The Silent Boy (7 page)

"Katy!" My mother was calling now. "Katy!"

I should call back, I knew. But I liked the feeling of being concealed there, squatting in the moist earth, with the high grass golden above me. I liked hearing things happen around me, being an observer, but hidden. The breeze blew the grass and it closed above my head, creating a small, secret place where I fit. I had already forgotten my toad in the new excitement of being lost to the grownups. So I held still.

"You go that way, Caroline," my father said. "Check over there behind the woodpile and by the shed. I'll look in this direction."

"She wouldn't have gone into the house, would she? She would have had to pass us, to go into the house. We would have seen her. Katy!"

"Jessie, are you sure you don't know where she went?" Mr. Wood sounded angry, as if he were scolding his little girl.

Jessie began to cry. It pleased me somehow, that she was crying. She deserved to cry, because she owned a tin pail with bright paintings on its side.

"Katy! Katy!" My mother's voice was quite far from me now.

"Let's think." Jessie's mother said this. "
Hush,
Jessie." (Jessie was still crying loudly.) "She wouldn't have gone far because she was barefoot. It's stony out there beyond the house. It would hurt her feet."

"Kaaaaty!" It was like a song in my mother's voice, when she called it that way. "Henry," she called to my father, "she isn't over this way."

"Everyone be absolutely quiet for a moment," Mr. Wood commanded. "She might be calling and we wouldn't hear her."

It was silent except for Jessie, who was now howling. In my mind, I scolded Jessie for not obeying her father. "Shhhh," Mrs. Wood said to her angrily, and finally Jessie was quiet.

Now, into that important silence, was when I should have called out. "Surprise!" I should have shouted. "Here I am!"

But I didn't. I waited. There was a bug near my toe, and I watched it waddle across the slick surface of wet earth. I put my hand near it and hoped that it would mount my finger and walk on me. But carefully it found a path around my hand. I began thinking very hard about the bug, and I forgot my family and their worry. I crouched there, and then lay down, slowly curling into the warm mud that was as soft and private as a bed. The sun was hot on my head and back, coming down through the curtain of grass that surrounded me, and things became dreamlike.

I woke when they found me, and now my mother was crying, so I was vaguely sorry that I hid. But I liked the attention. I was the heroine of the story, now: the little lost girl.
The one in danger.

We were given cookies. Mrs. Wood must have made the cookies, because they had raisins in them, and my own mother knew that I disliked raisins. Meticulously I picked each raisin out and dropped it into the bushes beside the porch. My mother saw me doing this and smiled, creating a secret between us.

Then we were re-dressed. Jessie was upset still. I recognized her feeling, the feeling of being left out, overlooked, angry at things that you don't even understand, so that you cry in frustration and look for something to blame.
I should be the one crying!
I thought.
After all, I was the one who might have drowned, who might have been eaten by a bear!
Instead, I smiled, and it was Jessie who whined and made the grownups impatient. She wailed when her stockings were pulled on, worried that there may be pine needles—oh, yes! I understood, now! She was troubled by the word
needles.
The mothers, both of them, kept reassuring her that her feet were clean and dry. But it wasn't dirt or dampness that frightened her! It was
needles!

Later there were the surprising bursts of color in the sky, and the alarming sound of the fireworks display. I curled up on my father's lap on the cottage porch, watching. I was sleepy, puzzled by the sounds and explosions of light, but not frightened. My father's shirt was soft against my cheek, and he smelled as he always did, father-smells of
shaving lotions and shoe polish and pipe tobacco. (Mother was cologne and powder and the laundry starch ironed into her shirtwaist.)

I suppose Jessie was there on her own father's lap, but she was not part of my evening memory, which had grown small to enclose only my father and me. And mosquitoes. There were mosquitoes buzzing on the porch, and Father brushed them away from my bare arms and slapped at his own neck from time to time.

 

"Yes," I said to Mother, as we looked at the photograph together. "I do remember it."

From above, still, there came the sound of low voices murmuring. I looked again at the photograph of the two little girls, Jessie and me, and pretended for an instant that they were Peggy and Nell. One quiet and watching, tidy and careful. The other, banging a shovel against a bright tin pail. Eager. Brash. Impatient. Shrill.

Winter dragged on, and soon enough we tired of snow. January came and went, and February. Mornings were still dark when I dressed for school in February, and the dark of evening came much too early. Father built a fire after supper and then while Pepper, the dog, slept on the rug, he read aloud to us in the parlor while Mother's fingers flew over her knitting. Upstairs, in a drawer, baby clothes were folded and waiting.

Peggy sat, sometimes, and listened. Upstairs, her room was very cold, and Mother said she should stay down in the warm parlor with us,
evenings. So she took the dark green chair in the corner and mended. Father read
David Copperfield
and I saw Peggy cry a little at the sad parts.

In the afternoons Peggy read to herself while Mother napped. Once each week we went to the library, the two of us, and sometimes, if she promised to behave, Jessie came along.

Early one Friday evening the telephone rang, and Father was called away to the hospital. Mother sighed, set her knitting down, and took up the book. But her voice was different, and she didn't act the parts like Father did, using comical voices. Even she said so.

"I just can't do it as well,"Mother said regretfully. "I hope he gets back early."

But Father was gone all night, and in the early morning came in smelling foul and went right upstairs for a bath. There had been a terrible fire at Schuyler's Mill.

"Some of the men are laying blame on the Stoltz boy," I heard Father tell Mother in their bedroom as he dressed. "Peggy's brother. He hangs about the mill often; he loves it there. And the men make fun of him because of his affliction. Now they're looking for someone to blame."

Mother's voice sounded very worried. "Might it be true?" I heard her ask. "Is he responsible? Oh, that would be terrible news to give Peggy."

"No, no. One of the late workers lighted a cigar
and the dust burst into flame like an explosion. People saw the whole thing. The Stoltz boy wasn't even there."

The entire mill was gone, they had told him, just the walls left standing, and the grindstone lying in the rubble. Men had come from everywhere to fight the fire and some of them were burned.

Father said at breakfast he hoped they would live but wasn't sure. He and other doctors had worked all that night. But when I asked him to tell me what it was like, and what the doctors did, both Mother and Peggy shushed me.

"It's bad for the baby to talk about such things," Peggy explained, taking me aside later that morning, when she was ironing. "It would upset your mama, and then the baby will be damaged."

"I don't see how. The baby's very cozy inside. It floats, Father told me, and swims."

"Babies can be marked," Peggy said in a serious voice. "I heard of a woman who was frightened by a runaway horse, and her baby was born with a mane and tail."

"Peggy!" I sputtered with laughter. "I
know
that can't be true! You didn't really see it, did you?"

"Well, no, but I heard."

"Someone was fooling you."

Peggy thought about it and smiled, finally. "Maybe," she admitted. "But it
is
true that you mustn't upset a mother-to-be. You know the boy
who delivers the groceries from the market?"

"Yes." It was a boy from my school, actually, a sixth-grader named Edward, who brought the groceries in his wagon. My mother always gave him a nickel at the back door.

"He was marked on his face when his mother was carrying him. She likely saw something hideous and put her hand to her face in just that place."

Edward had a pale pink stain across his chin and cheek. "Father calls it a birthmark," I told Peggy.

"You see?"

I didn't, exactly, and resolved to ask Father more about it when we were alone together.

Peggy set the iron back on the stove to reheat. She folded the heavy sheet she d been ironing, set it aside, and took another, damp and rolled, from the basket. The moisture and heat felt good in the kitchen with the cold weather outdoors.

"Peg? Is
touched
the same as marked?"

"Touched?" She looked at me, puzzled, as she laid the sheet out on the board.

"Jacob. You said he was touched."

The hot iron sizzled when she laid it on the sheet, and she moved it so that it wouldn't scorch.

Peggy chuckled. She looked fond. Always when she spoke of her brother, she got that fond look. "My mother says 'touched by the Lord,' and I think it's true.

"My pa, though, he don't think that," she confided. "He wishes he had him a boy who could take on the farm one day. Jacob can't ever."

"But you said he's good with animals." I had seen it, too, watching him with our own horses—for he had come many evenings now, and I had seen him there, in the stable—but I didn't talk to Peggy about Jacob's visits. It was not that they were wrong, or even secret, but they seemed private. "I've seen him with our horses, Peggy. It's almost as if he can speak their special language."

"He does have a way with animals," Peggy agreed. "But a farm is more than animals. There's the crops. The planting and the harvest. Taking care of the plow and the harnesses. Buying the seed. My pa has to go to the feed store and bargain and trade.

"And the butchering, too," she added. "It troubles my pa that Jacob runs and hides at butchering time. He feels them animals to be his friends. He can't be there when their time comes, and it angers Pa."

"But the kittens, Peggy! You told me about the kittens, when there are too many. You said Jacob is the one who—" I just couldn't say the rest.

She folded the ironed sheet and laid it on the pile. "Want to do your father's hanky?" she asked, picking up the small damp cloth from the basket.

So I took the hot iron and guided it across the square of linen. The iron was heavy, and it was not as easy as it looked, to get the handkerchief flattened perfectly and dry. Peggy helped me with her strong hand on mine.

"New kittens," she explained, "aren't the same as the kind you like to play with, all whiskers and fur and jumping around. Newborn, they don't seem like nothing lovable yet. Jacob does it quick and then forgets it, and even the mother cat don't seem to care.

"My land, look there in the corner of the hanky," she said, and ran her finger across the embroidered HWT. "His initials. I see that every time I iron, and think how wonderful it is to have your name be so important."

 

We heard a knock at the front door, and then Mother called from the hall.

"Katy! Jessie's here and wants to play!"

"Don't bring her in here, Katy," Peggy whispered. "She gets into everything and her hands are always dirty."

I laughed because it was true. Jessie Wood was my best girlfriend, but she was always a source of trouble. Mischief, sometimes, though I tried to steer her from it; and even if she wasn 't into
mischief, Jessie stumbled into things, dropped them, broke them, dirtied them. I left Peggy to the ironing and took Jessie up to my bedroom, where we could play with our paper dolls. Mother had given us last year's Sears Roebuck catalogue, and Jessie and I had made us a fine set of families from it. Now we were furnishing houses for them, choosing the furniture from the pages and making a life for our paper families. Jessie's was grand, with the most expensive suites and fancy wallpapers. But I had decided on a plainer life for mine, maybe on a farm, and I set about choosing overalls forthefather,andaplow.Igavethelittleboy—I had cut him out the last time we had played—a pair of overalls, too; now I chose some sturdy shoes for him, so that when he roamed, as I thought he might, he would be warm and comfortable.

I made Jessie wipe her feet because it was thawing now, as February turned to March, and muddy in places where the snow was gone on the path. Then I made her wash her hands before we got the paper dolls out. Last time we played, I hadn't, and she got dirt smears on a fine Summer Leghorn Hat of Real Japanese Silk that she wanted for the lady in her paper doll family.

Jessie washed her hands, but she said our bathroom smelled peculiar.

And it was true. Peggy had taken Father's
clothes away, the ones he had worn all night at the hospital, but the smell from them remained. Peggy told me later it was the smell of burned people on him; she opened the window wide, though it was cold outside, and scrubbed the bathroom with carbolic acid.