Jane Smiley - Some Luck

Over supper, Joey asked if Papa had found the part, and when Papa said no, Joey said, “Did you see Jake?”

Papa said “Nope,” and Henry said, “Who’s Jake?”

“Our horse we had. We gave it to them to pull a buggy. If I’d known you were going there, I would have come along—”

But Papa was biting his lip, and then Mama said, “What, Walter?”

“They had horses,” said Henry. “They had four chestnuts and two blacks. The boys were mean boys.”

“Not worth talking about, you ask me,” said Papa, and that was the end of that.

But when it was dark and Henry was getting into bed, Joey appeared in the doorway of his room — something he never did, Joey never came upstairs — and he said, “They didn’t have a white horse?”

Henry didn’t say anything, but he must have grunted without meaning to. Then Henry said, “Something bad happened.”

Joey sat on the bed. “Tell me.”

“I couldn’t stop them.”

“What?”

“They were beating the white horse with sticks. He was dead and down in a ditch, and they beat him until—”

“Until what?”

“He didn’t have any eyes.”

“Until what?”

“Until he blew up, kind of. His stomach. It got on me.”

Joey put his hand over his face and nodded. Henry could see that he was crying. Henry had never seen Joey cry. Joey said, “You didn’t have to stop them. It’s okay, Henry.”

But Henry cried anyway. Joey left the room. Henry cried for a pretty long time, then fell asleep. He wished he had taken a bit of the tail, just a few hairs, which he could have given to Joey.

EVERYONE HAD SAID how much Lillian would like the high school. Mama and Granny Elizabeth had sewn her just the outfits she wanted, ones she’d seen in a magazine, and she had cut her hair (putting her braids, which were twenty-two inches long, away in a drawer). She wore a smoother hairdo now, still bright blond, but she had to roll it under every night and sleep on it. She could not say that the girls and the boys were mean to her — in general, they ignored her, didn’t look at her at all. An odd thing to know was that she was short, that when she walked down the hall she was merely part of the crowd, that her greatest efforts simply raised her to the level of most of the others. She, who had been told for her entire life that she was an angel and a beauty and a darling, wasn’t any of these things — she was one of many girls who were blonde, a little bigger in the hips than in the bust, a girl who had to watch out where she hemmed her skirts for fear that her calves would look unattractive.

And she, whom adults loved, was not the adored of her teachers, either. They considered her a decent student, for a girl, but, according to the ones who remembered him, nothing like Frank. Frank had been a phenomenon — totally ignorant of some of the simplest things, like the fact that London was in England, but totally capable of learning. Once he saw a map of Europe, and England, and London, and read an assigned book, Oliver Twist , he could tell you exactly where Oliver started out, where he went, and where he ended up. Yes, he had a “photographic memory,” that was part of it, but he understood what things meant, too. That’s what the English teacher said, anyway. The chemistry teacher saw her name on the class list and told the class about the time her brother Frank blew a window out of the classroom with a nitrogen experiment of some sort.

Jane was taller than she was now, by half a head, and thinner, too. She had been used to thinking of Jane as “malnourished,” as Mama would say, but now that she was in high school, she saw that Jane was rather elegant-looking — dark and flat-chested. All the girls preferred to be flat-chested with slim hips. They liked Bette Davis, of course, but also Barbara Stanwyck, blondes who were not really blonde, and who didn’t look at all like they did, farm girls, Iowa girls. Even Margaret Lindsay, who was born in Iowa and had started out as Margaret Kies — wouldn’t that be German? — didn’t look like any of the girls in the high school. “Jane Morris” was a good name for Hollywood, and their very first semester, she tried out for a part in the play. She didn’t seem to be daunted when she didn’t get it, either. When the other kids laughed in her audition, she didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Lillian cared on her behalf, but didn’t say anything. Jane did have a way of lifting her head and flaring her nostrils that said, “I’ll be leaving this town very soon,” which made Lillian laugh.

At the high school, Lillian missed Henry. Henry was eight now, and such a chatterbox. Lillian was sure he was driving Minnie crazy. She wished that Minnie would go to the school board and report that she couldn’t possibly teach at the school without Lillian to help her, and then Lillian could go back there and be of some use, instead of wandering the halls of the high school, wondering why in the world she had to grow up.

FRANK WAS HAVING lunch in Ragnar’s café with Lawrence, Hildy, and Eunice. Frank didn’t go to Ragnar’s café all that much, because Ragnar tended to watch him from across the room and ostentatiously leave him alone, but Lawrence liked the steak with popovers. Hildy was Frank’s girlfriend, a sophomore in his ancient-history class, from Decorah, far in the northeast corner of Iowa. She spoke Norwegian at home (it sounded like everyone in that town did), and she spoke Norwegian to Ragnar, who was charmed by it. But everyone was charmed by her — she was a beautiful girl — great ankles, terrific knees, slim waist, nice bust, broad shoulders, long neck, glamorous smile, eyes so blue that they seemed to spring out at you when she opened them. When Frank and Hildy walked down the street, heads did turn. Maybe she was better-looking than he was — and he considered that a good thing. She was crazy about Frank — they both knew it. He was playing it cool. Lawrence was here with Eunice. Eunice was from St. Louis, Missouri, of all places, and she never let you forget it. How she had gotten to a place like Iowa State, she couldn’t imagine. She was a Tri Delt, majoring in finding a diamond ring.

The first time Lawrence put his hand to his jaw was after he took a bite of steak. A few minutes later, he said, “Hey, ouch!”

It was Hildy, not Eunice, who said, “What’s the matter?”

“My tooth. My tooth is stabbing me.”

They ate a bit more; Frank had the fried chicken, which was exactly like Mama’s, but with fried potatoes, not mashed. Finally, Lawrence just dropped his fork on the table and said, “What is happening?”

The Flying Cloud was parked outside, and the four of them piled into it, but Lawrence said he was in too much pain to drive, so Frank drove. In the back seat (he could see in the mirror), Lawrence was sitting up, and then he fell over with his head in Eunice’s lap. Frank also saw in the mirror that she looked down with no expression on her face at all, and then cautiously stroked his hair. They drove around Campustown, looking for a dentist.

The dentist they found, somewhere up Hayward, was not working — he was cleaning his office, since it was Saturday, but one look at Lawrence in the back of the car, and he opened the door and stepped aside. They more or less dragged Lawrence in and set him in the chair. The dentist said that he had an impacted wisdom tooth, and that he needed to go to Mary Greeley. That was over on the other side of town, east on Lincoln Way and across the tracks. It was a bright, cold day, almost time for Christmas break. Over lunch, they had been talking about whether they liked to go home or not. Hildy had said that Christmas in Decorah was a real celebration, like Christmas in Norway — candles, that sort of thing. Frank drove the Flying Cloud through the crossing, and up Douglas. He turned in at the hospital driveway.