This Tender Land Read online

  “The banks take the farms away.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “They can. They shouldn’t but they can. It’s all because of the Crash.”

  I knew about the Crash on Wall Street but didn’t really know what that meant. When I first heard it, I imagined Wall Street like this giant castle wall, and the banks and all their money were hidden behind it. And then one day—they called it Black Friday, and when I imagined it I saw it happening under a dark, threatening sky—that wall came tumbling down, and all the money the banks had stashed away just kind of went up with the wind and vanished. On the edge of the Great Plains, it didn’t interest or really affect me. Out there, nobody had money.

  That night in bed after lights-out, I listened to one of the younger kids crying. Sometimes a new kid cried at night for months. Even the old-timers occasionally gave in to an overwhelming sense of despair and let the tears flow. Despite the good news of that morning, Cora Frost’s proposal and the prospect of leaving Lincoln School, I was feeling kind of down myself. I was thinking about Mr. Seifert, who was a good man, but it had got him nowhere. Thinking about all the kids who’d been taken from their homes and everything that was familiar to them. And thinking especially about Billy, who was weighing heavily on my mind. I’d vowed to be the shepherd for kids like him, but until Mr. Greene had asked about him, I hadn’t even noticed that Billy had gone missing.

  “Think they’ll find him?” I whispered.

  Albert’s bunk was next to mine. We weren’t allowed to talk after lights-out, but we could get away with it if we spoke quietly enough.

  “Billy Red Sleeve? I don’t know.”

  “I hope he’s okay.”

  I heard Albert turn on his bunk, and even though I couldn’t see him clearly, I knew he was facing me. “Listen, Odie, don’t you go caring too much about other people. In the end, they just get taken from you.”

  “Are you thinking about Pop?”

  “Don’t forget Mom,” he said. Because more and more I did.

  “Are you afraid I’ll get taken from you?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid I’ll get taken from you, and who’d look after you then?”

  “Maybe God?”

  “God?” He said it as if I were joking.

  “Maybe it really is like it says in the Bible,” I offered. “God’s a shepherd and we’re his flock and he watches over us.”

  For a long while, Albert didn’t say anything. I listened to that kid crying in the dark because he felt lost and alone and believed no one cared.

  Finally Albert whispered, “Listen, Odie, what does a shepherd eat?”

  I didn’t know where he was going with that, so I didn’t reply.

  “His flock,” Albert told me. “One by one.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MONDAY MORNING, MOSE and I were assigned to work Bledsoe’s hayfields. At breakfast, Volz stopped by our table in the dining hall to give us the word. Albert and several other boys had been assigned to the German to help him slap a new coat of whitewash on the old water tower.

  The water tower was legendary. Long before we came to Lincoln School, a kid named Samuel Kills Many had run away. Before he left, he’d painted across the water tower tank in bold black letters WELCOME TO HELL. Kills Many was one of the few kids who’d fled and had never been caught, and he’d become an important part of the mythology at Lincoln. They’d covered his parting sentiment with a coat of whitewash, but over the years the coating had faded and those bold, black words beneath, which resonated in the heart of every kid at Lincoln School, had begun to reemerge, ghostlike.

  The morning was still and already hot, the air so sultry that it was like trying to breathe water. I knew the day would be a bastard, just as Hector Bledsoe had predicted, but I was worried less about that than the whereabouts of Billy.

  “Any word on Red Sleeve?” I asked.

  Volz shook his head. “It’s only been a day. Give it time, Odie.”

  We rode in the bed of Bledsoe’s pickup, Mose and me and the others condemned to baling and bucking hay all day. We were quiet, as befitted a group of boys heading out to work under the control of a heartless farmer who would treat us like beasts. I thought maybe Billy Red Sleeve had the right idea. If I’d bolted with him, when we were caught, my punishment would most likely have been a night in the quiet room, and a pretty good strapping in the bargain, which, all things considered, might have been better than a whole day in the hayfields under an unrelenting sun, sucking in hay dust until it nearly choked me.

  At noon, we broke from the work and jostled for a place in the shade under the hay wagon. We ate the dry sandwich Bledsoe’s wife had made for each of us and shared a water bag, and all of us lay dripping sweat and silently cursing Bledsoe and the day we were born. All of us, that is, except Mose, who could work hour after hour without complaint. It wasn’t because he had no voice to do the complaining—his fingers were plenty eloquent—but he seemed to revel in physical labor, in the way it challenged his body and spirit. Nobody faulted him for being the only one not miserable, because he was always quick to step in and help whenever one of the other boys needed a hand. Often, because of Mose’s mute acceptance, Bledsoe lay the hardest work on his shoulders.

  I sat next to him under the wagon, staring west, where the sky was beginning to look threatening. Clouds had gathered above Buffalo Ridge. Not the white puffy kind of a normal summer day, but a charcoal wall that mounted out of the southwest and spit lightning. Hector Bledsoe and his son Ralph sat in the shade of their pickup, eyeing the sky.

  Mose tapped my arm and signed, Storm. Quit early maybe.

  I shook my head and said, “Bledsoe’s a son of a bitch. If we don’t hay, he’ll probably make us muck his cattle yard in the rain.”

  I heard an automobile and saw Mrs. Bledsoe driving their Model B down a hay row. She stopped at the pickup, got out, and spoke to her husband, gesturing toward the west. Bledsoe shook his head, but the woman put a hand on her hip and wagged her finger at her husband. Bledsoe again studied the sky, which was quickly being gobbled up by those ugly storm clouds. He took a deep breath, left his pickup, and walked our way. He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose clean of hay dust.

  “Wife says the storm’s gonna be a corker, boys. That’s all she wrote for today. I’ll pick you up again when the hay’s dried out. Load yourselves onto the truck.”

  You never saw boys move so fast. We were on the bed of that pickup before Bledsoe finished wiping his nose. Mose elbowed me and nodded toward Mrs. Bledsoe, who stood waiting by her car as if to be certain her husband did as he’d said he would.

  Thank her, he signed.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I called out.

  She lifted her hand and watched as Bledsoe hauled us away.

  By the time we got to Lincoln School, the clouds had turned dark green and swirled like witches’ brew in a cauldron. The wind was up, and as we climbed off the truck, small hailstones began to fall. Nobody had expected us and so no one was there to herd us along. It wasn’t necessary. We all ran for the dormitory. The building was deserted, which wouldn’t have been unusual on a normal day. Lunch was long over and all the kids would have returned to their work assignments. But a threat like this should have brought them back inside. We all stood at the windows of the dorm and watched that storm sweeping off Buffalo Ridge. The hail got heavier, the sound of it on the roof deafening, so that we had to shout to make ourselves heard. A window shattered and a hailstone the size of a plum hit the floor near Mose’s feet. A couple of minutes more and the hail stopped as suddenly as it had begun, but the storm wasn’t finished. A mile away, we saw a long gray maelstrom of cloud slowly descend. It came down from the great green wall that had swept over Buffalo Ridge, and it looked to me like the finger of God reaching toward earth. The moment it touched ground, it turned raging black.

  “Tornado!” someone shouted. “Run!”

  None of us moved. We stood riveted at the wi
ndows as it came. My whole body tingled as if with electricity. That long crooked finger of cloud was a terrible thing to behold, but it was also mesmerizing. The air around it was filled with black pieces of debris like a flock of frenzying crows, things torn asunder by a power nothing earthly could resist. It was near enough now that I saw it uproot trees as it crossed the Gilead River. It came at the water tower, and I suddenly remembered Albert and Volz, who were whitewashing the big tank. I pressed my nose to the window glass, straining to see if they were still up there. The job was only half-done, WELCOME TO HELL still visible under the old whitewash, but as nearly as I could tell, the tower was deserted.

  The tornado ripped across the ball field, and I watched the bleachers disintegrate in splinters. We should have moved, run to find shelter, but it was too late now. We stood paralyzed, watching our doom approach.

  Then, by some miracle, the tornado turned and began to follow the river. It tore up the ground north of the school, sliding past all the buildings and the Brickmans’ fine home, heading toward the town of Lincoln itself. We ran to the windows along the east side of the dorm and watched the tornado skirt the south end of town and move into the farmland farther out along the river.

  And I realized where it was headed.

  Mose did, too. He grabbed my arm and signed, Mrs. Frost and Emmy.

  * * *

  WHEN WE RAN outside, we saw Volz and Albert coming from the dining hall. Behind them, others trickled out, and I figured they’d all huddled inside that great stone building to ride out the storm. Mose and I raced across the old parade ground.

  “Mrs. Frost and Emmy,” I hollered. “Have you seen them?”

  Volz shook his head. “Not today.”

  “That tornado’s headed straight for their place.”

  “Shouldn’t they be here somewhere?” Albert said.

  “Let’s try her classroom,” Volz said.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Mrs. Brickman,” Volz suggested next. “She will know.”

  We hurried to the Brickman home and pounded on the door, but no one answered. Albert went to the garage and peered through a window.

  “The Franklin’s gone,” he said.

  Volz pounded more and the door finally opened. Clyde Brickman stood there, as white as a ghost.

  “That damn tornado almost got me,” he said.

  “Cora Frost,” Volz demanded. “Was she at school today?”

  Brickman scowled and thought a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Mrs. Brickman,” Volz said. “Does she know?”

  “Thelma left for Saint Paul this morning, Herman. She’s gone all week.”

  “Damn.”

  Volz looked east, down the track of destruction left by the storm. We all looked that way. In my whole life, I had never been so afraid.

  “Wait here,” Volz said. “I get my automobile.”

  He drove us all, Brickman included, toward the home of Cora and Emmy Frost. At the south end of Lincoln, we saw that the wooden buildings next to the grain elevators lay in rubble. We followed the dirt road that lay beside the river, driving through the aftermath of capricious destruction. Here, a barn had been torn in half while not twenty yards away the farmhouse stood untouched. There, a silo had lost its top, but inside the cattle pen still intact next to it, cows browsed as if nothing had happened. I saw a big sheet of corrugated metal bent around a cottonwood trunk like Christmas wrapping paper. For the first time in forever, I found myself praying sincerely, desperately asking God to spare Cora Frost and her daughter.

  When we arrived at the farm, all my hope died. Where only a few days before, Mrs. Frost and the Brickmans had sat in the parlor sipping tea, nothing remained now but splintered boards. The barn had been obliterated. Many of the orchard trees had been torn out by their roots and lay thrown in an abysmal jumble. Mrs. Frost’s truck lay flipped on its top like a dead turtle. Over everything lay utter silence.

  We dug among the ruins, lifting debris, calling their names. I was sure we wouldn’t find them alive, and because of this, didn’t really want to find them at all. I could see how easily the storm had twisted and torn things of solid construction, and I didn’t want to look on the actuality of what it must have done to something as fragile as flesh and bone. So mostly I just stood numb atop the broken roof beams that had once sheltered Cora and Emmy Frost, and that, for a brief time, I’d let myself believe would shelter me, too.

  I’d lost my mother and my father. I’d been beaten, degraded, thrown into isolation, but until that moment, I’d never lost hope that someday things would be better.

  Then Mose signed, Hear that?

  I listened, and I heard it, too.

  Mose started pulling up boards and broken beams. The rest of us joined in. We worked feverishly, clearing the debris above the little cries we heard. We finally reached the outside entrance to the cellar, where the door was still blocked by two heavy sections of broken joists. We cleared those, and Mose yanked open the door. Staring up at us from the dark inside stood little Emmy Frost, her face and clothing covered in dust, the curls of her hair tangled stiff with grit, her blue eyes blinking at the sudden light. Mose bounded down the stairs and swept her up in his arms and brought her out, and signed to her, Your mother?

  “I don’t know.” Emmy was crying hysterically. She shook her head wildly and said again, “I don’t know.”

  “Was she with you down there?” Volz asked.

  Again the headshake, and dust flew from her hair in a cloud. “She put me there and then she left me all alone.”

  “Where did she go, Emmy?” Albert asked.

  “Big George,” she said. “She was going to let him out of the barn.”

  After her husband died, Cora Frost had chosen to keep the draft horse, though feeding such a great beast was a costly chore. Volz and Albert had already checked the pile of rubble that had been the barn, but they ran back and began going through the debris again.

  “Where’s Mama?” Emmy cried. “Mama?”

  “Hush, girl,” Brickman said. “It does you no good to cry.”

  She paid him no attention. “Mama!”

  Mose sat down on the rubble of the house and took Emmy onto his lap and held her against his chest and she cried and cried. After a while, Albert and Volz returned and simply shook their heads.

  “I will take her back to the school,” Volz said.

  “I’ll go with you,” Brickman said.

  I crossed my arms and stood firm. “I’m not leaving until we find Mrs. Frost.”

  Volz didn’t argue. “All right, Odie. Albert, Mose, will you stay also?”

  They both nodded.

  “I will send someone back for you. Clyde, let’s get this little girl out of here.”

  They tried to pull Emmy away from Mose, but she clung to him fiercely, and finally Volz said, “You come, too, Mose.”

  They walked away, Mose carrying little Emmy, but Brickman lingered a moment and surveyed the destruction. Under his breath he said, “Jesus.”

  “You were wrong,” I told him.

  He looked at me and squinted. “Wrong?”

  “You said God was a shepherd and would take care of us. God’s no shepherd.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “You know what God is, Mr. Brickman? A goddamn tornado, that’s what he is.”

  Brickman simply turned and walked away.

  After they were gone, Albert and I stood alone. The sky above us was clear and blue, as if it had never hurled at us the hell of the last couple of hours. I heard a meadowlark sing.

  “It was going to be perfect,” I said. “Everything was finally going to be perfect.”

  Albert turned in a full circle, taking in the whole of the devastation around us. When he spoke, his voice was as hard as I’d ever heard it. “One by one, Odie,” he said. “One by one.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THEY FOUND CORA Frost’s body later that day, a mile distant, cradled in the branches of an elm in a
farmyard where the tornado had done no damage at all but had, as it dissipated, deposited a lot of debris. Big George, the draft horse, was found unharmed, not far from the destruction of the Frost farm, placidly munching grass along the bank of the Gilead River.

  When she received the report of what had happened, Mrs. Brickman returned from Saint Paul immediately. She magnanimously declared that Emmy Frost would not be motherless for long. It was her intention to adopt the little girl just as soon as she could.

  Mose, when he heard this, signed, Black Witch her new mother? Then he signed something that Mrs. Frost, had she been alive, would never have approved of.

  Albert said in a low, resigned voice, “What the Black Witch wants, the Black Witch gets.”

  To me it seemed just one more unfair thing in a long line of terrible unfairnesses. I could live with all the disappointment and destruction that a heartless God had sent my way. Maybe I even deserved it. But Emmy Frost? All she’d ever done her whole brief life was bring happiness to the rest of us. And Mrs. Frost? If ever there’d been an angel on this earth, it was her.

  The funeral service was held on Thursday in the gymnasium. All the kids at school were there, except Billy Red Sleeve, who hadn’t been picked up by the authorities yet. We were dressed as if for Sunday, and the podium Mr. Brickman always preached from stood on the gym floor with chairs behind it for him and Mrs. Brickman, and one for Emmy, who sat there slumped like a lifeless doll. We hadn’t seen her since that terrible day of the tornado. She wore a new dress and shiny new leather shoes. The grit and dust and plaster had been so thick in her hair that they couldn’t wash it out, and they’d simply cut back all her curls to within an inch of her scalp. Without the dress, she could have passed for a boy.

  Miss Stratton sat at the pump organ. She played “Rock of Ages” and we all mumbled along. Mr. Brickman gave the eulogy. For the first time I could recall, he spoke to us in a respectful tone with no bombast whatsoever. I’d never liked him, but I was grateful for the kind—and true—things he said about Cora Frost.