Jane Smiley - Some Luck

FRANK’S NEW SCHOOL was actually new — it was called the Franklin Branch, and it had only been open for two years. It was much bigger than North Usherton, and there wasn’t a single farm kid enrolled, unless you counted Frank, which Frank did not. It had a big library, a gymnasium, and a meeting hall where the student body gathered to be told things, and where performances and shows were put on — Frank was pretty impressed when, two weeks after his arrival, the students themselves did some singing, tap dancing, piano playing, and violin playing. The first half was for classical music, and the second half was for popular music, and the last act was eight girls who kicked up their legs and threw their arms around, and eight guys who tossed them in the air. There would be another show at the end of the year, and Frank planned to be in it, but he wasn’t going to sing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.” “Ain’t Misbehavin’ ” was more like it, but in the larger scheme of things, he was misbehaving, and it was wonderful fun.

He had fallen in with a gang of boys who ranged all over Lincoln Park and the North Side of Chicago, Terry, Mort, Lew, and Bob. Bob was the most accomplished thief — he walked into Woolworth’s and even into Marshall Field’s in one pair of shoes and came out in another. For his mother’s birthday, he had stolen a five-pound roast, walking out with it under his coat. He had also stolen her birthday present, which was a silk blouse. The other boys, and Frank himself, stuck to packs of cigarettes and bars of chocolate, but Bob would try anything. Terry and Mort were the brawlers. When they happened to run into the gang from St. Michael’s, who were good fighters because they were Micks, Terry and Mort could do damage if they had to. Lew, Bob, and Frank did some punching, but only for the fun of it. Terry broke one kid’s nose — really broke it — and Mort had another kid down and was kicking him as hard as he could, until the kid could hardly walk. Lew was the best talker — he talked a mile a minute, and just like Jimmy Cagney. Lew knew all the stories about the twenties in Chicago, and swore up and down that his dad and his uncle had been bootleggers, but Mort said that Lew’s dad and uncle were plumbers and always had been, and so what? Lew had perfected a type of swagger and knew how to get into Cubs games for free, so Frank was looking forward to Opening Day. The boys were going to skip school, as was everyone else. Wrigley Field was about a half an hour from Eloise’s place, less on the L. There was a catcher everybody was wild about named Gabby Hartnett. He was called Gabby because he had a big mouth and was funny. His batting average in the last season was.344, and Lew was sure he would end up in the Hall of Fame. Frank didn’t tell them he had never been to a baseball game. Even Julius liked baseball games, and they took Rosa.

It was Frank who was good with the girls. The others stood back and gawked at him — he could talk to any girl, and he would talk to any girl. He didn’t care whether she was nice or had a bad reputation or was pretty or not. He started by giving the girl a smile — not a dumb smirk or a sideways thing, but a good smile. He made sure she saw it, but he didn’t say anything right away. When the girl was used to smiling back, then he would start chatting like they’d been talking all along. It was easy. And, as he tried to explain to the others, though to little effect, it didn’t matter if some of them walked away — girls were all the same; you couldn’t tell by looking which one you wanted. The other thing was that if you had the girls on your side, then the teachers liked you. Frank didn’t know why that was, but maybe that, too, was the smile. One teacher, Mr. McCarron, he thought might see through him — he was a little impatient, and he taught French. But Frank liked French. He was in there with freshmen, since there hadn’t been French at North Usherton, but he did his work and practiced his pronunciation and raised his hand and asked Mr. McCarron about all the Louises and the Charleses, and the ponts and the gares . He imagined Paris to be a kind of better Chicago. He said that his father had spent a lot of time in Paris during the Great War, but of course he hadn’t. Yes, Frank had a contribution to make to the gang that was certainly on a par with Lew’s, Bob’s, Terry’s, and Mort’s — he was the best liar. He didn’t tell stories and he didn’t put on any performances, but he got them out of trouble two or three times. Frank liked to think of himself as the brains of the operation.

It was in this spirit that he made himself available to Julius, who was willing to pay him for writing up leaflets focused on Youth. It didn’t take long, and by doing it, he learned to type. Who Is Our Real Enemy? was the name of one — about Hitler. What Is Really Going On in Spain? was another. Who’s the Boss? was about whether members of the petite bourgeoisie were really free or actually slaves of the system without knowing it. After listening to Julius go on and on around the apartment, Frank could blab away in these leaflets without a hitch. Julius would read them over and correct him, and then when the leaflets were printed up, Frank saw them as a sort of publication, even though his name wasn’t on them. Julius paid him five dollars a leaflet, including typing.

But the thing Frank really loved had nothing to do with the gang or school or girls, even; he loved the L. It was Bob who showed him, since Bob had to range fairly widely in his avocation of stealing, so Bob took him south, down to the Loop, all the way to the University of Chicago, and north to Evanston and Wilmette, and west to the cattleyards. The L ran fairly steadily in spite of the snow, and it gave Frank a sense of dazzling speed and mobility, especially when he caught a glimpse of the still, flat, frozen white in the distance. At those moments, even though the L was big and noisy and made of metal, it felt cloudlike, as if he were sailing in a thunderhead over the still plains. The L made him want to fly in an airplane, as Julius had, as Eloise had, as even Bob had, though only to Minneapolis. When he was on the L, it convinced him that he would never return to the farm, never see the farm again, maybe only ever see Mama and Papa and Joey and Lillian and Henry from a great distance, from high in the air or way down the street. He imagined himself waving and them not seeing him, and himself walking on and turning the corner.

SCHOOL GOT OUT later in the summer in Chicago than it did in Usherton, and even the corn was already planted by the time Frank was finished for the year, so Mama said that he could stay with Eloise if he found work of some sort. He didn’t, at first, and then he did. A fellow at Party headquarters got him a job at Marshall Field’s, working in the stockroom. But three weeks into that, just before the Fourth of July, Eloise received a letter, and that night there was crying, and then, the next morning, Eloise got up at six, when Frank woke up, and she came into his room and sat on the bed, pinning Frank under the sheet. Her eyes were red, and she said, “Frank, something happened.”

The first thing that Frank thought of was that Mama had had another baby, but he didn’t say anything. Eloise said, “Your uncle Rolf. Your uncle Rolf died.” She glanced toward the doorway, and Julius was there. Julius made a noise. Eloise said, “Frank, Rolf killed himself, and so we have to go back home for the funeral, and we’re taking the train today. It leaves at ten-twenty.”

Frank did think this was shocking, but in comparison to what he had imagined, rather dryly shocking, and strange because Uncle Rolf had finally done something.

When they got to the farm, where Grandpa Wilmer left him before taking Eloise, Julius, and Rosa on to the Vogel farm, Mama was rather desperately glad to see him, as if it were Frank who had been in danger, not Rolf, and Frank felt a stab of fear that he wouldn’t be allowed to go back to Chicago, but he sat with her on the sofa, holding her hand, and didn’t say a word about that.