The Silent Boy

"Two sisters side by side. Isn't that nice? Does Nell look like Peggy, with that thick brown hair?" Gram leaned forward to the looking glass and patted her own hair to tidy it.



"Not really. Nellie's hair is bright red, and she's more—" I tried to think of the right word to describe Nell: the overabundance of pink in her cheeks; her wild, flame-colored hair; the extra flounces in her clothing.



"More glamorous," I said, finally.



Speaking of Peggy's sister made me think, suddenly, of something uncomfortable I had seen in the Bishops barn. I willed the thought from my mind and took my Gram's hand, to lead her down the hall again, back downstairs to the waiting dinner and the warm comfort of my family.



Austin came over on Saturday afternoon to play, and Peggy gave us cookies. We stood by Gram, watching her with the cards, and she tried to show us how the game went, but Austin was bored by it and so after a while we went outdoors.



Austin was in my class at school, but being a boy he played only on the boys side of the playground while I played on the girls , and we never looked at each other during recess. But at home, on Orchard Street, we often played a game we had created together. We called it Tragedy and Disaster, and it took many forms.



On this early April afternoon, we played the version named San Francisco Earthquake. "Tragedy and disaster!" we called out together, and then shook the porch furniture until the wicker legs of the chairs thumped on the floor. We screamed, "Tremors!" again and again until Mother came to the door and told us to be quieter.



So we played Shipwreck, instead, sitting quietly in the porch chairs and commenting about the beauty of the sea, then tipping over and drowning silently after a few last words. "Tragedy and disaster!" we gulped. Pepper kept getting up from where he was sleeping by the steps to come sniff our bodies.



Then, because drowning wasn't very interesting after we had done it twice, we decided to be saved by a lifeboat. There had been a shipwreck off Nantucket a few years before, when a liner named Larchmont had collided with another ship. People had been saved by the lifeboats, though the ship was lost forever, and with it some treasure, or so it was said.



We found boards in the Bishops barn, dragged them to my front yard, and arranged them just below the porch railing, though we were careful not to smash the budding azaleas, because I knew Mother would be cross if they were ruined.



We began the game again, seating ourselves very properly in the porch chairs that we had arranged side by side, imagining them to be on the deck of a ship.



"How do you do," I said to Austin, holding my fingers around an imaginary teacup. "What a lovely day it is."



"Yes," he replied. "How do you do. My name is Mr. Larchmont."



I kicked his chair and whispered, "You can't be. That ' s the boat' s name."



He puffed on an imaginary cigar. "They named this ship after me," he explained in a loud voice.



"Oh," I replied, sipping my tea. "How nice. And isn't it a lovely ocean? Such beautiful water."



"Yes indeed," he said. "But I believe I can see another ship coming dangerously close."



"I do hope it doesn't strike us."



"I ' m sure it won ' t," Austin said. "Would you like to dance, or stroll?"



"Stroll," I decided. So he took my arm and we walked slowly across the porch. He puffed some more on his cigar.



"Here it comes!" I called out. "Collision!"



"To the lifeboat!" Austin cried, and we scurried to the porch railing.



"Tragedy and disaster!" we shouted together. We climbed the railing, held hands, and jumped down onto our boards.



"I think it' s supposed to be only women and children," I said, after we were afloat in the yard.



Courageously Austin said, "I ' ll make room for them." He leapt into the sea and prepared to drown.



"Wait!" I said. I jumped from my lifeboat and shook a branch of the nearby forsythia bush. Its few remaining yellow blossoms broke loose and fluttered down. "Treasure," I announced, and returned to my boat. "Falling into the sea."



"I drown surrounded by gold!" Austin shouted heroically. Then he added, "Also sharks." Those were his last words before he flopped over and was still.



I noticed that a splinter from the lifeboat boards had torn my stocking and scratched my leg. Bravely, ignoring my injury, I picked up a small stick and used it as a paddle, stabbing at the earth of my yard to propel myself to safety while Austin floated nearby, his eyes open, golden forsythia blossoms in his hair. Pepper once again lifted his head curiously and ambled down the porch steps, sniffing at us to see what was wrong.



"No dogs allowed in the lifeboat," Austin announced from where he drifted dead in the sea, so I shoved Pepper away and floated on alone.



10. APRIL 1911



 

"Katy, wake up!" Peggy shook my shoulders, and I opened my eyes. It was very early on a Sunday morning.



"I have a surprise for you!" she said, as I sat up and yawned. "Hurry and dress."



"For church? It ' s too early."



"No, not church." Peggy was getting my underclothes from the drawer.



"The baby! Has the baby come?"



"No—whatever made you think that? Here, stand up. I'll help you with your nightgown."



"I thought I heard something in the night." I tried to remember, but it was blurred now. "Father waswalkinginthehall,Ithink.AndIheard Mother ' s voice."



"You must have dreamed it."



She was right; it was as hazy as a dream and already disappearing from my memory the way a dream does.



"Look out the window. Levi has the horses hitched up. Your father called him to come."



I glanced down and it was true. The buggy was waiting in the driveway beside the house, and Levi was there holding the harness reins. Jed and Dahlia stood patiently. The neighborhood houses were silent. The sun was just rising. The light was pink.



"Are we going someplace? It's Sunday. I'm supposed to go to Sunday school. These are the wrong clothes." She was buttoning my dress, an old one that I wore for play, not even to school, because it was faded and patched. Then she held up a pinafore and directed my arms through. "These are play clothes, Peggy."



"We have a vacation today," she said, and pulled the brush deftly through my hair. "Now go into the bathroom and wash your face and brush your teeth. Be quiet. Don ' t wake your mother."



I thought I could hear Mother and Father stirring in their bedroom, behind the closed door, but I obeyed Peggy. I was quick and quiet, and then I hurried down the stairs and was surprised to find that we were not even stopping for breakfast. Peggy had a basket packed already with toast and jam, which she said we would eat in the buggy. I drank a glass of milk quickly, put on my jacket, and we were off.



Off to the Stoltzes ' farm! Peggy said we were going to visit her family.



She took the reins and to my surprise she could managethehorsesaswellasFatherorLevi.She chuckled to find that I was surprised.



"I ' m a farm girl, Katy!" she reminded me. "Eat your toast now so you won't be hungry. My ma will give us breakfast but it'll be awhile."



"Why don't we take Nellie, too? She could come, and Austin."



"Just us," Peggy said. "Nellie doesn ' t like the farm. She's too fancy, she thinks, for farms. And Austin? He's still asleep. It's just us today, Katy."



We had already passed the Bishops house and moved down our quiet street; soon we were on the main street headed out of town. It was so early that no one was out.



"Want some toast?" I handed Peggy a half a slice of the toast smeared with blackberry jam.



She took it and nibbled. "Nellie never goes home," she said. "It really frets my ma."



"Never? But she has her days off, like you! All hired girls do!"



Peggy shrugged. "She finds other things to do. You know she goes to the pictures."



"She should go to the library instead," I decided aloud, but Peggy scoffed at the thought.



"Really," I insisted. "She never does, and she might like it. She could go with us. We could stop afterward at Corcoran ' s and have a ginger beer, with straws."



I loved drinking straws. And Corcoran's served tea biscuits, too. It was a treat to go there after the library.



Peggy clucked at the horses to remind them to lift their feet. "Nellie don't like to read," she said. "Even in school, she never did."



"Your sister Nellie doesn't like to, and your brother, Jacob, can't," I pointed out. "Isn't that strange?"



Peggy smiled and agreed that it was strange.



"Will Jacob be home?" I asked her.



"I expect so." She glanced at the sun, still low against the horizon. "He'll be helping my pa with the milking now. And by the time we get there, the milk will be in, and we'll have it still warm, on oatmeal. And honey with it, from the hives."



The thought made my cold toast unappetizing, and I threw the crust of it from the buggy to the side of the road, for birds and chipmunks to have.



"Do they know we ' re coming?"



"Yes. I telephoned."



"Do they mind, your bringing me?" I asked.



"Of course not," Peggy replied. "And when they find what a good girl you are, they may even want to keep you for their own!"



I glanced at her quickly because the thought made me a little fearful, but I could see she was teasing, and so I laughed as well.



I had not been inside the Stoltz farmhouse before. Peggy's mother greeted me warmly and hung my jacket on a wall peg.



"You're hungry, I expect," she said, and led me to the kitchen, where a wooden table was covered with a flowered cloth. The wood stove was hot, and kettles simmered atop it. The little girl—I remembered her name was Anna—sat in a high wooden chair and banged a spoon on the table. She smiled at me, then lowered her eyes, bashful.



The back door thumped open suddenly and Mr. Stoltz came in, with Jacob behind him. They smelled of barn, of hay and cows. Peggy's father set a bucket on the shelf beside the stove. Then he nodded at me and said, "Miss." He began to wash his hands, pumping the water with the handle at the sink. "Wash, boy," he said, and Jacob joined him.



It surprised me that Jacob did not look at me, or nod, or smile. I had thought that we were friends, in an odd but special way. Again and again I had stood with him in the stable, stroking the horses massive heads side by side. We had never talked. Indeed, I had never heard Jacob speak. But we had made sounds together—I thought of it as our special kind of singing, there in the stable—and sometimes I had walked beside him and his dog for a way, through the alley behind our house, when he left to roam off to other places that I did not know about.



But Jacob did not look at me.



We sat around the table on sturdy wooden chairs. "Cap," Mr. Stoltz said, looking at his son meaningfully. Jacob turned his face away and pretended not to hear..



"Remove your cap, boy." When he repeated it, his tone was stern. Reluctantly Jacob grabbed the cap from his own head, exposing uncombed, curly hair. He held the cap crumpled in his lap.