The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  I lay in the crib, willing myself, as I often did, into that landscape, which I had furnished with everything I could desire: a small grape arbor like Grandpa Erhardt’s; a big, red tricycle to replace the little one that somebody had run over out in the parking lot; and a tree house perched among the spreading limbs of an old shade tree.

  When I visited the clock, my hair curled and returned to the blond color it had known before kindergarten, my bony arms and legs responded to my every command, turning perfect cartwheels and tapping out pulsing, staccato dances like those Sally Wheeler was learning at Martha Beverton’s Tap and Toe classes.

  Picking some of the larkspur to carry into the cottage with me, I skipped down a flagstone path to a trellised doorway.

  At half past three, I woke, sweaty and rumpled, my starched, red dress drooping like sad, old curtains. Mama was not on the big bed. In the kitchen a spoon scraped the inside of a saucepan. Climbing out of the crib with the Cape Ann booklet, I picked up my shoes and carried them to the kitchen.

  “What’re you making?” I asked, sitting down at the table to put on my shoes.

  “Penuche frosting.”

  “Is there enough for candy?”

  “Yes.”

  Mama usually made extra penuche frosting for candies, which she spooned out on waxed paper, pressing a walnut half into each.

  “Can I show you a house plan called the Cape Ann?”

  “Not now.”

  “Can I go outside?”

  She looked at me. “Put on an old dress. Why did you wear that one to bed?”

  “I couldn’t undo the buttons.”

  She set down the big spoon and unbuttoned the back of my dress.

  “Can I walk down the tracks?”

  “Not too far.”

  When I had pulled on an old pink dress whose bodice smocking was coming unsmocked, I asked Mama, “Do we have any money saved for the house?”

  “We had five hundred dollars.”

  “How much do we have now?”

  “Your fool papa lost two hundred dollars, so we’ve got three hundred left.” She poured frosting on the cake. “I could kill him,” she said, smoothing the frosting with vicious swipes of the back of the big spoon.

  “Is he coming home for supper?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” She was almost as mad as she’d been in the morning. I could feel her anger like the summer heat that rose in waves from the brick platform.

  “You be home for supper,” she said as I went out the door.

  Tiptoeing past the office windows, I kept my eyes downcast. It was as though in not coming home to lunch, Papa had turned his back on me as well as on Mama. What would I say to him when I saw him? What would he say to me? I squirmed and hurried west, following the sun down the tracks.

  Looking both ways first, I ran fast across Fourth Street. Businesses sprawled messily out along Fourth Street, vacant lots and weedy patches between them; businesses that didn’t fit on Main Street, due either to their nature or their size. Rayzeen’s Lumberyard. Grubb’s Junkyard and Body Shop. The Nite Time Saloon, which because of local law served only beer. And Marcella’s Permanent Wave, which Mama said was a cover-up for the bootleg, hard liquor business of Marcella’s husband, Barney Finney. Beverly Ridza from catechism class lived down there, past Grubb’s Junkyard.

  On the other side of Fourth Street, I slowed to stare into the hobo jungle on the left. A couple of hundred yards distant from the depot, the hobo jungle was the exposed basement of a warehouse long ago razed or burned to the ground. It was a hole in the ground with concrete and stone walls, but no stairs. In one corner a pair of empty oil drums, one smaller than the other, served as steps. In the center of the space, someone had collected old bricks, lined them up, and laid a metal grill over them. Here the men who stopped over cooked cans of beans or soup, toasted bread, and made coffee.

  If the weather was good and Mama had half a dozen magazines to throw away, she’d pack them in a grocery bag with a couple of cans of Campbell’s soup and send me with them down to the jungle. If someone was there, I’d leave them at the edge, telling the men, “From Mama.” If no one was camped, I’d climb down the oil cans and rummage around. Interesting relics could be found: a key to a door somewhere, a half-full can of snoose, a jewel-like piece of melted glass from the ashes of the fire. Once I found a letter, never sealed, addressed, or mailed.

  “What does it say?” I asked Mama.

  “I don’t think we should read it,” Mama said. “Maybe he’s just gone looking for a meal. He’ll come back and find it gone.”

  “No, he won’t. Nobody’s been in the jungle for two days.”

  Mama sat down at the table and looked at the envelope. She was of two minds. At length she slipped the letter out and unfolded it. Written on cheap, lined paper, it was dated October 15, 1938.

  Dear Bill,

  I’m writing from a little burg called Harvester up here in Minnesota, Land of the Swedes and Home of the Norwegians. There are more Johnsons and Olsons than leaves on the trees. But matter of fact, there aren’t too many leaves on the trees, it being the middle of October. Nights are getting cold and sometimes, along toward morning, it almost smells like snow! Christ, I’ve got to head south. No more work here and no work there, but I can’t stick around Minnesota, especially since I lost my heavy jacket outside that goddamned Cicero last spring.

  I was sure glad to hear from Eddie P. that you found something steady in Florida. Do you have Elda and the kids with you now? Splitting up the family is the worst.

  I had some work up on Lake Superior on an ore boat this summer, but those damned things can’t run in the winter so I’m traveling again. I’d hoped to get something around here to see me through the winter, but nothing’s turned up, and I can’t stick much longer. Maybe I’ll head for Texas. God, I’m sick of boxcars.

  If I get over Florida way, I might stop for a day or two if that’s all right. I haven’t seen Sis since the farm was sold. Six years! If Elda and the kids are in Florida, I’d like to see them, but I don’t mean to sponge, Bill. I think you know that.

  I suppose Ma is still at Aunt Mary’s. That’s where I write her. I’d like to get back East next spring to see them. I was in Oregon in ’33 when Pa passed on. There wasn’t any way to reach me. If anything happened to Ma and I didn’t know, I’d just as soon ride the goddamned railroad right into the Gulf of Mexico.

  Summer before last I was on a farm east of here, near a place called New Ulm. That was beautiful country, along the Minnesota River, but the owner didn’t want to keep me over the winter because the daughter was getting interested. She was a nice girl. If I could have found something steady around here, I’d have written to her.

  When do you think there’ll be work, Bill, and where do you think it’ll be? I’d like to be there when it opens up. I’ve bummed so damned long, I’m getting to feel like a bum. Sometimes I stink till I don’t want to lie down beside myself. I remember Saturday nights on the farm, and the old galvanized tub that Ma filled. God, she scrubbed my head so hard, I thought she’d leave scars. I’d sure like to feel that clean again.

  Your brother-in-law,

  Earl Samson

  “I wish I knew where that Bill lived, and I’d send him this,” Mama said.

  “Why didn’t Earl mail the letter, Mama?”

  “Maybe he didn’t have the price of a stamp.” She carried the letter in the bedroom and put it in her bureau drawer.

  I found the letter in the hobo jungle last fall, in October. This was May. Had Earl Samson come back to Minnesota with the warm weather, or had he found “something steady” down south? I would like to meet him. Could he be one of these men in the jungle today? The one reading the magazine looked too young, the one sleeping, too old.

  I passed by. Leaving the tracks, I crossed the shallow ditch, wading through the high, warm grass. It was cool among the cottonwoods. This was where the tramps lay around during hot summer days when they weren’t
out looking for work or a handout. At night they slept in the basement, where dogs couldn’t bother them. There were a couple of wooden crates here, big ones, that gave some protection from the rain.

  I picked my way through the silken grass and debris, searching for relics. Maybe evidence of Earl Samson. There wasn’t much here today. I crouched to inspect a brown leather shoe, cracked and scuffed till it was nearly white, a hole in the sole the size of a silver dollar. I put my hand inside the shoe and stuck my fingers through the hole. All of them fit. Further on I picked up an empty half-pint whiskey bottle, decided the label wasn’t pretty, and threw it aside again. Propped against one of the cottonwoods was a hoe with a broken-off handle. The men used it to bury their bowel movements when they relieved themselves in this grove.

  When I had sifted through everything that was new and found no treasures, I returned to the tracks and continued west out of town, tightrope walking, putting one foot directly in front of the other, along the rail, my arms outstretched, like someone trying to fly.

  As Harvester fell behind me, tall shrubs and pussy willows sprang up along the ditches on either side of the rail bed. They were forests for short people like me. I had come earlier in the spring with Mama to pick pussy willows for the living room, for Mama’s friends, and for Father Delias. Mama took special care for old Father Delias. She asked at the Loon Cafe for an empty lard can, and they gave her one the size of a slop pail. She scrubbed it out, covered it with a scrap of maroon-and-cream-striped satin upholstery fabric, weighted it with small rocks, and arranged tall pussy willows in it for his office in the rectory.

  When Father saw it, he exclaimed, “Why, that’s fit for a castle, Arlene.” He always called Mama by her first name, as if she were a little sister or a favored niece. “You must have remembered the dark red chairs in the office!”

  Cinders were one of the few bad things about trains. I sat down on one of the rails, pulled off a shoe, and dumped out a cinder. Ahead about a hundred yards was a trestle over a dry gulch. It wasn’t very high, but “high enough to break your neck,” Mama told me. She didn’t know that I sometimes crossed it when she wasn’t with me. I was careful, though. I didn’t want to break my neck. Otto Monke, one of the custodians at school, broke his back when he was young. Now he was bent over and looked like he had a box in his back.

  When I came to the trestle, I walked between the rails, stepping carefully from tie to tie, looking down at the scrubby gulch. Leroy Mosely from catechism class had told me he’d seen a rattlesnake down there. But he was a liar who spent his spare time scaring girls. The only good thing about him was that he would be in the confessional longer than I was, when we had our first confession next spring.

  Mama said there weren’t any poisonous snakes in south central Minnesota. Up in the North Woods there were a few timber snakes that were poisonous, she said, but she’d never seen one. If Leroy Mosely had seen a snake in the gulch, Mama explained, it was a garter snake or a gopher snake, and they weren’t poisonous.

  A jackrabbit jumped up like a jack-in-the-box and shot across the gulch. It startled me and I lurched, nearly losing my balance. My heart raced. I sat down on the trestle. For several minutes I rested, but my heart went on pounding. I was afraid. Yet a jackrabbit was nothing to fear. Snakes must be making me feel this way. Thinking about snakes could make you sweaty and shaky.

  At the other end of the trestle, on the embankment, was a big patch of mustard, looking like butter spread across the ground. I thought I spied wild onion not far from some box elders at the top of the embankment, maybe fifty yards down the gulch.

  Rising slowly, gingerly, I stood up, not moving, like someone who has had a dizzy spell. At length I set out, but hesitantly, not as jaunty as I’d been. When I reached the far side of the railroad bridge, I turned right, toward the wildflowers. The dry earth of the embankment crumbled beneath my feet. My shoes filled with it, and my socks turned dusty gray.

  I was snapping off a good bundle of mustard and at the same time working toward the wild onion, which lay between me and the stand of box elders. The white onion flowers were going to be pretty mixed into the vibrant yellow of the mustard. Mama would arrange them in the cut-glass vase that had been a wedding gift from her Aunt Essie who lived in Fargo.

  I didn’t see any snakes. A gopher scurried down his hole as I came near, and several squirrels ran up the box elder trunks and began jumping from tree to tree, like children pretending to be frightened. Across the gulch, a meadowlark sang prettily.

  It was warm and dusty among the scrub and flowers. I was beginning to feel itchy and drowsy. It would be pleasant to put the flowers down, sit on the ground, and scratch my legs, but the sun was falling behind the box elders and the buzz of insects was dying. I should start home if I didn’t want to be late for supper. I had come a little further than I ought.

  In the shadows among the trees at the top of the embankment, the figure of a man appeared. Who could that be? A tramp, maybe. I stood frozen, staring up at him, feeling small and very short legged. Maybe it was someone who had come to arrest me for picking flowers that didn’t belong to me.

  I threw the flowers down and took off as fast as my legs would carry me, directly through the mustard, toward the trestle. If I had thought, I would have run across the gulch and up the other side. It wasn’t necessary to take the trestle. But I wasn’t thinking. I fled as I had come, across the railroad bridge.

  Back by the onion flowers a voice squawked and screamed. Was this the bogeyman Grandpa Erhardt had told me about? The one who waited at the top of the stairs? The one Mama had assured me was only a joke? This bogeyman had waited at the top of the embankment, among the trees.

  Running on the rough ties was awkward. I stumbled, caught myself, and stumbled again. If I fell over the edge, I would break my neck, and the bogeyman would get me for sure, down there in the wash. I didn’t know what a bogeyman did when he caught you.

  A sharp pain pierced my right side, below the ribs. I pressed my fist against it. Behind me now, heavy shoes thudded on the bridge. The voice howled unintelligible words.

  Even if I made it across the trestle, it was a long way back to town. The water tower and the grain elevators looked like gray giants lined up on the horizon, distant friends I would never reach.

  If I gained the far side of the bridge, should I dash into the brush? Could I hide there? The heavy shoes were close. They would catch me before I could escape. Only a few feet now. His grunting breath touched my hair.

  “Oh, My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all…”

  Fingers brushed my dress. Propelled by horror, I flew through the air, landing hard on cinders and gravel and solid earth, twisting and kicking, rolling through the grass and screaming, “… because they offend Thee, My Lord, Who art all good and deserving of all my love …”

  There was nowhere to go. I curled into a ball, wrapped my arms around my head, closed my eyes, and sobbed, “I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace—” Nothing happened. I stopped praying. There was absolute stillness except for the sound of my thick breathing. Turning my head slightly, I opened one eye.

  Sitting on the grass beside the rail bed, wildflowers cradled in one arm, was Hilly Stillman.

  6

  I SAT UP. “WHAT are you doing out here?”

  Hilly held up the yellow and white flowers. Tears stood in his eyes, and his nose was running. He misunderstood my question, and I didn’t ask him again.

  Getting to my feet, I surveyed the damage. Both my knees were scraped and dirty, likewise one of my elbows. There were long scratches on my thighs where I’d dived into the cinders and gravel, and my chin was hot and tender.

  In the west, the sun was lying flat on the tracks. A pinkish yellow shaft of it lit Hilly, washing his profile and his white shirt in a dramatic glow. His unhappiness began to smooth away. In repose, Hilly’s face retained the
curved, unformed look of an eighteen-year-old boy’s. The skin was still soft despite years in the sun and cold of Main Street. If Hilly got his sanity back, would his face become old? He held the flowers out to me. They felt cool in my hands.

  “Pretty,” Hilly said.

  I nodded. “I have to get home,” I told him. “It’s late. Mama’s going to be mad.”

  We walked along the verge of the rail bed, saying little. You didn’t have to talk a lot to Hilly. Sometimes words confused him, as when Mama had told him he could buy ice cream with his earnings. But he liked to listen to others talk. Mama said Hilly listened to other people’s conversations with sweet rapture, as though he were at a concert. This made some people nervous, but not Mama. When Hilly was around, she talked to me about anything that came into her head because it entertained him.

  When he was excited, Hilly lost what little control of his words he had. No one wanted to sit by him at a softball game because he screamed like a banshee when the ball was hit. Bill McGivern said that when Hilly first started going to softball games after the war, he’d jump down from the stands and run after the ball. The players on the Harvester Blue Sox would just tell him to get the hell back up in the stands, but a first baseman from Red Berry once got so riled, he hit Hilly with his fist and knocked him down.

  Hilly never hit back. Not the softball player, and not the eleven-and twelve-year-old boys who taunted him and threw things at him. I thought it was strange that someone who’d been a hero in the war never hit back. When I told this to Mama, she said thank God he didn’t, or people around here would throw him in the state hospital for the insane and retarded faster than you could salute the flag.

  The six o’clock whistle blew. We could hear it plainly. Supper was always on the table at five-thirty. Hilly looked at me.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. But I was worried. I didn’t want to get the back of the brush.