Fields Of Gold (15 page)
Authors: Marie Bostwick
“Oh, Ruby!” I sprang out of the chair and went to wrap my arms around her. “I know it hurts. I know all about that, but it's not forever. He'll send for you soon, you'll see. You'll take a train out to California, and he'll be there when you arrive. You'll live in a house with a green yard, and your children will pick oranges and eat them, right off the trees.”
“No,” she whispered. She looked away from me again and stared off into space at a place only she could see. “No, we won't. He's not coming back. I'm never going to see him again.”
I shushed her for talking such foolishness, but a chill ran through me as I tried to comfort her. Looking at her face, I wondered where she was, maybe in that place where I had been with Slim, where you can see the one you love as sharp and full as life and how everything will be, a cruel preview of things you cannot change.
Chapter 10
T
he Depression was when everyone in America learned they were alone.
he Depression was when everyone in America learned they were alone.
Most people will tell you it started in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed, but that didn't matter in Dillon. We couldn't have located Wall Street on a map if we'd wanted to, and I didn't know anyone who owned a single share of stock. The Depression started and ended on different days in different ways for everyone, but rich or poor, no one was untouched by it.
For most people in Dillon, the Depression started when the dust whirled and crops died and they realized it wasn't going to stop anytime soon. My hard times began when I opened Slim's letter. His began on March 1, 1932, and, in a way, would never really end.
After his marriage to Anne, the everyday details and emotions of Slim's life were no longer entwined with my own. Of course, I heard about the wedding and the birth of their son, Charles Jr.âthe papers were full of both stories. But in general I willed myself to forget him. Still, every now and then I noticed the connection that was there, whether I wanted it to be or not. Sometimes the air would seem to crackle with his essence, and I knew something was happening, something so big that Slim couldn't force himself to stay completely inside his own skin.
That's what it felt like that first night of March. I woke up in the night and knew something was wrong. I got out of bed and went to the window, looking to see what it might be, but the house was quiet. I couldn't shake the feeling that something awful was happening to Slim. Worry chased me as I paced the floor, my arms wrapped around myself to ward off the cold that suddenly seemed to chill the night air. I couldn't think what to do, so I prayed through the night, not knowing the reason or the effect of my petitions, but pleading with the spirit of God to do the things that were needful.
The next morning, right after Morgan left for school, I heard Ruby yoo-hooing outside, running across the yard and waving a sheet of paper over her head like a white flag of surrender.
The letter from Clarence she'd been waiting for so long had finally come. Mama, Papa, and I gathered in the kitchen to hear the news. I forced myself to put Slim out of my mind for the moment and concentrate on Ruby's news.
Clarence hadn't gone to California after all. He'd tried, but a band of thugs, actually policeman from Los Angeles, were waiting at the state line to “persuade” immigrants from the dust bowlâOkies, they called usânot to invade their own personal paradise.
“Some persuasion.” Ruby curled her lip in disgust. “They beat him so bad he couldn't see out of one eye. Listen, he says, âThey hit me till my face looked like hamburger meat. One of them wore brass knuckles. After they was finished, lying in the dirt on the Nevada side of the border, I decided they was right. If that's what California people was like, I didn't want no part of them.'” Ruby smiled at Clarence's dry humor even as her brow gathered with worry about his wounds, and she clucked her tongue and sighed, wondering aloud if he'd had any witch hazel to put on the cuts.
I assured her that Clarence was a big boy. “Don't worry,” I soothed, “he can't be too bad off or he wouldn't have been able to write you such a long letter. What happened next? Did he stay in Nevada?”
“No, he says that he caught a freight to Oregon. Heard that there was work in the logging camps up there. Here”âshe squinted at the paperâ“this part is for you. âTell Eva and her folks thank you for the five dollars. I was going to send it back when I got to California, but I had to use it for eating money to get to Oregon. I don't know what I would have done otherways. I still have a dollar fourteen cents left, but it will have to last me till I get paid. Tell them I will pay them back when I get some money ahead.'”
“No need,” Papa piped in as he sat in Mama's chair rocking and listening. “When you write, Ruby, you tell him it was a gift.”
Mama stood next to him, listening, and laid her hand on his shoulder to signal her approval of Papa's generosity. “That's right. You tell him we're just happy everything worked out. He said something about getting paid,” Mama prodded. “He's got a job, then?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Ruby said. “He got a job as a high climber for a logging company. He shinnies forty or fifty feet up to the top of these trees and cuts off the highest part so they'll be easier to fell.”
“Sounds dangerous,” said Mama.
“It is,” Ruby admitted. “That's how he got the job. The man that did it before fell and broke his leg. Clarence was in the right place at the right time, and there wasn't any other work, so he took it. He says I shouldn't worry because he's real careful, and work is work. The pay is pretty fair. Of course, he's so far up on the mountain. There's no place for me, only men in the camp. I'll have to stay here until we get some savings. He gets paid in three weeks. I've got to figure out how to get by until then,” she mused. “The next month's rent's due, and I don't have more than three dollars left myself.”
Mama interrupted Ruby's worried reverie and looked at Papa. “You know, we've been talking about that very thing, Ruby. Why don't you come here and live with us until you can go out to join Clarence. We've got plenty of room. There's no sense paying rent on a house that's too big for one and land that you're not working.”
Ruby protested that it was too much, but Mama and Papa were insistent, pointing out how nice it would be having an extra pair of hands around the place and generally making it sound as though she'd be doing them the biggest favor in the world by moving in. Finally she accepted. When she did, the relief that spread across her face was obvious, and it wasn't just about not having enough money. I realized how lonely she must have been these past couple of months.
It was decided that an extra bed could be moved into my room. Ruby would give notice and pack up her things that very day. It would be wonderful having her so close, but I'll confess to a moment's hesitation about giving up my privacy. Ruby must have read my thoughts, because she leaned over and said, “Don't worry, Eva. It's your room. I'll just sleep there at night and keep to the kitchen during the day.”
I scolded myself for being so selfish and told Ruby not be silly, that I'd be glad to have her there, it'd be just like the old sleepovers we had when we were girls. I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine back. Then we went back to her house to pack up her things, few as they were.
She and Clarence didn't have much in the way of worldly goods, just some dishes and a little furniture that we stored in one of the empty horse stalls. There was nothing of real value except an almost new Philco radio set Ruby's folks had given her as a wedding present. We didn't have a radio of our own. At Ruby's insistence, Papa lugged the radio, shining wood and glass and big as a good-sized pie safe, into the parlor.
“Oh my, won't this be wonderful,” Mama murmured, and I could see by her eyes that she truly was almost as excited as Morgan, who was already leaning up against the speaker while Papa turned the dials to pick up crackling radio waves. He finally tuned in on a strong signal from a station out of Tulsa.
The voice of the announcer interrupted the program to bring us an important news bulletin. That's how I heard that Slim's other son, his pink and sturdy baby boy, whom Anne called the “fat lamb,” had been stolen. Someone took him, warm and drowsy from his bed, and no one knew where he was.
“Oh my Lord!” gasped Mama. “How could they?” We stood, silent and disbelieving, as the announcer droned on.
My knees were suddenly weak, and I carefully lowered myself into a chair, my mind echoing Mama:
How could they? How could they sneak into a home and steal an innocent child from his bed, for the sake of greed?
How could they? How could they sneak into a home and steal an innocent child from his bed, for the sake of greed?
That was the pain that had woken me in the night, Slim's pain. His world was turned upside down. They'd stolen his child, his heart, and his last grain of trust. I knew that no matter what happened, Slim would be never be the same. He would be maimed by hatred, not just for the kidnappers but for the entire carnivorous world that consumed his life as though it were their own. In his way, he would be just as crippled as I was, but it would be worse, because his deformity would be invisible. No one would make allowances for a wound they couldn't see, a thick but imperceptible scar tissue of suspicion. I could not think what he had done to deserve this.
The papers and radio stories continued full of recycled accounts of the kidnapping, with lurid headlines about ransoms paid and rescues attempted or achieved. People were horrified and sickened by the story, even as they demanded more of it, factual or invented. I heard where the sales of newspapers increased twenty percent during the kidnapping. I couldn't blame people; I followed the story with the same addictive devotion as the rest of the country.
Morgan, who was only nine years old, seemed more upset than any of us. He would stop work on his latest balsa-wood airplane and listen with furrowed-brow concentration when his radio program was interrupted to announce some new development or other. He scoured the paper for updates about the kidnapping, and at night, when I tucked him in bed, he prayed fervently for the safe return of Baby Charles. It was the first time I'd heard him pray out loud for something. Usually he kept his head bowed as I voiced petitions for him while he affirmed the requests with a sleepy and disconnected “Amen” before I pulled the quilt up and he dropped off to sleep.
Maybe I was imagining it, but Morgan's concern was so deep and genuine it seemed like more than just sympathy for a cherished hero. Then again, perhaps it wasn't anything more complicated than that. He was mad about planes and the men who flew them and dreamed of flying on his own one day. Maybe it was just the Lindbergh name that drew him. Or could he be picking up on my own distraction and worry? As I watched him kneeling on the cold floor night after night, begging God for a happy ending, eyes and hands clenched so tightly you couldn't have pried them open, I couldn't help but wonder. Maybe he knew, in some deep recess of his soul, that they were connected, he and his curly-headed half-brother. The Lindbergh babies. I dared not ask him.
Finally, we learned the truth. Our prayers had been fruitless from the beginning. The baby was dead. He had been from the first night and for all the drawn-out days and nights that came after. They found him with his skull crushed in, lying in a shallow grave so near his home that if he'd been alive, Slim and Anne could have gone outside and called for him and he'd have run, laughing and wobbling on stubby toddler legs, back home where it was safe. During all that time, the killers called Slim and cruelly acted it all out, played on his hopes and fears and desperation, when all along hope was dead and had been from the first moment they'd stolen it away.
The world was in shock. It was so unbelievable, like some horrific fairy tale of witches and lost children, but without a redeeming moral or the small comfort that the tragedy had been caused by some mistake on the parents' part or some flaw in their character. Therefore, there was nothing in this story to assure the public that their lives, their children, would be secure as long as they never made a similar mistake or developed a similar flaw. There was no such comfort. Nothing made sense. People everywhere, women and men, shed tears of sympathy. They knew exactly how they would feel if one of their own children were lost, cold and alone, bleeding and dying among strangers. The thought was too painful to be borne. So they held their own children close and wept, because it was the only thing they could do. Everyone had learned a little more about how cruel life could be.
Morgan wanted an explanation. He looked at me with accusing eyes. “Mama, why would God allow something so awful to happen to a baby? Colonel Lindbergh is the bravest man alive, and his wife is so pretty and smart. They can't have done anything wrong. I just don't understand how bad things can happen to people like that.”
“I know, Morgan. It's all so sad. The only thing we can do is pray for them.”
Morgan shook his head, and I could see that he wasn't satisfied. Some of his trust had been stripped away. Simple answers couldn't erase the doubts. He looked at me with eyes like his father's and dared me to find an explanation.
“I already did that,” he insisted, “and nothing happened. If God is out there, wouldn't He hear my prayers? And if He heard them, why wouldn't He answer them?”
I began to tell him that God knows best. That there's always a reason, even in something as senseless as this, but we just can't see it. But as the words took shape in my mind, I didn't believe them myself, so I told him the truth.
“Morgan, I could tell you the things mothers are supposed to say, but you're too old now to believe what I say just because you're my son, so I'm going to tell you plain.” I took a deep breath and searched once more for some elegant collection of words that would make sense of everything, but none came to mind. “I don't know,” I finally admitted. “There's a lot of things I just don't understand. But I feel sure deep inside myself that God is out there and He cares. So many things just don't make sense to me. I can't fathom why such terrible things are allowed to happen to people. I don't expect I ever will.”
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