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.
10
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.
At two o’clock Joey awoke and I fed him some soup that had kept warm on the back of the stove; at six I was up making a hot cereal for him, but Gramma came over and made me go back to bed while she finished the cooking and, with many little murmurs of sympathy, gave Joey his breakfast.
Joey began to recuperate immediately. With each meal we could see new brightness come into his face, new light in his eyes. Janey became his special nurse, and I sometimes caught a twinkle in my young brother’s eyes, a twinkle that seemed to crow over me as Janey hovered above him, feeding him, reading to him, pampering him as much as he would allow.
Mrs. Arthur, the woman who with her husband had taken Joey into their home the night Lonnie found him, came to visit him on his third day with us. She was an attractive woman, nicely dressed and smelling faintly of a perfume that was like spring flowers. She exclaimed over Joey and cried a little as she sat beside him. Finally she turned to speak to me as I stood at the head of his bed.
“You are the brother he was looking for—you are Josh?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I could have kept Joey for a while—I could have had the joy of nursing him back to health if he hadn’t been so anxious to see his brother.” She looked at me almost resentfully although she smiled.
“We’re very grateful to you, ma’am. I can’t ever thank you enough for what you did for Joey that night.”
Her face relaxed somewhat. “Mr. Bromer told us a great deal of what you boys have lived through this winter. He mentioned that you play the piano quite well.”
“I—I enjoy playing,” I answered.
“How long have you studied?”
“My mother gave me lessons until a couple years ago when we had to sell our piano. Since then I’ve learned on my own.”
“Oh,” she said, and looked down at her gloved hands as if she took little stock in the kind of lessons one learns from his own mother.
Then Joey spoke up. “If you’d hear my brother play, you’d understand, Mrs. Arthur. He’s really top-notch.”
She smiled down at him. “Then I’d like to hear him play, Joey; maybe when you’re well, you and your brother and Mr. Bromer’s niece can come to my house and we’ll hear Josh play. Would you like that?”
He nodded, delighted. I didn’t feel so enthusiastic myself. I had a feeling that she was a woman who would have suffered if music familiar to her was subjected to a little improvisation, a beat that was a little different. But I thanked her. “Yes, I’d like to play for you,” I said, but I didn’t think it likely that I ever would.
She left books and games for Joey, some special things to eat and some articles of clothing that she said had once belonged to her own children, but which looked suspiciously new. She also brought his old jacket, the twenty dollar overshoes, and the knife with Pete Harris’s initials in the handle. And, carefully wrapped as if she knew it was precious, was Howie’s banjo in a large cardboard box.
During the next few days when Joey and I were alone, I got out pen and paper and began the letters I needed to write. I wrote home first of all. In the beginning I wrote, “Dear Mom”; then after a long time I added, “and Dad.” I told them how Joey had been found, how fast he was recuperating, how comfortable and safe we were with Lonnie. I didn’t say that I’d been homesick, that I wanted to bring Joey home soon. I couldn’t quite say that, but I felt that my letter would certainly reassure them. I told them a little about Janey; I sent our love to Kitty.
After that I wrote to Edward C., and then to Emily. I didn’t know whether she was Mrs. Pete Harris or not; I simply directed the letter to “Emily in care of Pete Harris.” She had asked me to write to her, and I wondered what I would ever have to say to her. I found that it wasn’t hard. I used up page after page in telling her the whole story—in sharing my anxiety and then my joy with her.
We were a happy family during those last weeks of March, so happy that I almost forgot the loneliness for home which I had felt earlier. The attention of all of us was centered upon Joey, and our common concern over him made us a tightly drawn little group. Lonnie was especially cheerful these days. He would come home bringing treats for supper—oysters because they were Gramma’s favorite food, ice cream because that was Joey’s. One night when I had lost all traces of my cough, he took Janey and me to a movie, leaving Gramma and Joey at home with a big bowl of popcorn he had fixed for them.
He spoke of us as his three kids. He would ask Janey to read aloud in the evening, and we would sit around the table listening, Lonnie on the old couch, resting his arm around Joey’s shoulders. I noticed Gramma watching him on one such night as she stood at her ironing board. There were tears in her eyes.
As I grew stronger, I began to think more and more about getting a job. The bread of charity choked me a little now and then; I felt that the proudest moment of my life would come when I could begin to repay Lonnie for what he’d done for us. And when all was repaid—then, perhaps, home. Perhaps. I wasn’t quite sure, but I thought that home was what I wanted.
Lonnie recognized my restlessness and need for work. “Sure, sure, Josh. I’ll keep my eyes open; something might turn up. We’ve got to be careful, though. You’ve lost twenty pounds this winter. I can’t let you take on too much until you’re husky again.”
And then one evening Mrs. Arthur appeared again. She asked Lonnie if she might pick the three of us up and take us to her house for lunch the next day.
Lonnie smiled at her. “Are you sure you want Josh and Janey, or just this lady-killer here?” he asked, indicating Joey.
She was a pleasant woman, ready to laugh. She said, “Joey is my first love, yes, but I want the others too. I want to hear Josh play just to see if what his little brother says about him is true.”
Lonnie loaned me a decent shirt, and I carefully pressed the old trousers Pete Harris had given me. Joey was fairly well supplied with the clothing M
rs. Arthur had brought him earlier. Janey, of course, had no problems. She wore her best blue cotton dress and tied her hair back with a band of blue velvet. Her costume brought praise from the three male members of her family, a praise that deepened the color in her cheeks, overcoming the freckles and making her very pretty.
Mrs. Arthur picked us up at eleven o’clock. She had a friendly way about her that put us at ease as we drove along and stopped finally at a house in a neighborhood obviously much wealthier than the one in which Lonnie lived.
The Arthur home seemed magnificent to us, but the great piano in an alcove off the living room was the one point of interest as far as I was concerned. I walked toward it, forgetting the other three, unaware at first that they stood watching me, smiling at my fascination with the beautiful instrument.
“We will leave you and the piano alone for a while, Josh,” Mrs. Arthur said, coming over to my side. “You may want to get your hands accustomed to the keyboard again before you play for me. Go ahead. It’s all yours for the next hour before we eat.”
It was the finest instrument I had ever touched, and the beautiful resonant tones that responded to my fingers thrilled me so much that I forgot everything except my own delight. I roamed the keyboard for a time, softly at first and then with mounting excitement.
I had improvised upon a love theme for Emily down on the carnival grounds, but as I sat at Mrs. Arthur’s piano, my improvisations covered a wider scope. It was as if a long story passed before my eyes and became music somewhere inside my brain. I forgot where I was, forgot that someone might be listening, and I played as I watched Howie’s body carried down a long track; I played as I remembered a boy standing humiliated before a pretty girl who told him she was sorry he must beg; I played as I relived the fear of cold and hunger, the anguish of losing Joey, and finally the surge of gratitude that the world had righted itself for me, had restored my confidence.