Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Lillian and Lois mounted the steps of the Fredericks’ big front porch. The Fredericks’ house was a very nice one, and Lillian appreciated it every time she visited. It had come on a train from Chicago — or, rather, all its parts had come, with instructions on how to build it — and she imagined that all houses in Chicago, all the houses Frankie saw when he was walking to school, looked like this one. She and Lois opened the big dark front door with the windows in it and went in. They hung their coats by the fireplace. Mrs. Frederick was just coming down the stairs.

She gave Lillian a welcoming glance and said, “I do think I saw some cookies cooling on the kitchen table. They might have been gingersnaps.”

“I hope they were,” said Lillian.

“Me, too,” said Lois.

Mrs. Frederick said, “I’ll go look.”

Lillian was very fond of all the Fredericks, and sometimes she lay in bed at night imagining their house, where someone was always making a joke and there was never any fighting. Lillian imagined that they had a secret about that, and she liked to come over and watch them, hoping she would figure out what it was.

ONE MORNING, after school was out and the corn planting finished, Joe got up and went to feed the animals, and he saw a mound, pale in the early light, lying in the grassy muck of the east pasture, half under the Osage-orange bush. He knew what it was without even going to look, but he went anyway, and when he got there, he squatted down and petted Elsa for a few minutes, along her neck and the roots of her mane; then he closed her eye. She was a bit of a mess — he hadn’t brushed her in a week, maybe, and her coat, now snowy white, was grimy. What was she, twenty-three?

Jake was at the far end of the pasture, standing among the cows. He took a few steps toward Joe, then stopped and flicked his ears. Jake was over twenty himself. The only thing either horse ever did anymore was walk around and eat, sometimes with Henry on board — Jake was better at that than Elsa had been. When Henry kicked him, he would actually speed up his walk a bit and stop putting his head down to eat. He would also turn when Henry pulled one way or another on the lead rope. Joe himself sometimes got on Jake and rode through the fields — easier than walking, and more fun. But Joe hadn’t done that in almost a year. He gave Elsa a last pat and went into the barn, where he got a couple of burlap sacks and laid them over the corpse. At breakfast, Mama said, “Don’t say anything. Maybe Henry won’t notice.”

“Well,” said Papa, “he’ll notice when the rendering wagon comes out to pick her up.”

“I think they have a truck now,” said Joe.

“There you go,” said Walter. “Even the renderer drives a truck. Even the renderer hasn’t much use for animals anymore.”

A couple of weeks later, Joe came home from Rolf’s farm, where he had been cultivating the corn, and Papa stopped him as he walked out of the barn toward the house. He said, “Joey, I sold Jake to someone.”

Joe’s voice shot out of his mouth, loud, surprised, “I think of Jake as my —”

“But he’s just standing there. This fellow has a use for him.”

Papa spoke sharply, but he had an abashed look on his face, and Joe said, “What use would that be?”

“I guess he has an old buggy he likes to drive in parades. A light thing, nothing to pull for a horse like Jake. He’s healthy, he should have a job.”

Joe didn’t disagree with this, but he was suspicious. He said, “How’d he find out about Jake?”

“I guess the man from the rendering plant told him we had a nice horse.”

“Well, I don’t want to sell him.” Joe pushed past Papa — but gently, respectfully — and headed toward the house. It was suppertime, and he was hungry.

Papa said, “It’s forty dollars. That’s Frankie’s fees for a quarter at Iowa State.”

Joe spun around. “I thought he gave that up for a year. He was going to go up to Wisconsin and hunt fox and beaver for his fees.”

“Now he doesn’t have to.”

“What about that ‘labor school’ Eloise and Julius were talking about? Brook something? That was free.”

“I guess it closed.”

But Papa was neither asking permission nor seeking advice. The horse was sold, and Papa already had the money — the man would be by to get Jake the next day.

Mama was more thoughtful. She came into Joe’s room when he was getting into bed, and sat down. She took his hand. She said, “Lillian is crying, too. I told her, but I think I’ll wait till Henry asks. Sometimes children get used to things by not knowing quite what’s happened for a bit. But Papa and I understand how attached you are to Jake. Papa is sick about this.”

Joe removed his hand from Mama’s and pushed back his hair. He didn’t say anything.

“Joseph. It’s not just Frankie going to school for himself. He’s going for all of us. The world is changing, and someone has to go out into it and be prepared for it.”

Joe snorted.

“Son, you know that that someone is him and not you. You love the world you live in, and that’s good. He loves the world we don’t know much about, and that’s good, too. I consider myself lucky to have one of each in my boys.”

She took his hand again, and patted it, then left. Joe knew that there was no hope for saving Jake, and it was true, he would live longer with something to do, and enjoy himself more with an equine friend — the man had another horse with an old lameness, who couldn’t pull the buggy anymore. What drove him crazy was that he couldn’t find his way around any of their arguments, never had. His own family left him confused and dumb. He didn’t think he was stupid — he could plow a straight row, repair a fence, shear a sheep, milk a cow, predict the weather, even get a robin to sit on his finger. He could mimic the calls of seventeen birds and animals, and often did for Henry’s and Lillian’s amusement (Lillian would tell the story, and Joe would pretend to be saying the parts in “real animal language”). He thought of Uncle Rolf, whose field he cultivated, whose life seemed to be buried in that very field. But he wasn’t Rolf, and would never be, thought Joe. Not in a million years.

FRANK WAS SITTING in the Lincoln Way Café in Campustown, across from the college in Ames, and the man who had just taken his order was, to his utter amazement, none other than Ragnar, Papa’s farmhand from years ago — eight or ten, anyway. He recognized Frank, though Frank hadn’t recognized him. And now here came a woman — Irma, it would be. She looked slightly more familiar. She rushed up to him, grabbed his hands. “Goodness gracious! Frankie Langdon, welcome to Iowa State! When I saw you last you were Mr. Mischief! Do you remember hammering that row of nails into the railings of the front porch? Oh, your papa was fit to be tied! And now here you are! Where do you live?”

Frank said, “In the freshman dorm. But I want to join Sigma Chi if I can. They have a good scholarship.”

“Oh, goodness. Have they told you about the fraternity houses? Since the flu epidemic after the war, everyone sleeps in the attic with all the windows wide open through the winter. The dorms and even apartments are at least above freezing!”

Frank laughed. He said, “Like home, then.”

“And how are your folks doing? I was so worried about them.”

Frankie stiffened. “Fine. They’re fine. Henry was born. He’s almost five.”

“And darling, I’m sure,” said Irma. She squeezed his hand. “Back to the kitchen now. But have the special. Corned beef and cabbage. On the house.”

Frank had ordered the chicken soup, the cheapest thing on the menu, but he said, “Thanks.” In a few minutes, Ragnar brought him a plate of the corned beef, with not only cabbage but some fried potatoes on the side, and a piece of apple pie. Frank made himself eat it with leisurely deliberation, even though he was ravenous.