The Cape Ann

by Faith Sullivan

  “People who commit suicide go there automatically. Everybody knows that.”

  “The only people who know that for sure, are the people who commit suicide.”

  “That’s sacrilege, what you’re saying. No wonder the kid’s the way she is. The Church tells us that people who commit suicide go to hell. Are you telling me the Church is wrong?”

  “I don’t know what I’m telling you. I just know that Hilly didn’t go to hell.”

  “I guess I’d better talk to Father Delias about you, too.”

  “You do that, Willie.”

  Papa turned to Aunt Betty. “Betty, am I wrong? Does the Church say that people who kill themselves go to hell?”

  Aunt Betty squirmed and looked from Mama to me. “No. You’re not wrong, Willie. But, Hilly was—”

  “You’re damned right I’m not wrong,” Papa said, dipping his bread into the Swiss steak gravy. “You’re damned right I’m not wrong.”

  • • •

  “Do you mind if I don’t go to Bernice McGivern’s tonight?” Aunt Betty was wiping dishes.

  “You stay home with Lark,” Mama said. “I’m only going long enough to help her pick out a tablecloth and lay out the dishes. And I thought I’d leave our baked goods there tonight. That way we don’t have to worry about them tomorrow.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “I don’t mind. You baked all day.”

  “You were on the road all afternoon.”

  “Being on the road’s fun.” Mama handed Aunt Betty a wet plate. “Joe Navarin says the war may ruin my business. He says the government’s going to start controlling the amount of gas people can buy.”

  “Did they tell him that?”

  “I don’t think so, but he says the army’s going to need the gas.”

  “It’s so frightening, the war. I can hardly sleep at night.”

  “Do you hear soldiers marching at night?” I asked. Maybe that was why Aunt Betty couldn’t sleep.

  “What?” She looked at me blankly. “Soldiers marching?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I was thinking of something else.”

  “After Betty and I finish these dishes, I want you to carry the slop pails,” Mama told me.

  I nodded.

  “And I want you in bed early tonight. Tomorrow will be a long day. Aunt Betty’s going to see to it that you’re in bed by eight.”

  “What will you do if you can’t get gas?” I asked Mama.

  “I’ll think of something.”

  When I carried the slop pails across the tracks, I saw a man pulling himself up into an empty boxcar. I kept going, pretending I hadn’t seen him. Technically, the hoboes weren’t supposed to be in the cars. But he would freeze down in the hobo jungle tonight.

  After putting the slop pails under the sink and washing my face and hands, I slipped into my nightie and climbed into the crib. I was getting so big for the crib that it felt like a cage. Still, I did like the bunnies painted at either end. I would miss them when we moved into our new house and I had a real bed.

  From the living room Aunt Betty said, “I think I’ll get ready for bed, too.” A minute later she was brushing her teeth at the sink. As she rinsed her mouth, someone knocked at the door.

  I jumped down from the crib and ran into the kitchen.

  “Get back in bed,” Aunt Betty told me. “I’ll get it.”

  I retreated to the far side of the table.

  “Yes?” she asked, opening the storm door.

  A man stood on the step. I was sure it was the hobo. He had on an old, red plaid wool jacket, frayed at the bottom, a beaked gray wool cap with the earflaps down, faded black twill work trousers, and big, heavy shoes, like workmen wore.

  “Ma’am? I don’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but… I’m hungry. I’d pay, but I run out of cash.”

  “Step inside. On the paper.” Aunt Betty closed the door against the cold and turned on the burner under the coffee.

  The man nodded to me.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  “Someplace warm.”

  “California?”

  “If it works out that way. Maybe the gulf.”

  “Do you know a man named Earl Samson?”

  “I can’t say I do. At least not by his name.”

  “He’s a friend of mine. You might meet him sometime.”

  “He riding the boxcars?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  “If you meet him, will you tell him something?”

  “If I can remember.”

  “Tell him Angela Roosevelt is on the radio in Chicago. Can you remember that?”

  “Angela Roosevelt is on the radio in Chicago.”

  “You can have a seat there for a minute,” Aunt Betty told the man, setting a cup of coffee on the table.

  He removed his cap and sat down. “Thank you.”

  “You can only stay a minute, because my brother-in-law who works in there”—she nodded toward the office—“might come any time.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Aunt Betty buttered two slices of nut bread, set them on a plate, and placed it before the hobo. “I’ll wrap the rest of it up for you,” she said, and went to tie up the remainder of the loaf in wax paper, then slip it into a brown bag. Pouring milk into a fruit jar, she put that in the bag as well.

  “Is there any chores I can do for you?” he asked. “I saw the little girl carrying pails across the tracks.”

  “No. There’s nothing.”

  “Excuse me.” Aunt Betty left for a moment. I heard her digging in her purse. Returning, she handed the man a quarter.

  When he had gone and Aunt Betty was preparing to wash his dishes, I said, “You were really nice to him.”

  She sat down. “Didn’t you think he looked like Uncle Stan?” she asked, and she put her head down on her arms.

  I didn’t think he looked one bit like Uncle Stan.

  After the westbound freight had groaned away, pulling with it the empty boxcar with a Missouri Pacific emblem on the outside and our new friend on the inside, Papa came in for a cup of coffee. I heard him poking around in the bread box, searching for the nut bread.

  “Betty?” he said, but when he walked into the living room, he saw that she was asleep. “Damn,” he swore, and settled for saltine crackers with jam.

  After he had snacked, Papa came in the bedroom to get a handkerchief from the drawer. “You’re supposed to be asleep,” he told me.

  “Aunt Betty said I could read my book for a while.”

  He was ready to leave again when it occurred to him that this was an ideal time to get something settled between us. Sitting down on the edge of the big bed, he said, “You know that you make me very sad.”

  “Are you going to talk about Hilly again?”

  “I’m going to tell you how sad it makes me that your ma and I’ll be in heaven and our little girl’ll be down in hell. What’ll we tell people?”

  “Tell ’em I went to hell,” I said, lying down and pulling the quilt up.

  “You don’t care how sad I am,” he said as if his heart would break.

  “I care, but I don’t want to talk about hell.”

  “No, I wouldn’t either if I was going there.”

  “Maybe you will,” I said, “maybe we’ll be together.”

  “Well, that’s the damnedest thing I ever heard of a kid telling her pa,” he said, rising. “We’ll see who goes to hell.” He turned and fled back to the depot office.

  53

  PAPA DIDN’T ATTEND HILLY’S funeral. He was taking no chances with his immortal soul. And, as he pointed out two or three times between Saturday and Tuesday, he had been no friend of Hilly’s in life. He would be no hypocrite in death.

  One problem between Papa and Hilly was that, however touched Hilly might have been, he’d been a bona fide war hero. Unless our shore
s were overrun by Huns and Nips, Papa would never be called on to defend his country. He resented Hilly’s fame.

  The number of villagers who did attend the funeral was not legion. Mama and Aunt Betty and I sat in the front pew of the First Methodist Church, next to Mrs. Stillman. Across the aisle were Bernice McGivern, Bill, and Bernice’s sister, Maxine, who was Doctor White’s assistant. Dr. and Mrs. White sat beside them. And in the pew behind were Mr. Navarin, his son Danny, Sonny Steen, and a man I didn’t recognize who turned out to be the pallbearer from Red Berry.

  Behind Mama and me were Mrs. Wheeler and Sally. And beside them, Beverly and Mrs. Ridza. In the back pew on our side sat a graying, red-faced man in the uniform of an officer of the last war. Dignified and distant, he was not familiar to me, or to Mama.

  Over Hilly’s closed casket was draped an American flag, and on that stood a photograph of the young Hilly in his uniform. It was the portrait from the table in Mrs. Stillman’s living room. The sweet, open, far-off gaze made me feel right with myself.

  The minister’s sermon was chaste and succinct, giving offense to no one and not much comfort either. The comfort lay in his giving Hilly a Christian burial. For that we were all immoderately grateful.

  At the cemetery the red-faced officer and Bill McGivern folded the flag ceremoniously and presented it to Mrs. Stillman. But the officer failed to show up at the gathering at Bernice McGivern’s house. Who had he been?

  “I never laid eyes on the man before,” Bill McGivern confessed to Mrs. Stillman, who sat in the place of honor, the best chair, in the bay window of the McGivern living room. “A captain, he was.”

  Mrs. Stillman shook her head. She had not recognized the officer. “He had a fine bearing,” she noted.

  “‘I never laid eyes on him before.’ That’s what Bill McGivern told Mrs. Stillman,” Mama relayed to Papa at supper. “And Bill McGivern knows nearly every legionnaire in the state. Isn’t that interesting, Willie?”

  “That Bill McGivern knows every legionnaire in the state?”

  “No. That he didn’t know this mysterious captain.”

  Papa shrugged. “How many people came to the funeral?”

  “About twenty-five, I guess. And they all came to Bernice’s except the officer.” She reaffirmed to Aunt Betty, “I don’t care what anyone says, it was mysterious.”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Mama, when are you going to talk to Mr. Rayzeen again about the new house?” I asked. I thought that it would be wonderful if we had a bay window in the living room like the one Mrs. Stillman sat in at Bernice McGivern’s.

  “Saturday. I decided to wait till Saturday because that way I don’t have to hurry back in from the road to get there by closing.”

  “Could you ask him how much it’d cost to have a bay window in the living room?”

  “All right. I’ll ask.”

  “I saw a fabric in a magazine that’d make beautiful living room drapes,” Aunt Betty told Mama. “It was an off-white background with cabbage roses and peonies in different shades of pink, from real pale to real dark—almost red—and then lots of forest green leaves spread all over. It was stunning.”

  “Wouldn’t those be pretty on either side of a bay window, with lace curtains in between?” Mama responded.

  “And the walls could match the off-white in the background of the fabric.”

  “Is there going to be dessert?” Papa demanded.

  Mama rose to fetch the remaining pie and cake she’d hauled home from Bernice McGivern’s. Bernice had said, “You take this home. Bill and I’ll never get around all this food.” There were three pieces of chocolate cake and two of mincemeat pie.

  “Is there any of that nut bread?” Papa inquired.

  “You mean the kind we had at supper last night?”

  “What other kind would I mean?”

  “Lark, see if there’s any in the bread box,” Mama told me.

  “I looked in there,” Papa said. “There’s none in there.”

  “Then I guess we don’t have any,” Mama said.

  Aunt Betty was giving me a keen look. She could have saved herself the trouble. I wasn’t going to tell.

  “Mighty damned funny how that disappeared so suddenly,” Papa complained.

  “You like chocolate cake, Willie. Why don’t you have a piece of that?”

  “I had my mouth set for nut bread,” he demurred.

  Aunt Betty poured coffee. “That was a beautiful cloth Bernice McGivern had on her dining room table.”

  “I picked it out,” Mama said. “She was going to use one that had a lot of cross-stitch on it. And I said, ‘No, Bernice, you don’t want to do that, with all the different platters and plates that’ll be laid out. It’ll look too busy. Use the ecru damask,’ I told her.”

  “You were right. It had a rich look to it.”

  Papa pushed back from the table, rattling the cups and spilling coffee into the saucers. “It’s like sitting with three cackling damned hens. I am sick of hearing about your tablecloths and houses.” He put his knuckles on the table, bending close to Mama’s face. “Where in hell will you be, lady, if I refuse to cosign?”

  “You can’t stop me, Willie. I’ve got the down payment. I’ll get my Papa to cosign.”

  Papa shoved the table, knocking the ketchup bottle over. “There’s no room left for me in this family. Where’s the respect due me?” He turned and flung himself out the door. After slamming the inside door, he tried to slam the storm door. But it’s difficult to slam a storm door because of the air that’s caught between the two doors. He had to come back and give it an extra bang with his fist.

  “Lark, get to your homework,” Mama said, as if she were upset with me. “You missed a whole day of school. You get that made up now.”

  Mama and Aunt Betty remained at the table. Aunt Betty stood the ketchup bottle up. “It’s my fault, Arlene. Because of me you’re crowded.”

  “It’s not your fault. We were crowded before you ever came. Answer me this, Betty, why is Willie so against the new house? Can you tell me that?”

  Aunt Betty considered. She placed a paper napkin under her cup to absorb the spilled coffee, and then she said, “Willie thinks you love the new house more than you love him.”

  Mama looked at Aunt Betty for a long minute. Abruptly she broke into an odd, wild laugh, and abruptly she stopped. “Lark, I told you to get to your homework,” she said. “What’re you doing here?”

  An hour later Mama came into the bedroom. “Would you like me to read you a story?” she asked. It had been a very long time since she’d done that. “What would you like to hear?”

  I handed her Happy Stories for Bedtime.

  “My goodness. You still read these stories? I’d think you’d be tired of them by now. Which one do you want?”

  “‘Peggy Among the Pansies.’”

  “Why that one?”

  “It reminds me of Hilly.”

  When Mama turned out the bedroom light, I lay thinking about Hilly in his casket in the ground. What did his head look like where he blew his brains out? Could he still think? Did people think after they were dead? When their brains turned to dust, what did they think with? Their souls? Were their souls like beautiful brains that never died? Yes, I thought they were.

  I wished that I could look inside the casket to see if Hilly opened his eyes. Did he open his eyes and find himself in a casket? Or did he open them and find himself in heaven? Or did he find himself in two places at once?

  Maybe he would come and tell me. I wouldn’t be afraid if Hilly came and told me about dying and heaven. Grandma Browning was once visited in a dream by a dead cousin she’d known well in childhood. The cousin stood on a cloud, bathed in golden light, and told Grandma that it was time for Great-Grandma Davis to come to heaven. And the very next week Great-Grandma Davis passed on of a stroke. But even if Hilly came to me as a real, live ghost, instead of a dream, I wouldn’t be afraid of him.

  I asked God to let Hilly
come to me and tell me how he was doing. But maybe God wouldn’t listen anymore, since I’d given up the Church.

  54

  WHEN MAMA PULLED IN from the road on Friday, she brought a Christmas tree, an enormous spruce that half-filled the living room. The man at the American Legion tree lot had tied one end of it to the hood ornament on the Ford, and the other end to the trunk. Mama had to drive home with her head out the window to see where she was going. “Lucky I didn’t have but three blocks to come,” she exclaimed.

  “It smells so good,” Aunt Betty said, “I’m glad I sleep in the living room.”

  Papa was going to a railroad meeting in St. Bridget that night, something to do with seniority rights and “bumping” privileges, he said. “You girls have the tree all finished when I get home,” he told us cheerfully, pulling on his heavy brown jacket and good leather gloves. Like Mama, Papa was in a good mood when he was going out for the evening.

  “Be careful,” Mama warned. “The roads over that way are as slick as glass. I nearly went off, coming around that curve right outside of St. Bridget.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m a big boy.”

  Mama made buttered popcorn for us to eat, and then she filled the canning kettle with unbuttered for me to string for the tree.

  When we had rearranged the living room furniture to accommodate the great tree, Mama and Aunt Betty, with a flashlight to show them the way, hurried down to the freight room at the opposite end of the depot to find the ladder, the boxes of Christmas tree ornaments, the lights, and the tree stand, which were stored on a high shelf, separate from the boxes of freight.

  “I was going to buy tinsel in St. Bridget today and I forgot,” Mama said, returning with the boxes in her arms. “Willie likes tinsel. If we don’t have enough left from last year, we’ll get some downtown tomorrow.”

  I sat on the couch, stringing popcorn while Mama and Aunt Betty set the tree in its stand and arranged the lights. “Next year we’ll be putting the tree up in our new bay window,” I said.

  “If a bay window isn’t too expensive,” Mama reminded me.

  “Think of it, Arlene—Christmas in the new house.” Aunt Betty had caught house fever from Mama and me.