Free No Promises in the Wind by Irene Hunt Page B

sleep.
    When I awoke, they were talking quietly together, evidently about me. I heard Lonnie say, “So, I take it you’re pretty fond of your big brother, aren’t you?”
    I think Joey was slightly embarrassed. We never talked much about such things. We left that sort of talk for Kitty and Mom.
    Joey hesitated a little. “Yes, I like him. I like him a lot.”
    â€œI have an idea your dad is thinking a lot about you boys these days.”
    Joey hesitated even longer before answering. “Yes,” he said finally, “I expect he is. It’s been hard to live with Dad since times got so bad and he lost his job. But I can tell you one thing—Dad isn’t nearly as bad as Josh thinks he is.”
    So, I thought, Joey too! Mom and Lonnie and now, Joey. All with a warm spot for Stefan Grondowski. Well and good. Let them keep their kind feelings for him; I didn’t care. Maybe I’d starve in the years ahead, or maybe I’d get a job and be able to do the things I’d dreamed of doing. A lot of maybes, but among them there was one certainty: I would never go back and offer my hand in friendliness to Stefan Grondowski; never would I sit at his table again. Never! I found myself clutching big handfuls of grass as I lay there with the waves of anger running all through me.
    But hope got the better of my rage as the big truck counted off the miles and the air grew warmer and the sky brighter with sunlight. We were driving into a new world, a kinder world where Lonnie would help me find a job, where things were going to be right with me for a change. I didn’t intend to let thoughts of Dad spoil this new hope for me.
    It wasn’t long until we entered Louisiana and found ourselves on curving roads so unlike the straight highways of the Midwest. We drove past dozens of beautiful old plantation homes of a kind that I had seen only in moving pictures. We were soon in the bayou country, dark with forests of pine and oak, of magnolia and cypress all draped with shaggy hangings of moss, gray and forlorn-looking. At a cafe where we stopped for lunch, we overheard some men speaking in a foreign tongue as they sat at the counter eating.
    â€œThat’s mixed-up French,” Lonnie told us. “Cajun talk. You’ll hear a lot of it down in these parts.”
    I began to feel a little scared. This was a world of warmth and softness, good to feel after the harsh winter we had just left, but it was an alien world of strange trees and marshes, of unfamiliar language. I supposed the carnival would seem alien too, and I wondered how I would dare to ask for a job in a place so strange and, what was more than likely, so unfriendly to a stray kid asking for a job that a dozen local kids may have been wanting. I had heard over and over during the fall and early winter, “We’ve got kids here too, you know. We have to look after our own. We don’t have enough for them and tramp-kids too.” To ask for a job was almost like begging. I hated for Lonnie to see me rejected and humiliated when I begged for work.
    Lonnie had to make several inquiries, but finally one evening we came upon it, the carnival we’d driven hundreds of miles to find. We found it lying before us in an open meadow only a few miles out of Baton Rouge. It was in full swing, bright with hundreds of colored light bulbs, noisy with the shouting of barkers and the laughter of children and the blaring music of a merry-go-round which dominated the center of the scene. There was a Ferris wheel, too, with a few children strapped in the seats, and on a circular track there were a half dozen little cars with a great cover of canvas falling in accordion folds over them to give the effect of a giant caterpillar. There were roulette wheels with cheap little prizes attached—chewing gum, candy bars, occasionally a quarter or a half dollar. There were tents where barkers urged us to have our fortunes told. We were