Authors: Leisha Kelly
She nodded but didn’t say more. She just pulled her rag doll from the striped bag and plunked it across her shoulders the way Sam had carried her. “Going to Ill’nois, Bessie,” she chanted. “Going to Ill’nois.”
But Samuel and Robert were already reading the map with their eyes on our destination. Two days with such slow progress had made them testy, tense, and tired. We paid for rooms twice to avoid sleeping in a ditch, and I bought the cheapest food I could find. Despite all this, I tried my best to stay cheerful. But young Robert refused to stick his thumb out anymore and began walking three paces behind us.
Our situation was hardest for Samuel, though, knowing we’d had money, and especially that I’d had money, once. When we married, he promised me a house with curving chandeliers and plenty of roses. I didn’t care about all that anymore, but he did. I could see it eating away at him as the miles passed behind us. Our lovely home in Harrisburg, the yard we’d filled with roses, were gone. And who could know what we would ever have to take their place?
I’d promised Sarah a home as good or better. I even tried to believe it myself. But the fear still lingered. Sometimes when you think things are going to improve a little, they just get worse.
By the time we reached Evansville, Indiana, on the second of May, Sam had woolly whiskers and a gaunt look I’d never seen before in him. He hurried us into the gray-looking town, determined to telephone Dewey in Illinois and tell him how close we were and how eager he was to work as soon as we got there. I tied on my rosy scarf in the growing breeze and sang “Blue Skies” for Robert and Sarah while Sam stood inside the
Evansville Daily
office, talking to his cousin.
Robert was finally excited again. What would Dewey’s house be like? Were there neighbors? Was the school close by? Would we get a telephone again one day? And a radio to hear about Jack Sharkey in the boxing ring in New York City?
Sarah, bless her, had only two questions. Could she have pink covers on her new bed in Illinois? And would we find any theaters where we could go and watch Mickey the Mouse again?
I shared their anticipation, expecting Dewey’s news to be as grand as it ever was, hoping he’d even consider climbing in his Model A and driving the distance to meet us.
But when Samuel stepped out of that office, looking like a stormy wind had dashed him against a wall of stone, the clouds descended over me and I turned away. I knew by his face. Dewey wouldn’t be coming. Dewey couldn’t carry all the hopes we’d pinned on him. We were alone.
Samuel
We joined the back of a soup line in Evansville, and I felt like a miserable father. Mine were the only kids I could see in line. I’d brought my wife and children across three states on the promise of a job that would never happen. I should have known. I should have realized that when Dewey couldn’t send us money for traveling, his ideas were not all that secure.
The wheel plant was struggling now, laying off, about to close. No apologies from Dewey. He was so worried about his own livelihood that he had nothing to say about mine. And it hurt. We’d been like brothers since the third grade, when I helped him sneak off during one of his parents’ drunken fights. We were both gone for two days, and I got a licking I’ll never forget. But we were always in cahoots after that. And I could always trust that he was looking out for me as much as he was for himself. Until now.
I’d have turned back to Pennsylvania if we had anything to go back to. But there was nothing at the end of the line, or at its beginning. We were strung on a string and it didn’t matter where we stopped.
Julia said nothing at all, and I thought this a mercy. She should have been weeping by now, but she hadn’t cried once in a year and a half of struggle. First everything I’d invested was gone. Then the best job I’d ever had, tooling in Cooper’s engineering plant. And then the house.
She didn’t berate me for the way I’d let her down, but I knew how hurt she was. I knew she was bitterly disappointed. But she didn’t even admit to being tired. She just picked up little Sarah and looked down the street.
“Remember Grandma Pearl?” she asked the children.
Robert nodded his assent, but Sarah shook her head. She’d been only two when Pearl died, far too young to remember.
“I lived with Grandma Pearl a long time,” Julia told the children again. “After Papa died and I thought I had nothing left in this world. But she told me there’s always a way. There’s always good things just waiting for you to find them.”
“Are we looking for good things?” Sarah asked.
“Every day,” Julia answered.
I was surprised she could be so calm, but then I saw her eyes, just for a moment, before she turned away. I’d never seen such a jumble of emotion, as though all the hurt and uncertainty inside were finally welling up and spilling over. She couldn’t bury the tears, so they just hung there like dew on the grass.
“I remember Grandma’s garden best,” Robert said. “She was funny, pulling weeds all morning and then eating some of them.”
“She was a smart lady,” Julia told him. “She knew how to use whatever God provides.”
“He’s providin’ soup today,” Sarah said as we approached the soup counter. “I hope they got vegible.”
I turned my face away from my family. I didn’t want them to see how it tore at me to introduce them to the stout lady behind the counter and tell her where we were from.
“I’ll letcha eat tonight,” she said with a frown. “But you need to be movin’ on. This facility is for residents down on their luck. We don’t entertain no vagabonds ’round here.”
Vegetable soup was all they had, which of course pleased Sarah. One scant bowl and two soda crackers apiece. We ate in silence until Sarah suddenly asked, “What’s a vagabond?”
Dear Julia, always trying to shelter the kids from our trouble, answered quickly before I got the chance. “It’s someone who travels a lot, honey.”
“Why don’t they wanna ennertain ’em, then, Mama?” Sarah asked. “I think it’d be fun. They could tell about neat places. Like Affica, maybe.”
Robert set his spoon down hard and grimaced at his sister. “Don’t you know nothing?” he demanded. “She was calling
us
vagabonds! That means we’re poor!”
Sarah looked at her mother with her round eyes full of question. I couldn’t have said a word, even if I’d wanted to. The carrots and potatoes went down hard just then, like they were made of shoe leather. But Julia just looked over at Robert and told him to finish his soup. “Not all vagabonds are poor,” she said. “Not of heart, at least.”
A gray-headed old man told us about a church a few blocks down that had beds for the homeless. I thanked him, knowing we had no choice but to get what help we could. We walked to the church quickly when the soup was gone. And I was thinking the whole time that Julia hadn’t said one word to me and had scarcely even looked at me since I’d talked with Dewey.
She was bound to be angry, and I knew that one of these times she’d up and let me know how she really felt, but not in front of the kids. She’d wait till they were asleep, surely, and then tell me what a dismal failure I was. After all this time, I thought it would almost be a relief to hear her say the things I imagined she must be thinking about me: If I could have kept my job, or got another one, if I could have left Grandma Pearl’s money in her shoebox instead of buying company shares, we might still have had our house.
The folks at the church were more pleasant than the soup lady, but they didn’t seem to have a minute to spare for us. They gave us a room apart from the rest of the people who’d come to them, mostly men, and then left us on our own. The kids were soon asleep, and then Julia too. Still without a word.
But I couldn’t even lay my head down. What would my family wake up to? What would I have to give them? We didn’t even have Evansville’s soup line to look forward to. We had nothing, and they would know it. I’d promised them Illinois, with prospering prairies and fields. I’d promised them Cousin Dewey, a happy welcome, a happy visit, and a future.
Dewey hadn’t said to turn back. We were welcome to visit, since we’d come so far. But he held out no scrap of hope for me. There was not a chance of being hired.
I tried to pray, knowing Julia and the grandma she remembered so fondly would certainly think it best. But I found no light and certainly no arrows pointing me the way. By sunup, feeling raw inside, I decided that we would have to go on, if only to be doing something.
Julia accepted my decision immediately. She bought us day-old biscuits from a diner owner’s nephew who was out peddling bargains from his Fleetwood wagon. He walked up and down the sidewalk in the business district, trying to sell what his uncle couldn’t serve. And Julia praised him for his enterprise. The boy gave her a smile and two extra biscuits for being so nice.
Then when we got a ride, she chatted with the driver as though we hadn’t a care in the world. Bolstered by their mother’s calm exterior, Sarah scanned the fields for wildflowers and Robert sat quietly, without a single complaint about another day’s travel.
Juli puts up such a good front,
I kept thinking. I couldn’t do that. But she had the children thinking our situation was no big deal, or at least no permanent problem. Just another day of doing what needed to be done.
My family would come out all right. They had the grace of God’s angels and all the pluck Grandma Pearl had managed to grow in Julia. There’d be a way somehow. I could see them starting over, managing to make ends meet and finding a roof over their heads. But I could only see myself drowning, with every mile going deeper into the depths of my inability.
Julia
In the middle of the afternoon we stopped alongside a field somewhere near Dearing, Illinois. Sam didn’t want to turn farther south again, which would take us away from Mt. Vernon. So the driver let us out. Not one vehicle passed our way after that, so I carried my tired little girl. After two hours of walking, angry clouds pitched over one another and the wind whipped Sarah’s brown curls into my face.
I’d never felt so angry before. We were in the middle of nowhere and about to be stuck in the worst storm I’d seen all year. It was going to be bad, I could see that, though I couldn’t say so for the sake of the children. We had to find shelter, and fast, before the storm’s full fury broke over us.
Sam was the first to see a barn to the south of us, and I ran for it, trying my best to juggle my handbag and Sarah at the same time. Robert jogged alongside me, surely wondering what would become of us now. There’d been bad days before, plenty of them. But this one surely outdid them all.
I could hear the old barn creaking in the wind. What kind of a shelter was it going to be? I expected to see it give up and tumble to the ground before we even reached it.
“Hurry!” Sam yelled, but I wouldn’t look his way. This whole journey had been his idea, to take our kids and hitchhike halfway across the country on the strength of Dewey’s word. I didn’t care what buddies Sam and Dewey had been. I didn’t even care how badly Sam might be feeling. The only thing I could think of was his plans falling through again. We had nothing at all to show for our leaving Pennsylvania behind. We were stuck in a strange state, now with less than a dollar between us, and nowhere else to go.
The stubble from last season’s corn made the unworked field a nightmare to cross. And it was getting darker. A sudden crash of thunder behind me sent Sarah’s face into the folds of my coat. She clutched at me so tightly that my scarf slipped backward and my unbraided hair went flying in the wind.
“We’ll make it, baby,” I said to her. “We’ll be inside before this storm hits.”
Robert went sprinting ahead of me as fast as his lanky, ten-year-old legs could carry him. He reached the rickety old barn before his father did and pushed and pulled the floppy old door until Sam reached him and slid the thing open. I passed the two old trees that stood like sentries beside the barn and then ducked inside just as the downpour began.
Sam had already thrown his bags to the middle of the straw-strewn floor. What a stench this place had! Like a hundred years’ worth of dirt and cattle and mice and wet, moldy hay. Robert crinkled his nose and stared at me.
But Sarah lifted her eyes for only a second. “I’m scared, Daddy!” she cried. The poor thing had always been scared of thunderstorms.
“It’ll be okay, pumpkin.” Sam tried his best to reassure her, pulling her from my arms to hug her close.
But I could see his eyes wandering over our shelter. The whole place seemed to rattle and shake with every thunderclap. There were holes in the roof and walls where the rain had begun pouring in. The west side of the old structure appeared to be solid, but the rest seemed to defy its own nature just to remain standing in that wind.
I knew I should be thankful for the shelter, poor though it was. In the right light, such an old barn would enchant me. But I was still too mad to find the good in this mess.
And Sam’s tenderness with Sarah was suddenly tough to take. I found it hard to be angry when watching him kiss away her tears. I knew Sam loved us; I could never really doubt that. He hadn’t meant for this to happen. He’d had no way of knowing the market would crash. Or that the Cooper plant would fold soon after. He thought he’d been doing me a favor by putting my inheritance into his doomed company. If only he’d just left it alone! The shoe-box was good enough for Grandma, and it would’ve been better for us.
Robert set his gunnysack of belongings beside me and walked to the opposite side of the barn as Sarah leaned into her father’s shoulder. Robert was braver than his sister when it came to things like thunder. But I was worried for him just the same, because I knew he worried with me, knowing as he did just how bad off we really were.
“Mom, look here,” Robert called from the far door, which had been flopping in the wind until he took hold of it. I hurried to him, and he pointed to the southwest, past a rickety chicken coop to an old, two-story farmhouse. The back door was standing ajar, and we could see two broken windows.