He’d sold his Sears High-Wheel and bought a Cadillac touring car. “More practical,” he said, though he frequently found himself mired up to the axles and needing the hire of a good draft horse to pull him out. “It’s amazing the constituents I meet when I’m stuck,” John laughed.
It was obvious how much he loved his work. When Nell saw him—and that was not often—he was full of stories of Congress and the district. Over a game of whist at Juliet and Laurence’s, he told them, “I was out at Anders Bloom’s the other day. He’s got a three-legged chicken. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Had to build a separate pen and roost for it, or the other hens’d peck it to death. I said to him, ‘Anders, why don’t you just kill it and fry it up, then you wouldn’t have to go to all this trouble?’
“Well, you know Anders, he’s not a loquacious man. Fifteen, twenty words in a day. But he looked at me as if I belonged in the state hospital. ‘What kinda fool d’ya take me for?’ he said. ‘Kill that chicken? Why, that bird’s my fame.’” Everyone laughed.
“Had a photographer out taking pictures,” John continued. “And didn’t they have the damnedest time getting the bird to stand still. Paid the photographer good money—not Anders’s usual habit. But when the chicken finally goes, he said, he’ll have the proof of his fame. I said maybe he oughta get it stuffed. He said he’d think on that.”
“Don’t most people want a scrap of fame?” Juliet wondered. “Think of Eudora Barnstable’s plantings at the cemetery. It’s her cemetery.”
“I think you’re right,” Nell said. “Even if you’re only famous for your gingerbread recipe or your solos in the church choir.”
“Ah, vanity,” Juliet sighed. “Mine’s probably the bookshelves at the Water and Power Company. And someday, mark my words, a real public library. Oh, won’t I be conceited then?” She folded her cards against her breast, caught in the rapture of plans.
Laurence reached for a piece of fudge from a dish beside his wife. “Then there’s folks who get themselves real fame,” he said, looking at John.
His friend hooted. “Being a first-term congressman is pretty small potatoes.”
“What are you hearing about the war?” Laurence asked.
“Wilson’s still trying to keep us out, but don’t bet on it. What’s got me worried is this U-boat zone the Germans have thrown around Britain. Thank God they don’t have enough of the damned things to set up a full blockade.” He paused. With Cora and George on the verge of their ocean voyage, this was a delicate subject. “But you know all this.” He turned to Nell. “I believe it’s your lead, darlin’.”
“They sail May first,” Laurence said. “I’ll be glad when they get to Liverpool. I always feel better when folks are on dry land.”
chapter thirty-one
HILLY APPROACHED LUNDEEN’S DRY GOODS as a tearful Howard Schroeder was hanging a Closed sign on the door.
“How can you be closed on Saturday?” Hilly asked.
A sob. “Mr. and Mrs. George’s ship went down.”
“What?”
“The Lusitania. Sank.”
Hilly reeled. “But . . . but, how could it?”
“Torpedoed. German submarine.”
Dazed, Hilly made his way home. George and Cora. How was he going to tell his mother?
He’d better buck up. He was the man of the family. Wiping his face, he mounted the stairs.
When John heard the news, he caught the first train from Washington. Following the memorial service in Harvester, Laurence, Juliet, and Larry traveled east for another in Boston. Overnight, Laurence had become stooped and trembling, Juliet completely gray—yet she made the arrangements and cared for him.
“Let me come with you,” Nell said. “I could help with the luggage and see to Laurence.”
“You’re too kind, dear Nell. But I think I need to do this on my own. Still, if Hilly could give Larry some of his time when we get back, we’d be grateful. Whatever he can spare. I know how busy . . .”
Juliet’s eyes filled and she let go of Nell’s hand to dab at them.
Some days later, John was sitting in Nell’s living room. The two had been talking in the disjointed way people do in days of crisis, sorting through a welter of thoughts, beginning sentences that went nowhere. How could one speak sensibly of something so senseless?
Now, as shadows piled up in the corners, the silence felt companionable. Nell glanced at the clock. “I’ll fix supper,” she said, rising from her chair.
“Don’t bother for me.”
“You have to eat and so does Hilly. He’ll be home in a few minutes, and he’ll be upset if he’s missed you. Hang up your hat and light the lamp.”
That evening, after a meal eaten in near silence, Hilly said, “I don’t want to run Friday.”
“St. Bridget. I’d forgotten.” Nell began clearing away. “But you’ve been running all week.”
“That’s different. Out in the country, I can cry,” Hilly said without embarrassment.
“So, why not run Friday?”
“Friday feels like, I don’t know—like showing off. Disrespectful.”
Nell turned from the sink. “Mr. Timms will understand.”
John rose and grabbed a dishtowel from the hook by the sink. “I don’t know as it’ll make any difference in the way you feel, Professor, but I planned to ask Larry if he’d like to ride along to St. Bridget and watch you run. I thought it might be a distraction for him.”
So it was that on Friday Hilly found himself at the track, standing on the far side to watch the sprinters and relay runners. Spectators from St. Bridget ringed the oval, and he lost himself among them, waiting for the longer distances when he would have to wander back to his team.
John and Larry were subsumed in the band of Harvester men gathered near the team. They wouldn’t mind his ignoring them.
Nervous and determined, Hilly paced behind the onlookers. Today he was running for George and Cora. He recalled how excited George had been when he’d chauffeured the boys to last year’s meet. “It’s a grand thing to compete. At recess, when I was a kid, a handful of boys raced each other, all ages together. I still remember that feeling—a damned fine madness, when you’re rushing across the pasture with the wind whipping your face, and the blood humming in your ears.”
Hilly imagined the Irish beach where people had stood watching as the few lifeboats had landed and bodies washed ashore. John had brought newspapers from Washington describing the anguish of the surviving passengers and of the Irish who had helped them onto land.
But now Abel Timms was waving his arms, hailing Hilly to the starting line. Hilly trotted across the infield and took his place with six other boys, including young Gus Rabel. Hilly hated beating Gus, now a senior, in the fellow’s last race, but the Lundeens came first.
And now, as the gun sounded, and the Irish beach extended before him, Hilly ran. To reach them. To reach them. To haul them ashore. He was fast. They were there ahead, calling him, George exhausted, swimming with Cora clinging to his side. No one could make it ten miles to shore in the cold Atlantic, not hauling another body—but George was there, not a gasp nor an ounce of strength left. The grass beneath Hilly’s shoes was sand; the air not bright and dry but filled with a misty chill; gulls, not blackbirds, wheeled overhead.
And then the tape was breaking across his chest—and Hilly hadn’t reached them. He staggered past Abel Timms; past John holding his hand out; past Larry, calling to him. He staggered down the field sobbing, his spirit breaking against a distant shoal.
When they found him weeping, he told them, “I couldn’t run fast enough.”
Timms approached with Hilly’s first-place ribbon. “Good work, son,” he said, then turned and walked away. You didn’t probe a boy’s heartbreak.
Waiters in black silk vests and bow ties moved from kitchen to dining room, from one linen-covered table to another, smiling, nodding, taking and filling orders, replenishing water in glasses where ice snapped like the breaking of ti
ny crystal bells.
John had taken Hilly and Larry to the St. Bridget Hotel after the meet. Now Hilly sat straight as a post, hands knotted in his lap, studying the comings and goings, the flourished menus, the waiters’ bows to departing customers. He pondered the maître d’, who lingered with special clientele. To Hilly this was all as alien and as fascinating as a glimpse into one of the great pyramids at Giza.
The maître d’ had recognized John when they entered and treated him with a deferent bonhomie that implied a long and happy familiarity between the Representative and this dining room. The boys, by association, were welcomed as minor celebrities. Following the maître d’ to their table, John nodded and waved to several other diners, but made it plain that he was engaged by the two lads.
Hilly found it impossible to be unimpressed. On winered walls hung gilt-framed oil paintings, mostly portraits, by an artist of provincial note who worked from photographs. That one over there was the soprano Nellie Melba, Hilly was pretty sure; and there was Zebulon Pike, the great explorer; and further along, there was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—their glances approving, seeming to say, “We’re all good fellows and gentle ladies here.”
Though electric lighting was finding its way into St. Bridget homes and businesses, the hotel dining room was still flushed overall with a golden gaslight that flattered women and threw an aura of authority and substance around men.
“Well, boys, what’ll it be?” John asked.
“Boeuf Bourguignon, sir,” Larry said, closing his menu and laying it to one side.
“And you, Professor?”
“Um . . . I’m not sure.” Hilly found it difficult to detach his attention from the surroundings long enough to think about food. The Harvester Arms was pleasant, he knew. But this was, well, a different world entirely.
“D’ya like beef stew?” Larry asked.
“You bet,” Hilly replied.
“Well, that’s what Boeuf Bourguignon is: beef stew cooked with red wine.”
“Excellent.” Hilly closed his menu, and they ordered.
“That was a fine run today,” John said, not for the first time. “You’ll be welcomed to the running club at any college.”
“I still have another year of high school, sir. And . . . I don’t know about college.”
“It’s never too soon to start planning. And of course you’ll go to college, a bright lad like you. It’d be a damned waste if you didn’t.”
Hilly was silent. He didn’t want to mention the cost; John might think he was looking for help. The boy rolled the edges of the napkin lying across his lap and glanced away, as if studying a portrait of Colonel Josiah Snelling.
“I wonder why Gus Rabel joined the running club,” Larry said. “He’s kind of . . . bulky.”
“Not the model of a runner,” John agreed.
“Still, he came in third today,” Hilly pointed out.
“That’s because one of the St. Bridget boys turned his ankle at the start.” Larry was silent for a moment, then, “He’s a terrible bully.”
“That so?” John asked. “I’m surprised. His dad’s a fine fellow.”
“Young Gus is always picking on smaller boys. He’d be all over me if he weren’t afraid of Granddad.”
John laughed. “Doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of the bank?” The food arrived and he forked into his trout amandine.
Interesting, thought Hilly. Apparently Hilly hadn’t been young Gus’s only victim. Well, all that would end now that Gus was graduating.
As the small group was leaving the dining room, the maître d’ bowed and again embraced them with his ardent professional cordiality. “Always a special pleasure, Representative,” he said, his warm glance taking in the boys as well.
Hilly couldn’t help feeling a little important.
During the drive back to Harvester, talk was sparse—the gravel road being rough and words being shouted. But bellowing cattle along the way, impatient for the barn and milking, would have heard three male voices raised nonetheless. “On the Road to Mandalay” and “Swanee River” and “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” rang across pastures and farmyards beneath the pale early moon.
If it weren’t for George and Cora—and that was a monster If—Hilly thought that life couldn’t get better than this day. He’d won his race, eaten Boeuf Bourguignon in the St. Bridget Hotel, and ridden in John’s car, the spiffiest in Harvester.
Flynn pulled the Cadillac to the curb in front of Rabel’s Meat Market. “Congratulations again, Professor,” he shouted above the engine clatter as Hilly climbed out of the car.
“Thank you, sir. And thank you for dinner. The beef stew was excellent. Really excellent.”
Hilly stood watching the car pull away, remembering the tender beef in red wine, the carrots and potatoes, and the pecan tart with whipped cream. When John turned the Cadillac toward the Lundeens’, Hilly swung around and headed for the stairs at the side of the building . . .
. . . and then someone was knocking him down, dragging him, kicking him. Then that same someone fell atop him, pounding, grunting. “Think you’re somebody.” Half-heard, the attacker was whistling through his nose, leaning close, hissing into Hilly’s face, “You’re nobody. The little man who wasn’t there.” The voice laughed low. “Little Milly Stillman.”
Nell leapt from her chair when she saw Hilly. “What’s happened?” The boy leaned against the jamb, squinting into the room, eyes already swelling shut, lips split and bleeding.
After she’d led him into his room and sat him on his bed, she fetched a cloth, a pan of tepid water, and a jar of ointment. Gently dabbing his face and neck with the cloth, she asked, “Who did this?”
“I didn’t see him. He came from behind, and it was dark.”
Nell helped Hilly out of his shirt and undershirt, then left him while he removed his trousers. Returning, she handed him a chunk of ice wrapped in a clean rag, then placed three aspirin in his cupped hand and held out a glass of water.
“Now, lie down, and I’ll pull the sheet up.”
Once she’d picked up the bloodstained shirts lying beside the bed, she stood for long seconds not moving, remembering. Water in a galvanized pail swirled in a pink eddy of blood as a dress and petticoat swam dizzyingly.
“You know I hate violence. But this—person—who beat you could have killed you. How could I live if anything happened to you? I’m going to the constable.”
“No, Mama.”
“At least let me tell John.”
“No, Mama.”
She bent and brushed Hilly’s cheek with her lips. “Then next time, put up your dukes.”
chapter thirty-two
WHEN THEY HAD RETURNED FROM BOSTON, Juliet and Laurence were stunned to find a letter in Cora’s hand, written on hotel stationery and postmarked New York. It had been a long time on its way.
Dear Mama, Papa, and Larry,
I’ve been to a New York doctor who practices techniques similar to those of the Zurich fellow we’ll be seeing and I’m feeling more hopeful than I have in years. I honestly believe I’m feeling something!—it’s only a “buzzing” sensation in my right thigh, but . . .
On the other hand, don’t count your chickens, as Nell’s Mr. Wodehouse would say. No need to break out the champagne yet.
Anyway, I’m more eager than ever to meet the man in Switzerland. Apologies that this note is so brief, but we are repacking for the ship. We both send kisses to the three of you and our greetings to the “whist gang.”
Love,
Cora
Bumping into Nell in the post office, Juliet described the note. “It was so hopeful, it broke my heart. I debated whether to show it to Larry. In the end, I decided not to for now.” She removed her glasses and folded them, shaking her head. “He’s being brave, but he doesn’t sleep well. Terrible dreams. I suppose that’s to be expected, but you worry anyway. Hilly’s been good, bless him, making time for Larry.”
That fall of 1915, Juliet and Lau
rence had moved back into the old house on Catalpa. “For Larry,” Juliet said to Nell one day. “His memories of George and Cora are in this house.”
“And the lovely home you built for you and Laurence?” Nell asked.
“There’s a new manager at the Water and Power Company, Eli Weatherford,” Juliet said as they stood on the post-office steps. “Wife and two children—another baby on the way. They’ll rent the place indefinitely.” She nodded to Grandpa Hapgood, coming from a game of billiards at Reagan’s. “Maybe someday, when we’ve gotten past all this, we’ll turn the house into a town library.”
“How’s Laurence?”
“Still frail, but finally getting over his chest cold. Wants to get back to working full-time. Suddenly everybody’s ordering a telephone.”
“If there’s anything I can do . . .”
“You can tell Hilly how proud we are. I don’t think he lost a race this past spring, did he?” He hadn’t.
In September, Hilly began his senior year, relieved that young Gus Rabel was gone from the high school. Gus was working for his father in the meat market, mostly in the back, learning butchery and brining. Old Gus had added a Reliance Motor truck to the business so his son could make pickups from farms and deliveries to town customers. He was big enough and strong enough to handle sizeable carcasses.
Young Gus’s path rarely crossed Hilly’s; Hilly was busy working part-time at Kolchak’s and running. At school he excelled. Mrs. Cooper, the English teacher, told Nell, “The boy has a gift for writing. I don’t know what a man would do with that after college. . . .” She played with a lace frill at the neck of her dress. “Maybe newspaper work? He does love writing stories about exotic places—Constantinople and Rio de Janeiro and Nanking and I don’t know where all.”
Though foreign lands fascinated Hilly, they were not much on the mind of the average villager. When the Archduke got assassinated in Europe back in ‘14, that was unfortunate, and of course the sinking of the Lusitania was a damned shame—but most folks were pretty sure the president would keep the country out of any serious mess. The average villager was more interested in local gossip, the condition of the streets, and whether his supply of coal and firewood would last the winter.
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 14
