Read Online Some Luck by Jane Smiley - Free Book Online

to feed the chickens and the horses (Papa fed the hogs and the sheep himself). His coat was by the door, and he put on that himself, too, along with his cap and his mittens. His boots were on the porch. While Papa was putting his boots on, Frank put his boots on. Sometimes he put them on the wrong feet, but if he did, he had to walk out in them—there was no time to change, because the animals were hungry.
    First they carried oats and hay to the horses—Frank poured the oats out of the bucket into their feed trough while Papa forked them some hay. Then they got another bucket of oats, and Frank walked around the chicken yard, throwing it to them, while Papa checked the nests for eggs. Sometimes, when there were a lot of eggs, Frank got to carry a few of them into the house, but he had to be careful so that the eggs didn’t break. Eggs were food and eggs were money—Frank understood those concepts perfectly well.
    When they got back to the kitchen, Joey would be sitting in the high chair, eating whatever Mama had made for breakfast, and Mary Elizabeth would be in her basket on the table, looking up at the ceiling. Frank liked to go over to her and jump up and down. Sometimes that made her cry, but the point was not to make her cry, just to make her jerk her head or lift her hands or kick her feet. Mama always said, “Be nice to your sister, Frankie.”
    “I’m nice,” said Frankie.
    “Hmp,” said Papa.
    Joey just looked at them, his head turning back and forth, Frank to Mama to Papa, back to Frank. Joe never went out to feed the horses or the chickens. That was Frank’s job.
    Frank got to lead the horses to pasture, too. First Jake. Papa put the thing called the halter around Jake’s head, and put the rope in Frank’shand, and Frank stepped forward very straight and didn’t look back, and when they got to the gate of the pasture, Papa had already opened it, and he led Jake through and turned him around. Then they stood there until Papa took off the halter, and they stepped back and Papa closed the gate. They followed the same procedure with Elsa. On good days, Papa let him ride Jake, but never Elsa. Elsa was a little “marish” and not completely trustworthy, Papa said. Frank led the horses back from the pasture in the afternoon. This was a job he was especially proud of.
    What was fun and not a job at all was sitting on the seat of the Ford and putting both hands on the steering wheel and pretending to turn it—left, right. If he had been going anywhere, he would have had to stand on the seat, which wasn’t allowed, but it was more fun to sit and make noises. What made him laugh was to make a noise like they were going over a bump and then bounce up and down on the seat.
    For Mama, he had jobs, too. He pulled up the covers on his and Joey’s bed, with the pillows under the orange quilt that Granny Elizabeth had made for them, and he picked up his dirty clothes and Joey’s dirty clothes and put them in a basket. Joey’s dirty clothes were dirtier than his. It was hard not to feel that Joey was a disappointment, since, as Papa said, he was a terrible whiner, and always had to be told to stop. Frank was well aware that he himself never whined. Joe also had nightmares and cried out in the night, so Frank had taken the job on himself, without being told by Mama, to shake Joey if he was having a bad dream and wake him up. Sometimes he shook him pretty hard, but no harder than Papa shook him.
    Frank was also learning to read. He wasn’t old enough for school yet, but Mama had gotten the book from the teacher, and Frank could read almost the whole thing already. It was easy. And every time he read another page, Mama threw her arms around his neck and said, “Oh, darling Frankie, you are going to be president, aren’t you?”
    WHAT JOE LIKED was a little peace and quiet once in a while. Right now, sitting on the lowest step of the front porch, was about perfect. His tormentor, Frankie, had gone somewhere—who