Villa America (2 page)

Gerald hadn’t brought Pitz upstairs for a while, but when Nurse came to fetch him from the nursery, she complained of a cold, and Gerald saw his opportunity. After saying his prayers, he tiptoed downstairs, scooped up Pitz, and, heart hammering, took him to his bed.

He lay there with his dog’s body curved against his. He put his face to Pitz’s neck and breathed in and out. He listened for the sound of Nurse’s footsteps, and when he was sure it was all quiet, he relaxed his grip and closed his eyes.

It must have been very late, and Gerald had been dreaming he was a pirate. Or he had been dreaming he was on the streetcar with Father and then he was a pirate. Then his arm hurt and he opened his eyes and saw Nurse, her face twisted in the light of her lamp. She was pinching him. Then it was loud and Nurse was screaming about the devil and his ways and dirty beasts, her spittle flying on his face, and Gerald sat up and saw Pitz cowering in a corner near his bureau, his back curved and his tail tucked under, making himself as round and unnoticeable as possible. His friend looked so very small. Gerald cried out and tried to get off the bed, but Nurse pushed him back, flew at the dog, and struck him. And then again, and again.

Then Father came in and Nurse was talking and Gerald couldn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word to save his special friend. Father picked Pitz up and left the room. Nurse pointed one big horrible finger at Gerald. “You could have killed Baby” was all she said, and then she left, slamming the door behind her.

In the morning, Father called Gerald into his study before breakfast. Gerald scrubbed his face hard before he went downstairs because he knew Father would be angry if he thought Gerald had been crying.

“You have not shown responsibility, Gerald,” Father said. “Since you are unable to manage the dog, it can no longer stay in this house. Animals have a place and once they are elevated beyond that place, it not only makes them dangerous but reflects poorly on the master. From this day on, you are not to go near that dog. It will live in the yard. It can make itself useful by catching rats. You can make yourself useful by learning to live up to your responsibilities. Is that understood?”

“He’ll die outside,” Gerald said.

“Nonsense,” Father said. “It will have a shelter; I’ve already instructed Harold to make one. The dog, Gerald, will be a dog.”

“No, please. Pitz. He’s…”

“Enough. Don’t blubber. You look like Nurse. Do you remember what I told you about seeing something through to the end? Well, this is just one of those times. You must be a man, accept this as a lesson, and see it through to the end. That’s the last I want to hear on the subject. You will eat your breakfast in the nursery this morning. Good day, Gerald.”

For the next week, every night, Gerald would open his bedroom window and speak softly to Pitz, who sat looking forlornly up at the house. For the first few days, Pitz waited until Gerald couldn’t stand the cold any longer and was forced to shut the window before creeping to the wooden shack Harold had built in the corner of the garden. By Friday, though, the dog no longer waited for Gerald to finish telling him about his day, and by Sunday, he didn’t even come out of his shelter at the sound of the sash going up.

When Pitz didn’t appear Monday evening, Gerald opened the chest-on-chest in his room where they kept spare blankets. He pulled out the oldest one he could find and went and lifted the window.

“Pitz.” He kept his voice low and hushed.

The sky was so dark that it was a kind of black-blue.

“Pitz,” he called again, a little louder.

Finally, Gerald could make out a small head appearing from the shelter.

“Pitz. Come.”

The dog moved warily towards the sound of Gerald’s voice.

Gerald dangled the blanket out the window and then tossed it as far as he could.

Pitz moved slowly towards it and sniffed it. He looked up at Gerald, and Gerald knew what his friend was asking.

“Go on, Pitz. Go on and take it. It’s for you.”

Pitz looked at him a moment longer and then grabbed one end of the woolen cover, dragged it back to his shack, and pulled it in after him.

 “I love you, Pitz,” Gerald called across the garden. “I love you.”

By the beginning of February, Gerald had thrown three blankets, a couple of pairs of winter socks he thought Pitz could make a pillow with, various tidbits from his lunches and suppers, and a box of sweetmeats that he had stolen from the drawing room. But one night, he had nothing useful to throw down to his friend—he had been so very hungry at lunch that there was nothing left over. So, in desperation, he threw down one of his toy soldiers. Pitz came out and snuffled it, then gazed up at the window. For a moment Gerald thought Pitz was disappointed because it wasn’t food, but then the dog nudged the lead figurine with his nose and looked up at Gerald, letting out a small bark. Gerald began to cry.

The next day, after school, when Nurse was busy with Baby, and Cook was running errands, Gerald decided to brave punishment and went out into the garden.

He stood in the doorway and called Pitz’s name. At first there was no movement, and then a small head popped out of the shelter. Gerald, afraid and elated, moved across the hard ground towards his dog. Pitz emerged slowly and Gerald knelt down and held out his hand. He had brought a bit of biscuit.

“Come, Pitz,” he said.

The dog moved closer and Gerald saw that his coat had grown quite matted and was also coarser than he remembered. Pitz smelled the food and cautiously approached, first sniffing from a little ways away, then darting in and scarfing the tidbit from Gerald’s palm.

The pink slip of the tongue, the heavy fur; Gerald couldn’t wait one second longer to touch him and feel him and smell him. His friend, his special, best, brave friend. He reached out his arms, and as he did, the dog turned slightly and got low. In his rush to get to him, though, Gerald didn’t notice or really know what the strange noise meant. He reached out and the dog whipped around and sank his teeth deep in Gerald’s hand.

“No, Pitz. No,” Gerald cried softly. He tried again to hold him, to touch him, despite his bleeding hand and the pain, but the dog just growled and bared his teeth.

Not knowing what to do, Gerald ran back to the house to look for a place to hide his tears. But it was no use. His hand swelled to the size of an onion, and Nurse saw it and knew it for what it was. She reported him to Father, and finally, the judgment came down: Pitz was to go. Where, Gerald didn’t know, and Father wouldn’t tell him. He said only that Gerald was to be banished to the nursery at all hours that he wasn’t in school.

When Nurse came up to the nursery later to bring his dinner, Gerald couldn’t even look at her.

“At least that’s settled once and for all,” she said, placing a baleful piece of lamb pie down in front of him. “And you, you got nothing less than you deserve, Gerald Clery Murphy. I warned you about that beast. Dirty, vicious thing.” She tapped her fingers next to his plate. “Your father showed too much mercy from the beginning, in my opinion.”

“You hit Pitz,” he said, staring down at the table, balling his fists in his lap. “You hit him and then made him go outside and hate me, and now he’s gone. My only friend in this whole world. And now I hate you.”

Nurse dug her fingers into his shoulder and forced him to look up at her. Her eyes were like the shiny gray pebbles on the beach in Southampton that looked smooth but hurt to walk on. “If it had been up to me,” she said, “I would have made a hearth rug out of that filthy animal. Something to keep my feet warm.”

The memory rose of a terrified Pitz desperately showing his soft belly to Nurse before she beat him, and in that moment Gerald Murphy made the first real decision of his life.

The boy turned in his seat and, in the coldest voice he could muster, said: “You are a wicked woman and I don’t care what anyone says. From this moment on, I will never, ever speak to you again.”

And, despite his parents’ exhortations, he kept his word. Like the men who built the skyscrapers, he decided to do something and he followed it through to the end, because that’s how anything worth doing got done.

Three weeks later, Gerald was shipped off to boarding school.

Sara Wiborg loved the feel of earth in her hands, the humid texture of it between her fingers. She was in the garden of their home in Clifton, Ohio, selecting grasses and bits of things for a diorama she was making for her class at Miss Ely’s.

This was to be her and her sisters’ last month at Miss Ely’s; their family was moving to Germany in July. Her father had become great friends with the kaiser and they were to spend a year there while he expanded his business abroad. At fifteen, she was too old, really, for Miss Ely’s anyway, and if it weren’t Germany it would have been some other school, although her mother refused to send the girls away. She loved them too much, she said.

For the diorama, Sara had decided to make a farm. Her middle sister, Hoytie, was a few feet away, staring up at the sky and neglecting her work, while Olga, the youngest at nine, was with their nurse in the hothouse picking flowers for her tropical scene.

Carrying a celadon bowl full of pebbles, Sara found a shaded spot under an oak tree where the moss was growing dark and wet, making it malleable. Carefully, she peeled it off in strips and placed them over the pebbles until she had created a miniature, glistening green hill. She believed the perfect home should be on a hill, but it should also be near the sea, so she had dug a small moat that would serve as the curve of a seashore.

Next she selected small tips of pine and black maple and dogwood and witch hazel to make a copse for her farm. Then she collected tender heads of Indian grass and planted them in rows in the moss: her wheat field.

She was collecting violets when the storm came. It swept with a sudden violence over the stables and the sunken garden and the hothouse and the pasture beyond, clattered across the house like horses’ hooves hitting the ground.

Sara quickly picked up the bowl as well as the violets, which she held lightly in her hand so as not to crush the petals, and hurried towards the house. When she looked back to make sure Hoytie was behind her, she saw that her middle sister was standing, staring up at the deluge.

“Hoytie,” she called out. “Hurry up. You’ll be soaked.”

Hoytie turned to her. Then she stamped her foot angrily and, raising her eleven-year-old fist to the sky, cried indignantly: “It’s…raining…on…
me.
”

Sara laughed. “Oh, Hoytie, it’s raining on all of us. Come on.”

When the girls reached the entrance hall, one of the maids came running with towels. Sara took them and began drying her sister off, catching glimpses of the two of them in the flashing mirrors that hung on the walls.

She wondered at her sister’s declaration, how it was some people seemed sure of their place in the world. For her part, she had no idea where she belonged or where she would end up.

When she’d dried off a bit, Sara retrieved the small farmhouse she’d painted—wooden sticks brushed white, the windowsills yellow—and placed it atop her green hill. Then she took her diorama into the Turkish smoking room, where her parents kept all their Middle Eastern treasures.

She set the bowl down on the polished wooden floor, went to one of the glass cases, and pilfered two gold Egyptian figurines: Ramses II and his wife Nefertari.

She placed the king and queen in front of the yellow and white house. They sat there solemnly presiding over their beautiful, lush farm.

Then, as the last touch, she took the delicate purple flowers she’d carried through the storm and floated them on the moat she’d carved out. A perfumed violet-blue sea.

I
t was still dark when Owen rose and collected the eggs, warm from the henhouse. He milked the two cows, loaded the aluminum milk vats onto the cart along with the potatoes, butter, and cheese, harnessed the mare, and began the journey into town. His hands on the reins were stiff from the cold. His balls had shrunk back towards the heat of his body. He shifted on the wooden seat watching the lantern lighting his way, willing its flame back to him.

He thought about breakfast. The faster he delivered, the faster he would be home and the faster his mother would put that plate in front of him. He urged the horse on. He could smell the fallen pine needles as her hooves hit them, but it was a thin smell; the March air was still too cold.

He went over the names on his list of deliveries. Mrs. Violet Pease, Mrs. Camilla Thurston, the Drakes, the rectory at St. Andrew’s, the old schoolmaster Mr. Cushing. There was one more; who was it? His head was still thick with sleep and stunned by the cold. His feet had long since lost any feeling and he tried to scrunch his toes in his boots, but he couldn’t tell if they were even moving.

To distract himself, he counted how much they would make from this round. One of their cows, Lettuce, had to be dried off soon, so the deliveries would be much smaller for a couple of months, until she could be milked again.

Lettuce was Owen’s favorite, a Jersey cow, caramel-colored. He’d been the one to pick her out two summers ago. His mother hadn’t wanted to buy her—all that difficulty calving such a small thing. They were smaller and more sensitive than other breeds, the Jersey cows, but, as he’d argued, they ate less and produced such fine milk. They were also soft to the touch, although he didn’t say this to his mother; softness was no reason for keeping a working animal.

The other thing he didn’t tell his mother was how he talked to Lettuce. It had started off as something he did before milking in the hope that it might make her less anxious. But over time, he’d begun to believe that she wanted him to do it, that she understood, that she waited for their conversations. She seemed to produce more milk, and Owen became convinced that there was a real connection there despite his shame in believing it. He didn’t like to think about it; he just did it.

If all went well, Lettuce would calve in May. Hopefully, they could get a good price for the calf, either for veal or for dairy. But, meanwhile, it meant the coming month would be lean.

Then it would be planting season. Because of the sea air, they had a long fall, but spring came late, the beginning of April, when they would plant corn, as well as some sugar and shelling peas. In May, he’d skip school because there would be so much to do: turn the vegetable fields and plow down the winter rye and gather the first potatoes. The hay harvesting would be done in June. The real backbreaking work. But it also meant lovely soft summer evenings, tired, driving the hay back to be baled. Letting the working steers plod along while he stared up at the changing sky.

Sometimes when he was in the classroom, bored, he would think about all the bigger farms on the island and do the sums of how much it would cost to buy one. Sums were one thing Owen was good at—they arranged themselves naturally in his head—but even he couldn’t make the numbers come out right for that. There weren’t enough eggs in the world.

When he was younger, he used to imagine a rich relative of his father’s showing up and showering them with money. Sometimes the relative would be a railroad magnate, other times a Chicago industrialist. His father had died of smallpox when Owen was three, and he had only the barest recollection of him, an odor really, the smell of leather and wet-blue from the tanning factory he’d worked in. His mother had set him straight when he’d mentioned one of his daydreams, the Chicago industrialist: “He was a decent man, your father, but he had no money except what he earned, and no connections to speak of. He was a good husband, but there’s no use thinking on him anymore.”

His mother was an islander. She’d left her family to find work in Boston and ended up marrying a man from the mainland. After Owen’s father had been hauled off to the pesthouse to die, his mother had returned to her parents’ small dairy farm and eventually took it over when they were gone. Owen had been old enough to work when his grandparents died, four years ago. Now, at fourteen, he was strong enough that they needed to hire men only twice a year to help out.

She was a smart woman, his mother. He loved her. He could remember when she’d been handsome. It wasn’t that she was ugly now, just a little weathered, like everyone on the island. She was strong, stronger than him sometimes, birthing calves and even loading hay when they couldn’t get a second man in.

Owen looked up at the sky. There were no stars; too misty. The milk cans pinged behind him. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour still, not until he hit town. Then five deliveries, then another hour home, then breakfast. No; six deliveries, the new one. The mainlander. His order would help make up the shortfall, bring the ends closer together.

Mr. Glass, that was it; that was his name. There’d been talk when the mainlander had bought the land out Katama, and then more talk when he’d built the big house. Married with a son and daughter, if the talk was to be believed.

The order was for four dozen eggs. It was a big order for a man with a small family, but apparently the eggs were for dyeing. For Easter. Still, as his mother said: “I don’t care if he wants to bathe in them, so long as he pays.”

Owen sighed and hunched further into his coat, urging the mare on.

First stop was Mr. Cushing’s house. He hopped down from the box, pulled a sack of potatoes out of the cart, brought it to the front door, and knocked twice before going back for the milk can. Mr. Cushing, lean as a beanpole, opened the door and squinted at him.

“Making good time this morning,” he said as Owen placed the milk on the front porch.

“Extra delivery today.”

“Who’s that, now?”

“The mainlander out Katama.” Owen held out his hand for last week’s empty can, hoping the old schoolmaster wasn’t gearing up for a chat.

“Mr. Glass.”

“That’s the one.” Owen made a show of impatiently stamping his feet against the porch boards.

“They say he’s got a flying machine out there. Got it stashed away in a big barn.”

Owen stopped stamping. “You’ve seen it?”

“No, I heard that from Carey. He built the barn.”

“How’d he get it to the island? He couldn’t have flown it all the way.” Owen had read all about the Wright brothers’ flying machine—all the boys in town had—but Wilbur Wright had managed to fly it for only twenty-four miles. And that was out in a field, not over the Atlantic.

“I have no earthly idea, Owen.” Mr. Cushing’s calm smile annoyed him.

He lifted the can and hauled it back to the cart. Mr. Cushing called something after him, but Owen was already pushing on, his mind on this new, incredible information, and the schoolmaster’s voice was lost.

The road to Katama ran the other way out of town, which meant a detour, and Owen thought perhaps he would put Mr. Glass first on his list of deliveries next time. The Glass place had been built towards the end of Katama Bay, and Owen waited until the second-to-last cutoff to turn in through the pines, as he’d been instructed by his mother.

The path was smooth, newly hewn, and the cart barely rattled as he drove on it. After a bit, the trees disappeared and an oversize barn came into view on his right. Behind it ran a large, cut field, covered in snow. He stopped a moment, thinking about the flying machine hidden away in there like treasure. Then he continued until he saw the house, perched on the edge of a small cliff. At the top of the circular drive, he pulled the horse up in front of a grand-looking porch.

There was no sign of the help, or of anyone, for that matter. He pulled out the baskets of eggs and made his way around the side of the house to a door with a small portico. He set the baskets down on the path and looked out to the sea, slate winter-gray in front of him, and then returned for the two cans of milk the mainlander had ordered and left those too.

When he came abreast of the barn on his way back up the road, he couldn’t help himself. He pulled over. He glanced around and at the house; everything was still, the snow on the field muffling the noise of the sea.

He decided to chance it. He opened the barn door a crack and peered inside; it was too dark to see. He pulled the door wider and stepped in, just a little ways. He still couldn’t make out very much, so he went in just a bit farther, and then a little more, and a little more.

It took shape gradually as his eyes adjusted. An enormous monster of a thing, all white fabric and shiny wood and glinting, cold wire.
Aeroplane,
that’s what some of the newspapers called it, but Owen thought
flying machine
was a much better description. It was shaped like an arithmetic problem: all rectangles, isosceles triangles, half-moons, right angles, straight angles, and curves. And the wings. Two sets of them, one on top, one on bottom. Altogether huge, spanning at least the length of six men. And in the center, like an ugly heart, was a mass of metal, with chains and other twisted things, and two shining propellers behind it. In front, a pair of impossibly small seats that reminded Owen of the ones he’d seen in the theater in Boston. The whole apparatus sat atop a pair of long, slender pieces of wood curved like skis.

How many eggs would someone have to sell to buy a thing like this?

“It came in boxes,” said a voice from behind him.

Owen turned to see a man standing in the doorway, his broad thick body dark against the sun.

“Pretty big boxes too.” The man adjusted his britches and began striding towards him. Owen was rooted to the spot. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Owen,” he said. “Chambers. From the farm.”

Up close, he could see the man had a crimson tinge to his buffed skin, and his hair was slicked back, like in an advertisement; a big full mustache dominated his face. His head reminded Owen of a horse’s, sinew and bone and meat. A strong head. A rich man’s head.

“Aha. So you’ve heard about my plane. News travels fast, I suppose.”

This was Mr. Glass. “Yes, sir, I’m sorry. There was no one—”

“Thought you’d sneak a look, did you?”

Owen wondered what the penalty was for breaking into someone’s barn to look at a flying machine.

“Don’t look so stricken, Owen Chambers, boy from the farm. I’m not going to report you.” Mr. Glass turned his gaze to the machine. “She’s something to behold, all right.”

“Does it fly?”

“Does it fly?” Mr. Glass snorted. “Of course it flies. Why in tarnation would I have it, otherwise?” He looked at Owen as if he were sizing him up. “Would you like to touch her?”

He nodded.

“Go on, then.”

Owen approached it carefully, like he would a snake. Tentatively, he stretched his hand out and touched the material on one of the bottom wings. It looked like heavy canvas, and he’d expected it to feel like a sail. Instead, his fingertips met with something spongier, tackier. He pulled his hand away, surprised.

“It’s rubberized,” Mr. Glass said. “Clever, isn’t it?”

Owen looked at him and, at that moment, realized all the things this man must know and, by extension, all the things he himself did not.

“This is
Flora,
” Mr. Glass said. “Named after my daughter.”

“Like a boat,” Owen said.

“Ha. Like a boat that flies.” The man ran his hand over one of the wooden poles that separated the lower wing from the upper.

“How does it…” He couldn’t imagine getting this complicated giant of a machine from where it sat into the sky.

“Come with me.” Mr. Glass led him to the doorway and pointed to a conical structure across the field. “You see that derrick out there? You push her out and get her on those rails, attach that weight, and when it drops: whoosh”—he made an upward movement with his hand—“she rushes forward and up, up, and away.”

“Have you flown it…her…here?”

“Well, now, you need at least six men to get her going. And the right conditions.” Mr. Glass scratched his chin. “But in spring, when the weather gets finer, I’m going to rally some troops for a maiden voyage.”

“So you’ve never flown her?”

“Oh, I did. Went with Orville Wright himself when I bought her.” The older man’s eyes were fixed on some unknown point in the distance. “Quite a man, that Orville Wright. And when you’re up there…Couldn’t get my son to go up, though. He wasn’t scared, you understand. Just…well, Charlie’s more of a scholar. Interested in books and such.” He scratched his chin again.

“I could help,” Owen said. “When you decide to do it, I mean.”

Mr. Glass shifted his gaze to Owen, almost as if he’d forgotten he was there. “We’ll see.” He suddenly seemed to have lost interest. “I’m sure you must be off now. Have a farm to run, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” He flushed.

Still, he found it hard to leave the sight of the glorious monster—to get back in his cart, do his chores, go to school. The idea seemed impossible as he stood there, then slowly edged out of the barn backward, his eyes riveted to the whiteness of the wings, the cruel, graceful propellers.

He didn’t tell any of the boys at school about the machine, guarding his secret jealously. But he wanted to talk about it to someone, so after his evening chores, he sat in the warm kitchen, the island dark and hushed outside, and said to his mother: “The mainlander has a flying machine.”

“Does he, now.” His mother didn’t turn away from the stove.

“In his barn. He’s going to fly it in spring.”

 “It’s spring now,” his mother said.

“Later, when it’s warmer,” Owen said.

“When it’s warmer,” his mother said, “it will be summer.”

“Well.”

“That’s not the same thing.” She looked at him. “People don’t always mean what they say. In fact, it’s often not what they mean at all.”

So next Owen talked to Lettuce about it.

“It’s like a giant bird skeleton,” he told her, running his hand down her back. “And in the center is metal.” His hand reached her thurl. “But really, it’s mostly wood and cloth.” He traveled down her rear flank. “But it’s not like any cloth you’ve ever seen. It’s gummy.” His hand reached her teat. “I wish you could see it. But then, maybe you wouldn’t like it. Maybe you’d be afraid.” Her milk came out, pale yellow, thick, like honey, into the pail.