Early Warning

“Not that I know of,” said Arthur, seriously. “Just dumb luck, I suspect. But we will take the credit if it is offered to us.” He shifted Tina to the other shoulder. “Maybe he doesn’t matter, though. There’s no sign that things have changed or that their ambitions have waned.”

Frank nodded, then said, “You know what we said in the war? Two Russkies die, four more pop up. Why would Stalin be different?”

“You know that, when Hitler and Stalin were playing footsie, Hitler promised him Iran, right?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“He did. Now Mossadegh hates the Brits so much that he’s heading that way, too. However Iran goes, so go the rest of them.”

“Truman would have let them have it,” said Frank. “He let them have Eastern Europe. Maybe Ike has more balls.”

“Zorin is in Tehran now. He was in Prague in ’48. Coups are what he does.”

Frank half expected Arthur to ask him to do something, but he couldn’t imagine what that would be. Jim Upjohn, the savviest investor Frank knew, had recently put a lot of money into Getty, but Getty was based in Kuwait and Arabia — nothing in Iran. Arthur said, “I’m ready for bedtime. How about you?”

Frank said, “Always.”

But dinner was served. Once they were seated, Janny between himself and Minnie, who kept putting bits of food on her plate, Janny seemed to cheer up. She ate everything Minnie gave her, and asked for more of the canned corn. There was plenty, as always — beef stew, beans, rolls, the newest possible potatoes, an angel-food cake. When everyone had eaten their fill, Joe told a story — the kind people tell at family dinners after a funeral, about the person who died. “One time, Papa sat me on our horse Jake, and then led me to the apple tree and had me pick apples. I would hand them to him, and he would put them in an old feed sack.”

“Oh, that was the Arkansas Black,” said Rosanna. “So good. Only cropped every two years, though.”

“When Walter showed up to propose to you, Rosanna,” said Eloise, “I remember he wore the strangest hat.”

“It was a derby!” exclaimed Rosanna. “Very stylish.”

“I was looking out the window. I thought he was wearing a turban.”

“How did that look like a turban?” said Rosanna.

“I didn’t know! I’d never seen a turban, either.”

Everyone laughed.

Minnie said, “What about the rattlesnake?”

“What rattlesnake?” said Joe.

Frank suddenly remembered this.

Minnie said, “Frankie and I were picking pole beans. We were maybe seven. There was a snake under the bottom of the fence, a step from where we were. Walter must have been watching us, because, as soon as I screamed, this long, forked stick came down and pinned the snake’s head right to the ground. We ran away. I don’t know what Walter did with the snake.”

Frank said, “He cut off the head with a hoe. I remember him saying that the cut-off head could still bite.”

Debbie said, “What do you remember, Mommy?”

“Well,” said Lillian, “one time when I was working at the drugstore, I was at the counter late at night, adding up what I had sold for the day, and someone sat next to me, and kind of leaned into me, so I moved over without looking up from my figures, and he leaned into me a little more, so I moved over a little more, and he elbowed me in the side, so I whipped around to tell that guy to get away from me, and it was my papa, grinning like mad that he had played a trick on me. We laughed all the way home.”

Debbie nodded. Frank had never thought of Walter as playful.

Henry said, “When I was about nine, we came out the back door in the morning, and Papa said, ‘Look at that.’ He was pointing at something. Then he moved his finger in a curve and said, ‘See that sheen?’ and it was a huge spiderweb covered with dew. It must have been ten feet across, and perfect.”

Claire started crying. Rosanna said, “We could have lost him long ago.” She dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron.

Everyone sat up.

She nodded. “Papa fell into the well. He was standing on the cover of it — the old well — and it broke away. He flung out his arms to the sides and caught himself. That well out by the barn — that’s a deep one. He climbed out and never said a word about it until a couple of years ago. He told me he hung there, trying to decide. I asked him, ‘Walter, what were you trying to decide?’ He said he was trying to decide how to get out, but I’m sure he was trying to decide whether to get out, because I’m telling you, back in the Depression, it seemed like either a slow death or a quick one were the only choices.” She shook her head. “So — I tell myself we had twenty extra years. That’s what I tell myself.”

The memory of his father that came to Frank was of having his pants pulled down and being beaten with the belt — no memory of pain, only of Walter looming over him, the muscles of his forearm twitching and bulging, the words matching the rhythm of the blows, Frank’s close-up view of the hairs on the back of Walter’s hand.

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