“Don’t worry, this isn’t the last you’ve seen of me, but I wanted to give you something before I go.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. When he saw Louise’s face brighten, he laughed. “Don’t get too excited, I’m not giving you money.” He pulled out a photo and handed it to her. “Maybe you don’t remember because you were pretty young, but I showed you this photo after I took you to a Fourth of July parade, the one where they unveiled the Great War memorial in 1920. Remember?”
Louise looked at the photo’s younger version of Uncle Freddie, sitting in a café with a friend. Both wore their army uniforms, and they looked handsome and confident, content. “I remember this. After I saw it, I thought the war didn’t look so bad.”
“True, if you only saw this photo, no one could blame you for thinking that. Do you remember what I told you about why I served in the war?”
Louise nodded, though her uncertainty must have shown because Uncle Freddie continued. “I told you I served because I felt it was important to show my respect and pride for my country, even if the same type of respect and pride wasn’t necessarily returned to me by my countrymen?”
“I remember.”
“You’ve been racing awfully well, and this whole running business could lead you to something bigger. I saw some of those newspaper stories in the Globe about women competing in the Olympics. Maybe you could be one of them. You’re strong, fast, and have a good head on your shoulders.”
“I didn’t see anything about girls like me competing in such important races.”
“You mean colored girls? It’ll happen someday.”
“Really?”
“Sure, change may be slow, but it’s coming.”
It sounded like a long shot, but if her uncle wanted her to try, she could do that. Since she’d started practicing with the team, she felt stronger and her mind was quieter, freer of the worries that had nagged her. She was tired at the end of each day, but tired in a good way that helped keep her bad memories at bay. She no longer climbed into bed and replayed that awful afternoon of Grace’s accident in her mind. Now she fell asleep quickly and slept hard. “All right, I’ll stick with it.”
“Good girl. If you ever end up heading to California for races, I’ll come and cheer you on.” He put out his hand to shake hers. “Deal?”
Louise nudged his hand aside and embraced him. “Deal.”
11.
October 1929
Fulton, Missouri
ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON, HELEN SHAMBLED TOWARD the barn. The air felt warm on her bare forearms, but there was a crispness in the wind, a feeling that the weather would turn soon. An eerie silence hung over the farm. Pa was off working in a distant field. Ma had taken to her bed the day before, complaining of a headache, and one of Pa’s sisters had taken Bobbie Lee to her house for a few days. Helen couldn’t remember the last time Ma had taken to bed. Even after Bobbie Lee’s early morning arrival several years earlier, Ma had been back in the kitchen by lunchtime making Pa his midday meal.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a red-tailed hawk’s scream cutting through the whisper of the surrounding cornstalks. She glanced at the sky and saw the creature gliding on updrafts, circling, focused on an unfortunate victim below. Helen stopped for a moment, admiring how it moved with effortless speed.
For the last year Helen had been reading and rereading the Missouri Daily Observer’s Amsterdam Olympic coverage. The newsprint smudged, the paper turned brittle and yellowed, but she continued to pore over the articles, memorizing the results. Since Miss Thurston had found her in the outbuilding with Jimmy, Helen had been spending more time alone, thinking. She couldn’t change the past, but moving ahead, she could do things that would make everyone proud of her. Reading about the Olympics had given her some ideas.
She proceeded to the barn, went inside, and rummaged around Pa’s worktable for a moment, looking for a hammer. Once she found one, she walked to the barn’s wide entryway, drove a couple of tacks into the dry wooden doorframe, and strung a line of twine across the opening. She then paced a couple of hundred feet down the driveway away from the yard, turned, and raced back toward the barn with everything she had. Her bare feet thundered along the packed-dirt road. Her lungs burned with the sudden exertion. She reached the doorway and pulled through the twine, imagining it was finish tape. Truth be told, she hadn’t made it loose enough and it stung a little across her chest, but she didn’t mind. She welcomed the pain. It told her she had been running fast. Really fast.
When her breathing settled, she reached for the pitchfork leaning against the wall next to her and got to work mucking out the horse’s stall. After she finished her chores in the barn, she headed for the house. Dr. McCubbin’s Model A was parked next to the picket fence by the farmhouse. Helen slowed. What brought him out here? At the fence gate, she paused, peeling a few chips of white paint off the wood with her grubby fingers. Tense voices floated toward her from the open windows of the parlor. She edged toward the house, stopping upon the first step of the porch, listening, and hunching her shoulders, making herself small so no one would see her.
Dr. McCubbin said, “Now, Frank, you must take this seriously. Your wife is to have no more children. All things considered, it’s fortunate this pregnancy ended as it did. Bertie needs some rest, but everything will be fine.”
“Fine?” Pa huffed. “Doc, don’t you see where I live? What farmer doesn’t have a bunch of kids to pull their own weight around the homestead? I need help.”
“You have a mighty strong daughter. Sure, she’s a bit accident-prone, but she’s stronger than most boys her age.”
“A girl.” A derisive snort. “I never wanted her.”
Dr. McCubbin spoke again, assuring Pa that Bobbie Lee would be helpful, but the words dropped away. Helen suddenly felt light-headed and she dropped to the first step of the porch. She rested her skinned elbows on the knees of her overalls, staring into the distance.
I never wanted her.
Her vision blurred with tears.
There were so many ways she had disappointed her parents over the years. She knew Ma wished she could muster enthusiasm for playing an instrument. She knew Pa wished she were a boy. She knew both Ma and Pa were shamed by what she had done with Jimmy. Why, she had shamed herself with that too. She gave an involuntary shudder at that memory and glanced back at the door.
From the sounds of it, Dr. McCubbin would be leaving soon. Desperate to avoid detection, she dashed from the porch steps, out the gate, into the cornfield adjacent to the yard. She galloped along a path where the cornstalks stood tall, blocking her from view. When she reached the far end of the field, near a bare patch of ground, she stopped at the salt lick. No one could see her here. She could be by herself, do some thinking. To keep her lower lip from trembling, she tore a foxtail from next to a cornstalk and placed it in her mouth, the bitter taste of it a welcome distraction from what nagged at her.
I never wanted her.
She lay down on the warm, hard-packed earth. The cornstalks fanned around her, cutting her off from the rest of the world. Above, cumulus clouds swept across the sky. She studied them, playing her favorite game, looking for shapes. A lamb. A pail. A feather. She tried to push Pa’s words from her mind.