Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Frank turned around, not taking his hands out of his pockets, and said, “Hey. Sorry. Didn’t realize you were standing there.” He moved away.

The next exhibit was of a tractor with its own plow, which could lift up at the end of a row. It was a machine that Frank would never purchase, but he gazed at it, cocking his hip to one side, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the girls move toward the seeders. They stood there for a few moments, then went to the doorway, where they peeked out and drew back in. Frank turned on his heel and did something that he knew Granny Mary would call “sashaying out the door.” He went on down past the candy-cotton man and the double Ferris wheel. He glanced around. The girls were nowhere to be seen. But the wind was making his nose run, so that was when he made his big mistake — he wiped his nose on his sleeve, just like a rube would do, and right then, one of the girls, the taller one, with black hair, came around a tree, out of the darkness, and startled him. She was smoothing her dress over her hips. She stopped in front of him and said, “Staring at something?”

“What would I be staring at?”

“Well, I was taking a piss behind that tree, didn’t you know that?”

“Nope. Didn’t see you.” And then he said, “Wish I did.” She came up about to his eyebrows, he thought. And she was almost pretty. Eighteen for sure.

“You’re a smart kid,” she said.

“Who says I’m a kid?”

She laughed and pushed around him, then headed down the midway. He watched her, but she didn’t look back. Now he sauntered along, but in two days, he had had a taste of everything, and he had gobbled it all down so fast that it did make him a little sick. At the hotdog stand, he asked the guy frying the hot dogs if he knew what time it was. It was ten-forty-five. Frank yawned.

A few minutes later, he was crossing the campground where all the cars were parked and the tents were set up. The boardinghouse where Mama and Papa were certainly seething with anger was to the left of where the cars were, and he was making his way through all the vehicles when that girl stepped out from behind something black, maybe a Ford. She said, “Oh, there you are.”

Frank thought that was a good line. He stopped and tried out one of his slow smiles. The girl said, “How old are you, anyway?”

“Where’s your friend?”

“Somewhere. Not here.”

“Are you from around here?”

“We drove over from Muscatine.”

“That’s way east.”

“Way east. If you’re cold, you can get in our car.”

Frank said, “Okay.”

When they were in the car, which was actually a Dodge, she said, “So — how old are you?”

“Guess.”

“Seventeen?”

“My birthday is New Year’s Day.” He didn’t mention that it would be his fifteenth birthday. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.” Her mouth made a skeptical “o.”

The car was not warm, but it was out of the breeze, and with the windows up, he could smell her — a combination of flowers, tobacco smoke, and sweat that was strange. She was sitting by the window. She said, “What’s your name?”

Frank said, “Joe. Joe Vogel. How about you?”

“Libby Holman.”

He said, “That’s a funny name.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

She stretched her leg toward him, heel first, and said, “Look. I got a run.” She took his hand and put the tips of his fingers on the stocking. He didn’t know what a run was, and in the dark, he couldn’t see anything. He said, “Maybe.”

She said, “You’re cute.”

“My mom says that.”

“How about the girls?”

He shrugged, then cocked his head. “I heard they say that.”

“Well, you are.”

“Doesn’t matter to me. I can’t look at myself.”

“Put your head forward, so I can see you a little in the light.”

He leaned forward.

She put his hand back on her leg, and then kissed him, right on the lips. He reciprocated, opening his own lips just a little bit. He slid his hand up her leg, and her leg relaxed. He said, “Where’s your friend?”

“Somewhere.” And then she rearranged herself for another kiss. Her jacket and her blouse were open. Her breast was the hottest thing he had ever felt, he thought. She lay back.

In the end, all he did was touch her and look at her. When he came, his thing was pressed against the smoothness of her skirt, and she sat up suddenly and said, “Ugh.” Then she pushed him away and lit a cigarette, but she didn’t button her blouse or pull down her skirt. She offered him a drag. She said, “How old are you really? Sixteen?”

Frank said, “Maybe.”

That got a smile.

THE FUNNY PART, Frank thought on the way home the next day, was listening to Mama and Papa talk about Joey, who was riding with the Fredericks and the ewe. Papa said, “That girl Emily was a very nice girl.”

“A little forward, if you ask me.”

“Nice animal she had, too.”

“I guess she’s been in 4-H for years. Her mother said they come every year, and her brother always brought calves. Herefords.”

“That right,” said Papa.

Frank, of course, was in big trouble, for coming in late, lying, and running off. Mama didn’t know what she was going to do with him. He was sitting in the back seat, and Lillian had fallen against him, sound asleep. Henry was up front, in Mama’s lap, and Lois had gone in the truck.

Mama said, “I think Joey bought her about five root beers. I don’t know why they weren’t belching the whole time. I guess they went on the Ferris wheel, too. What was her last name?”

“Stanton. Old man’s got two hundred acres by Lone Tree, south of Iowa City there. He said he’s looking at less than thirty bushels an acre this year. But I guess they’ve had more rain than we have.”

Mama said, “Well, if she kissed him …”

Papa lowered his voice. “Maybe it went the other direction. Maybe he kissed her.”

Frank turned his head and looked out the window.

AT DINNER, Henry ate all of his chicken hash and all of his applesauce, and Mama said he was a good boy. Then Papa got up from his chair and groaned, but Mama didn’t say anything, just kept standing by the sink. When Papa was out the door, Henry slid down from his chair and went over to the sink and held up his hands. Mama pumped some water and wiped his hands and face with a rag.

The room was bright. Henry could see the snow out his window, lots of it, so much that for two days Frankie, Joey, and Lillian had stayed home from school. They had built a snowman sitting in a chair. Henry could see the back of the chair from his crib. It had taken all morning, one of the mornings. Henry liked it. When it was all built, Frankie had sat him in the snowman’s lap, and everyone laughed when Henry slid down to the ground.

The house was completely different with no one in it, Henry thought. He went to the toy box and took out three of his books. He opened the one he knew by heart and looked at the pictures while telling himself the story: A man and his wife were lonely. A cat came. More cats came. More cats came. No one had ever seen so many cats in one place before. Papa didn’t like cats. Mama said that cats were useful; she shooed them out if they came in the house. Lillian wished she had a cat. Joey wished he had a dog. Henry read the story again, then opened another book, but he didn’t know that story. He got up and went into the kitchen. He looked around, but he wasn’t hungry. He got up into his chair and got down again. He walked across the kitchen and looked out the window. There was nothing out there, and then there was, something red. Red was a good color. He stared and stared at the red thing in the snow. Maybe it was moving, maybe it was waving. Henry couldn’t tell, but he wondered. He opened the kitchen door and put his foot out onto the porch. It was—