Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Oma spoke in German again, and Mama said, “You can talk English, Grandma.”

Oma said, “Nicht zu diesem.” Then she added, “Alles, was Teufel will, ist Krieg. Die Engländer können es nicht sehen, aber die Deutschen können.”

Papa said, “What did she say?”

“She said Hitler is bent on having a war.”

There was an uncomfortable silence; then Papa said, “Prices will go up.”

Joe didn’t mind detasseling the corn. He did it at a trot, from one end of a long row to the other. He moved along, yanking the pollen-filled tassels out of the stalks and dropping them on the ground. It was not terribly hot — he did it in a loose shirt and light shoes. The field was full of all sorts of bugs and bees, and he had to watch out for snakes, but it also gave him a chance to pull up the rogue corn plants, and the bindweed, and the lamb’s-quarter, and the Canada thistle, all of which smelled rather good. Because of how sharp the edges of the corn leaves were, he had to wear gloves anyway, so he got all of the thistles out of the field. Mama said, “You are such an industrious boy, Joey. Do you remember the way you stacked those dominoes when you were about two? No, of course not. But every time Frankie knocked them over, you stacked them up again.” The dominoes were in Henry’s toy box. Joey didn’t remember playing with them, but he was sure that mindless activity had been his specialty.

His favorite day of detasseling was the last Saturday, when Minnie, who had been teaching at the schoolhouse for the last year (six students, including Lois), agreed to help him. That day, he slowed down.

He was now taller than Minnie, though he wasn’t quite sure when that had happened. He hadn’t gone to school at all this year, and so he hadn’t had her as a teacher, which meant that he could tell her what to do. He said, “Well, too bad you didn’t come at the beginning instead of at the end — the corn is a lot taller now. But there aren’t many tassels left. This is cleanup.”

She set down the basket she’d brought with the clean dish towel tied over the top, and Joey threw his jacket over that. The morning had started pretty cool, but it was warming up fast. The tassels were bright yellow at the tops of the green plants, but you had to reach into the leaves and grab them at the base, or they would break off. After he showed her, she went over a few rows and he could barely see her. She shouted, “Looks like a good crop!”

“Too soon to tell.”

She shouted, “That’s how I feel about my students!”

Joe laughed. At the end of the row, they sipped some water from the canteen he was carrying. Minnie said, “So what do you hear from Frank?”

“Not much. I guess they have a nice swimming pool there. He likes that. Did you know that he learned to swim when he was in Chicago?”

“He wrote me about that.”

“You probably hear more than we do.”

“He said he was working on making gunpowder out of cornstalks.”

Joe said, “I think that’s a joke.” The joke was that if there was anything in the world Joe could imagine Frank trying, it was making gunpowder out of cornstalks. And bullets out of kernels.

They made their way down the next two rows, back to the basket. When they were having a sandwich (chicken salad and cucumber — the cukes were sweet), Joe said, “How were your students this year?”

“I had to be kind of strict with Lois and Henry. I think I hurt their feelings. But it’s not like when Frank and I were going there — lots of kids, and so lots of distractions for the teacher, and so lots of fun. Do you remember when Frank set the mousetrap for the bullies, where they kept their cigarettes in the outhouse?”

“Never heard about that one.”

“He might have been seven at that point. I thought he was so brave and smart. Even though they were bigger than he was, they left us alone after that, because he was as sly as could be. Another time, he put a half-rotted rat in one of the bullies’ boots. It was winter, and the kid had to jam his foot in to get it on. We all knew it was in there. Oh my, we laughed. But there’s none of that now. I have my eye on all of them all the time.”

“I guess, when Lillian and Jane go to the high school, you’ll be down to four.”

“They might close the school.”

She pulled out a small bowl of raspberries, which they ate one by one.

It was nearly noon when they made their way down the third set of rows. Joe wondered what Minnie would do if they closed the school. She had never shown any inclination to leave home, and he didn’t know what Mrs. Frederick would do without her.

The last row Minnie walked in front of him, pulling out the tassels that were at her level, and Joe walked behind her, pulling out the higher ones. She had a straw hat on (so did he). He couldn’t see even the back of her head, but he could see her hips and her feet. They gave him such a funny feeling that he was a little delirious by the time they got back to the food basket. They drank some water and sat down on a blanket in the shade of the tall corn plants to share the rest of the food. There were more sandwiches, with some sliced sausage, lettuce, and the first of the season’s tomatoes on Mama’s homemade bread; after that, some of Mrs. Frederick’s Linz cookies, with jam in the middle — these were fancy, and she was the only one in the neighborhood who took the time to bake them. The jam in the middle was blackberry, one of Joe’s favorites. Minnie said, “I used to hide those in my coat, and then Frankie would tickle me until I gave him one.”

Joe must have looked dismayed, because Minnie said, “We were only eight and nine.”

“He used to tickle me, too. But it wasn’t for a cookie.”

“What was it for?”

“To make me pee my pants.”

“That’s mean.”

“That’s Frankie.”

“Brothers and sisters are mean. Even Jane Morris shoves her sister Lucy, and Jane is the meekest child I ever saw. I think being mean to siblings is the law of the world.”

Joe didn’t answer. Once again, the discussion had gone past him. He said, “Thanks for helping me. I’ll cut you in on the profits.”

“Oh, please do!”

They folded up the blanket, and Minnie put her hat back on her head. Joe wondered how much Minnie thought about Frankie. He was pretty certain that Frankie never thought about Minnie.

CLAIRE WAS BORN on Frankie’s birthday, but late in the day rather than the middle of the night. Rosanna and Walter had time to get to the hospital in Usherton. Once she was there, under the care of Dr. Liscombe, there were plenty of nurses, all in white uniforms and about nineteen years old. Rosanna could not imagine how she had given birth before, although she could remember it perfectly well. The new hospital had all the latest things — big windows, railings around the beds, linoleum floors, swinging doors, rooms with only two beds in them. After Dr. Liscombe delivered Claire, they took her away, and didn’t bring her back for four hours. What a relief that was! The birth was easy — what birth wasn’t, after five previous ones, Rosanna would like to know — but she felt she deserved a nap, anyway. Once she’d had one, and they put Claire in her arms, she thought it was the first time she had ever looked at her new baby and not gone nuts.

Claire was a seven-pounder (seven pounds, three ounces — when had she ever known the exact weight before?). She had a down-to-earth way about her. She wasn’t an angel and she wasn’t a beauty and she wasn’t the repository of all of Rosanna’s hopes, whatever they were. (What were they? wondered Rosanna.) She was a baby who had Walter’s hair and Rosanna’s nose and someone else’s eyes — maybe Granny Elizabeth? Rosanna smiled at her — who could help it? — and smoothed her dark hair to the side. She put Claire to the breast. She almost said ouch; this was the thing she had forgotten, how much it hurt the first few times. The nurse who had brought the baby said, “Oh, doesn’t it ache, though? There was a lady in here last week whose one-year-old was still nursing, and even she winced when the newborn latched on. But I don’t need to tell you.”