Whipple's Castle

by Thomas Williams

  Although it was not in Henrietta’s nature to so casually mention things in her past, Sally would have found some of her experiences hard to believe too. That her father was partly eaten by pigs, for instance, or the winter they lived mostly on wild vegetables, tubers and johnnycake, when she had come down with what she now believed to have been either a vitamin deficiency or an allergy to some of that food—apples, pigweed, burdock, canned fiddleheads, dandelion greens, Jerusalem artichoke, hemlock tea and all the rest—and came out with sores and runny pus all over her body, so that she smelled awful, and most likely nearly died. The Overseer of the Poor brought them milk and flour. Their three cows had been condemned because of tuberculosis, and a bear had killed the two heifers in the orchard. They burned gray birch that winter, green and unsplit, and they were as close to the bone as most people ever got. They had no tree that Christmas because her grandfather was too tired to find one and drag it home. Her father sat in the kitchen, holding his soiled bandaged stumps with fearful care, and gave great breathless sobs because of his worthlessness and frustration. Of all the Christmases of her childhood, that was the one she remembered most clearly.

  One miraculous thing happened on Christmas Eve, and at least one close shave. Tom came home after nearly a year of God knew where—that was the miracle. Kate heard a scrabbling, thumping noise at the back door and opened the inner door. There in the small window of the storm door was a cat’s face staring at her, right into her eyes. Tom had climbed up the storm door by sheer claw, as he always did, and looked in. She opened the door and he dropped down, walked in, twitched his tail, thumped his head on her ankle as of old, jumped up on the stool and said “Miaow.”

  For a moment she was confused about his absence. Had he really been gone? There he was, looking no different. His eyes were as green, his gray tiger coat as smooth and neat as ever, his gums as pink. He licked a paw, combed his brow with it, and said “Miaow” again.

  “Tom!” she said, and ran into the living room, where David, Horace, Peggy and her mother and rather sat around the tree. “Tom’s back!” To prove her point he followed her in, his tail up straight, each paw putting itself down with his old lion’s authority, in which there always seemed to be some distaste for the texture of the carpet. He went straight to David, who sat in a high-backed oak and leather chair, jumped up on his lap and rolled over, exposing his fleecy white belly. When David scratched his stomach, Tom grabbed David’s hand with his front paws and gently bit it as he went clawlessly through the gutting motions with his hind paws. There was no doubt that he was back, and that he didn’t care to discuss his absence, or to allude to it by any way of strange behavior. He had been gone, they finally decided, about eight months.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Harvey asked him. “Where the hell have you been, you murdering nightwalker?” Tom looked over at him and slowly closed his eyes.

  “He’s got one little souvenir of his travels,” David said, rolling the fur away from a long scar on his flank. Tom batted his hand away and jumped down.

  “He’s been out on the tomcat trail,” Harvey said. “He’s lucky that’s all he’s got.”

  “When Wood and Sally come, let’s not mention it,” Kate said. “Let’s see what Wood says!”

  Tom walked over to where Horace was sitting on the floor with his back against the paneling. He sat down in front of Horace, looked at him and yawned fearsomely, exposing all his needlelike white teeth and the pink cavern of his throat.

  Horace shivered and looked away from those weapons. He wished Wood were back. He had never understood the cat, never understood why the others all seemed to like it, and to kid with it, as his father just had, about its hunting prowess. “What a killer!” David had often said proudly.

  The cat went to the dining-room archway and rubbed itself in mock affection against the molding. “Miaow!” it said, and Kate rushed out to get it a saucer of milk.

  Peggy sat next to the fire, licking a peppermint candy cane to make it last. She saw Horace shiver when the cat yawned at him, and she thought she knew how he felt. One night almost a year ago she woke up hearing the shrill death screams of a rabbit. Over and over the high “No! No!” broke out of the darkness, then died down, then was torn out again, pitiful and hopeless with tenor. What could a rabbit call to for help? That cry was for no reason but pain and despair. It took a quarter of an hour before the cries came no more. In the morning by the outhouse she found a dead coney rabbit, its spine bare where a cat, or something, had eaten out its live backstrap muscles. The Whipples’ fondness for Tom had always been a little strange to her too, and it made them all somehow larger than life, even somewhat frightening and heroic, as though they could look straight at death without even a shudder.

  Wood and Sally De Oestris finally arrived, and Sally came slowly in on her canes, her deep voice merrily booming. Her fur coat was removed and she was ensconced in the high oak chair David vacated for her, and given a glass of sherry. She shook out her beads and adjusted herself and the brilliant folds of her blue dress, grinning all the while. She noticed Peggy and said, “Margaret Mudd! What’s this? A little Wandervogel come for Christmas?”

  Peggy nodded shyly, and Sally said, “I knew it. Wood told me in time to include something for you, Peggy Mudd. You’ll find it under the tree in the morning.” She looked fiercely about her and said, “Well!”

  Wood and David had brought her packages in from the car, and now, as was their custom on Christmas Eve, they began with great mock secrecy, and lies as to which present was for whom, to put all the presents under the tree.

  “A case of Lifebuoy for Kate!” David said, tucking a package far back under the tree. “Beee-oooh!” he said, imitating the radio.

  “The keys to Davy’s new Plymouth convertible!” Kate said as she came back from the hall closet with one tiny box in her hand.

  Peggy sat basking in their energy. Mr. Whipple said something to Sally and she roared, though her white head barely moved. Her carefully set white hair glinted all the colors of the tree. Mrs. Whipple took a glass of sherry and came to sit on another wicker stool next to Peggy.

  “I saw another present for you in the hall closet,” she whispered, and her hand came over to lie warmly on Peggy’s arm.

  Soon the presents were all partly hidden beneath the tree. Their shiny bows and flowered wrappings could be seen, precious and powerful shapes in there in the colorful dusk. Even she had bought presents for them all, because of Wood, who’d insisted on lending her five dollars. He’d ordered her to take the five dollars. When she said she couldn’t, he said she must, and frowned at her from such a stern height she trembled, and couldn’t refuse. She bought Wood a wallet, the most expensive thing, handkerchiefs for Kate and Mrs. Whipple, a boondoggle and steel key ring for David, a pair of knit gloves for Horace and, in consultation with Mrs. Whipple, a little pipe-reaming tool for Mr. Whipple, who occasionally smoked a pipe. All this came to four dollars and eighty-five cents. In spite of her happiness at having bought these things for all the Whipples, it seemed like such a lot of money she could never pay it back.

  Just then Tom, evidently having finished his milk, stepped quietly into the center of the room, sat down, stuck one hind leg out straight as a Nazi saluting Hitler, and began to lick himself. Peggy watched Wood, and then, as Wood’s eyes opened in surprise, she turned to Kate. Kate was bubbling inside and grinning—the only girl Peggy knew who could make faces and still look pretty.

  “Look who came home for Christmas!” Kate said.

  “It’s Tom!” Wood said.

  “Back from the wars, with a Purple Heart,” David said.

  Mrs. Whipple’s hand tightened on Peggy’s arm, and Peggy looked up at her. She was staring unhappily at Wood. Was it what David had said about the war? Wood was going into the Army soon, going away to danger. Suddenly her heart gave a great push, almost as if she’d lost her breath. How could he go from this house out there where her father was made sick with fear of the she
lls and bullets? It was more dangerous for Wood. Someone would take care of her father and tell him what to do, but Wood would choose to do what other people wouldn’t dare to do. For him the war would be too dangerous. He was too valuable, and somehow he shouldn’t be allowed to go. With this thought, which seemed to carry in it all the truth in the world, she saw at once the horror and injustice of the war. Nothing could be done about it. Wood was not going of his own free will, even though he might give that impression because he was resigned to it. It was by force that he had to go, and that force came suddenly right into this room in spite of the beautiful tree and these Whipples who were being happy and good to each other. These moments of Christmas now became, in her new knowledge, infinitely pitiful and valuable.

  Not hearing their talk, now, she began to make an accounting of this place in time, as if for future reference: the few pretty Christmas candies on waxed paper, Kate’s beauty and grace, the angel singing its unknown hymn from the top of the tree, the dark strength of the high room looming over them, but now brushed gently with the kindly light of Christmas. There in the corner sat Horace with his blunt awkwardness, and in the middle of the room Sally De Oestris glittered like a funny little queen on her throne, while Mr. Whipple drank and joked like a slightly dangerous clown. Mrs. Whipple, who was always kind but sometimes distant, as if she’d been called away in her mind to some other place; David, who said quick things that might be funny yet might be cruel. And Wood, whom she loved with all her heart and because of this deeply feared. He reminded her of…God. From across the room his great warmth pressed against her with nearly as tangible a force as the fire at her side.

  Horace watched Peggy through his crisp new glasses, seeing to his horror that tears were in her eyes. She was crying. He had to do something for her right now. Later, after all the excitement caused by this flash of need on his part had died down, he could not remember the idea of urgency at all; he merely acted. If only he could have made one intermediate step of some sort between the thought and its translation into action—if only he could leam to do this—such disasters might not always happen to him.

  He did not remember getting up from the floor. As to what he intended to give Peggy, he was never certain; the nearest real object might possibly have been a candy cane hanging on a branch of the tree near a blue ball with a red light deeply refleeted in its delicate, complicated panorama of reflections. But more than this, perhaps, was a kind of wonderful aura he crazily thought he might grasp out of the very air next to the tree—its calmness, its serenity before which they had all lost their cruelty—and bring this in his arms to Peggy. But then everything turned into slow motion; their horrified faces passed his dazed regard as slowly as great masses gather momentum. He had stepped on the cat, whose scream contained all kinds of judgments and bad information. He stepped off the cat into what seemed to be a slow yet irresistible wind. Their faces turned like moons, like the Herpes watching his total responsibility. He could make no explanations. His next step would, he realized, be upon a green-wrapped box he happened to know contained a present for his mother—a fragile lamp for her sewing table. So he did not take that step, and the wind, or whatever force it was, moved him toward the tree. Branches delicately touched his cheeks; lights and the glowing balls, icicles and strings of tinsel moved like galaxies toward and past his still wondering eyes as he passed remorselessly out of the room and into nightmare, the final, totally familiar crash and glassbreak of disaster.

  Later, after Horace’s groaning cries had stopped, the tree had been set straight again and the broken decorations picked up and swept up, they all sat quietly and listened to carols. Henrietta had her arm around Horace, and quieted him. Harvey searched for a way to make it less than it was, but could find no way to make it funny and small. The boy’s sheer terror had even frightened him, and his first ironic comment now echoed cruelly in his ears. “God bless us, every one!” he’d said in the first shocked silence before Horace bawled.

  Peggy sat on the other side of Horace and held his hand. David and Kate still looked rather stunned.

  Silent night, holy night,

  All is calm, all is bright…

  the radio voices sang. After a while Kate made hot chocolate, and the disaster faded into less than tragedy. After a long time, when Horace was even seen to smile, all their faces instantly imitated his.

  There were few memories of Christmases, just memories of Christmas. In the Whipples’ castle the great tree of one year faded into all the trees of all the years. But they would remember more clearly than most the Christmas Horace fell into the tree. The snow would stop, the roads would open out again from their house and from Leah, and the colors of Christmas, its familiar intimacies, its quality of truce, would change into the celebration of someone’s return. In their memories this would be the last real Christmas of childhood.

  PART II

  Amerika, du hast es besser

  Als wiser Continent, das alte,

  Hast keine verfdlene Schlösser

  Und keine Basalte.

  Goethe: “Den Vereinigten Staaten”

  13

  Harvey learned in February that one of his out-of-town clients was planning to set up a new metal-working plant in Leah which would train and employ over two hundred workers. This, he foresaw, would change the whole economy of the town, and immediately he began to consider ways in which he might turn this development to his own profit. The factory was going to take over the complex of brick buildings that had been the home of the long defunct Leah Woolen Mills, and within walking distance was a large wooden tenement that had long been half-heartedly for sale. Of its nine apartments, four were vacant, and the others now rented for twelve dollars a month. The asking price was $8,500. Taxes on the building were at present $250 per year. With the advent of the factory and its wartime salaries, he figured he could rent eight of the apartments for $60 and give the other rent-free to a part-time janitor. This would give him an immediate return of $480 per month on an investment of $8,500, plus an outlay of $1,500 for needed repairs, which would constitute the down payment on the loan. Five-percent interest on $8,500 would amount to $425 per year. Say the total amount of his investment was $10,000—$8,500 of which he’d borrow from the Leah Savings Bank. His yearly income from rents would be $5,760. Deducting interest on the loan ($425), oil, electricity and water (about $480), taxes ($250), insurance and repairs, he’d make at least $3,000 to $4,000 a year, if he counted equity, on an initial cash investment of $1,500.

  At first he thought of selling some common stocks and not dealing with the bank, but this would lose him 1 to 1½ percent in earnings. Gordon Ward, Sr., was, in dealings such as this, a fairly honest and very reasonable fellow, so he went ahead through Gordon’s bank. The owner of the building was a rather senile old Jew who lived in Summersville and came to Leah once a month to collect his rents and have a shouting fit—his standard reaction to complaints about disrepair. Harvey knew most of this because he’d carried the insurance on the building for years.

  Even if he could rent the apartments for only $50, or $45, he’d still be making money. Lots of money. In fact, there was another tenement nearby in better repair and thus more expensive, that he’d also decided to look into.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he said thoughtfully. In a little while he got into the habit of saying this. He would hear the words echoing in his mind, just after having said them unconsciously. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” In theory, at least, it seemed quite a good way to begin to get rich.

  On Monday, March 15, Wood reported to Grenier Field, Manchester, New Hampshire, for his preinduction physical. His blood, bones, joints, heart, sight and hearing all seemed to be in order, and upon his avowal that sexually, he liked girls not boys, he passed. He was then directed to report to the Reception Center at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for classification and assignment in fifteen days, on Tuesday, March 30, 1943. Transportation coupons were provided.

  When Wood
left on the Peanut for Manchester and his preinduction examinations, Horace began to believe that he might actually go away from their house and away from Leah. Horace couldn’t go to the station with him because he had to be in school, and when Wood came back that night, saying that he had passed, Horace began to count the days. Fifteen days seemed at first a long time. He couldn’t divide it into weeks because it was longer than two weeks.

  At dinner his father turned to Wood and said, “So he’s going to be a doughboy.”

  Wood frowned slightly and nodded.

  “They don’t call them doughboys,” David said. “They call them GIs now. ‘Government Issue.’”

  “Government Issue,” Horace’s father said. “The government issues about everything these days.” He thought for a moment. “Well, it’s a hell of a war, I’ll say that.” There seemed to be some grudging admiration in his voice. Usually he got impatient and even angry if anyone brought up the war.

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” Henrietta said.