Some Luck by Jane Smiley

cart the boys all the way to Mason City and then stay in a hotel there (three dollars per night) he thought was strange, but if it got her through this time, he welcomed it, and so did his mother when he mentioned it in town. She said, “She knows what she wants, though maybe she doesn’t know what will work. But if you don’t give her what she wants, she’ll spend the rest of her life thinking that that was the one thing that might have worked.”
    Everyone said that Billy Sunday wasn’t the draw he had once been, but as they got closer to the assembly hall, Walter had to be impressed by the crowds streaming around him. He carried Joey in his arms, and he was sorry that he didn’t have a length of rope to tie around Frankie, because Frankie kept disappearing, if only for as long as it took Walter to begin to panic. Rosanna kept saying, “Frankie, hold my hand!” But she was distracted, too. Walter said to her, half joking, “I should have given him his whipping in advance!” but she barely chuckled. A moment later, when Frankie happened to bump into his legs, Walter grabbed his shoulder and said in his strictest voice, “If you don’t stay right with me, they’ll make you stay out, and we’ll go in, and what’ll you do then?”
    Frankie looked up at him and said, “Run away!” But he took his hand and stuck by him as they went through the door. Fortunately, just inside the door, a fat man with a handkerchief over his head and his hat on top of that saw Frankie start jumping up and down and said, “Boy, you better be quiet for Reverend Sunday, because he don’t like a lick of noise from the audience, and he’ll send you right out. I seen it happen.”
    Frank’s mouth dropped open—more, Walter thought, at the man’s enormous girth than at the reprimand—but Walter took the opportunity to ask him how many revivals he had been to, and the man said, “This is twelve for me. I go to one each year or so. I went to the first one, up in Garner. First time he ever spoke to an audience. Thatwas history in the making.” Suddenly he bent down and stuck his face into Frankie’s and said, “You mind, hear? I’m watching you!” To be perfectly honest, Walter was glad he did. Rosanna was staring at the stage and the choir and all the people. He said, “Rosanna?” one time, but she paid him no attention.
    JOE COULDN ’ T STAND the noise. The giant room they were in was pounding with it, so the first thing he tried was to lay his head against Papa’s chest, just press his ear into his shirt there, put his hand over his other ear, and close his eyes. That was a little better, but then the noise revealed itself not to be just noise, but also shaking and stamping. It seemed like he could hear it through the top of his head and the seat of his pants. When Joe thought of the loudest noises he had ever heard (thunder, lots of cows mooing all at once, Frankie screaming right in his ear), this was still worse. He shifted around so that his other ear was against Papa, but that didn’t work, either. It was a terrible riddle, and it made him want to scream into the noise (he glanced up at Walter’s face, then at Rosanna’s), but he didn’t dare. At least Frank wasn’t bothering him. In the back seat of the car on the way down, as soon as Mama said, “Now, you boys settle down and try to be quiet for five minutes,” Frankie began with the nail he had, poking it into Joe’s side, right behind his arm. When Joe grunted, Frankie made it go back into his hand, so that when Mama turned around, there was no nail. Then, when Mama was looking out the windshield again, Joe would see out of the side of his eye Frankie sticking his tongue out. Joe knew that Frankie knew that Joe knew he was sticking his tongue out, so it was no use to pretend that nothing was happening. Never once did Mama or Papa think to check in Frankie’s pockets for his weapons. They just looked at him, and he smiled that smile he had, and one or the