The Cape Ann (7 page)

I was snapping off a good bundle of mustard and at the same time working toward the wild onion, which lay between me and the stand of box elders. The white onion flowers were going to be pretty mixed into the vibrant yellow of the mustard. Mama would arrange them in the cut-glass vase that had been a wedding gift from her Aunt Essie who lived in Fargo.

I didn’t see any snakes. A gopher scurried down his hole as I came near, and several squirrels ran up the box elder trunks and began jumping from tree to tree, like children pretending to be frightened. Across the gulch, a meadowlark sang prettily.

It was warm and dusty among the scrub and flowers. I was beginning to feel itchy and drowsy. It would be pleasant to put the flowers down, sit on the ground, and scratch my legs, but the sun was falling behind the box elders and the buzz of insects was dying. I should start home if I didn’t want to be late for supper. I had come a little further than I ought.

In the shadows among the trees at the top of the embankment, the figure of a man appeared. Who could that be? A tramp, maybe. I stood frozen, staring up at him, feeling small and very short legged. Maybe it was someone who had come to arrest me for picking flowers that didn’t belong to me.

I threw the flowers down and took off as fast as my legs would carry me, directly through the mustard, toward the trestle. If I had thought, I would have run across the gulch and up the other side. It wasn’t necessary to take the trestle. But I wasn’t thinking. I fled as I had come, across the railroad bridge.

Back by the onion flowers a voice squawked and screamed. Was this the bogeyman Grandpa Erhardt had told me about? The one who waited at the top of the stairs? The one Mama had assured me was only a joke? This bogeyman had waited at the top of the embankment, among the trees.

Running on the rough ties was awkward. I stumbled, caught myself, and stumbled again. If I fell over the edge, I would break my neck, and the bogeyman would get me for sure, down there in the wash. I didn’t know what a bogeyman did when he caught you.

A sharp pain pierced my right side, below the ribs. I pressed my fist against it. Behind me now, heavy shoes thudded on the bridge. The voice howled unintelligible words.

Even if I made it across the trestle, it was a long way back to town. The water tower and the grain elevators looked like gray giants lined up on the horizon, distant friends I would never reach.

If I gained the far side of the bridge, should I dash into the brush? Could I hide there? The heavy shoes were close. They would catch me before I could escape. Only a few feet now. His grunting breath touched my hair.

“Oh, My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all…”

Fingers brushed my dress. Propelled by horror, I flew through the air, landing hard on cinders and gravel and solid earth, twisting and kicking, rolling through the grass and screaming, “… because they offend Thee, My Lord, Who art all good and deserving of all my love …”

There was nowhere to go. I curled into a ball, wrapped my arms around my head, closed my eyes, and sobbed, “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace—” Nothing happened. I stopped
praying. There was absolute stillness except for the sound of my thick breathing. Turning my head slightly, I opened one eye.

Sitting on the grass beside the rail bed, wildflowers cradled in one arm, was Hilly Stillman.

I SAT UP. “WHAT
are you doing out here?”

Hilly held up the yellow and white flowers. Tears stood in his eyes, and his nose was running. He misunderstood my question, and I didn’t ask him again.

Getting to my feet, I surveyed the damage. Both my knees were scraped and dirty, likewise one of my elbows. There were long scratches on my thighs where I’d dived into the cinders and gravel, and my chin was hot and tender.

In the west, the sun was lying flat on the tracks. A pinkish yellow shaft of it lit Hilly, washing his profile and his white shirt in a dramatic glow. His unhappiness began to smooth away. In repose, Hilly’s face retained the curved, unformed look of an eighteen-year-old boy’s. The skin was still soft despite years in the sun and cold of Main Street. If Hilly got his sanity back, would his face become old? He held the flowers out to me. They felt cool in my hands.

“Pretty,” Hilly said.

I nodded. “I have to get home,” I told him. “It’s late. Mama’s going to be mad.”

We walked along the verge of the rail bed, saying little. You didn’t have to talk a lot to Hilly. Sometimes words confused him, as when Mama had told him he could buy ice cream with his earnings. But he liked to listen to others talk. Mama said Hilly listened to other people’s conversations with sweet rapture, as though he were at a concert. This made some people nervous, but not Mama. When Hilly was around, she talked to me about anything that came into her head because it entertained him.

When he was excited, Hilly lost what little control of his words he had. No one wanted to sit by him at a softball game because he
screamed like a banshee when the ball was hit. Bill McGivern said that when Hilly first started going to softball games after the war, he’d jump down from the stands and run after the ball. The players on the Harvester Blue Sox would just tell him to get the hell back up in the stands, but a first baseman from Red Berry once got so riled, he hit Hilly with his fist and knocked him down.

Hilly never hit back. Not the softball player, and not the eleven-and twelve-year-old boys who taunted him and threw things at him. I thought it was strange that someone who’d been a hero in the war never hit back. When I told this to Mama, she said thank God he didn’t, or people around here would throw him in the state hospital for the insane and retarded faster than you could salute the flag.

The six o’clock whistle blew. We could hear it plainly. Supper was always on the table at five-thirty. Hilly looked at me.

“Don’t worry,” I told him. But
I
was worried. I didn’t want to get the back of the brush.

As we reached the hobo jungle, I scanned the open cellar for anyone new, any latecomer. There was a third man now, one who was clean shaven and looked recently bathed. He’d probably been out scratching for work when I’d come by earlier. He was sitting by the fire, heating a can of Campbell’s Pork and Beans.

In a sudden flush of temerity, I went to the edge of the basement and called, “Do you know Earl Samson?” Then I was shy and couldn’t believe I had called to them that way.

The oldest of the three, the one who’d been napping before, glanced at the others. “I guess not, little lady,” he said. “Is there a message if I meet him?”

But my courage was gone. I shook my head and turned away, hurrying toward home with Hilly. And whom should we sight striding down the track, anger in every step, but Mama.

“Where in
hell
have you been, Lark?” When Mama was mad, she didn’t mince words, and it didn’t matter who was around. “I’ve been worried sick.” Reaching us, she grabbed my upper arm, giving me a good pinch. “I sat down to read,” she explained, relief and worry and impatience mixed in her voice, “and fell asleep with the book in my hand, or else I’d have been out here with the brush an hour ago.” She didn’t have the brush with her. If she was feeling guilty for falling asleep and not keeping a check on me, she might not use the brush at all. “I told you to be home for supper,” she
continued, grasping my hand and pulling me roughly along at a trot.

“I brought you a bouquet,” I told her, holding up the mustard and onions, which she ignored. “I met Hilly while I was picking flowers.” Hilly loped along beside us in his tipsy fashion. Mama’s lips were pressed tightly together, so I stopped trying to make conversation.

It was embarrassing to be dragged along like this. I hoped not too many people were watching, especially not too many first graders. Some mothers covered up their anger until they got home, but Mama would swat me on the backside right in the middle of Main Street if I were being “incorrigible.” Incorrigible was a favorite word of Mama’s. I was an incorrigible nail biter. Papa had been trying to get me to stop biting my nails for as long as I could remember. He’d recently begun weekly inspections. Every Monday at supper, he ordered me to lay my hands on the table while he examined my nails. Last Monday he was so upset, he said if there wasn’t improvement by next Monday, I’d get the back of the brush.

Papa believed that ladies, big and little, should be as pretty and perfect in every detail as was possible. He had limited control over my too-fine, straight-as-a-stick hair and my scrawny arms and legs (though sometimes he kept me at the table until nearly bedtime to see that I cleaned my plate), but over my fingernails he was determined to prevail.

The fact was, Mama bit her nails, too, but Papa had long ago despaired of breaking her of the habit. For that reason it was twice as important to him that I be made to quit the filthy practice.

Mama had painted my nails with pink polish, and when that didn’t discourage me from biting them, she’d dipped them in some foul-tasting stuff, just as she had done to her own. It was no more successful with me than it had been with her.

I did try to stop. I was still trying. Every night when I went to bed, I asked God to help me, but so far He’d kept out of it. Each night I swore that I would not put my fingers near my mouth the next day. It was a mystery to me how I kept doing it after all my praying and swearing. I must truly be incorrigible.

I was also an incorrigible dawdler, and as Mama dragged me into the kitchen, she remarked to Hilly, “This child is an incorrigible dawdler. I’m always thinking she’s been kidnapped, like the Lindbergh baby, although I don’t know who would want a dawdler
who takes an hour to walk five short blocks home from school. Sometimes longer.” She let go of my hand and held the screen door for Hilly. “Your mother’s going to worry, too, Hilly. I’ll give her a ring.” She started for the living room. “Would you like to stay for supper?”

Hilly nodded vigorously. “Supper.”

It was seven-thirty when we sat down to hamburger patties, skillet-fried potatoes, canned peas, bread and butter, and the spice cake with penuche frosting. Papa had not come home. If Papa had been home, Mama would not have invited Hilly to stay. Papa thought Hilly was a “damned nuisance,” always getting under foot when you were coming out of the post office and holding you up, hanging around the Oldsmobile or the pickup with his damned old rag, wiping the fenders and hood. Papa didn’t like it when Hilly came to wash our windows. How did it look to passengers getting off at Harvester to be greeted by an idiot? Someone might complain to the railroad, and then Papa would get the blame. “Magdalen Haggerty says they put a stop to him coming in the Loon Cafe.” Magdalen was one of the two waitresses there and had probably served Papa his supper tonight. Magdalen Haggerty or Dora Noonan. “Shanty Irish,” Mama called them to irritate Papa.

“They’re good Catholic women who’re at the communion rail every Sunday.” Mama only took communion at Christmas and Easter, one time more than the law demanded, as she pointed out. Papa only took communion at Christmas, Easter, and when we went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Erhardt.

“Another piece of cake, Hilly?” Mama cut a big square and lifted it onto Hilly’s plate, then she refilled their coffee cups. Seated again, holding her cup in both hands, Mama told Hilly, “Lark has First Communion classes every Saturday morning at the Catholic church. Eight o’clock in the morning she has to be there. That’s pretty early for a six-year-old. Next year she’ll take her first communion. This year she was an angel.” Mama touched me lightly with the offhand, proprietary glance mothers use when discussing a child who is present, the same glance they use while sitting on the davenport and observing that the thing has held up well, but probably needs a new slipcover.

“The angels,” she went on, “are the ones who escort the First Communion children up to the altar and back to their pews again. They wear white organdy dresses and white organdy wings and
silver halos. The wings are separate from the dress. They tie on with white satin ribbon. Well, you can’t send away to Monkey Ward for an outfit like that, the way you can for a party dress. The mothers of the angels had to sew the dresses and the wings, and make the halos. I ended up making two, because Stella Wheeler doesn’t sew, and Sally needed an angel dress. You know the Wheelers, they live a block east of the school in the new cottage. He travels for an office supply company. Stella has bad nerves, but she’s a good soul, always nice to Lark.”

This was Mama entertaining Hilly. He sat there eating the last crumbs of his cake, mashing them with the back of his spoon and sucking them off, happily enthralled. “Lark, get the picture from the sideboard,” Mama said.

I went to fetch the studio picture Mama had had taken of me in my white dress, wings, and halo. In order to show the wings, the photographer had taken a side shot. I was kneeling, hands folded in prayer, looking very Catholic and uncharacteristic.

“Doesn’t she look pretty?” Mama said, handing it to Hilly. “Those wings were hell to make. But you haven’t heard the best. A week before Lark and Sally were going to wear the angel dresses, Sister Mary Clair sent home a note with Lark. ‘Dear Mrs. Erhardt,’ it said, ‘Lark and Sally’s dresses should be long enough to cover the kneecap. Sister Mary Frances and I feel that Lark normally wears her dresses shorter than angels do. Thank you. Sister Mary Clair.’ Tell me, what angel flew down to tell Sister Mary Clair the style they’re wearing in heaven this year?” Mama rose and refilled the cups.

“Lark likes her dresses short and starched, like Shirley Temple. In my opinion, that’s a lot cuter than below the kneecap, which makes you look like a refugee from a poor Catholic country.”

Eventually we cleared the table. Mama washed, Hilly dried, and I put away. Hilly was careful and very slow. Mama was finished long before Hilly, so she cut a big hunk of cake and wrapped it in paper napkins for Hilly to take home.

“You and your mama can have this before you go to bed,” she told Hilly.