Tommy finished his shift with one eye on the hotel guests and one eye out for the return of Hank and Bayard or even the reverend. Out of his uniform and back in his comfortable, worn shirt and pants, he scratched along the dirt road that led to the post office, where he was expecting to collect at least one letter from his father.
Satisfied with most of his day’s work at the Savery, but disappointed that his dollar tip from Mrs. Simmons was now in Hank’s pocket, he settled on being pleased there were no more signs of his pals.
Tommy was whistling past McCrady’s Trade and Buy when a large gilt-framed painting caught his eye. The gold surround flashed and winked as sunrays slipped through the clear parts of the sooty glass. He looked twice before he believed what he was seeing, then stopped. People ran up his heels, jostling him until he shuffled out of the way, feeling for the porch step with his foot, adjusting his hat, slack-jawed.
The rendering filled nearly half the window. He glanced around to see if anyone else noticed the artwork or understood what it meant. He pulled his hat down tight. The painting was of none other than his very family, circa 1886. Tommy’s heart thumped, unable to match the image of who the Arthurs had been when they sat for John Singer Sargent with whom they were now.
In the portrait, James, Tommy, and their father were clad in fine woolen summer suits, his father’s hair perfectly slicked back. James stood off to one side of Mama as though watching over her. Tommy laid on the floor, fingers poised to shoot a marble. Mama and Katherine wore white dresses so delicate the ruffles around the neck and down the front seemed to flutter right off the canvas. Their sister, Yale, hadn’t yet been born.
It shocked him to see it there in a shop window with a note that read “Make me an offer” next to it. Humiliation gathered bitter on his tongue as he tried to remember all that had happened the day all their household goods were sold off to repay their grandfather’s failed investment scheme. How quickly things went from wealthy comfort to prairie squalor, dead crops, fire, his brother’s death, and then the family’s split, the awful years alone as the Arthurs tried to put themselves back together. A lifetime ago.
Tommy tried to remember who took this painting the day of the raid. He could see two men lifting it off its wall hook, but he couldn’t remember their names—if he ever knew them.
He’d been too busy protecting Mama, keeping her from shooting people streaming into their home, shoving trinkets into pockets and purses, lugging furniture—marauding, but legally so, according to the courts.
Tommy had tried to help Mama keep some of their things, and with all the folks pushing and taking and fighting over items of value, he hadn’t remembered until that moment that people had taken their family portraits. It was one of the few times Mama had seen Tommy as her protector instead of James.
Now, five years later, standing at McCrady’s window for what felt like hours, Tommy tried to make himself believe that the wealthy people conjured with thick, moody, oil-painted brushstrokes were his family members. Tommy breathed deep and looked around to see if anyone matched him to the boy in the painting, anger growing.
He stomped inside, prepared to negotiate with McCrady to trade for the painting, to stop the insult of it being cast off, just barely more than trash. A shopgirl slid back and forth behind a counter arranging things, marking in a ledger.
“Painting in the window. Bottom line it.”
She leaned past Tommy to get a look. “Big daddy there? That one?”
Tommy nodded.
She paged through the ledger, licking her finger with every turn. She shrugged and tossed the notebook aside. “Must be a new acquisition.”
Tommy felt out of his body, disoriented by the concrete reminder of what they’d lost, the weight of it thumping in his chest. He removed his hat and leaned on the counter.
“Take it out of the window. Save it for me in the back room.”
“No how,” she said. “McCrady’s strict on the window display and what everything costs and such. Make me an offer means pay me a boatload.”
“But that’s not an ordinary painting.”
“I gathered.”
Tommy sighed. “Not like you’re thinking.”
“You’re barking at a knot with this. I can’t change window items out willy-nilly.” She dragged her gaze up and down his body. “No way you can afford that anyhow.”
He pulled up. “Says who, I can’t? I’ve a good offer.”
“No how.”
“Yes how.” He had no idea how much to offer for such a thing. Tommy shook his head. Having it made had been a fancy affair, an appointment years in the making costing a massive amount of money. Pride kept him from explaining that the painting was rightfully his, that whatever McCrady might take for it, his parents had already paid a huge sum in the first place.
He pushed away from the counter. “I’m coming for the painting. Don’t sell it except to me.”
“Sure, sure.” She put her back to him, fussing with cups and saucers on the shelves behind the counter. “Same sad tale all day long.”
He wiped his mouth. He was different. He’d return for it. He wove through the crooked path around tables and cabinets, trying to decide if the money he’d saved to help bring his father back to town would be better spent on something that would outlive them all—the painting that was evidence of what they used to be: a successful, complete family. He imagined bursting into the tiny home where they were boarding and leaning the painting against the wall between the two windows in the front room, surprising Mama and Katherine with a piece of who they used to be.
He dragged his fingers across items strewn on tabletops—boxes of marbles, buttons, yo-yos, tops, spatulas, mixing spoons, and bowls—and was nearly to the door when the blue-and-gold spine of a book caught his eye. He slid it out from under some others. An English translation of D’Aulnoy’s Les Contes des Fées—Tales of Fairies. The mushrooms and whimsical fairies embossed on the cover took him back, remembering the joy the stories brought his family in their early years.
He paged through the book, looking for an inscription from Mama, hoping it wasn’t there. He couldn’t bear to see another Arthur belonging orphaned in a shop, mocking him. The tattered cover nearly fell away. He exhaled, not realizing he’d been holding his breath. The page where it would have been inscribed was missing. Relieved, he ran his finger down the contents, noting the story titles. The Blue Bird, Prince Sprite, Finnette Cendron . . .
This made him think of Pearl, who often called him a prince despite his desperate finances. She saw beyond his tattered clothing to the riches he carried in his mind, as his mother always put it. He chuckled. If there was a girl who needed fairy-tale rescuing less, it was Pearl.
He envisioned her gutting the deer that he could not, how she’d been surgical and matter-of-fact with the pearl-handled knife, the way she seemed to keep herself decidedly independent. But oh, how she dreamed of someday being what amounted to a princess with proper English and fancy manners. Pearl was rough, her beauty hidden, encrusted by the grime that splotched her clothing and skin. Though Penelope was far from a wealthy, educated girl, she was nowhere near as hardscrabble as Pearl. Yet it was Pearl who sparked his imagination, whom he thought of when he ran into something interesting like this book.
Pearl’s face came to mind, the way an expression often folded her features in puzzled concentration as she read letters she shouldn’t have been reading when working at the post office. Perhaps she just needed a book to keep her occupied. “How much for this?” he asked the shopgirl.
She sighed as though she’d been asked to lift heavy furniture. She stared at Tommy for a moment, then pulled another ledger from behind the counter. She blew dust off the cover and paged through it. “Where is it, where is it?”
Tommy gave a little shake of his head, knowing he wouldn’t have enough for it anyway, not for something so unneeded.
“Here!” She ran her finger along the page. “Says right here, this book . . .” She brushed dust away and pulled it closer.
“What?” Tommy asked.
She turned the book toward him. “Says it should go economy priced due to its condition and ’cause every happy home needs a book of fairy stories.”
Tommy thought that sounded odd, but he was excited by the notion. “What’s economy priced in this instance?”
She licked her finger and turned the page. “Says here price to be determined by the buyer and . . .”
He leaned closer, but her finger was blocking the words. “And what?”
She rolled her eyes. “His circumstances.”
She looked over the top of the notebook and took in the sight of Tommy again. “Determined by his circumstances.”
Now pleased his appearance would make a claim of poverty more believable than wealth, he looked down and opened his arms. “I’d say my circumstances are bleak.”
She narrowed her eyes on him before rolling them. “Suddenly bleak, Mister I Want the Painting in the Window?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I have to agree. Bleak as the dickens. But I don’t think . . .” She pulled the book away, shaking her head.
Tommy pointed at the book. “Says it’s for the person who inquires of it. Fork it over.”
She flipped a ledger page and reread. “Sure does say that.”
He smiled.
“Fine. It’s yours.” She gestured toward the book.
He drew a deep breath. “Thank you. I can’t believe my luck.”
“Suppose I should pay better attention to inventory from now on.” She shrugged, turning away. Tommy jammed his hand into his pocket and rubbed the Indian Head penny and fingered the dime he had there as well. Perhaps this was a new beginning in more ways than one. He asked the shopgirl if he could borrow her pen and ink to inscribe the book. She scowled and grimaced but allowed it.
Tommy turned to the title page. He almost wrote a simple To Pearl, From Tommy, but then decided that would be offensive. This book of literature and wonder was a worthy gift for Pearl, and she deserved a worthy thought dedicating it to her. He dipped the nib into the black liquid and was as precise with his lettering as he could be.
**
Money. The thought of it popped into Tommy’s mind like a minute hand ticked around a clock face. He told himself to enjoy this moment, the gift he’d found for Pearl. He drew a deep, satisfied breath, staving off the endless list of needs that filtered through his mind all day long. The book of fairy tales would be the perfect way to thank Pearl for that day in the woods one year back when she stumbled upon him and the deer he’d shot, for her tact and friendship when she had to dress it without any help from him. A year was a long time to make an overt thank-you, but Pearl would think it was worth the wait.
Pluck, pluck, pluck. Hollow-sounding raindrops splattered off the brim of his hat, keeping rhythm with his steps as he strode in the direction of the post office. He tucked the book inside his coat and pulled it tighter around him.
Acquiring the fairy-tale book took the sting out of seeing his family portrait in the window, made him think as though it was meant to be that he was there at that moment and saw the book peeking out below the others. He reassured himself it wasn’t as though anyone would recognize him from the painting that had been made seven years before. Growing to six-foot-one and changing from a boy to a man did wonders for disguising his appearance.
Mama was another story. She’d enough burden to carry; she didn’t need to see that painting in the window. This discovery solidified his plan to pull all the pieces of his broken family together. He’d get that back. Someday. For now, he’d focus on how happy the book would make Pearl.
Rain continued to peck at the dirt road, releasing a distinct harmony of odor—manure, clay, sand—aromas rising as the moisture unleashed each layer.
He smiled into the sky, alternating between a run and a shuffle, slowing enough to kick a rock into the air. The broken-down section of town gave way to the newer, busier section of Des Moines. His feet fueled by his good mood, he passed stocked storefronts, dodging distracted businessmen and women laden with shopping bags.
“Hey!” a man’s gruff voice came from inside the grocery. The scolding tone caused Tommy to break into a full run. He looked behind him to see the grocer shaking his finger at two delivery boys.
Tommy blew out his breath. It’d been a while since he’d been in trouble, but the fear that came with the memory stuck with him, rising up when he least expected it. He could not go back to jail, not ever. He wasn’t a criminal. He was a kid. Except for the times he felt like a man, which was most of the time these days. But jail? Nothing shrank his sense of manhood like jailtime. Having Mama and his sisters back in Des Moines reminded him that only in the most dire situations should he do anything untoward.
He assuaged his guilt with what defined his present circumstances. He’d done well despite the downturn his family suffered. Hell, any boy whose father left, who buried his brother and was separated from his mother and sisters for years and managed to survive was not a criminal. He was a victor. If he took an apple or lifted one out of the fifty-two silver spoons from a wealthy family so he could eat that day, it was evidence he was capable and smart, everything a mother wanted a son to be.
It wasn’t as if Tommy stole upon the rising of each and every sun. The job at the Savery made use of all his early breeding and education and provided opportunity to earn a better position. And his schooling—just another year or so and he’d collect a diploma like his mother wanted for him so badly. He wanted that too but wasn’t so sure it would be as easy to fit it in as she thought. Not when she needed him to make enough money to contribute to savings for a cottage. This summer Tommy wanted to squirrel away as much money as possible before schoolwork intruded on his time.
Tommy rubbed the back of his sore neck, his fingers grazing the thin scars, reminding him of the policeman’s fingernails as they’d scraped his skin when the brute grabbed his collar and hauled him away like a dog who got too close to a steaming bowl of stew. He’d just been helping a child and his mother. He shivered. Tommy hadn’t planned for a life of crime and punishment, justified or otherwise, but in order to move forward with his plan to help his father and bring him back, he needed resources. Trouble was, the way things had gone since the blizzard of 1888, well, he’d learned resources were hard to come by for anyone other than folks who already had them.