Some Luck Read Free

noise. Frank had nothing to do with it. It just happened. Now, in the long moment when Mama was gone, Frank looked away from Papa toward the window.
    “All right,” said Mama, “I found it in the sideboard. But you’ve got to put some sugar in the knot or he won’t be able to stand the bitter taste.” She reached for a cup on one of the shelves, and poured something into it. After that, she lifted the tray of Frank’s chair, all the while anchoring him with her hand, and then she took him in her arms and set him gently on her jiggling knee. The noise subsided considerably. But even so, she did put a thing in his mouth, first burning and then moist and sweet, and anyway something to suck upon. Papa said, “Ragnar, the English for that is ‘sugar tit.’ ”
    “Oh, Walter,” exclaimed Mama. “For goodness’ sake.”
    Ragnar said, “Sukker smokk.”
    Mama said, “I am sure you are telling Ragnar all the best dirty English words while you are cleaning the hog pens.”
    Frank felt his mouth working, pulling the sweetness through the bitterness. Normally while sucking, he would be looking at Mama, the curve of her jaw and the fall of her blond hair half covering her ear, but now he stared at the ceiling. It was flat, and as he sucked, it seemed to lower itself onto him. The last thing he heard was “Did he fall asleep?”
    The jiggling continued.
    NOW THAT HE was crawling, Frank found that many doors were closed to him. Most of the time, in fact, he was confined to a space in the dining room that was nowhere near the woodstove in the front room, or the range in the kitchen. Many things were denied him that he once enjoyed, including the quotidian miracle of the flung spoon—he could have a spoon only when he was secure in his high chair in the kitchen (and he now had a strap to tie him in, since he felt no scruples about arching his back and sliding downward beneath the tray in his attempt to find the floor and take off). Things that he picked up, no matter how small, were removed from his grasp before he could give them the most cursory inspection, not to mention getthem to his mouth. It seemed that he could never get anything to his mouth that he actually wanted to get there. Whatever he grabbed was immediately removed and a cracker was substituted, but he had explored all the features of crackers, and there was nothing more about them that he cared to find out.
    The only thing he had left was standing beside one of the cane-seated chairs in his confinement pen and banging on it with his hands, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes alternately, sometimes together. The cane in the middle and the wood around it presented an interesting contrast. His fist smacked the wood and it hurt just a little, though not enough to matter. His fist smacked the cane and then bounced. He also laughed when he pushed the chair over, but that could backfire if he then fell down—his balance was improving, but he wasn’t walking yet. These were seductive feelings, but no substitute for everything else in the house—the staircase, the windows, the basket of firewood, the books that could be opened and closed and torn, the rocking chair that could be tipped over, the cat that could be chased (though not caught), the fringe of the rug that could be chewed. He couldn’t even go out onto the porch anymore—when that door flew open, a cold blast shot through it that made him gasp.
    Mama and Papa came and went. When he made noise (he now knew where the noise came from and how to make it whenever he wanted to—you opened your mouth and pressed the noise out and there were a variety of noises that produced a variety of effects upon Mama and Papa), she appeared from beyond one of the doors—the kitchen door—and she had a cloth in her hands. She said, “Frankie hungry? Poor boy. Two more minutes, baby.” The door closed and she was gone. He pounded his fist on the cane-bottomed chair. The noise he made was “ma ma ma ma