Rain in the Valley

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2005 Rain in the Valley Helen Papanikolas Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the Creative Writing Commons, and the Cultural History Commons Recommended Citation Papanikolas, H. (2005). Rain in the valley: A novel. Logan: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rain in the Valley Rain in the Valley A Novel by Helen Papanikolas Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright © 2005 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322–7800 www.usu.edu/usupress/ Versions of Kosta’s story have been previously published in works by Helen Papanikolas: “Crying Kostas,” in Small Bird Tell Me: Stories of Greek Immigrants (1993) is reprinted with permission of Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio. “Excerpt from an Unpublised Novel,” The Charioteer: A Review of Modern Greek Literature 43 (2005) is reprinted by permission of The Charioteer: A Review of Modern Greek Literature, Pella Publishing Company, New York, New York. Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free, recycled paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Papanikolas, Helen, 1917- Rain in the valley : a novel / by Helen Papanikolas. p. cm. ISBN 0-87421-630-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Greek Americans--Fiction. 2. Sheepherding--Fiction. 3. Utah--Fiction. I. Title. PS3566.A612R35 2006 813’.54--dc22 2005027279 Helen Zeese Papanikolas entrusted the fi nal editing of this book to her son Zeese Papanikolas and her grandson Nick Smart As she wished, Rain in the Valley is dedicated to her great grandchildren J. D. Kallie Leo Max Jackson May her memory be eternal The Demas (Demopoulos) Family GUS DEMAS—m—RINA PETE DEMAS—m—KATINA CHRIS DEMAS—m—EMMA Mellie (girl) (girl) Alexandra (boy (girl) (girl) (girl) (girl) Nicky dies in infancy) SOULA—m—NONDA BESSIE—m—DENO RAHAS PEGGY—m—TOM DOUKAS LIA (Vasiliki) (Pelaghia) (Lya) Mikey (child) (child) (child) Goldie Gussie Rita Lana The Papastamos Family MARKO PAPASTAMOS—m—ZOITSA John—m—Vassie Zeffy Tessie (boy) (boy) (boy) (boy) (Y iannaki) (child) (child) (child) (child) (child) LIA JIM m (Lya) (Mitro) ANNE—m—Aaron CHRIS—m—Stacy RACHEL (child) (child) Snow falls on the mountains and rain in the valley But the door of wedded lovers is made of gold. —A Greek folk poem 1915–1922 The commotion in Greek Town prologue reached the nearby grade school, traveled up the one-street western town to Steamboat Mountain, the great jutting rock studded with junipers on its slopes, and circled the imposing two-story yellow brick YMCA that faced the railyards. In the yards coal trains from the thirty-two surrounding mining camps were taking on water for their long haul to eastern cities. “The Demopoulos name lives in America!” was the cry re- sounding again and again. Children beat on pans; women with dish- towels tied about their heads stayed the paddles holding dough for their outdoor ovens, and men toasted each other. “At last, a boy is born to the Demopoulos clan! May he live and give joy!” Until then the two older Demopoulos brothers, Gus and Pete, already portly and nearly bald, had only daughters, but now, the youngest of them, Chris, the handsome one, albeit with the family’s prominent nose, was the father of a son! Forget that the child’s mother was an Ameri- kanidha and that Chris was forced to marry her at the point of her father’s gun. Foolishly he had given a fi fteen-year-old waitress at the Grill Café a ride in his new red Buick. On the way back to town a hayrack blocked the way and the farmer with his gangly, toothy son and the sheriff came over. “You ruined my girl’s repatation and now you gon- na marry her,” the old farmer said. Chris protested that he had done nothing bad to her. “Well,” the sheriff said, “you should know bet- ter than to be seen with a white girl.” And so Hristo—Chris—was married to Emma Englehardt in Judge Fitch’s crowded living room, where stern pioneer ancestors looked out of oval frames, where cro- cheted doilies were abundant, and in a recessed gilt frame Mrs. Fitch’s 1 Helen Papanikolas once-golden hair was wound into a fl ower bouquet. The sweet scent of lilacs came through the windows and would sicken Chris for years. He drove the stunned Emma to Greek Town. In the center of town women were hanging up wash on clotheslines, children were chasing each other, and older boys and girls were hoeing gardens and guiding irrigation water down the rows. When Chris and Emma arrived a great confrontation began, bigger than any the Demopoulos brothers had had until then. The news had traveled throughout the town with miraculous speed. Chris’s two brothers following in the family touring car jumped out shouting at him for blackening the family name. Just as they had become businessmen, someone would throw kerosene on the store and it would all go up in smoke! “We allotted ourselves a half-can of pork and beans, a dry onion, and a fi st- ful of bread to pay our sisters’ dowries and get out of the mines and you, brainless jackass, could turn those years we worked the grave- yard shift to shit!” “Demas Brothers Studbaker Agency,” Gus, the oldest, sneered. “No American or Mormon will step in to look at our cars now!” The brothers had changed their names from Kosta, Petro, and Hristo to Gus, Pete, and Chris Demas in 1915 when they got their citizenship papers and bought the car agency. Certainly, they had thought, with a change of names and ownership of a car agency, they would be respected. “You’re no longer a brother of ours!” Gus and Pete shouted. The older brothers ranted on at Chris while their wives hurried out of their adjoining houses—a telephone call from the coffeehouse had relayed the news. They had to pull Emma, the fi fteen-year-old, out of the car and lead her into the cool dark living room of Gus’s, the oldest brother’s, house. “Let her sleep in my room tonight,” Chris said. “I’ll fi nd a house.” Directly across from his brothers’ houses was an empty one, and on the second day, Chris bought a few pieces of furniture while the girl cleared the cobwebs and dust. The next morning, Rina, Gus’s wife, walked through the house early in the morning to check on the sheets as was her responsibility as the oldest woman of the clan in America. Emma was bent over the sink washing her bloodied night- gown. Rina sniffed both in approval and censure. When Chris awoke he knew he could not stay in the small western coal town. He was a liability to his brothers’ new automobile agency. But after he traded back his red Buick for the old family touring car with canvas top and side fl aps, he had no idea what to do next. 2 Rain in the Valley Marko Papastamos, a fellow villager, dressed in the high-top boots and Stetson hat of livestock owners, gave him the answer. Standing in front of the coffeehouse he said, “Hristo, you have no future here. I’ll help you get into the sheep business.” He told Chris that Druserre, an immigrant like themselves, a Frenchman, had good ewes for sale and told him what supplies he would need. There was a shack not far from his own ranch in the Colorado mountains that was empty. “I’ll loan you Kosta the Crier.” Grateful, Chris agreed and shook Papastamos’s hand. The next day Chris picked up mustachioed Kosta outside the coffeehouse. Kosta was another fellow villager, a pair of dime-store eyeglasses well down his hawk nose. He was wearing black wool pants, old and shiny, and a plaid cotton shirt with a faded black wool vest over it. A war medal for service in the Greek-Turkish war of 1912 was pinned to it. Kosta was called the Crier behind his back because his eyes, for no reason anyone knew or could guess, would suddenly fi ll with tears or he’d be found weeping hard behind the sheep wagon. On that day his big mustaches, twisted into points and already touched with gray, twitched with anger. “My bossis loans me to you and I have to treat you like a baby! Forced to leave my bossis Papastamos who saved me in this exile. I couldn’t read and write my own language and he brought me books in the sheep camp and helped me! Now I have to leave him and teach a light-brain the sheep business!” A week later Kosta sat on his big brown horse humiliated by the paltry four hundred ewes Chris had bought from Druserre and trailed the band from the eastern Utah winter desert grounds into Colorado. Thousands of sheep owned by other men crowded the dusty road into Craig, Colorado, guided by racing sheepdogs up the Twenty-Mile Road to the summer grazing land. After three weeks, Chris and Emma took the same road, then followed a smaller one split off on the left and arrived at a fi lthy, ram- shackle cabin.

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