Revolt of the Rats - Reed Blitzerman (early readers txt) 📗

to the Steiners. She’d worn a string of pearls with her sundress that Everett swore were real.

Carter had bent over and shaken Everett’s hand in a warm but serious manner, squatting so close Everett could smell the peppermint on his breath. He’d said simply, “Young Master” and given Everett’s arm a single pump.

Then he turned to Everett’s father. “How’s life suiting you?”

“Fine, fine. The farm’s doing well. Judith and Everett are healthy. It’s the most I could hope for, to have a farm and a family of my own. And you two? Do you have any plans?”

Carter smiled then, the bashful newlywed, and slipped a sly glance at his new wife, her eyes flashing, her face splashed with freckles. “Well, we figured we’d try for a child. Things at the bank are going well, why not?”

“Why not, indeed?” Both Everett’s parents were beaming when Eli spoke again. “Good luck to you.” His father had placed a hand on Carter’s arm as they said good-bye.

Everett was missing something. The thought squirmed from him as he tried to hold it. He tried again to catch it but it slithered just beyond his reach like a greased salamander. Everett sighed. It was so close. But he was too ignorant of adult goings on to turn the spark into a blaze. Maybe his father would figure it out.

A sound spread across the fields, beautiful and strange; accompanied by an approaching cloud of dust. He recognized the sound as jazz and the cloud resolved into a car. After weeks and months of hoping for something to happen, he wasn’t sure it was real. He’d prayed at night for something to change, for a chance to do something different. He had a glimmer now that the time had come.

He woke his mother who was asleep on the couch, and she joined him on the porch. They watched, holding hands, as the car drew closer.

Dill Steiner gunned the engine. She’d received a folded sheet from a delivery boy several days earlier. Stone drunk, she’d placed the message on the entryway dresser and headed to her favorite speakeasy, the Metropole, still in her dungarees from work. It wasn’t until the next morning she’d read the telegram, just before using it to light the stove.

Dill nearly tore it up, then thought better of it. The contents were an open handed slap. A summons from Judith. For once she wasn’t lecturing. For the first time in her life, Judith was asking for help. Dill stood motionless in the kitchen.

In her mind, she wasn’t in Chicago anymore, she was back home. She was back home with Daddy, Daddy and his foot soldier Judith. Only Judith could kill a good time with a single piece of paper.

She re-read the telegram, packed her bags, then descended the stairs to the fire engine red Studebaker Erskine roadster crouched at the curb.

Dill stepped on the running board, threw her bags in the backseat and took down the convertible top. At the turn of the key, the engine hummed to life with a jolt that thrilled her. The gas tank was full.

She counted her cash, ruefully thinking of what she’d spent on beer the night before. She had enough money to get there, but only just. She put her hair up in a bun with a few pins, put on some lipstick while easing the car into the traffic, and headed off to her sister and Eli, headed off to home.

The roadster gobbled up the miles: the round protruding lights drilling holes through the darkness, the narrow front grill carving the distance like the bow of a speedboat. When she felt herself nodding off, she pulled into a stand of trees and napped. She washed at the occasional rooming house, ignoring their stares at a young woman in pants traveling alone. She nibbled at fruit and cornbread from roadside stands as she rode, wondering at the events that brought her to this.

She wouldn’t have left Chicago for anyone except Eli, her sister included. When her father had abandoned her, Eli had been a rock. That wasn’t quite right. He’d been an oasis. Constant and consistent, his faith in her was unbroken and unbreakable.

After the airplane, he’d brought her different things to take apart; toasters, lawnmowers, and boat engines. There’d been trips to junkyards and farmhouses with her exasperated older sister in tow, stepping over spider webs and dried dog turds with equal apprehension.

Dill laughed now, remembering her sister streaked with dirt in a long ago auto parts yard. Judith spoke through a handkerchief that covered her mouth. “Watch out for the rats, and the grease, and the dog leavings. Oh, my God, this place smells.”

“Yeah,” Dill said.

“This isn’t ladylike,” Judith said. “Why are you wearing men’s pants again? That’s not the natural order of things.”

“Cause I like ‘em. Why do you care? Being older doesn’t make you an expert.” Dill said it over her shoulder, not bothering to interrupt her scavenging.

“You don’t want people thinking you’re a boy, Dill.” The corners of Judith’s mouth were turned down, like she was swallowing something that tasted bad.

“I care less what a boy thinks.”

“How are you going to find a husband? They will have expectations.”

“Don’t need one. I’m not spending my life washing knickers or turning to dust over a stove.” She had turned square, and was staring at her sister now, her hands in fists, her head tilted forward, her incisors visible over her bottom lip. “You’ve got no right to talk down to me.”

Eli appeared then from  a stack of parts and rescued her, or maybe rescued her sister, pivoting slightly between them. He asked, “Would you ladies be interested in a slice of pie? I skipped breakfast, and I’m famished.”

The look on her sister’s face was one of a kind. His words and that smile were scalding water over a heart of frozen ice, melting her sister in two breaths. “Yes, of course.” Judith paused, lowered the handkerchief to her breastbone. “That would be fine.”

What a salesman.

The restaurant had been packed with people, jostling in the aisle as they waited for a booth. When they were finally seated, Dill had sat next to her sister with Eli across from them. The jukebox had poured out a song of hope. The restaurant filled with sunlight.

Eli was exuberant. “Now that I’m out of the army, I’m going to buy a farm. Someplace with lots of space. We’ll grow corn. Even have a few peach trees. I’ll need a wife, of course.” He was looking at her sister when he said it and she blushed red without answering, her eyes doing the talking. It was the most forward she’d ever seen him.

The waitress came with the pie before he spoke again and the smell was enough to fill the table. He was earnest now. “And you’re welcome to come any time, Dill. The door’s always open. You’re family.”

Peach pie and junkyard grease; that was the smell of happiness.

That was then. This was now. An approaching line of homes brought her attention back to the present. She checked the name of the town against the shapes circled on her map. Satisfied, she banked onto Main Street. The boardwalk along the nicer shops became dirt sidewalks at the edge of town, where it fronted abandoned factories. She read their faded signs with interest then the empty road rolled away from the light and she turned on the radio.

Dill looked down again at the paper map in her lap. She banked hard left and headed toward a lone farmhouse on the horizon. The sky darkened as night approached. Fields stretched away from her, broken only by the occasional tree. For the first time since reading that telegram over her apartment stove, she wondered what she’d gotten herself into.

The family was on the porch when she pulled up. She tried to act nonchalant, but her heart was pounding. Dill asked, “Someone sent a telegram?”

She stepped out of the car and they welcomed her in, Everett and Judith carrying her bags. Then they drank sweet tea at the kitchen table.

Judith couldn’t stop looking at her. Dill stared at the three of them in disbelief, silently surprised that Eli wasn’t dead and that Everett, whom she’d last seen as a baby was now ten years old. Judith hadn’t changed at all.

Dill looked at Eli. “You seem a little worse for wear. Are those smallpox scars?” She asked.

Eli smiled and nodded.

“Couldn’t really put smallpox in the telegram,” Judith said. “People have a way of gossiping and that sort of thing spreads like wildfire.”

“Quite the motorcar you got there,” Everett said.

“Studebaker Erskine.”

“Doesn’t that have six cylinders?”

Dill nodded. “The message was very cryptic. But now I’m here. So what do you want to do?”

Eli and Judith spent the next thirty minutes explaining the situation. Judith finished the thread of conversation with, “...so we need to go and get our seed loan.”

“You think they’re going to give it to you looking like that?”

“Maybe,” Judith said.

So she’d left a paying job for maybe.

“We need the seed loan and we’ve got to put in a crop in two months. We need help, Dill. Eli beat the pox but he’s not the same.”

Eli said nothing, just stared out the window. Dill read the emotion conveyed by his profile. He’d done something once for her. She knew what they wanted. She just wondered in the end what it would cost her. They ate and got ready to go to bed. The car keys were still in her pocket. She fought the urge to return to Chicago and see if she could get her job back.