Jane Smiley - Some Luck

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.”