No Promises in the Wind (18 page)

Lonnie was pulling on his coat. “I'll go to the radio station. See what they know. They can surely tell me what people to contact next. I'll find him. I'll find that boy if it takes all night—all week—”

“Let me go with you, Lonnie,” I begged.

“Don't be a fool, Josh.” His voice was harsh. “Do you think I want you going into a relapse when we don't know what to expect about Joey? You stay right here. I've got enough to worry about.”

He hurried outside, and through the din made by the rain we heard the sound of his old car as it sputtered into action. Janey put her hand on my arm. “He's all worked up, Josh. He was like this the night we found you. He almost took my head off when I asked him a few questions about you that night.”

I sat down, suddenly very tired. “We're causing him trouble and expense—we're making him worry. I hate to think about it,” I said.

She sat down beside me on the bench behind the stove, and we clasped hands; somehow it seemed the natural thing to do. The room was shadowy in the lamplight.

“Do you want me to talk or be quiet?” Janey asked.

“Be quiet,” I answered.

“Do you want me to stay here or go over home and leave you alone?”

“I want you to stay here—I want you very much, Janey. Just stay here like this.”

She nodded, and we sat there for a long time, close to one another without moving. Gramma came over later to iron the shirts in a big laundry basket which Lonnie had carried in for her earlier, the work that gave her a chance to earn a little money to help with expenses. I thought Gramma might not like it that Janey and I were sitting together with our hands clasped, but she seemed to feel it was all right. She said to Janey, “It's like when we had our Davy with us. You'd sit there behind the stove holding each other by the hand—you remember?”

Janey nodded and smiled at the deaf old woman; then she turned to me. “She's right, you know. Davy and I used to sit like this. Especially if one or both of us had been scolded. We'd just sit here holding each other's hand and staring in front of us. Lonnie and Aunt Helen used to say it was unnerving. I think, unconsciously, we meant it to be that way.”

“You liked him a lot, didn't you?”

“I adored him. He was just enough older to make me feel that whatever he did was right. Anything, of course, that didn't interfere with me. We fought once in a while. Not often, but when we did, it was a bloody fight.”

We didn't say anything more. I watched Gramma take a hot flatiron from the stove and push it slowly back and forth along a white shirt sleeve, making little inroads at the top of the cuff, pressing slowly and heavily across the cuff itself. The rain continued to beat against the windows, stubbornly persisting, I thought, long after you'd think there couldn't be any more water to come down. It seemed Lonnie had been gone an age; I wondered what could have happened. I wondered if it could have been a mistake, if by some cruel chance there could have been another boy from Chicago who was clutching an old banjo.

We waited hour after hour. At nine Janey remembered that we hadn't had supper, and so she filled bowls with soup and the three of us ate a little. At ten she and Gramma hung the long rows of shirts, each on its separate hanger, in Lonnie's bedroom, ready to be packed and delivered the next day. Then Gramma drew a shawl around her shoulders and motioned to Janey. “We must go, honey. It may be late before Uncle Lonnie gets home. You have to get to bed.” She came over and, to my surprise, bent and kissed my forehead. “My prayers have been for your little brother ever since you came, Josh; tonight they will be the same,” she said. It was strange that I had ever thought of her as being grim.

When they were gone, I walked around the room a dozen times or more, stopping at the window to look out into the night, going back to the bench where Janey and I had sat together. After a while I began to tremble; I didn't think it was with cold, but I put more coal on the fire anyway and drew a blanket around my shoulders. “I mustn't get sick again,” I thought. “Lonnie has had enough trouble in taking care of me; I've got to take some responsibility for myself. I've got to keep well and take care of Joey—”

A car turned into the driveway finally and stopped as near the kitchen door as the driver could maneuver it. I stood at the window, shaking, trying to see out into the darkness. I found myself saying, “Please—please—,” through my chattering teeth.

Then I heard Lonnie at the door, and I threw it open for him. He came inside, carrying Joey in his arms. “I have a young man here who says he's acquainted with you, Josh.” Lonnie's voice was cheerful, consciously so, I realized. He put Joey down in the big armchair and drew aside a layer of blankets, revealing a terribly thin little boy, dressed in warm, clean pajamas, his feet tucked in wooly, white slippers. He didn't quite look like Joey except for the big gray eyes and the mass of blond hair that fell around his face.

There are patterns of behavior that people of a certain age, a certain sex, a certain condition, must follow. A fifteen-year-old boy cannot take a ten-year-old brother in his arms as a mother might do; he cannot say the things that are deep inside him, cannot express his love and relief, his bitter remorse. The pattern of behavior toward a younger brother by a fifteen-year-old does not allow these things. Joey would have recognized this. He understood patterns very well.

And I so I simply held out my hand. “Hi, Joey,” I said. He grinned every so slightly. That grin belonged to the Joey of other days. He said, “Hi, Josh. It's sure good to see you.”

We shook hands. I ducked my head a little so that he wouldn't know that I was crying. Tears were not in the pattern either.

We
put Joey to bed, and when I leaned over him, he gave a long sigh of contentment and looked up at me. Then he went to sleep almost immediately. I sat close to the bed and watched him as he slept. It took me a little while to realize fully that he was there, that the long nightmare of anxiety and anguish was over. Lonnie dropped down in a chair facing me, and for a time he just sat there staring ahead of him as if he, too, were emerging from some bad dream.

“It's been a night,” he said finally, leaning his head against the back of the chair and closing his eyes.

“Did you have trouble finding him, Lonnie?”

“Not in finding him. The police had a list of the people who had taken the eight children this afternoon. Joey was with a couple who appear to be in good circumstances, and they didn't want to give him up. He was clean and fed and dressed in warm night clothes; they'd sent for a doctor; they'd done everything they could and so resented me at first. The woman, Mrs. Arthur, cried and took on over him; at first I thought maybe they were right, maybe I had no business moving him while he's so frail. But Joey is the one who settled things. He intended coming home with me and finding his brother—there were no if's about it. He was weak, but he raised Cain when he thought I was going to leave without him.”

I went over to the stove and poured a cup of coffee for him. He nodded his thanks. “The doctor came and examined him. He said it was better for me to bring him home if he was going to fret. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the Arthurs. They'd only had him a few hours, but they were in love with him already.” Lonnie sipped his coffee slowly. “Lord, this is good. They offered me food over there, but I couldn't eat. I was all shook to pieces.”

I looked at the little hand that lay outside the blanket. “Do you think he'll be all right, Lonnie?”

“Oh, yes. The doctor says it's just a matter of food and rest—and love—for Joey. We shouldn't feed him much at a time, but he must have something every few hours. You and Janey will have to watch over him for a few days. He'll be all right. The doctor thinks so too.”

“I wish the folks knew,” I said more to myself than to Lonnie.

“They do,” he said. “I went out while they were getting Joey ready to come home, and sent a wire to your folks and one to Pete Harris. I just said, ‘Found Joey. Everything's okay.' I hope your dad can sleep tonight.”

“I hope so too,” I said. A kind of gladness for Dad went through my mind.

When he had finished his coffee, Lonnie stood up and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I think I'll have to get to bed if I'm to work tomorrow, Josh. I'm beat. Can you watch over him tonight?”

“Of course.” I looked up at him. In the space of a few months he had helped us to a chance to take care of ourselves, and when we had failed at that, he had saved both our lives. I said, “You took a big load on your shoulders that day you stopped your truck and waited for us, Lonnie.”

He smiled just a little. “No regrets. Good-night, Josh.” He turned the lamp down low, closing the door behind him.

For the first time in what seemed like an eternity, I was once again alone with Joey. I couldn't bear to go to bed; I had to sit there in the dim light and look at Joey while he slept. Somehow I was afraid to go to sleep; I had to stay awake and be sure that the miracle of finding him was real.

He woke up after an hour or so, and I heated some milk and brought it to him. I sat on the bed at his back so he could lean against me when he sat up. He drank the milk eagerly and when he was through, lifted his hand and reached for mine.

“I found you, didn't I?” he said.

I held his hand tightly in mine. It was a terribly thin little hand, so thin that it made a shudder run over me when I realized the narrow margin by which I had been allowed to have him with me again. I said, “Can you tell me what happened, Joey? Just a little before you go back to sleep?”

“Yes.” He hesitated, and his face showed the pain of remembering that night when we quarreled. “I went back to the shed,” he said finally. “I stayed there all night, and I waited and waited the next day. I thought sure you'd come back, but when you didn't, I thought I'd better try to get home.”

He was silent for a long time. “If it tires you, Joey, don't talk. You can tell me tomorrow.”

“No. I'm just trying to get words to tell you. I started to hitchhike home, but I had such a feeling that I was doing the wrong thing. I kept thinking you needed me. So I came back to Omaha. I thought you'd be here.”

“Why didn't you call Lonnie when you got there, Joey?”

“It was awful. I couldn't remember his last name. I think we mentioned it just once down at the carnival. I tried and tried to remember, but I couldn't. I was just lost in Omaha—looking for a man named Lonnie.”

I couldn't talk much. “You mustn't get tired,” I told him. “Better go to sleep now.”

He shook his head. “I've got to tell you one thing, Josh. I didn't know that you were sick with fever that night. Lonnie told me as we were coming home. He told me you were so sick and scared you didn't know what you were doing.”

“There's never any real excuse for being as mean as I was, Joey. But it's true that I was awfully sick and scared.”

“I know you were. Like Dad, I guess, the night he turned on you.”

He burrowed down under the covers and was asleep almost as soon as the words were spoken. But I sat there staring straight ahead into the shadows for a long time.

The picture was painful, but there it was, clear and sharp before me. Suddenly, for the first time that winter I wanted to go home. Without warning, a wave of such homesickness as I'd never felt before came over me. I could think of nothing but Dad, of sleepless nights for him like the ones I had known, of remorse and anguish as bitter for him as mine had been for me. I had remembered the black looks and the mean, cruel words all winter, remembering them in great detail to help maintain the dislike for him which I'd thought would never change. But at Joey's words there in the darkness, I felt only pity and a sense of having been subjected to the same hell Dad had known. I hoped I wouldn't undergo a change of feeling the next morning; I felt better and more mature; I felt a compassion that was altogether new to me.

I tried being matter-of-fact with myself. No point in kidding myself that Dad and I would ever be able to live together without running into problems. We were too much alike. I remembered times when he had apologized to Mom for a show of impatience toward her on his part. “It's the Grondowski in me, Mary,” he would tell her, blaming the father he resented for his own weaknesses. I had often tended to write off my own weaknesses as being inherited from Dad. It occurred to me as I lay there beside Joey in the silent room that both Stefan and Josh Grondowski should stop blaming their fathers and work on a little self-discipline and understanding themselves. I wondered if someday I might talk to Dad about the weaknesses we shared.

I couldn't settle down to sleep; the thoughts kept whirling around in my head. It seemed incredible to me that the wish to go home should all at once be so strong inside me. How easy it would have been to catch rides back to Chicago when we were healthy; now Joey would not be strong for many weeks, and my cough was still with me, my legs too weak for more than walking around the rooms of Lonnie's house. Besides that, there was a great debt which we owed Lonnie.

Somehow I had to get well and find a job so that I could repay him before we left. That was a matter of great importance to me. One thing to Stefan Grondowski's credit was the fact that he had taught his sons to be honest about their debts; that much I believed I would have admitted even when my anger against him was bitterest.

The prospect of repaying a debt, however, was very dim. We were penniless, neither of us well enough to take care of ourselves. “If I can get rid of this cough and gain some strength, maybe Lonnie can find work for me here in Omaha. Or maybe I can take Joey back to Chicago and then set out for the carnival when Pete gets it going again. Maybe with summer coming on...” The maybes cluttered up my brain and made my temples throb.