away from the counter, toward the back of the store, as if there were something she’d seen from a distance. But there was nothing — she knew what she needed. In addition to the momentary charade of pretending that she was merely considering his offer, there was the pleasure of gazing at his goods, being seen to gaze at his goods, and exercising nonchalance. That was the most important thing. At least outside the farm, she was not going to fall prey to Walter’s ever-present state of worry-shading-into-alarm. She was going to comport herself as the town women did, greeting everyone from a bit of a platform, whatever it was, even if it was only that she carefully candled her own eggs so that none of them were ever addled, even if it was only that her butter was rich and delicious, even if it was only that she and Jake made such a pretty picture trotting down the road.

Back at the counter, Dan Crest was waiting on an older woman Rosanna had never seen before, possibly the woman who owned the “coupay.” Rosanna stilled her movements and the rustle of her dress, and listened. Dan was saying, “Yes, ma’am. Wonderful fresh butter, right from the farm this morning. And the best around.” She couldn’t hear what the woman said, but then Dan said, “Seventy-five cents a pound, and I’m proud to say it.”

“Goodness me!” said the woman.

“There’s a French family in town — this is all they buy.”

“Indeed,” said the woman.

Only then did Dan’s eyebrow cock in her direction.

“Well, I …” But he made the sale, two pounds, and she also bought some sausages. When Rosanna returned to the counter, he said, “Sixty-two cents, in kind, and not a penny more.”

All Rosanna said was “I see you have some apples left.”

“Oh,” said Dan Crest, “those are some russets from over to the east. You know the Schmidts over there?”

Rosanna shook her head.

“He keeps them in a cellar dug in not far from the river. I would have thought the damp would rot them myself, but they’re as crisp as they can be.” And so it began. There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret — it was a source of pride.

FRANK HAD a special place, and what he did was, when Papa was outside and Joey was sleeping and Mama was in the kitchen, Frank climbed the stairs and went into Papa and Mama’s room, and he lifted the corner of the blue-and-green quilt, and he lay down on his back and slid under there. The floor was slick against his back, and he got himself all the way to the far corner, right by the wall, and he put his hands behind his head and stared up at the underside of Mama and Papa’s bed. The bed was much more interesting from the underside than from the top. It was like his own house under there, dark and shady, and he could look at things that fascinated him. For example, the legs of the bed had feet that looked like upside-down muffins, and above those, spirals — the back feet spiraled one way, and the front feet spiraled the other way, just like the spirals on the stair banister, one way, then the other way, up the stairs. The wood of the bed, which Frank also liked, was smooth and reddish, and on every side there were pegs sticking out. The best part of the bed from underneath were the ropes that ran back and forth, making squares. Frank liked to slide his finger along the ropes, outlining the squares, but he never put his finger between a rope and the heavy thing above it, because he had done that once and gotten his finger stuck, and it had hurt to pull it out.

There were no toys under the bed — that wasn’t why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn’t anything under the bed — no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no “no”s. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all. It was so quiet under the bed that sometimes he had a nap. Mama didn’t mind him going under the bed — more than once she had said, “Well, you can’t get into any trouble down there, at least.” Eloise would sometimes come to the side of the bed and throw the quilt up and shout, “Boo! I see you!” and that made them both laugh, especially since he knew she was coming because her feet showed below the edge of the quilt.

But Papa didn’t like him under the bed, and if Papa had told him not to go under the bed, then Papa would be very angry if he found Frank under the bed. And today was a Sunday, and they were going to go in the buggy to Granny’s for Sunday supper, and Frank was wearing good clothes — clean pants and clean shirt. He had been told to stay downstairs and not go under the bed, and as soon as he was alone, he did the very thing he was told not to do.

It was beyond Frank to understand why he sometimes did the very thing he was told not to do. It seemed like once they told him not to do it — once they said it and put it in his mind — then what else was there to do? It was like smacking Joey. “Don’t hit your brother. Don’t ever hit your brother, do you understand? If I catch you hitting your brother, then I will whip you, do you understand?”

But what was hitting? Sometimes, when Joey was walking along, all you had to do was touch him and he fell down and cried. Other times, a good wallop had no effect. If there was anything Frank liked, it was trying things out. Joey was the most interesting person to try things out on, especially considering that the cat always ran away, even when Mama was not saying that the cat was dirty and shooing him out of the house. It was obvious to Frank that if you had something in your hand, no matter what it was, you had to employ it. If it was a rock, then you had to scrape it on the ground or on a wall. If it was a fork, you had to poke it into your egg or into the table or into Joey. If it was a stick, you had to hit something with it. If it was a screwdriver, you had to turn a screw, and Papa had shown him how to do that. At Christmas, Mama had given him a box of eight colors (blue, green, brack, brow, vilet, ornge, red, yellooooooo) and a book to color in, but he had to try it on the table and the rug and the floor and the wall and his own skin. Only the wall was really bad — he got a whipping for the wall — but they laughed at the ornge on his legs.