Spindle City

by Jotham Burrello

  Mayor Kay stepped to the podium, his tie crooked. “Ladies and gentlemen—” His voice cracked, and he stepped back to clear his throat. “Ladies and gentlemen, our Sammees are back,” the mayor cheered, using the French nickname for our doughboys. The crowd applauded. Kay raised his arms. “These boys stood toe to toe with the enemy and spit in their eye.”

  “A few caught some spit themselves,” a boy near Will whispered. His father smacked the back of his head. Others shouted, “The Hun didn’t know what hit ’em,” and, “Glad they’re on our side.” The treasurer approached Kay and whispered something into his ear. Kay nodded and then shuffled through his speech, paused, shook his head as if having a conversation with himself, and then folded the papers in half and tucked them into his suit jacket. He shouted, “We bombed the Hun to hell.” One of the palsy-suffering boys in the back rows screamed, then stepped off the stage, falling smack on his face. Two medics lifted him up by his arms and legs and spirited him away, but as long as the band played on, no one seemed to notice. Will’s hands went numb, but he whacked them harder and shouted his brother’s name over the noisemakers.

  A local troop of military men in khaki uniforms, really a hodgepodge left over from the days when Fall River had its own militia, stood in a line facing away from the platform to give the boys a twenty-one-gun salute. Their leader—Mr. Grimes, a baker—unsheathed his saber and thrust it heavenward; the men hoisted their rifles.

  “Fire!” Grimes slashed down his blade, and the first report blasted. Immediately five men onstage dove for cover. Mayor Kay’s jaw dropped. Spectators screeched, pointed at the boys, and gasped, hands covering their mouths. Kay yelled to stop the shooting.

  “Fire!” Another ten men dropped. Those in wheelchairs buried their heads in their laps. A few toppled over and crawled under their chairs for cover. Nurses and nuns scurried about. The spectators rushed the stage, but many stopped at the edge of the platform, not recognizing their fathers and brothers. Amputees extended crutches to hoist comrades. An out-of-breath police officer grabbed Grimes’s wrist to prevent a third volley. The shooters removed the cotton from their ears. One dropped his rifle and ran into the heap of bodies shouting, “Arly! Where’s my boy? Arly!”

  Up in the grandstand, Joseph slumped down as Hollister hit the deck. Everything seemed off with the boy. His son’s childhood was one large black mark that the military was supposed to remedy, not worsen. Rehabilitation, not annihilation. Joseph buried his face in his hands, but jerked them away, surprised by the stench of his own breath. He had not slept the night before. He hadn’t been eating well. His mouth filled with saliva, and he swallowed it, tasting the blood that seeped from his gums. Joseph saw Maria’s bruised face in the shadows of the farm coach. With my help, Joseph thought, the Germans had given Maria her revenge.

  “That’s what you get when you rely on the military to raise your boy,” Evelyn had said at breakfast. “Mrs. B could have saved him.” The military had become his family, just as Commandant Blunt had promised, and now his family had abandoned him. The stout boy he had seen off eighteen months ago was now broken, and for once Joseph couldn’t hire someone to fix him.

  Joseph saw a handful of mill agents as he walked to the platform, though most had sent surrogates or checks for the arch construction. Their sons had never enlisted. Others maneuvered out of the draft to stay in Fall River and rake in profits on garbage cloth for the military. There was talk of another cotton celebration to boost morale now that the war dollars would soon dry up. Joseph’s stomach ached thinking about such solipsistic folly. He squinted at the unfinished Victory Arch and shook his head.

  Will reached his brother a moment before Joseph. Both stood idly by as the man next to Hollister helped him to his feet. Hollister’s glasses were missing from his face. The skin surrounding his eyes was scarred and puffy, nearly swallowing his tiny pupils.

  “You must be Mr. Bartlett. Michael Murphy. I pray you received the letter?”

  Joseph hugged his son and his eyes welled up. Hollister did not return the embrace. Will extended his right hand to Michael Murphy but quickly withdrew it, realizing the man was missing his right arm.

  “Good thing I’m a lefty,” Michael joked, offering his remaining hand.

  The mayor gripped the lectern. “All is well.” His voice wavered. “No one panic. There are trained nurses traveling with these boys. Please back off the stage. All is well.”

  “Come on, Dad,” Will said, rubbing his father’s shoulder. On the edge of the platform, Will passed Mr. Grimes slumped on his knees. An officer knelt beside him, urging him to stand.

  The mayor’s face was dripping sweat; he offered a crooked smile to the crowd, waving his outstretched hands for calm. The police mimicked him. When the soldiers retook their seats, the mayor moved quickly to present the individual honors, small silver medallions engraved with the city’s seal attached to blue ribbons. The city treasurer stepped to the podium to read off each name. The crowd stood silent. His voice bounced between the buildings. Far off, a whistle blew as another shift in the mills ended. Soon, another would begin.

  * * *

  They brought Hollister to the June Street house and deposited him in his old room. He hadn’t slept there in over seven years, but they were hoping the doctor’s hunch was correct—once surrounded with memories, he’d snap out of his malaise. The walls were covered in countless postcards and his school drawings. He’d shown promise with his drawing—the prelude to his mapmaking at West Point and then the army. But these were mostly landscapes and family portraits, the Westport River at dawn and countless couples and girls strolling in South Park that he’d observed from a dark corner of the shelter. There was no reason why some were complete and others mere sketches. One of a mother and daughter at a duck pond had a blue competition ribbon attached to the frame. In it, the solemn mother gazed past the daughter to a café across the pond. The café was full of men, their reflections playing on the water. Above the door, one picture had been removed, leaving a square gap in the patchwork of art. The square of plaster, hidden for so many years, was bright white.

  An hour later, Will poked his head into the room. Hollister sat unmoving on a walnut rocker in the corner, his two feet firmly planted on the floor, his posture perfect except for his tilted head. His ears led him where his eyes had before. One doctor had described Hollister’s fragile frame of mind as if “a madman were controlling the switch to his brain.” During his hospitalization, he had completed sketches of the hospital grounds one day and didn’t lift himself out of bed the next. He’d retained some sight. He couldn’t pick out a goldfish in a bowl, but he knew it was something quick and orange.

  “Bet you’d never figured to be back in your old room, huh?” Will said but was met with silence. “Years ago you’d have told me to bugger off. Yeah . . .” Hollister’s head shifted to and fro as if tracking the flight path of a buzzing mosquito. “I’ll be heading out after dinner. Gonna see Helen. You remember Helen, right?” Will stared at the scars on his brother’s face, then the shiny cord on his shoulder. He wondered if he was indeed missing a chunk of flesh from a German spade. He had read in Harper’s that the Americans fought with rifle butts and bayonets, while the Krauts preferred the maneuverability of spades. How many men have you killed, big brother? Will stood and exhaled, suddenly embarrassed at his frivolous life.

  “Dinner in five, big brother. You need help?” he asked and, after a beat of no response, “Hey, Hollist—”

  “I gotta piss.”

  “Hey, you can talk!”

  “Piss, then chow.” Hollister stood and shuffled down the hall.

  Will called after him, “I assume you can find your dick.”

  * * *

  At dinner, Joseph had set a welcome home card from Commandant Blunt on Hollister’s plate. Joseph was still seething at the son of a bitch for not attending the parade. Hollister opened the card, but no sen
se of recognition registered on his face.

  Joseph asked, “May I read you the letter?” When Hollister didn’t respond, he turned to Will, who shrugged.

  Evelyn backed through the swinging door and set a roasted chicken on the table. “Dinner is served.”

  Hollister’s nose quivered. He felt around for utensils, and Evelyn handed him the carving knife and oversized fork. The gas had vaporized 40 percent of his lungs, so he breathed in slowly and said in a shallow whisper, “Thank you.” Next, he ran his finger along the breastbone and then carved himself a thick chunk of white meat and filled his plate with potatoes and beans. He didn’t offer anyone a morsel or notice Evelyn holding out plates. When she cleared her throat in an attempt to get Hollister to serve the table, Joseph picked up the serving fork and said, “Pass it here.”

  Joseph had had Evelyn prepare an extra-large bird, thinking the boy hadn’t seen such food for months, perhaps years—and thank heavens for that. After five minutes of continuous swallowing, Hollister paused long enough to take a swig of wine and belch before loading up a second plate full of food. Will exchanged a glance with his father, and then both focused on their own dinners. Joseph had asked Will to postpone his last year at Yale to help his brother adapt. He’d declined. Joseph suggested Hollister might work in the mill office. But doing what? He was far worse off than they’d expected. There was no girl or old pals to welcome him home. It had been a long time since a member of the Bartlett family had required help. Will prayed Evelyn would keep her mouth shut. Thankfully, she did.

  When his second plate was cleaned, Evelyn offered Hollister a slice of apple pie. He held up two fingers.

  As the others finished in silence, Hollister became preoccupied with cleaning his fingernails with the flatware. He tried each utensil before deciding the salad fork worked best. Once this task was complete, he sat up straight, as if waiting to be dismissed from the table. His head was turned toward a portrait of his mother that hung above the sideboard, but Hollister hadn’t changed his posture for some minutes, leading Joseph to believe he had dozed off.

  Evelyn bit her left knuckle and exhaled. “Mr. Bartlett, if you please.” She cleared her throat.

  Joseph nodded.

  “God saved you for a higher purpose, dear boy.” She began, reaching over the table to take his hand, jarring him from his stupor. “From now on, your life has a higher purpose.”

  Judging from the way his son dispatched the carving of the chicken, Joseph figured this higher purpose was working as a buffet carver or fishmonger.

  “On Sunday, the Father is having a special service just for you boys.”

  “Evelyn,” Joseph chided.

  “How about it?” She tapped Hollister’s wrist. He grunted, as if he could sense everyone’s eyes on him, begging for the story that would explain his injuries, but no one, not even mighty Dickens, could truly communicate the horrors of the trenches.

  Hollister jerked free of her grasp, lifted his crystal wine glass, and banged the stem into the center of the bone china plate, cracking it down the middle. Evelyn gasped. Gravy from the chicken leaked across the table, but neither Joseph nor Will made a move to sop it up. Hollister ran his index finger down the jagged edge until it caught on a porcelain sliver. He pressed his thumb to the cut, pooling blood on the tip of his finger, and then dragged it across the white tablecloth in a wavy line.

  “Us,” Hollister whispered.

  “Mr. Bartlett!” Evelyn shouted.

  “Shhhh.”

  Hollister pooled the blood again, and painted another line a foot above the first. “Germans.” He set a saltshaker behind one line and the pepper shaker behind the other. “Guns.” Between the two he drew a series of X’s. “Wire.” He scribbled three wavy lines above the wire. “Gas.” He kicked back from the table, pointed at the drawing. “War.”

  His father and brother eased back in their chairs. “And you won,” Joseph said. “You’re a hero.”

  Hollister shook his head. “I lost.” Suddenly he tilted his head, listening for the mosquito. Joseph never knew what triggered the boy’s bloody war demonstration, but the tear that fell from beneath his son’s dark glasses was easy to understand. The tears continued rolling down the sides of his face, stopping at the edge of his angular jawbone.

  “I’m sorry,” Joseph said. “You’re home now. You’re safe.”

  Hollister shook his head, and the tears rained off his chin, soaking the battlefield. He put his bloody finger in his mouth and left the table.

  * * *

  Will squatted between two blue hydrangea bushes in his mother’s garden (it would always be his mother’s garden), unwinding pesky honeysuckle vines that were slowly suffocating the wooden stems. With a stick, he inscribed helen bartlett in the dirt. Will needed Helen to help him make sense of the parade disaster and Hollister’s return. He’d found Hollister asleep shortly after dinner; his father had returned to the mill office. Will retrieved Hollister’s old paints from the cellar and set them beside his brother’s bed, thinking that perhaps next time he’d paint the war on canvas. He’d suggested to his father that he might do well on the farm in Middletown and rehashed his conversation with João, but Joseph wouldn’t hear of it. Will disagreed, and as he waited for word from Helen, he cooked up a plan to get his brother out of Fall River. He could be late to school.

  Will snapped the stick over his knee and looked at his watch. Where was she? His note with the linen suit suggested she join them for dinner on June Street and that they could then return to the boathouse together. She should have arrived hours ago. He brushed his index finger under his nose.

  A taxicab whirled to a halt against the granite curb. Helen leapt from the car, cutting sharply across the freshly mown lawn, kicking the grass clippings Wiggins had left for another day. Will dusted his hands and stood. He chuckled when he saw her wearing another square-front calico dress. She made a beeline toward the house, head down and arms swinging wildly, red blotches across her chest and wisps of loose hair stuck with sweat to her temples. That ramped nose now looked pointed, like an eagle’s beak. Will feared she’d had a row with her mother. As he stepped to embrace her, he noticed a parcel clutched under her arm. Closer, he noticed her bloodshot eyes. Definitely a row with her mother.

  “Where’s your father?” she shouted, her red eyes scanning the windows. “He’s a bastard.”

  Will stepped back, dusted off his hands, and finally said, “He may be,” trying to lighten the moment.

  “I found this in Mother’s room.” She held out the parcel. Inside were four lace doilies and a letter in a scratchy hand. He flipped the parcel over to inspect the foreign stamps.

  “Who’s it from?”

  “Uncle Charles. Granny died. He sent her antique lace to us kids. Four pieces.”

  “Sounds right.”

  Helen lifted the note. “He says, ‘The night before Mother passed, she told me to send the four grandchildren her family’s lace.’”

  “There’s three of you and Pete.”

  “In the next line he calls us, Mary’s four babies.”

  Will yanked the letter from her hand. “Just hold on.”

  “Remember my mother’s trip to County Cork the year after the fire? How no one had heard of any Aunt Meara?”

  “Your mom was miserable about her sick sister. I remember she threw up her Christmas dinner.”

  Helen rolled her eyes. “She was sick from the baby, you dummy.”

  “But Ray said he’d met her once.”

  “Ray’s a chowderhead. As a boy he thought cow pies were something you ate. Don’t you get it? Mom’s story of a dying sister—a lie. The story of the sister’s deathbed wish to take her infant son to America—another lie.”

  “And my father’s a bastard because he helps support Cousin Pete?”

  “Pete is not my cousin; he’s my half-brother. Your
half brother!”

  “Now, wait a second.” Sure, Pete did have Grandpa Otis’s large receivers, but—

  “Then I remembered the night before your mother’s funeral. Your father stumbled to our house in the middle of the night.” Helen’s voice caught in her throat, on the verge of tears. “I think he raped her.”

  The freckles on her neck began to glow, and she pumped her first. He waved his hands at her to cool down. “What else?”

  “Ever notice the scar on his knuckle? That night he knocked the vestibule chandelier. She went to him, and he bull-rushed her onto the study couch.”

  Will shook his head. “That’s crazy.”

  “First he impregnated her after Dad died, then he kept her warm in his old house—bastard figured he owned her. Owned us all.”

  “Dad’s no rapist.”

  “Probably little Bartlett bastards in every neighborhood.”

  “Shut up,” Will shouted. “He’s given your family everything.”

  “But why? ’Cause of one little brat?”

  “You know how he looks at her. He loves your mother.” Will wanted to forgive his father, if for no other reason than for all the hope that was dashed when his mother died. The old man came home every night to her sickness. That had to be worth something. With his wife gone and Tom Sr. buried long ago, God couldn’t condemn them.