American Progress

by Veda Boyd Jones

  Monday morning found Mark and Maureen back at Mrs. Hoag’s, this time in the Hawaiian Room.

  “I think we will lower the ceiling in here over part of this room and use a thatched roof for the house,” Mrs. Hoag said. “We’ll make the rest of this room look as if it’s outdoors with the sandy beaches and sprinkle it with some of these shells. I’ve never seen the ocean as blue as it was in Hawaii.”

  “Could we paint that wall over there blue?” Mark said. “Then it would look like water.”

  “I’m glad you’re a board member for the museum,” Mrs. Hoag said. “You have good ideas.”

  Bertha appeared at the door of the Hawaiian Room and said Mrs. Hoag was wanted on the telephone. Mrs. Hoag disappeared downstairs and returned a moment later with a stony look on her face.

  “Mark, your mother needs you at home.”

  “Right now?” he asked.

  “Yes, right now. Be gone with you. Maureen and I will work awhile longer.”

  Mark looked puzzled, but he quickly left.

  Mrs. Hoag stood watching out the window. “He’s on the street now. That’s all the work we’ll be doing for a while, Maureen.”

  “But you said we’d—”

  “I know what I was saying, but that was so I wouldn’t break down in front of Mark. He needs to be told by his mother.”

  “What’s wrong?” Maureen asked with a tremble in her voice and foreboding in her mind.

  “Your uncle Albert collapsed at the bank. They think it was his heart that stopped.”

  “He’s … dead?” Maureen grasped the teddy bear charm on her necklace and knew the kindly man who had given it to her was gone.

  CHAPTER 12

  Mark’s Sorrow

  Maureen stood in stunned disbelief at the kitchen counter. She stirred vanilla cream pie ingredients as Mrs. Hoag and Bertha rolled out crusts.

  “As soon as these pies are ready, we’ll take them over to Mark’s,” Mrs. Hoag said. “That will give the family time to recover from the first shock. Nadine said church members are taking in food already.”

  Mother had called from Mark’s house. She had gone there as soon as Father had called her and told her of Uncle Albert’s death. How could a body up and die so suddenly? Mama had been sick for a few days. Not that Maureen had been prepared for her death, but she’d seen it coming at the end, when her mama got worse and worse.

  Once again she grasped the teddy bear pendant. Never again would she see Uncle Albert’s joyful smile or hear him say he wanted to shake the hand that shook the hand of the president.

  How is Mark feeling now? She didn’t want to go there, to that dark place she remembered of the first few hours after her mother’s death. A heavy weight had descended on her chest, suffocating her, making it hard to breathe. Poor Mark. He must be feeling that pain.

  “We must help him through this,” Mrs. Hoag was saying. “We must help him through this, although how he handles it will be up to him.”

  “He’ll have pictures,” Maureen said, remembering the pictures Mark had taken Friday when she’d become a citizen. At the house, Father had taken a group photograph of Mark’s family. “I don’t have pictures of my papa, but I talk to my mama’s picture.”

  Mrs. Hoag nodded as if she understood, and they fell into silence as they finished making the pies. When they were baked and cooled, Maureen loaded them in the electric, and Mrs. Hoag drove to Mark’s house.

  Maureen recognized several of the buggies and wagons parked outside the Bowman home. The parson was there, and so was Father. His automobile was parked right in front.

  With reluctant steps, Maureen walked behind Mrs. Hoag and carried two pies. They were met at the door by a woman from church.

  “Just bring those pies right through here,” she said and waved toward the back of the house. Maureen knew the way to the kitchen and left her pies on the table.

  She had hoped to make it out of the house before she saw Mark, but he must have seen them come in, for he stood in the hall, blocking her escape.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said and burst into tears. Her chest heaved with heavy sobs. Mrs. Hoag put her arm around her and another around Mark and shepherded them to the front parlor where the family sat with friends.

  Father left Aunt Annie’s side and hugged Maureen.

  “He gave me this,” Maureen said between sobs and held out the teddy bear pendant. “Because I’m a citizen.”

  “I know,” Father said. “He told me about it when he bought it. He loved you, Maureen. And he knew you loved him.”

  “I never told him.” And, oh, how she wished she had.

  “You don’t have to explain love,” Father said. “It’s something people just know.”

  Maureen gulped and got the hiccups. She sneaked a glance at Mark and saw that his eyes were dry. She remembered the hour after her mama’s death, when she’d cried her heart out, and then there were no more tears; but she also knew that the tears would come back.

  “Let’s get you a drink,” Father said and took Maureen back to the kitchen. She drank a whole glass of water and then another one until her hiccups were gone. “Now, why don’t you take Mark and Sophie outside?” he suggested. “They don’t need to listen to their father’s funeral plans.”

  Maureen took a deep breath then did as Father asked. She and Mark and Sophie sat on the back porch steps. They sat in silence for a long time.

  “He just fell down,” Mark finally said. “They said he was dead before he hit the floor.”

  “Then he didn’t hurt his head,” Sophie said. “I hope he didn’t hurt his head.”

  Sophie was only seven, and her focus on her father’s pain touched Maureen. “I’m sure he didn’t hurt his head,” she reassured Sophie.

  “He’s in heaven, you know,” Sophie said.

  “I know. He’s there with my mama and papa.”

  Mark looked at Maureen as if he finally understood what she’d gone through. His eyes looked hollow and older than when she’d seen him a couple hours earlier.

  Odd how death made a person grow up. She wished she could go back to last summer, when she was more carefree; and she wished Mark could go back to yesterday, when they’d talked after Sunday school.

  She wanted to help them, but she didn’t know how. They sat there in the May sunshine, listening to the chatter in the kitchen. Mother came out once and sat down with them for a bit.

  “The funeral will be Wednesday afternoon,” she told them.

  “Could we go for a walk?” Maureen asked. She remembered how activity had helped her pass the time after Mama’s death.

  “That’s a good idea,” Mother said. “I know you’re not hungry, but come in and get something to eat first; then the three of you can get away from here for a while.”

  After they’d each grabbed a fried chicken leg and drunk a glass of milk, Mark led the way out of the house through the back door. Maureen knew she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to see a lot of people.

  They walked with no particular destination, but just walking helped Maureen feel better. It helped her headache, and it helped her heartache.

  For a long time they walked in silence, past house after house, past vacant lots, and past their church and the cemetery.

  “I guess we’ll be here Wednesday,” Mark said.

  “Yes. If you think of something else, it helps,” Maureen said. That’s what she’d done. She’d concentrated on other things. On school, on a book she’d read. She’d struggled to block out her mama’s funeral. And it had helped her get through it when all eyes were on her as she walked behind her mama’s casket. Later she’d fallen apart again, but she had gotten through the ceremony. “I prayed over and over not to cry at the funeral, and I didn’t,” she said. “But I had to think of other things.”

  They turned around at the cemetery and walked back a different direction, past more houses where children played outside, laughing, obviously unaware of the heartbroken three who walked by.

&n
bsp; They kept moving and changed directions, walking out toward a new section of town. Several houses were being built down one street. Carpenters’ hammers pounded and workmen shouted. Maureen watched the activity as men unloaded lumber from a wagon.

  “Look!” Mark exclaimed.

  Maureen looked but saw nothing unusual. “What should I be seeing?”

  Mark ran to the edge of the street and pointed to an iron stake with a scrap of red cloth tied to it.

  “Something red,” he said. He marched up to a workman and asked him something Maureen couldn’t hear, then he ran back into the street where Sophie and Maureen waited.

  “This marks the boundary of the yard for this house. Survey stakes. This must be what you saw in the woods by Mrs. Hoag’s house.”

  “But why would there be survey stakes on Mrs. Hoag’s land?”

  “To build a house,” Sophie said, “like this.” She pointed to the house under construction.

  “That’s it. Someone wants to build houses on her land,” Mark said. “And who do we know who wants to buy her land?”

  “No,” Maureen said, realizing what Mark was thinking. “Sidney Orr is a nice man. He gave me a flower.”

  “He wants to buy Mrs. Hoag’s house. We heard him say so. And he asked about her property.”

  “But why would he have the land divided up for houses before he bought the land?”

  “Maybe he needed to know how many houses he could build there so he could get a loan from the bank. I’ll ask Father,” Mark said. Then, as if realizing what he had said, he put his hand over his mouth. He closed his eyes, but tears oozed out.

  “You have to cry sometime,” Maureen said. “Let’s go back to your house.”

  It was as if a dam had burst and let Mark’s emotions out. He talked about his father and all the things they had done together.

  “He took me to a Millers baseball game last summer,” Mark said. “He said we’d go again this year.”

  They were some distance from the Bowman house, and they talked nonstop about Uncle Albert. Maureen remembered all the nice things he had done for her and how he had the greatest smile. Sophie talked about him reading to her at bedtime.

  “He didn’t like tinkering with things and fixing them like Uncle Theodore,” Mark said. “He likes… liked,” he corrected himself, “talking to people and making them feel better. And he liked knowing about places, new places.”

  “He told me he’d like to see Ireland,” Maureen said. “He was a good Christian man. That’s what Mrs. Hoag called him.”

  “I hope he didn’t hurt his head,” Sophie said again as they circled the Bowman house and walked up the back steps to the kitchen door.

  The funeral on Wednesday afternoon was a good one as far as funerals went, Mother said later. Maureen had sat with Mark and Sophie because Mother said it might help them.

  The minister talked about what a good man Uncle Albert was, and then Father talked about him, and another man from the church also talked about how kind Uncle Albert was.

  Maureen could hardly stand to look at Aunt Annie. At the cemetery she acted so strange, so quiet, and looked so lonely, even with her five children around her.

  After the burial, the family went to the Bowman home for a big dinner served by the church women. The mood was more lighthearted then, as if everyone had given a huge sigh of relief, but Maureen knew that it was temporary. It had been only five months ago that she’d felt that same relief after Mama’s funeral. She knew the pain would come back, and she felt old beyond her years for knowing it.

  “The best thing to do for them is to listen to them talk about Albert and keep them busy building a different life,” Mother said when she and Maureen and Father had returned home.

  “Mrs. Hoag said we didn’t need to work until Mark felt up to it,” Maureen said.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mother said. “She told me he might need time alone, but that’s what she did and it got too easy for her to stay away from other people. Why don’t you call Mark tomorrow and see if he’s willing to work a little bit? Just an hour, maybe, to get him out of the house awhile.”

  Maureen telephoned Mark first thing the next morning, and he agreed to ride over to her house. “We could look down at the creek again,” Maureen said, “then catalog some more.”

  They parked their bicycles at Mrs. Hoag’s house then cut across the land to the stake they had discovered earlier.

  “It’s got to be a survey stake,” Mark said. “But why would it be right here by the edge of the creek?”

  Maureen peered over the short bluff where they’d seen the boy fishing. “Maybe it marks something else. How did that boy get down there?” This was the only area around the creek that didn’t have a flat bank to it.

  The drop down the stone bluff to the foot-wide ledge that bordered the water was about six feet. Notches in the rock wall formed a natural ladder.

  Mark climbed down first, then Maureen gathered her skirt about her and followed him. There were dried footprints along the ledge that ran about ten feet, then turned inward.

  If she hadn’t been looking for something, Maureen would have missed the opening. A rock wall jutted out and concealed the entry from the direction they were walking. The hole on the other side was small, but Mark and Maureen slid through it easily. A man could, too, but it would have been more of a squeeze.

  “It’s a cave,” Maureen said. It couldn’t have been more than four feet wide, but she couldn’t tell how far back it went.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Mark said.

  “Me, either,” Maureen agreed. “We ought to come back here when we have a light.”

  “You stay on that side, and I’ll stay on this side, and we’ll feel our way to the back,” Mark said.

  “For a little ways,” Maureen said and hoped she didn’t sound as scared as she felt. The place was cold and eerie. “If it goes too far back, we’ll have to come back with a light. What are we looking for?”

  “I don’t know. But maybe that boy had been in this cave.”

  Maureen felt her way about six feet when the wall turned to form the back wall, except it wasn’t a stone wall. “There’s wood back here,” she said.

  “Where?” Mark was a lot closer than she’d thought.

  “Feel over here. The back wall is made of wood.”

  “What’s this?” he asked, and Maureen heard a clink as he turned something over. “I think it’s a lantern,” he said. “There’s a shelf here. Oh, wooden matches.” He struck one, and the light nearly blinded Maureen, who was used to the darkness.

  Mark lit the lantern then held it high. The back wall wasn’t a wall at all but was a wooden door. It opened on well-oiled hinges.

  “It’s a tunnel,” he said as the light exposed stone walls. There were timber beams overhead, and after the first twenty feet, the walls changed to mostly dirt.

  Maureen had seen enough, but Mark kept going, and since he had the light, she followed. She turned her back once, and it was so dark, she couldn’t see her hand. There was no noise underground. The smell of wet dirt filled her head. She felt alone, even though Mark walked just ahead of her with the lantern.

  “I didn’t cry at the funeral,” Mark said suddenly.

  The sudden mention of Uncle Albert shouldn’t have surprised Maureen, but it did. Thoughts of Mama still crossed her mind at the oddest times.

  “I know.”

  “Do you think Father’s watching us in this cave?”

  “I don’t know. We can go back.”

  “No. I think he’d want us to explore it. He’d like knowing where it went. One time we went on a little lane outside of town just to see how far it would go.” All the time he was talking, Mark walked forward. Within a couple more minutes, they reached the end of the tunnel and a ladder. Mark held the lantern up, and the light revealed a trapdoor overhead.

  “What do we do now?” Maureen asked.

  “We can’t go back without finding out what’
s up there,” Mark said.

  “Do you hear anything?”

  They were quiet a few moments and didn’t hear a word. Then Maureen heard a voice. She held her breath until she heard it again.

  “Quiet, be quiet.”

  “It’s Ruthie,” Mark exclaimed. “This must be the way the thieves get into the house to steal the artwork.”

  He handed Maureen the light and climbed up while she held the lantern. He had a little trouble pushing on the trapdoor. It wasn’t hinged, so it didn’t swing up easily. He applied so much pressure that it flew up a couple of inches and landed cockeyed off the hole with a loud thump. He pushed it to the side.

  Stairs led higher, so he climbed up a couple steps to make room for Maureen. As soon as she was on the landing, she pushed the trapdoor back in place with her foot. This was familiar territory. She had been in the secret staircase a number of times. She handed the lantern back to Mark and pushed on the secret panel. It swung open, and she stepped out into the Oriental Room.

  She saw Mrs. Hoag standing with the fireplace poker a fraction of a second before the woman hit her. Then all went black.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Plan

  The next thing Maureen knew, she was on the couch with a wet cloth on her forehead. In a haze, she made out Mrs. Hoag leaning over her and Mark right beside her.

  “Maureen, I’m so sorry. So sorry,” Mrs. Hoag said over and over.

  “She’s coming to,” Mark said as Maureen blinked her eyes again. “Are you all right?”

  Maureen tried to talk, but it took too much effort, and nodding her head was worse. Keeping her eyes open was the best she could do.

  “Maureen, I really tried not to hit you,” Mrs. Hoag said. “The moment I saw it was you, I tried to stop swinging, but I’d started, and I couldn’t stop it. Oh, I’m putting this badly.”

  “I’m all right,” Maureen said. “I just need to be still awhile.” She touched the back of her head and felt a knot the size of a goose egg.

  “I’ll call Nadine,” Mrs. Hoag said.