The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  Bill McGivern said that when Hilly was growing up, he took a lot of razzing about all of it, and about being a mama’s boy as well. He was always waiting around school for her instead of slipping off and doing daring, forbidden things that would get him into the proper kind of trouble.

  When President Wilson declared war on the Central Powers, Hilly was the first boy from the county to volunteer. A big fuss was made over him. His picture appeared in all the weekly and biweekly papers in St. Bridget County. Girls promised to write him, and everyone was proud to have known him, to have been his friend.

  Hilly was sent to France, where he brought glory upon himself with his daring in battle and his courage in the rescue of fallen comrades. At home Mrs. Stillman was invited everywhere. When he was decorated by both the French and the American governments, Hilly’s picture again appeared in all the papers. Three different Harvester girls were circulating the story of their imminent engagement to Hilly.

  Word that Hilly had been wounded and news of the end of the war arrived at nearly the same time. A great armistice celebration was held in the school gymnasium, and Mrs. Stillman was installed on a throne bedecked with bunting and flags.

  When Hilly’s wounds had healed as well as they ever would, he was shipped back to Harvester, where news of his return had preceded him. Lurching down the steps of the railway car, accompanied by another soldier, sent to see him home, Hilly was nearly blown sideways by the spirited strains of “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary.” Assembled before him at the station were the high school band and a throng of a thousand flag-waving citizens. Right down in front, clutching a gilded, three-foot wooden key, was the mayor, with Mrs. Stillman shy and weeping beside him.

  The boy with Hilly held tight to his charge and glanced anxiously around. That, at least, is the way Bill McGivern, who was already mustered out, remembers it.

  But Hilly broke into an open-mouthed smile and began flailing his arms in time to the music as if he were conducting the band. The young man beside him spoke some words to him, and Mrs. Stillman ran to fling her arms around her son, but Hilly ignored them. The arm flailing seemed to lift him to a higher level of excitement, and Hilly commenced to jig precariously. Neither his mother nor the attendant soldier could restrain him.

  Grinning and flailing and jigging, Hilly careened back and forth across the station platform. Helpless, Mrs. Stillman watched, clutching her coat around her.

  Suddenly Hilly stopped. His smile slid away, and he cast his eyes down to the front of his trousers. The widening stain of urine there seemed to amaze him.

  The band concluded “Tipperary.” Hilly raised his eyes and took in the gathered crowd, bewilderment crimping his features. Staring again at the stain, he spread his hands to conceal it and crumpled to the platform on his knees.

  The crowd began to crumble and disperse. Finally there were only the three of them on the platform: Hilly on his knees, Mrs. Stillman crouched beside him, and the attendant soldier standing guard.

  Hilly’s purely physical wounds—shrapnel in the neck and chest, and trench foot severe enough to necessitate amputation of several toes on his right foot—healed, though he would always walk with a rolling limp. But Hilly’s mind had carried him back to early childhood. About age five, people speculated. Doctors held out hope that he would recover his sanity spontaneously, but it was only a hope, not a prognosis.

  Hilly and his mother lived in a small apartment over Rabel’s Meat Market on Main Street, across from the post office. When Mrs. Stillman was home from school, where she still taught third grade, Hilly sat at the window in his room watching people come and go on the street below, particularly the steady flow in and out of the post office. There was no mail delivery in Harvester, so everyone picked up their own. Hilly liked to see people coming out with packages and imagine what was in them.

  After Mrs. Stillman left for school in the morning and Hilly had eaten the breakfast laid out on the kitchen table, he dressed himself and descended the outside stairs, drifting out onto Main Street. So proud was he of being able to dress himself that one spring morning, a couple of months after his return, Hilly hobbled naked down the stairs, carrying the garments Mrs. Stillman had left on the chair beside his bed. Hitching his way into Rabel’s Meat Market, he threw down the clothes and grinned widely at Mr. Rabel, Mr. Rabel’s apprentice, and three ladies come to do marketing, exhorting, “Watch.” Then one at a time, Hilly picked up the articles of clothing, held them up to show his audience, and painstakingly pulled them on, taking great care to match buttons to buttonholes. Two of the three ladies ran out of the store without their purchases. The third, Bernice McGivern’s sister, Maxine, who was Dr. White’s nurse, remained, and when Hilly was done dressing himself, she clapped and told him he was a clever boy.

  That was the first of the Hilly Stillman stories. Although his mother persuaded Hilly never again to appear in public without clothing, short of taping his mouth and tying him to a chair, she could not prevent his going out and talking to people on the sidewalk. Most people turned away when they saw him. They crossed the street to avoid him. Boys taunted him, and if no one were around to stop them, they pelted him with stones, chasing him home and up the wooden stairs outside the butcher shop.

  Women were frightened by Hilly. He lacked decorum. He would be on you, talking six to the dozen, before you could extricate yourself, and most of what he said made no sense.

  Some women feared, or said they did, that Hilly could be dangerous. Violent or … the other. After all, everyone knew he’d appeared naked in Rabel’s Meat Market in front of three women. Didn’t that prove something? And he still wet himself when he was frightened. That was no picnic to be around.

  Men weren’t afraid of Hilly but they didn’t want him hanging around their stores scaring off customers. He was a public nuisance and embarrassment. And they didn’t have time to waste, listening to his nonsense. It was too bad the kid had gone through whatever he’d gone through, but it wasn’t their lookout. They had a living to make.

  After being shooed out of every business on Main Street two or three times, Hilly had claimed the bench in front of the post office. Townspeople were willing to cede him that.

  There were a few in Harvester, among them Bernice McGivern, her sister, and Mama, who stood still for Hilly’s disjointed greetings and observations. Descending the post office steps, Mama would call, “I hear you’ve eaten every strawberry in Harvester, Hilly.” (Hilly had once told her, “Strawberries I eat better in my cream than coffee.”)

  Hilly would smile, showing all his teeth, his tongue, and part of his throat. “Nah.” He would shake his head vigorously, like a five-year-old. “Some more of strawberries for you will find.” Mama would laugh and Hilly would laugh. Then she would hand him the letters or package she held. Hilly liked to carry people’s mail. If you didn’t have a car, he would carry it all the way home for you. Sometimes Mama bought him an ice cream cone or a soda pop.

  The hardest part of being nice to Hilly was his gratitude. He turned himself inside out for anyone who nodded. Sticking out of his back pocket, summer or winter, was an old rag. If you allowed him to carry your mail, he polished your car. And if you were in a hurry, that could be a nuisance. Mama said sometimes you damned near had to run over Hilly to get away.

  Occasionally when Mama went to pick up our mail, she drove an old black pickup that Papa used for delivering railroad freight. Hilly was crazy about the pickup and was always begging to ride in the back. If Mama wasn’t busy, she’d give him a little ride around town.

  One time she brought him to the depot and asked him if he thought he could wash the windows of our living quarters. There were only three, but they were very tall and ladders made Mama dizzy. Hilly became nearly sick with delight at being asked.

  It took him an entire day to wash the three windows inside and out. That was because he was so particular. And he kept polishing them long after they were spotless. When it looked as though he would polish his
way right through the glass, Mama would tell him it was time to start the next.

  At noon Mama carried lunch out to Hilly on a pie tin—roast beef sandwiches, chocolate cake, and coffee with cream—and she told him he could sit in the back of the pickup to eat it. Later, when she went to collect the empty pie tin, Hilly was on his hands and knees with a rag and bucket, scrubbing out the truck.

  At close to five, Mama said, “Hilly, the windows are beautiful. It’s time for me to take you home.” She gave him a dollar, explaining, “You can buy ice cream cones with that.” He seemed very pleased by the idea, and folding the bill carefully several times, he slipped it into his shirt pocket. Mama drove him downtown, dropping him in front of Rabel’s Meat Market.

  She was home again, paring potatoes to fry, when someone knocked at the door. Setting the potato aside and wiping her hands on her apron, she answered it. On the platform stood Hilly, a collapsed cone in each hand, melted ice cream running down his arms and onto his trousers and shoes.

  Though he smiled his wide-open-mouth smile, he was anxious. “Ice cream can’t walk so far,” he told her, nodding his head up and down, willing her to grasp the demonstrable truth of this and pardon it.

  Hilly and the ice cream cones was a story for bridge club. At nearly every meeting, someone had a Hilly tale. Like Mama, many of the bridge clubbers were respectful of Hilly, but two or three of them reflected the general feeling in town. “It’s wrong to treat him like anybody. It gives him false hopes. The next thing you know, he’ll expect to get married… or something,” I once heard Bessie Anderson say. And Cynthia Eggers added, “He’s a grown man who’s been in the war. He could be dangerous. Charlie says I’m not to speak to him.”

  But Bernice McGivern said, “It isn’t Christian to ignore him. Think of what he’s been through. Also, if he ever gets his brains back, I don’t want him looking at me and remembering that I crossed the street to avoid him.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” Mama mused. “Wouldn’t it just be swell if one day Hilly woke up and he was sane.”

  3

  AFTER MAMA LEFT FOR bridge, I got into my nightgown and found the Hershey bar in the cupboard. Mama always left a treat when she was out at night. And I always ate it right away, then was sorry I hadn’t had any willpower. It would be smart, I told myself, to break the bar into its many little squares. I could eat some now, some at bedtime, and save two or three for tomorrow. That was the sort of wise thing Katherine Albers, who sat behind me in the first grade, would do. It was one of the reasons it was difficult to like her. Another was her blond, Shirley Temple curls.

  Chocolate bar in hand, I climbed into my crib and gazed out the bedroom window. Across the tracks, the grain elevators loomed pale silver against the deepening lilac sky. On this side, half a block away, dim, yellow lights seemed miles distant in the ecru rooms of the Harvester Arms Hotel.

  Climbing out again, I fetched the house plan booklets Mama had brought home from Rayzeen’s Lumberyard that afternoon, turned on the light beside Mama and Papa’s bed, and hoisted myself once more over the side of the crib. Devouring my chocolate two and even three squares at a bite, I turned the pages of floor plans and exterior sketches, marveling at how prettily the trees and shrubs were arranged around the houses and how deftly they were trimmed to resemble balls and cones and half-spheres. No one in Harvester had trees and shrubs like those.

  I liked houses with shutters. And brick chimneys. I hoped we would have a house with shutters and a brick chimney. Maybe even a brick sidewalk, if it didn’t cost an arm and a leg. Houses with shutters and brick chimneys looked as if Katherine Albers lived in them. If I lived in a house like that, I would develop willpower and be a better person.

  Mama had shown me how to make sense of floor plans; which little lines were doors, which windows or fireplaces. Fireplaces were grand. The few movies I’d seen had had fireplaces in them. But fireplaces were expensive, Mama said, so we probably would not have one, not at first.

  Now, here was a cottage (a cottage was what we were going to build) that had two bathrooms, one up and one down. The luxury of that made me shiver. I ate the last of the chocolate and closed my eyes to imagine being the little girl of the house in a house with two bathrooms.

  This particular cottage (#127—The Cape Ann) had a front entryway with a coat closet so people didn’t need to step into the living room with snow on their boots. It also boasted a small den, which Mama was set on having for a sewing/guest room. Before I fell asleep, I would put the booklet on Mama and Papa’s bed, open to the Cape Ann.

  While I sat studying house plans, the early freight pulled in. No cars needed to be switched to a siding, so the train was soon shrieking and grinding its way toward St. Bridget. As it drew away from the station, its great exertion caused the partition next to my crib to tremble, and the towering window in the room to vibrate. I reached my hand out between the bars of the crib and pressed it to the pulsing compoboard.

  There were messages for me in the hissings and groanings of the trains as they stood before the depot; and in the deep succussion sent through the earth as they departed. “Hello. Missed you. Throw a kiss,” they jangled and snorted, rolling up to my door. Then, beneath the loading and unloading and the cries of trainmen, they whispered praise for my report cards and news of friends far away, like William Powell. Leaving me slowly, reluctantly, they called shrilly, “Sweet dreams. Don’t cry. I’ll be back.”

  Soon Papa locked up the office and waiting room and came home. It was nearly nine. In the kitchen he washed his hands and face, then appeared at the bedroom doorway, wiping them on a towel.

  “We’re going out,” he said, casting a sly, confidential smile at me.

  “Where?”

  “Herbie Wendel’s.”

  “Why?”

  “To play poker.”

  “I don’t know how to play poker.”

  “Not you, dummy.” He laughed. “I’m going to play poker.”

  “Why am I going?”

  “Because we don’t have a girl to stay with you.”

  “But I’ve got on my nightie.”

  “That’s okay. You can lie down at Herbie’s.”

  “I don’t think Mama would want me to go in my nightie. I better put on some clothes.”

  “There isn’t time. Come on, now. Get up. You don’t want me to miss this poker party, do you?”

  “Can I put on my shoes?”

  “Okay, but hurry up. I’m already late.”

  “Mama said you should call a girl to stay with me.”

  “It’s too late. By the time she got here, Herbie would think I wasn’t coming. You’ll have a good time, don’t worry.”

  “You could call Herbie.”

  “Look, don’t you want to go? I thought you’d be tickled. You’re always wanting to go places with me. Get your shoes on.” Lifting me out of the crib, he set me down on the big bed and handed me my shoes and socks.

  “Mama’s going to get mad,” I told him.

  “I’ll handle her,” he said, buckling my black shoes that had tiny round air holes across their tops in the pattern of a bow.

  From the end of the crib, I took down the pink chenille robe that was like Mama’s Sunday robe, and was struggling into it as Papa hurriedly steered me out into the night.

  “Should we leave Mama a note?”

  “I’ll call later from Herbie’s,” Papa explained and swung me up onto the high truck seat.

  Even wearing a nightie and robe, I shivered when my legs touched the cold seat. It was May and, while the days were warm and yellow, the nights were chilly.

  The engine didn’t turn over right away, but complained in low moans, no happier than I to be going across town late on a Friday night. Papa gave it plenty of choke, and it trembled unwillingly to life, shaking just as I shook. We sat waiting for the engine to warm up, Papa rubbing the cold steering wheel, I hugging myself and letting my teeth click like castanets.

  Well, maybe Herbie Wendel’s
boy, Donald, would still be up. Donald, a silly boy with a rooster’s comb of hair at the back of his head and a relentless giggle, was in first grade with me. Maybe Donald and I could color in his coloring books or cut pictures out of magazines. Maybe I could learn to play poker.

  We rattled through silent streets, disturbing the dignified cold. There were several cars lined up in front of the Wendel house. Papa parked opposite. I was embarrassed to be walking around the streets in my nightclothes, but I hastened along behind Papa, anxious to get inside where it was warm. Papa didn’t knock, but just opened the door and walked into the living room. Mrs. Wendel wasn’t home or he wouldn’t do that.

  “Had to bring my kid,” he told the four men at the dining room table. “Sorry. The old lady’s at bridge.”

  Standing in the archway between living room and dining room, I asked Herbie Wendel, “Is Donald home?”

  “No, honey. He’s gone for the weekend with his ma to her folks over at St. Bridget.” Mr. Wendel got up from the poker table and disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a big red bubble gum jawbreaker. “Donald likes these,” he said, handing it to me.

  I thanked him and slipped it into my mouth, but when it was in my cheek, it stretched the skin so taut it hurt; and when it was between my teeth, it forced my jaws so far apart they ached. Donald Wendel was just the sort to be fond of a ridiculous treat like this. Hadn’t anyone told him about Hershey bars?

  I hung at the edge of the dining room, shifting the jawbreaker in my mouth and observing the men peeking at their cards, tapping them with their fingertips and grunting, “Hit me,” and “See you,” and “I’m in.” It was a confusing game. Just when I was getting the hang of it, the rules changed.

  I had begun making dents in the jawbreaker, when Papa ordered, “Stop that crunching. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Leave her alone, Willie. She’s not hurting anybody,” Lloyd Grubb told him.