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Takeoffs and Landings(42)

By:Margaret Peterson Haddix


“Why didn’t Daddy have a safer tractor?” Lori asked in a small voice.

Mom gave her a long look.

“Come on, Lori, you’ve grown up on a farm. You know how things are. You make do, you get along, you gamble that the tractor’ll make it just one more year and that the crops will be good enough that you can buy a new one. And then if the crops aren’t so hot, or the bottom falls out of the prices, you gamble that the tractor’ll make it two more years, if the combine doesn’t break down first, in which case that tractor had better make it three more years—”

Mom’s just giving a speech again, Lori thought.

But then Mom stopped herself and looked straight at Lori.

“Nobody thought that tractor was unsafe,” she said, and now she sounded as if every syllable hurt. Lori could tell she wasn’t hiding behind glib words anymore. “What happened was a fluke—a freak accident. The odds against it were a million to one.”

In the hall outside their hotel room, a little kid was shouting about beating his daddy to the swimming pool. Lori and Chuck and Mom could hear a man shouting back, “Oh, yeah? Think you’re faster than me?” There was the sound of running. Then there was silence.

“Well, the insurance company owed you,” Lori insisted.

“They were bankrupt,” Chuck said. “Weren’t you listening last night?”

Lori looked at her brother in surprise. He could sit through an entire 4-H meeting and come home and not have the slightest idea when the next meeting was or where they were supposed to turn in their registration forms or who had been elected to Junior Fair Board. But he’d understood Mom’s testimony, and all that had stuck with Lori was Mom’s last line: “By the grace of God, we’ll get by.”

“I wasn’t paying much attention,” Lori admitted.

“The company was running a scam,” Mom said. “Tom and I should have read the fine print. The head honcho ran off with the money and put the company in bankruptcy. And there were enough loopholes in the law that he pretty much got away with it.”

Mom looked over the table edge at the pile of glossy brochures, and Chuck thought, That’s it. She’s not going to tell us anything else. But then Mom sighed and looked back at them.

“Actually,” she said, “I could have sued. I had lawyers calling me, telling me I had a million-dollar case. But . . . there was no guarantee. I could have spent years on a lawsuit and gotten nothing. It all felt like a scam again.”

“But that’s no reason—,” Lori started in heatedly.

Mom gave her a wary look, and Lori shut up.

“My husband had died,” Mom said. “I had just given birth. It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. The only reason I could get out of bed, I think, was because somebody had to feed Emma, and somebody had to change Joey’s diapers, and somebody had to keep Mike from sticking forks in electrical outlets, and somebody had to make sure you two had clean clothes to wear to school. . . . I thought that that somebody had to be me. Because if it wasn’t, I had no reason to live, either.” Mom stopped, like she’d forgotten what she was trying to say and needed to get back on track. “You know what Gram and Pop think about lawyers. Gram and Pop told me I couldn’t trust those crooked lawyers any more than I’d been able to trust the insurance salesman. I was glad to let someone else do my thinking for me.”

“But—,” Lori objected.

Mom shrugged.

“Just last year, I read that some court dismissed the last of the suits against the insurance company. Nobody got anything,” Mom said. “So it wouldn’t have mattered.”

“It wouldn’t have brought Daddy back to life,” Chuck said softly, and Mom nodded.

Why did Chuck like that so much, having Mom agree with him?

“But you testified before Congress,” Lori persisted. “What good did that do?”

“They wanted to change the law, close the loopholes, so no other insurance company could do what ours did,” Mom said.

“I bet Gram and Pop didn’t want you to talk to Congress, either,” Chuck said. He’d heard Pop’s opinions about Congress: “Bunch of crooks in bed with thieves—they don’t care about real people, you know that? They don’t even try to do what’s good for us. The only people they listen to are those lobbyists. The ones who can give them trips on their fancy jets, expensive meals with the liquor flowing. . . . It makes me sick.”

“No,” Mom said, “they didn’t. But I was starting to wake up, starting to think for myself. . . . Even if Congress couldn’t force the insurance company to pay us, I thought I had to make sure nothing like that ever happened to anyone else. Or I could never look any of you kids in the face again.” She got a distant look in her eyes. “I can remember packing to go to Washington. . . . I felt like I was traveling to the moon, you know? I had to take Emma with me, because I was still nursing, and I couldn’t be away from her very long. They promised there’d be someone to take care of her while I was testifying. They put me up in some fancy hotel, and I was like Gomer Pyle, gone to the big city. ‘Shazam! People live like this?’ But Emma couldn’t sleep in the strange crib, so she cried all night, and I didn’t get any sleep. I was so tired, I wanted to cry, too. They put me in front of that microphone, with those bright lights on me, and I felt so stupid that I didn’t think I could put two words together.”