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BEING FOUR YEARS older than Juna, I remember Joseph Carl better than she. He is the one kind soul among all those Baine brothers. Even given my ache for Ellis, I know he isn’t such a kind man as Joseph Carl.
Joseph Carl was the brother who would take his mama by the arm, escort her into church or down the road through town. Walking with Joseph Carl was the only time Mrs. Baine would hold her head high so a person could see her eyes. She would nod to passersby, pat Joseph Carl’s hand, even call out a hello to one of the ladies. But Joseph Carl’s kindness didn’t serve him well in that family. It’s surely why he finally left, even knowing he was abandoning his mama to the care of those other boys. He had a yearning for something more and too much kindness to survive his family, so he packed up and left Hayden County.
For weeks, months maybe, before Joseph Carl stepped aboard a train, he talked of traveling north and west. Not so far away, he said, but look at how tall they grow their wheat. For anyone who would give him the time, Joseph Carl unrolled for them a poster that showed a man standing on a ladder so he could see over the top of his crop. This is how tall it grows, he said. Land so rich, crops sprout like weeds. When he did finally step aboard a train, most folks thought it was a damn foolish thing to do and he was a damn foolish man for doing it.
I’ve thought of Joseph Carl over the years, thought one day Ellis and I would marry and we’d go to live near Joseph Carl somewhere away from Juna and Daddy. I remembered the sun in that poster of his. The landscape had glowed orange, and the wheat was yellow, and the man who stood on that ladder had red cheeks. We would live there, where it was dry and warm and not all the time moldy and damp. I imagined Joseph Carl would be my brother, even on the day he left and I was too young to want Ellis in the way I want him now. I imagined Joseph Carl, and not any other Baine, would one day be my brother and Ellis would be my husband.
Most folks thought Joseph Carl likely died in the years that followed, or packed himself up and kept moving west like so many others when that dark rich soil dried up and blew away. I would imagine, sometimes, in more recent years, when we had a bit of dust blow through and it was a particular dark-brown shade, that it had come from a place where Joseph Carl had been and that he had touched it or walked upon it or dug it with his own bare hands.
He did write me a few times, three letters that came over two years. By the third letter, he told me he knew I loved Ellis but that it was a feeling I should be shy of. He said Ellis was a good enough man, but not as good as I might want him to be. Don’t mistake foolishness for bravery, Joseph Carl wrote. I’d tell you to find another man, but I know that’ll only make you want Ellis all the more. But I’ll say it anyway. Find another sort of man. Joseph Carl was the only person I ever knew who left Hayden County. The only person most anyone knew who left. But now, it would seem, Joseph Carl is back.
I leave the house before Juna can say Joseph Carl’s name out loud, and I take Mrs. Brashear and Abigail with me. On the porch, Abigail shakes her grandfather by the shoulder, him having already fallen off to sleep.
“Go on home,” I tell them, standing on the porch, drying my hands on my apron like I’ll be staying right here and have no other place to go. “Abraham will probably be there by the time you get home.” I say this because I can see in Abigail’s eyes, the way they are near to tearing over, that she’s scared to walk home with only her grandparents. “You all be safe, and thank you for the milk. We’ll send word when Dale is found.”
Once they are gone and their voices have faded into silence, I start up the road toward the Baines’ place. Along the way, I pass John Holleran’s home. He lives there with his mama and father. His mama has been to the house a half dozen times already since Dale disappeared. Each time she’s stopped in, she’s said she knows Dale is near and that he’ll be home soon.