When I was through, I realized that Mrs. Arthur and Janey and Joey were standing near me. Janey’s eyes were large and grave when I looked up at her.
“I don’t know you, Josh,” she said just above a whisper.
Mrs. Arthur stood there looking at me. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Finally she said, “You were improvising, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. I thought she probably didn’t like it.
“And you’ve only had lessons with your mother?”
“Yes. She’s a fine teacher, though.”
“I believe you, Josh.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “You’d like a job playing somewhere, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t think you can imagine how much I want a job like that.”
“Well”—she looked down at Joey’s face which was full of pride for me—“we’ll have to see, Joey. We’ll have to see if we can’t find a job of some sort for your brother.”
I don’t remember much about the lunch. It was delicious, whatever it was, and served on thin china that Janey could later describe to Gramma in detail. Mrs. Arthur was gay and pleasant; Joey and Janey were at ease and chatted with her all during the meal. I alone was silent. It seemed as if I were in a dream, and I only came out of it when the others teased me. Mrs. Arthur smiled at me. “It’s a promise, Josh. I’ll find someone who will pay for music like yours.”
That day marked the point when the dream Howie and I had shared began to take form. Within a week Mrs. Arthur came over to see me.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people, Josh. Last night my husband and I talked to the manager of a very fine restaurant here. The manager, Mr. Ericsson, is a friend of my husband’s. We persuaded him it would be a good idea to feature music from six until midnight, creating a job for a boy and doing a good thing for himself too. I told him quite a lot about you—how much I liked your music—and since he respects my knowledge of music, he wants to hear you play tomorrow afternoon. I’ll drive you over.”
It was as if a long nightmare had given way to a fairy tale. Mr. Ericsson liked my playing. The salary, in comparison to the five dollars a week which I had received at the carnival, seemed princely to me. Mrs. Arthur took me to a shop and fitted me with an appropriate suit and shoes; she wanted to give them to me, but I jotted down the costs and prepared to repay her as soon as I had money. Begging had left its scars, scars that hurt again even at the kindliest of gifts.
My work at the restaurant gave me a great deal of satisfaction. There was no silly clowning to be carried out as had been necessary to the job down at the carnival. I was a well-dressed, poised young man who played as I wanted to play, who responded courteously to requests.
One point bothered me at first, but, of necessity, I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind. Mr. Ericsson had placed a printed page titled “Our Wild Boy of the Road” inside the menu covers. There the diners could read about Joey and me, about the fact that we left home because our family didn’t have enough to eat. There was a detailed account of the begging, of the freezing and starving we had endured. It shamed me at first. Our troubles were a drawing card like poor Ellsworth’s flippers that had grown instead of arms, like Madame Olympia’s mountain of flesh, like Edward C. Kensington’s dwarfism and the pitiful hump on his back. But it was not a time for sensitivity. A job was so precious a thing, so much a gift right out of Heaven, that I had no right to protest. I didn’t tell Joey about it, though, nor Janey. But one night I told Lonnie. His lips tightened, and his eyes looked angry for a moment. But he didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t long until Mr. Ericsson decided to feature Joey with me. There had been an account in the papers as well as on the radio of the boy who looked like “a half-famished angel” clasping a banjo in lieu of a harp. People wanted to see the younger “wild boy.” And so, after I had worked with him for hours, helping him to accompany me when I played some old or popular ballads, Joey stood beside me on the platform, singing and playing ringing chords on Howie’s old banjo.
He was a great attraction; his fragile appearance and beauty as well as a natural gift for comedy made him an immediate hit. Diners didn’t care if he stumbled over the chords occasionally. There would be a little flurry of laughter when his voice suddenly wandered off-key; then when he grinned widely and got himself straightened out with some help from me, he’d receive a burst of laughing applause.
Joey accepted his success as casually as he accepted the fact that most people loved him at first sight. It was just a fact of life to him; nothing to get excited about. But to me, our success was so marvelous a thing that I couldn’t get used to it. Several times I woke up in the night and for a second I thought that I was somewhere out in the fields or in the train depot of some lonely little town and that I’d had a dream of something too wonderful to be true. The wonder eased that loneliness I’d felt for home the night of Joey’s return. Home kept receding from my mind as the nights passed, gay, pleasant nights when I played for well-dressed, happy people who could afford to dine in beautiful restaurants. And then at the end of the week there was a check—money to pay our debts, money to make us feel confident and secure.
We sent money home from time to time, and we gave almost all the rest of it to Lonnie. He accepted it without comment, but I had the feeling he was not using it to help with household expenses.
“We owe you this money, Lonnie. It’s yours. We don’t want to be leeches on you.”
Lonnie was almost curt with me. “People don’t want to be paid for some things. Sure, I’ll keep a little money for medicines and extra expenses. I do that because I like the way you boys fight to keep your self-respect in money matters. But don’t ask me to take money for the food you’ve eaten or the bed you’ve slept in. You know about my boy; you must know how I feel about you and Joey.” He folded and refolded the bills I’d given him. “You boys will need this when you go back to Chicago,” he added.
I didn’t like for him to mention going back to Chicago. It brought a strangely mixed feeling of homesickness, of guilt and resentment that Joey and I should be asked to give up something better than our best hopes and go back to something once bitter and still unsure.
The mail brought word from Emily one day, an envelope addressed in a high, delicate script that looked as if every letter had been drawn painstakingly. The writing looked like Emily, I thought, and I opened the envelope carefully so that no part of my name as she had written it would be destroyed.
She told me of the relief and joy of Pete, of Edward C., of her boys and herself, when they heard that Joey was safe and that I was recovering from pneumonia. She said, “We had you boys with us for only a few weeks, but you made your way into our affections. We will never forget you, never stop wishing the very best of good fortune for both of you.”
She sent messages from Peter and Edward C; she told me a little of how Peter was rebuilding his carnival which he would bring farther north in the summer. There was only one mention of her marriage: “My boys are happy to have a father once again, and Pete is a kind and understanding father.” That was all. I wondered if she were happy too. I hoped so.
Then, like Lonnie, she talked about my going home. “I beg you, Josh, to take your little brother home, to make peace with your father and to gladden your mother’s heart. Parents are sometimes very wrong—I know that well enough. But unless they are really evil, they agonize over their mistakes. Your parents are not evil, Josh; they couldn’t have produced two beautiful boys like you and Joey if they were. I beg you again—please go home.”
I played at the restaurant six nights a week, and because I had to practice many hours of the day, I had very little opportunity to see Janey. But on my one night off we’d take long walks, talking of one thing and another, sometimes coming home to sit together with our hands clasped as she and Lonnie’s boy used to do.
Spring was late that year, but week by week the days grew warmer, the air gentler. One evening as Janey and I walked together a misty rain envel
oped us, hardly enough to make us bother with an umbrella, but enough to make little wisps of her hair curl against Janey’s cheeks, to make her skin glow with the tiny drops of mist that moistened it.
“You are my girl, aren’t you, Janey?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve been your girl ever since that afternoon you told me that I didn’t need to wear earrings like Emily—”
“—and you pressed your cheek against my hand. I’ve loved you ever since then, Janey—I always will, as long as I live.”
She didn’t answer for a while. Then she stopped and faced me as we reached a little clump of trees in the park. “Lonnie has talked to me, Josh. He thinks that you and Joey should go home to your mother and dad. He told me that I mustn’t try to keep you here because I—I—care so much for you. And I won’t. I’ll be terribly lonely when you and Joey are gone—but we must listen to Lonnie. He’s always known what was best for me. He knew what was best for you when you were down and out; he must know what is best now that things are better.”
She was right and I knew it, but all kinds of feelings churned inside me as I thought about leaving her. “I don’t know what to do, Janey. I’m pulled in all directions—I can’t quite figure out what is right.”
She lifted her arms then and placed her hands on my shoulders. I drew her to me. “I’ll come back to you, Janey,” I whispered. “I’ll come back. You’ll see. Just as soon as I make things right with my parents, I’ll come back.”
She said, “Yes, of course, Josh. At least I hope so.” I could see that she didn’t quite accept my promise. Janey had lost her parents, a cousin she adored, an aunt who had been almost like a second mother to her. She didn’t really believe that the people she loved ever came back.
The next days were full of inner turmoil and uncertainty for me. My love for Janey was very real and tender; I knew, though, that we were very young, and that a thing called marriage which people in love always thought about was something so far in the future as to be unreal. But that made our love no less true. I wanted to strike out at anyone who dared to say we were too young to understand love.
Lonnie came and stood beside me one evening as I stood staring at nothing from the window. He was silent as if waiting for me to speak.
“You know that Janey and I love one another, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know,” he answered.
“Don’t call it puppy love, Lonnie.”
“No, I’m not one to downgrade love—at any age. What I wanted to say to you is this: Your going home is not the most final thing in the world. You’ve been successful on a job out here; you’ve made friends who will help you to find a job if you don’t find one in Chicago. And as for Janey—this feeling between you and her could last as long as you live. It could change too—you’ve got to face that. But let’s suppose it lasts. You’ll always be welcome in my home—even if you only come to see Janey.”
He smiled at me, and I felt comforted. My bitter winter had ended in good fortune. It gave me hope for the years ahead. That night I played for the diners at Mr. Ericsson’s restaurant with a lighter heart, with a greater feeling of optimism.
Mr. Ericsson asked me to help Joey increase his repertoire of appealing songs, and in thinking about the list which we might choose from, I remembered Dad’s old Polish song, Góalru, Czy Ci Nie Zal?1, which was the one that came back to me on the awful night when I believed I was going to die. I think that as a little boy I had been impressed by the expression on Dad’s face when he taught me the words. “It is a song about the yearning for home,” he had told me, and I had interpreted that as meaning a yearning for his native country. Now, I knew that it might be a yearning for the mountains of Poland or the beaches of Spain or the dreariness of Chicago’s west side.
For several mornings Joey and I rehearsed together while the restaurant was still closed. I taught him the Polish words, and he learned to accompany me softly and with tenderness on Howie’s banjo.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Josh?” he said.
“I think so. I’ve loved it since I was a little boy.”
Joey took a deep breath. “It hurts me, though. It makes me want to see Mom and Dad.” He ran his fingers over the strings of the banjo. The chords sounded lonely, just as they had sounded that night on the freight train when Howie had strummed his banjo for a minute and then laid it aside.
“You want to go home, don’t you, Joey?” I asked after a minute.
He nodded without looking up at me. “If you do,” he said.
“All right, we’ll go home. Everyone advises it—all the people who care about us. I think perhaps they’re right. It’s time we headed for home.”
I talked to Mr. Ericsson that afternoon. I told him how we felt, what we had to do. He was a kind man. He gave me a letter of recommendation and suggested places in Chicago where I might present it. We shook hands, and I hoped I had made him realize how much I appreciated what he’d done for us.
The Arthurs invited Lonnie and Janey and Gramma to have dinner with them that night at the restaurant. When the audience asked Joey and me for an encore, I looked down into their faces and did what I had never done before: I made an announcement. “Joey and I will sing you a Polish song tonight, a song that tells about a longing for home. You people here in Omaha have been kind to us; we’ll never forget you. But now we have to go. The Wild Boys of the Road’ have been gone a long time, and tonight they’re homesick.”
Then Joey and I sang Dad’s song, and people applauded us as they never had before.
11
Although we had already told the Arthurs good-bye, Mrs. Arthur wanted to see Joey again before we left. So Lonnie took him over that last evening, giving Janey and me a chance to talk together out on the back steps while Gramma busied herself inside the kitchen. The stars were thick in the sky that night, and the air was warm and fragrant. The icy winter of Nebraska was far away, its violence something hard to remember.
Our thoughts were all about the fact that we would soon be parted. “It isn’t so far, you know. I can take a train in Chicago and be back in a few hours,” I said.
“Yes, I know.” Janey bent forward, elbows on her knees, chin in her cupped hands.
“You want me to come back, don’t you, Janey?”
“I sure do.”
“And—and I hope you won’t forget me. Of course, as Lonnie says, if other boys ask you to go out with them, naturally you should go—”
“Oh, I will,” she said, too readily I thought.
“Sometimes I wonder, Janey ...”
I felt her little shoulder grow tense as it leaned against me. She swallowed hard before she spoke. “Look, Josh, you could make me cry—awful easy. But I’m not going to do it. I dread to see you leave. This place is going to be haunted by you because I—I—think I love you, but—”
I was suddenly edgy and irritated. “You just think so. Aren’t you sure, Janey?”
“Were you sure when you loved that Emily lady?”
I took her hand and held it in both of mine while I thought about what she had said. “That was not the same,” I finally told her.
“No? And maybe it won’t be the same as this when you find some girl who doesn’t have freckles and—and isn’t a nut—and looks good in earrings.”
“Lonnie’s been talking to you,” I said.
“He has not. I wouldn’t let him. I’ve thought these things out for myself because I know things that you and Lonnie don’t understand. I happen to be a woman and I—”
I laughed at her. “You’re only fourteen, Janey.”
She choked suddenly and hid her face in her hands. “I’m not as sure as I sound, Josh. I—I don’t know what it’s all about. I wish I could be sure, but I can’t. Not really sure.”
We sat together for a long time, each of us thinking our own thoughts. When Lonnie and Joey came home, we didn’t have much to say to them either. And at nine when Janey had to go home, I kissed her good-night right in front o
f Lonnie. I didn’t care.
We left for the train to Chicago a little before daylight the next morning. We said good-bye to Gramma before we left the house; then Joey climbed into the front seat of the car with Lonnie while Janey and I sat together in the back. We were all silent, and I think the others were as heavy-hearted as I was.
Joey and I had tickets for the homeward trip. We had a right to step inside the coach in full view of any train official who chanced to be near; we could sit on the comfortable green mohair seats and have the privilege of feeling the miles slide by without blisters or weariness or pain on our part. Physical pain, that is, for the sight and sounds of a train still sent a shiver of horror through us. But we knew that it was a horror we must overcome. I saw Joey set his shoulders and try to repress the shudder that shook him when he looked at the big wheels of the engine.
We stood around feeling stiff and unnatural, dreading the good-byes, wishing they were over. Lonnie said, “Maybe it’s just as well you board a little early and get settled,” so we moved down the platform to our coach. There Joey said good-bye to Janey, and we tried to thank Lonnie but he wouldn’t have it. “Look, you fellows, write to us—write of ten, and don’t forget us,” he said. He looked at me with his half-smile. “You stay and say good-bye to Janey. Joey and I will get on and find a place for your baggage.”
Janey and I stood in the near-darkness together for several minutes. I guess we said the things that most people say when they love one another and a train is waiting to separate them for months, maybe for years, maybe for all time. I hoped she wouldn’t cry, and she didn’t. Finally I whispered, “Good-bye, Janey,” and I left her quickly.
Then, at last, Joey and I were in our seats, and after a few minutes the train pulled out slowly as we waved our good-byes from the window. Neither of us said anything for quite a long time after that.