In the spring of 1916, Hilly increased his training. This would be his last year running for Harvester, and he wanted to make a good show. When Timms called the team together in April, Hilly was ready—and by the time John visited in early May, the season was off to a good start. One evening John told Hilly, “I see by the Standard Ledger that you won your first two meets.”
“Yessir. I’ve been lucky.”
Hilly took a bite of potato; Nell had cooked dinner for them at John’s house, where she enjoyed working in a larger kitchen.
“I’m afraid I won’t make it to any of the meets this year. I hate missing them, Professor, but things are heating up in Washington.”
“Europe?”
“We’re gearing up. For what, I’m not sure, but Wilson thinks we oughta be ready, so we’re arming.” Seeing Nell’s discomfort, John changed the subject. “I’ll try to get back for graduation.”
Following the meal, Hilly went home to study, and Nell and John retired to the screened front porch to watch the sunset. Late twilight was blurring the world’s outlines as the two sat in the swing.
“I was hoping to talk to the Professor about college,” John said.
“He’s determined to pay for it himself.”
“Maybe I can reason with him.”
“If you paid, there’d be gossip.”
“I’d work it out.”
John took Nell’s hand, and they sat observing lamps being lit against descending night. To be alone in the dark, together, murmuring the inconsequent observations that mark intimacy and trust, was a rare treat, and the pleasure was unspeakably sharp and sweet.
In the Battle of Jutland, at the end of May, Germany inflicted serious damage on the British fleet. Congress was alarmed, and John remained in Washington for meetings with the War Department. He sent Hilly a long wire upon the boy’s graduation and promised a gift. Hilly thought the telegram alone was a gift; few in Harvester could boast of one. He tacked it to his bedroom wall, beside John’s map of the world.
At the actual graduation ceremony, Hilly was amazed to be singled out for a silver medal, Mr. Timms telling those gathered that Hillyard Stillman had distinguished himself by his character, his scholarship—nearly an A average—and his athletic performance. Hilly was further stunned when the Standard Ledger, covering graduation, mentioned his award right along with the honors given the valedictorian and salutatorian. Nell insisted they frame the newspaper piece and hang it on the living room wall along with the silver medal. And so they did.
In another surprise, Hilly received a letter from Eudora Barnstable. The only time the boy had ever laid eyes on Eudora had been when he and Ted Shuetty delivered a tall mahogany bookcase to her house. Hauling the furniture up the porch steps and into the front hall, he’d glanced into the parlor, noting more bookcases on either side of the fireplace, bookcases burdened by what looked like a thousand volumes. Hilly had felt sorry not to know this woman better, but she was not routinely seen on the street or in the stores. Little wonder, when she owned a library such as this.
When Hilly and Ted had hoisted the monstrous bookcase up the stairs and into a room which in novels would be called a study, Eudora plied them with glasses of lemonade. Later, at the front door, she thanked them and pressed twenty-five cents into each man’s hand, unwilling to hear their protests. She was not one to be gainsaid.
At any rate, here was a letter from the woman, a week after graduation.
Dear Hillyard,
I address you informally since, as you may recall, we met when you helped to deliver a bookcase to my home. At the time I was struck by your good manners and apparent intelligence. Your mother has made a good job of you.
I was present at the graduation ceremony and not surprised to witness your recognition by Mr. Timms and the administration. As one who reads newspapers, the local one among them, I was aware of your success as an athlete and, again, was not surprised that it was in long-distance running. I cannot help pondering if that isn’t the physical choice of a thinker. . . .
Have you had time to read about the ancient Greeks and their athlete/philosopher ideal? It might be something to look into and contemplate as you venture forward to college and beyond.
I’m hoping that you will accept the small gift enclosed, tendered in the spirit of admiration.
Sincerely,
Eudora Wellington Barnstable
Enclosed was a five-dollar bill. Hilly sat down at once to thank Mrs. Barnstable and John, who had himself sent a check for one hundred dollars—a sum the boy could not even contemplate, this to be applied to Hilly’s college savings. John had written, “Congratulations, Professor. I couldn’t be prouder if I were your father. We will talk further about college and the financing of it. With love, John.”
Following graduation, Hilly went to work for Kolchak’s full-time, driving Arnie’s new General Motors truck. But he still rose early each day to run. He had to; an engine inside him thrummed. At night, waiting for sleep, he heard its urgency, and he almost heard its purpose.
All that year of 1916, warnings rolled across the Atlantic. Then, on April 6, 1917—Good Friday—John Flynn voted in the House of Representatives for a resolution declaring a state of war between the United States and Germany. As in the Senate, it passed by a huge majority.
In Harvester, public sentiment was not so clear-cut. John’s constituency contained a sizable bloc of German-Americans. They read German-language newspapers; attended German Lutheran churches, where services were conducted in German; and often felt a loyalty to the Kaiser.
Yet the headlines in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune were unimaginable, some battles claiming as many as fifty thousand men. A large part of a generation of men was vanishing.
When John finally returned from Washington in July, Nell stood at the door masking her shock. He’d lost weight. An unhealthy gray had crept beneath his skin, and his thick, once salt-and-pepper mane was a dull steel. With a weary smile, he said, “And I wanted to be in politics.”
Nell led him to the green chair, taking his Panama hat and suit jacket. “I’ll get you a glass of iced tea. Loosen your collar and put your head back.”
When she returned, John was asleep. She placed a pillow from the daybed behind his head, then unlaced his shoes and removed them.
At supper, Nell set a platter of sauerkraut, ring bologna, carrots, and potatoes before John and Hilly. “Good men in our delegation voted against the declaration, and for good reasons,” John said. “I hope I did the right thing.”
“But it would have passed even if you’d voted against it,” Hilly pointed out. “And I read in the paper that guys are already going across, volunteering to fight with the English.”
“Who wants mustard? Ketchup?” Nell tried to change the subject—but she knew the subject would continue to be war, now and for a long time.
Following Mass the next Sunday, the three sat staring at Sioux Woman Lake, John’s cabin behind them, the remains of Nell’s picnic lunch collected on the table before them. In the slight breeze, evergreens shifted uneasily.
On the water, the paths of indolent canoes and several small sailboats crisscrossed. The lake had already begun to give off the rotting odor of algae, hot sand, and fish carcasses, washed up in the shallows where birds and raccoons picked them over.
Seated with his back to Nell, Hilly said, “I’m going to sign up, Mama.”
“You’re all I have.”
John frowned. “It’s early days, Professor.”
“Please talk to him, John.” Nell washed their few dishes at the kitchen pump. “Go out there now and talk to him.”
Hilly sat at the end of the dock. Behind him, John stood shielding his eyes from the water’s flashing light.
“Could you hold off a bit? Give your mother a chance to live with this?”
Hilly was silent. John waited, knowing the boy was collecting his words.
“Ever since the Lusitania, I dream that I’m there. On the Irish coast, watch
ing for them. I run as fast as I can, down the shore. I see that they’re swimming toward a point further along the beach. When I get close enough, I’m going to dive in and help George. But then, they’re gone. I’ve lost them.”
“It was ten miles to shore, son.”
“I know. And they didn’t even make it off the ship. But that’s not my dream.”
John nodded and touched Hilly’s shoulder. The power and the impotence of old men were terrible things.
After a silent drive from the lake, John dropped off Nell and Hilly and continued home. Just inside the door, Nell whirled on Hilly, screaming, “This can’t be!” For a split second, she looked as if she had startled herself. Then she fell on her knees at Hilly’s feet, sobbing, “Oh God, please, don’t go!”
Hilly stared down at Nell, who was suddenly hysterical, her face distorted. This was not the mother he knew. He reached to pull her to her feet, but as she rose, she twisted away, screaming, “I’ll die!” Her hands snatched at her hair. “I promised to look after you, don’t you understand?”
Her body was so rigid, he was afraid she might somehow break. He started toward her. “Mama . . .”
Then she went limp, almost as if she had broken, and he caught her before she fell. “Mama, Mama.”
She was weeping and choking and telling him, “It was a hot night. You were so beautiful and peaceful. A baby. In your bed. And I swore I would look after you.”
He led her to her chair and knelt beside it. “And you did, Mama. You always did look after me. But, Mama, I’m grown up now. You did your job. Remember what Mrs. Barnstable said? ‘Your mother has made a good job of you’?”
He smiled at her, proffering a handkerchief. She ran a hand down his cheek, trying to see the grown man in him. “I’m sorry, son. I’m ashamed of what just happened. Can you forgive me?” She swallowed the remaining tears and blew her nose.
“There isn’t anything to forgive.” He rose. “I’ll make us tea now.”
chapter thirty-three
WEDNESDAY NIGHT, after supper, Hilly walked out to Grandpa Hapgood’s for a last game of chess with the old man.
When Diana answered the knock, Hilly noted that a streak of gray flowed back from her temple. When had age crept up on Diana, and how had he not noticed? You had to pay attention every day, or it all moved on without you. A sudden sense of passing time filled his mouth, and his throat ached swallowing this huge new intelligence. When he came home from war, everything would have changed. That shook him.
“Be here when I get back,” he told them at the end of the visit.
“Come home,” was all Diana could manage.
“Keep your head down,” Grandpa said.
On Thursday, Hilly, Nell, and John spent the evening at Juliet and Laurence’s. At the house on Catalpa Street, thirteen-year-old Larry answered the bell, showing them to the screened back porch where Juliet was pouring cold beer. She handed a glass to Hilly, making no ceremony of his first beer. It would only call attention to his vulnerable youth, and his awful leave-taking. Already she was unsure that she could survive the evening without tears.
It was Larry who actually asked Hilly, “Your first beer?” and lifted his own half glass to his friend. The others followed suit, though Juliet turned away. She had read too much about this war; she had to shut down her mind to Hilly’s departure. It was impossible not to see the babe she’d played with the day after his father’s death.
The next day John and Nell drove Hilly to Minneapolis. The boy wanted to join the Ambulance Corps, and the recruiters were only too happy to accommodate. Nell scarce believed that a boy could be taken so swiftly from his mother and with so little ceremony. But one moment they were weeping and embracing, Hilly promising to write every day; the next, he was gone, hurried along with other young men for physical examinations, as if the war had waited in suspension for just this handful of volunteers.
“He’s ours now,” a recruiter told Nell and John. “You folks can head home.”
And Nell insisted they do head home. She would not stay overnight in Minneapolis. “I need to be in my own bed.”
Despite miserly illumination from the Cadillac’s headlamps, they reached Harvester at a quarter to eleven, Nell asleep beside John.
As he saw her up the stairs, Nell began to weep. “Don’t go.”
“Just to move the car. You don’t need gossip.”
When he returned to the apartment, a bottle of scotch under his arm, she was in a cotton nightgown, her hair down, looking lost—like the Serbian refugee woman pictured in a Washington newspaper. He felt unreasonable guilt, as if he were somehow responsible—and, having voted for war, perhaps he was.
“I took the car home,” he said, hooking the screen door.
For an hour they sat, she in the green chair, he in the rocker. “I can’t speak the things I worry about,” she told him. “They might come true.”
He nodded. What could he say?
“I feel so alone,” she said. “You don’t realize how much space someone takes up until they’re gone and there’s too much emptiness. This place never echoed before. Now it does.” She was mystified.
“My mind feels untethered,” she went on. “All these years it was focused on Hilly. Now it’s flying loose like a kite that the wind grabs. I chase after thoughts like you’d chase a kite string, but I can’t catch hold of a single one.” Shaking her head, baffled, she raised the glass John had poured and absently sipped.
He let her ramble, exhausting herself.
“How will I put my mind back together?” she asked. Her look implored.
“I don’t want to go back to Washington, Nell, but I have to.”
“Not right away.”
“Soon. I’ll come home as often as I can.”
“He’s such a good boy.”
“You’re worn out,” he said. “Come to bed.”
“I won’t sleep.”
They sat on the bed, backs against the headboard, a pale wash of light from the streetlamps below picking out Nell’s bureau and sewing machine, and the drinks in their hands.
From the street came the sounds of Saturday-night men at Reagan’s and of the piano, cranky after so many tunes of loss and bravado: “When the Lusitania Went Down” and, now, “Over There.”
“When Hilly was small, right after Elvira left, we walked out to the cemetery one Sunday, to visit Herbert’s grave. I wanted Hilly to have a sense that Herbert might be looking out for him.
“At any rate, we sat and read in the quiet. Hilly was reading something from Dickens, I think. Then a beautiful cob swan, as white as an angel, came toward us. He studied us so intently, it was uncanny.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I suppose I hoped in that moment that there was a connection between Herbert and the swan—and someone looking after Hilly.”
Below them, on Main Street, Reagan stood at the door shooing the Catholics out at midnight so they could attend Communion in the morning. “Now, mind, you don’t drink any water if you’re takin’ Communion.”
At length Nell handed her empty glass to John, who set it on the bedside table next to his. She reached for his hand and kissed the first knuckle of each finger. When she had done, he laid her down and buried his face in the curve of her neck. She felt his tears gathering there as he caressed her breast beneath the thin fabric of her gown.
When Reagan’s finally closed, and the strident piano and the men’s raised voices and “click-clock” of billiard balls fell silent, they could hear the night breathe, as prairie nights do—the heave and sigh of warm earth, of things growing and waiting to be cut down.
chapter thirty-four
NELL HEARD NOTHING FROM HILLY FOR A WEEK, and the rooms echoed with her footsteps. Sometimes she sang to fill the air, but with her mood that didn’t last. Instead, she opened the windows to let in whatever sounds were in the street. Then two short letters arrived, filling a bit of the emptiness:
Dear Mama,
I miss y
ou, and I miss John too.
I had a physical examination in Minneapolis and was found to be in excellent health. Well, we knew that. I told the Minneapolis doctors that my mother fed me well and that I’ve been a runner for four years. I figure I must be as right as rain.
By the time you receive this, I’ll be far across the country. And before too many months, I’ll be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean. Makes me dizzy. Who knows what all I’ll see in this war.
But someday I want to see Egypt and China and Greece and any other place I can get to. You’ll come with me.
I am enjoying the train. I like the way it sways and I like the sounds it makes. Of course, I’d heard the sounds before, but they’re different when you’re on the inside. It’s like they’re part of you.
I will write every day that I am able, and when I have an address, I will send it so you can write back. Please greet John and the Lundeens, including Larry of course. Maybe you will pass my address along to them, and to the Hapgoods.
When I was at the Hapgoods, I could see that Grandpa was feeling bad about my leaving. So I tried to let him beat me at chess—but he tried to let me beat HIM. We both caught on, and had a good laugh.
I will always be
Your loving son,
Hilly.
Later, from Pennsylvania, he wrote:
Dear Mama,
Not much to say about camp except that it’s big. There are thousands of us here. Like a city. I miss my quilt. We live in barracks, not nearly so cozy as home. And every one of the barracks looks exactly like every other one. A guy could get lost.
We get up before the birds and go to bed before them, too. The food isn’t bad, and they give you enough to feed a thresher. I’m wearing a uniform now. I’ll get my picture taken to send you. They cut your hair short here, so don’t be surprised when you see the picture.
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 15
