What had been wrong with his foot?
And what was this about decorations? His news was piecemeal.
Over the next days, by means unknown to Nell, word of the decorations spread.
“About these honors Hilly’s getting from the French and English. What can you tell me?” Ev Dunn, the owner of the Standard Ledger, asked one morning.
“Nothing. He wrote that he’d been told about them, but he thinks they might be a mistake.”
“Well, they’re not a mistake, that much I know. I called John Flynn first thing, and he said he’d just received word from the Secretary of War. But all we know is that Hilly and another driver are being decorated.”
“I wish I could be more helpful, Ev.”
“Oh, God, I should mention: The Women’s Committee is getting up an event in the new high-school gymnasium, something to honor our boys, but especially your son. And, by association, you.”
“I wish they wouldn’t,” Nell sighed.
“Hah! Go talk to Eudora!”
A heaviness, a weariness, plagued Nell over the next few days. It went against her grain to be made much of. To stand out was to invite comeuppance, or worse. The universe operated a leveling device, a harrow, to bring down anything that rose half a head above the commonplace.
But Eudora Barnstable would not be denied. The doors of the new gymnasium were flung open on the evening of Saturday, August 31, and strains of “Keep the Home-Fires Burning” and “Roses of Picardy” rang down Main Street.
Eudora’s red, white, and blue evening inaugurated the new gymnasium while celebrating the absent Hilly. And, as Ev Dunn had predicted, it honored Nell. On the stage at the far end of the echoing room, a dozen bunting-draped chairs were lined up. Nell occupied the most central and grandest of these, elevated on her own individual dais.
Overheated and groping in their bags for hankies, the mothers of other Harvester soldiers sat on either side of her. In the remaining three chairs, Eudora, Mayor Anton Lindstrom, and Representative John Flynn chatted together as townspeople found seats among rows of folding chairs.
Nell shifted on her throne. Perspiration gathered between her breasts, crawled down the backs of her legs, and puddled inside her shoes.
Most of what was said during the hour-and-twenty-minute program floated in one portal of Nell’s consciousness and out another. The stifling air in the big room—and the nagging certainty that no good could come of such spectacle—conjoined to visit Nell with a dull headache.
She did hear John tell the audience, “In early January of this year, our Hilly was reassigned to a British ambulance unit. I have a letter from a Major Willis of that British contingent. He writes:
To Family, Friends, and Fellow Countrymen of Private Hillyard Stillman:
It is my pleasure to advise you that Private Stillman will receive commendation by the governments of both France and Great Britain in recognition of extraordinary courage, initiative, and diligence in the rescue of fallen men.
Private Stillman has saved more lives and under more brutal and perilous circumstances than perhaps any ambulance driver serving on this front. Members of his own outfit report his dogged valor and stubborn refusal to leave a man behind, no matter that man’s condition.
A policy exists admonishing ambulance personnel to choose the more likely survivors from among the wounded. Again and again, Private Stillman found a means of taking everyone possible, even resorting to tying men on the bonnet and the roof of his vehicle. And while the Army’s orders are meant to be obeyed, in a case such as this, disobedience could not but be recognized for what it is: extraordinary heroism.
Major Hiram Willis,
in the Service of His Majesty
King George V
At the evening’s culmination, John presented each mother with a star-shaped brooch; the band played the national anthem; and the audience, pleased to have come and grateful to leave, processed out into a breathless summer evening.
“That was a splendid letter from Major Willis,” Eudora said later, as they settled onto Juliet’s screened back porch with cold beer from Reagan’s.
“I was over to St. Bridget today and saw a big story on the front page of Wednesday’s Examiner,” Ed Barnstable told them.
“What are Hilly’s plans when he’s home?” Dr. Gray asked.
“I hope he’ll rest for a long time,” Nell said, aware it wasn’t the answer Charlie Gray was looking for.
“Of course,” Juliet murmured.
“We must expect a different man,” John told them quietly. He rose from his chair, crossing to the screen door to light a cigar. “I had a long talk with Ben Hapgood last February.” He sucked flame into the Havana with insistent pulls. “He was with the First Minnesota during the Civil War. Those men saw horrors.
“When Ben got back, he didn’t want to talk to anyone for a long time. He wasn’t comfortable with people who hadn’t been there. Not even family. He was caught between two places so different, they’d never understand each other.” The cigar glowed in the growing pitchiness of the porch, the thick, fruity scent curling around the room. “Hilly’s going to need time to put it behind him the best he can,” John went on. “He’s been to hell. We’ll have to be patient.”
Beyond John, heat lightning zigzagged low across the horizon. Nell laid her head against the wicker chaise and listened as the others talked of the war and of high farm prices. Pools of illumination from the kerosene lamps created a little world within a world, its corners shadowed. Nell preferred these kerosene lamps to the electric ones they all had now. Electrification of the town had taken several years, but it had come too fast for her, and now it was moving out to the nearer farms.
Something in her clung to the old ways, unlike Hilly, who wanted to reach out to the new and the unknown. Look how he’d taken to the automobile, never frightened for a moment. Beyond this screened porch, safe and close, lay the vastness of a world he’d set his heart on exploring.
Guilt stirred her. She knew she would try to dissuade him. Did every mother feel this need to have her grown child close? Motherhood was the most insecure of all undertakings. If you stopped to think, even for a moment, every choice you made was the wrong choice.
“Well, all I can say,” Eudora began, “is that I’m terribly thankful that Pershing and our men are over there. With the Hun on their doorstep, what would the dear English have done?”
“Or the dear French, for that matter?” Laurence teased.
“I suppose,” said Eudora. “But I always think there’s something not quite solid about them.”
John returned to a chair near Nell and took her hand. “Sad to say, Eudora, many French boys weren’t solid enough to turn away bullets.”
“Thank you for bringing me to account, John. My Anglophilia carries me away. But I am glad our boys are putting an end to this war. And I thank you again, Nell, for the loan of a splendid son.”
Nell stirred in bed, throwing off the sheet. At the open window, sinuous curtains yielded to a whisper of air, caressing themselves, fold against fold, lace flowers bending, pliant. When he was small, Hilly stood at the open window and mashed his face into the curtains as if kissing or inhaling them.
On the bedside table, a piece of delicate crochet work, resembling rime on a winter window, covered the surface. She’d purchased that in June, at a St. Boniface bazaar raising money for the Red Cross. Standing in the church basement, doily in her hands, she’d imagined some small portion of her pennies leaping the miles, like seven-league boots, to the Front. John and Hilly’s photographs stood on the doily. The day after his death, she’d removed Herbert’s to Hilly’s room.
Climbing back into bed and pulling up the sheet, she turned on her side and ran a hand across the pillow where John’s head had recently rested.
chapter thirty-nine
Dear Mama,
All through this summer we’ve pushed the Boche back. “We” means the Commonwealth fellows—but I do feel like one of them.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be home soon. Silly thinks we might be home for Christmas, at least on leave. Please send my best to Diana, and to John and the Lundeens.
Love to everyone—even Aunt Martha.
I will always be
Your loving son,
Hilly
But then weeks passed without a word. Nell entreated John in Washington to discover what he could. By turns she was giddy with the certainty that Hilly was alive—then mad with the sure knowledge that he was dead.
When the bomb exploded beneath them, Silly was driving. Hilly was riding in the empty rear of the ambulance. The smell of burning trees and sometimes of burning farm buildings—if Hilly closed his eyes—could almost be the scent of autumn leaves burning in the backyards of Harvester.
And then, there was no sound, no smell. Just Hilly running barefoot on a cold Irish beach, while a ship in the gray distance disappeared. He was running and crying and calling out, “I’ll save you!”
In early October, a note addressed to The Family of Hillyard Stillman arrived from Major Willis, who had earlier informed them of Hilly’s honors.
I apologize for the tardiness of these tidings. Events of late have moved with such speed that I am a good deal behind in my duties.
In early September, while making ambulance runs near the town of Brie, the vehicle operated by the team of Privates Stillman and Benjamin struck an unexploded bomb. In the subsequent explosion, Private Stillman, though wounded, was thrown free. Private Benjamin was not.
I share this latter knowledge with you only because the two lads had operated together from the first and I feel certain that you would want to know.
Private Stillman was removed to an English field hospital and, later, to an American hospital at the rear. I have been unable to determine his whereabouts or condition beyond this point, though I feel sure that your own government will soon share this information with you.
I wish to thank you for the services of Hillyard Stillman in the cause of the Commonwealth. He has served the Allies with great distinction.
Major Hiram Willis,
in the Service of His Majesty
King George V
Hilly was alive.
On October 12, stopping to collect mail, Nell ran into Eudora on the post-office steps. “Mrs. Stillman!” Shifting the bag beneath her arm, she snatched Nell’s hand in a fierce grip. “Word came on the wire down at the depot. The Germans want to talk peace!” She gasped for air. “Hillyard will be home soon! We’ll give him a grand welcome, won’t we?”
And yet the fighting continued over the coming weeks. Fierce fighting, according to the newspaper. But at least Hilly was out of it.
Late that same month, Nell received a hastily scratched note from a Dr. Blaise at an army hospital in New York. Hilly was being treated for physical injuries and “what is commonly referred to as shell shock.” While visits might provoke an “excitation” that could impede Private Stillman’s progress, “we have every hope of Private Stillman achieving full recovery.”
Shell shock: Nell had heard reports of other boys coming home with this condition. What did it mean? And when would she be able to see him?
She wrote to the hospital at once, but received no answer.
Less than a month later, the war was over. The following Saturday, November 19, a parade marched from the schoolhouse down Main Street. High overhead, racing clouds veiled the sun, while on the street, the honed edge of November gusts whipped shifting islands of dead leaves.
From a chair beside the bedroom window, Nell watched. Men and women waving handkerchief-sized flags lined up on the sidewalk to cheer the combined town and high-school bands, newly outfitted in their first-ever uniforms, purchased in anticipation of the war’s end.
Across the street, Aunt Martha, cane looped over one arm, leaned against the handrail of the post-office steps and fanned herself, despite the chill of the day. Now and then she glanced up at Nell.
Behind the passing colors shambled two hoary Civil War veterans, bent and uncertain, then a handful of men who’d served in the Spanish-American conflict, portly now and comfortable. Like office seekers, they waved and smiled to the crowd.
Finally, a dozen already-returned survivors of the war “to end all wars” made slow procession down the street. Two of them struggled with crutches, one walked with a cane and carried an arm in a cast. The sleeve of another hung empty and pinned. They waved not at all, nor did they call out to friends.
Nell hesitated before answering Aunt Martha’s stentorian knock. She entered in full sail. “Didn’t see you marching with the third grade.”
“I’ll make coffee,” Nell volunteered.
“Not for me. I’ll only be a minute. There’s refreshments at the school. That’s where folks will be. Honoring the boys.” She pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her bosom, mopping her face. “What do you hear of Hillyard?”
“Only the letter from the doctor.”
“Can’t your good friend the congressman pry out some information?”
“It was on his account that we heard from the doctor at all.”
“Well, I am proud of our Hillyard,” Martha said, thrusting out her chin. “Look at how the French and English decorated him. When he comes home, he has to have a fuss made over him. Your responsibility.”
“We mustn’t plan something he wouldn’t want,” Nell said.
“Nonsense. He’d be tickled pink to have folks turn out.”
“Martha Stillman is a gossip and a mischief maker,” Nell told John over a game of gin rummy that night.
“Well, you can at least stop her gossiping about us, if that’s a problem.”
“Yes?”
John set his cards aside. “This isn’t how I planned it,” he said. “I was going to take you to St. Paul for dinner.”
“A long way to go for dinner.”
“Well, I hardly ever ask a woman to marry me.”
“Marry you. Because of gossip?”
“Not for a minute. Because I love you and want to take care of you.”
“You’ve always said you were too old for me.”
“I’m still too old for you, but I’ll overlook it if you will.”
Lifting his hand, she licked the saltiness in its palm and kissed his lifeline.
“Is that a yes?”
“That’s an I-have-to-think-about-it.”
In bed that night, John was patient. Nell lay on her side, studying John’s profile. He was a fine-looking man despite a nose broken in college wrestling. The nose gave him a rakish, dangerous look, appropriate for the man he was: someone to be reckoned with.
But marriage. Nell’s breath ruffled like something alive and alarmed in her throat.
chapter forty
OVERNIGHT, the temperature had dropped to three degrees above zero, and at 10:00 a.m. it hadn’t budged, despite a blinding sun. The January day was the sort one mistakenly ventures into because it appears vivid and welcoming, the light on the snow as flashing and gay as a jewelry-store window.
On a depot platform cleared of snow, the town band had assembled, its members laughing, chafing hands and stamping feet to keep blood circulating.
The Army notice had been brief: Private Stillman, accompanied by a medic, would arrive by train on Saturday, January 18. Nell had begged Eudora Barnstable not to organize a grand welcome.
But Eudora insisted, “I’m sure the medic is simply de rigueur, Nell dear. You’ll see. Hillyard may be on crutches and need a little assistance.” Tears stood in Eudora’s eyes and her nose reddened. “I couldn’t bear for our greatest local hero not to be feted.”
Now, Mayor Lindstrom stood near the band, cradling in his arms a three-foot-long Key to Harvester while some two hundred townspeople flocked around, with others huddled in the little parking lot at the end of the depot.
At his request, Nell stood to the left of the mayor. And to her left, John, Laurence, Juliet, and Larry lined up. On the mayor’s right, the tall, tutelary figur
e of Eudora gazed about at her subjects. Beside her, husband Edward, beset and gray at forty-two, dug gloved hands into the pockets of his overcoat.
To his father’s right, young Ed, eleven now—a late and solitary birth in the Barnstable household—tapped his feet and waved a small flag in time to “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.”
From the eastern distance, the sound of a train whistle called them all to attention, its cry barely succeeding against a west wind that tossed sound, smoke, and steam back the way they’d come. Nell shuddered and drew herself up.
John squeezed her gloved hand. “It’s going to be all right.”
“Well, this is it,” the mayor said.
Then, before Nell was ready, the train whistle was blowing again, this time at the crossing only a mile from town. Though Nell had dressed in layers of warm clothing and drawn her coat collar around her ears, she could not stop shaking. John slipped behind her, shielding her from the wind.
Suddenly, the train chuffed and squealed to a halt before them, exhaling a solemn cloud of steam. A conductor, with the dignity of a pallbearer, descended the steps of the passenger car, placing the portable step with care.
Nell didn’t see Hilly at any of the windows. Then, at the top of the iron steps, a soldier appeared, his body half turned to assist another—surely Hilly—to make his way to the platform. Hobbling, faltering, but without crutches, Hilly was at last framed in the entrance, peering out as if this place were unknown to him and possibly dangerous. At sight of the hometown boy, the band director waved his arms, and the musicians struck up a galloping “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The escort soldier flashed a glance of disapproval.
With the escort’s hand to guide him, Hilly lurched down the several steps. On the ground, he stared for long moments at the crowd, swiveling his head first in one direction, then the other. Forgetting his apprehension and slipping free of the medic’s grasp, he rushed forward. Grinning and drooling a little, he stood behind the music director, waving his arms in imitation. Excitation.
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 18
