The Silent Boy

Page 16

"My baby sister, Mary, was sick last week, with a cough and a fever. But Father gave her medicine and she's all better now. Father says that sometimes time is the best healer. But medicine helps, too."
He continued to rock back and forth, seated there on the hay bale.
"And love, of course. My mother says that, and Father says he agrees. When Mary was sick, Mother stayed with her every minute, rocking her, and nursing her, and wiping her forehead with a cool cloth.
"The window right above the kitchen is Mary's window," I said, even as I knew that he would not be interested, "and my room is down the hall, over the porch. My room has blue curtains. You can see them from the yard."
I was just talking aimlessly because I did not know how I could help him. It was clear that Jacob was distressed about something, but it was not something I could understand or make right.
He made a sound and I thought he might be crying, but I couldn't see his face. Finally, not knowing what to do, I stood up.
"Ihavetogoinnow.Ihavetogotobedearly because of the party tomorrow. Mother wants to wash my hair in the morning, and it takes forever to dry."
I tried to think of something less foolish, more helpful, to say.
"I hope things are better in your family soon, Jacob."
Oddly, I wanted to lean forward and kiss the top of his head. It was what both of my parents did when I needed comforting, and it seemed right, somehow, to try to comfort Jacob. But as always he was shielded from the world by the thick cap, and I knew he would recoil from such a touch.
He was a large boy, fourteen by then, with big hands resting on his own knees, and his feet—so often bare, but now, in October, in thick country shoes—almost the size of Father's. I had seen him doing farm chores and knew that he was strong and had a way with animals. Yet he seemed in other ways to be as young and unformed as Mary, with no language but sounds and needs that one could only guess.
Now, in the sunny Indian summer afternoon, the yard was decorated with ribbons and the yellow tablecloth heaped with brightly wrapped gifts. We children played musical chairs, with Father winding the Victrola again and again and Mother removing a chair from the line each time, so that one child would be left out until at the end there would be a winner. The poor old donkey on the stable wall was jabbed again and again, in his nose and tummy and ears, until finally Austin Bishop won the prize by coming close, at least, to where a tail should be.
We went indoors to untangle the spider web that Mother had created with different-colored ribbons and found ourselves crawling under furniture and behind the coat tree to come upon our sweets at the end of each. My cat followed us, leaping again and again to paw at the dangling ribbons, until finally we had to banish poor Goldy to the cellar. Then everyone gathered in the yard to watch me open my presents: embroidered hankies from Jessie, paper dolls, a new skipping rope, a pincushion, and a set of pick-up sticks. Gram had sent a book, Anne of Green Gables, from Cincinnati. Finally, Naomi served the cake and ice cream on the table under the ash tree.
The air turned cool after the party guests had gone home. A sudden chilly wind came up, and we hurried to bring in the table and the gifts because it looked like rain was on the way. With so much excitement in the yard that afternoon, and the cake and ice cream, and then the cleaning up to help with after the party guests had gone, I had completely forgotten the strange, sad visit with Peggy's brother the evening before. It was only after my party dress, smeared with cake frosting, was bundled up with the other laundry and I was in my nightgown, sound asleep on a cold rainy night with my new book on the table beside my bed, that Jacob Stoltz reentered my life in a new and terrible way.
The ringing of the telephone woke me in the middle of the night. Or perhaps I was already awake. My memories of that night became confused, afterward, but I believe that something, perhaps the onset of the heavy rainstorm, had woken me earlier. I had heard unfamiliar sounds in the house, which had made me sit up in bed. I listened in the dark, thought I heard a door open and close quietly, thought I heard footsteps on the stairs. There was only silence after that, except for the sound of rain. I decided it had been a dream and drifted off to sleep again. Then, later, the telephone rang.
At our house, we did not have to listen for the rings to make our own combination, the way most others did. Father being a doctor, we had our own line, and the ring was always for us. It was not unusual for the telephone to ring late at night. People seemed to get sickest then, and often Father would have to dress hastily and leave the house, carrying his medical bag, when it was dark and quiet throughout the town.
So I was not surprised by the ringing of the telephone, or hearing Father's feet on the stairs as he went down to answer it, or his murmured voice to Mother as he dressed in the night. I snuggled back again into my pillow, imagining him hurrying to the hospital, probably, only two streets away. Maybe he would not even take the buggy. He would walk quickly, carrying his bag. In the morning, at breakfast, he would tell us of a sudden illness and a family stricken with fear. Once it had been a small child: meningitis, Father had said, but she would get well. Once an old man we knew slightly from church: his heart, it was, and he would not recover. We watched the funeral procession go from the church to the cemetery a few days later.
But on the night of my birthday, it was different. As I lay there half-awake, I became aware of other, more unusual sounds. I heard my father go to the telephone again, and when he spoke to the operator I recognized the number that he gave her: 426. He was calling the Bishops house, next door. Through my slightly opened bedroom window, even through the rain, I could actually hear their telephone ring; and after a moment I saw lights go on in their parlor, and I knew Mr. Bishop had risen, as my father had, to answer it.
I heard my father speak, though I could not make out the words. Then he left the house and I saw him move through the rain across the yard toward the Bishops . I saw the two men meet on the porch and talk. While I watched they went to the barn, where Mr. Bishop kept the Ford motorcar, and then I heard—I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard—the sound as he cranked the motor to a start and in a moment, the loud sputter and rattle as it moved from the barn to the alley, then the street, and off. I had thought Father was in the car with Mr. Bishop, but after a moment I could I hear sounds in our stable and I knew Father was hitching Jed and Dahlia. Then he, too, was gone, in the buggy.
The night had turned very cold, and the rain had become a windy downpour. Indian summer was over. Shivering in my thin nightgown, I pulled the bedroom window closed and went to ask Mother what was happening.
"There's trouble at the Stoltz farm" was all she would say. "They need help."
She let me climb into the big bed, on Father's side. We lay there side by side, her arm around me, her hand stroking my hair. After a while, I slept.
It was light when Mother stirred and sat up. I opened my eyes.
"Is Father home?"
"No, not yet. Try to sleep some more. It's very early. I'm just going to feed Mary." She rose from the bed and put on her blue dressing gown, which had been draped over a chair.
Then I heard my baby sister making her cheerful early-morning sounds—laughing and gurgling—from the nursery down the hall. Mary was six months old now and slept all night, a great blessing, for there had been times when she was younger and Mother had had to go to her again and again.
I lay snuggled in the warm cocoon of my parents' bed and listened to Mother move down the hall, open Mary's door, and speak softly to the baby. The sounds were familiar, though most often I slept through the ritual. Mother would lift her from the crib, change her wet diaper, wrap her in her pink blanket, and sit in the upholstered rocking chair while Mary nursed.
But on this ruined dawn, the sleepy ceremony of sounds was interrupted by Mother's terrible cry.
In a moment she was back, holding Mary in her arms. She thrust the baby and a clean diaper at me, and said, "Watch Mary. Change her. Don't let her fall off the bed."
Mother's face was white. She took several deep breaths. "Katy? Are you awake? Are you paying attention? I have to go use the telephone. Take care of Mary. And do not go into the nursery. Do you hear me?"
I nodded. I laid the baby on her back beside me, and she grabbed at the sheet with her chubby hands.
"Promise me! Stay out of the baby's room."
"I promise." Mary was wiggling, and I held a corner of her nightie tightly so that she wouldn't make her way to the edge of the high, wide bed and fall.
Mother hurried from the bedroom and down the stairs to the telephone in the front hall. Obediently I unpinned Mary's wet diaper and began to fold the dry one into some sort of shape that I could pin around her. I had watched Mother and Peggy do it often enough, but it seemed very complicated now that I tried it on my own. Below, I could hear Mother's voice, but I couldn't hear what she was saying because Mary had begun to whimper. When I finally had the diaper secured as best I could, I picked her up and carried her downstairs just as Mother hung up the telephone.
"She's hungry." I handed her, crying loudly now, to Mother.
"Father's coming," she said tersely. She went to a chair in the parlor and sat down to feed Mary.
"I thought he was at the Stoltzes ."
"He was. I called there. He's coming home." She stroked Mary's fine hair. The baby was quiet now, nursing.
"What's wrong, Mother?"
But she only shook her head. "Katy, you know the Stoltz boy; what's his name? Joseph?"
"Jacob."
"Yes, Jacob. I should have remembered. Your father just said it."
"Did something happen to him?"
"No. But Peggy said you had become a sort of friend to him." Mother gave an odd laugh. "She told me you wanted to invite him to your birthday party.
"Was that just yesterday?" she asked suddenly. "It seems so long ago." She lifted Mary to her shoulder and began to pat her back. "Get a rag, Katy, in case she spits."
I went to the kitchen and brought her a clean cloth from the place where Naomi kept them folded. Gently Mother wiped some milky bubbles from Mary's mouth.
"What about Jacob?"
"They're looking for him. He seems to have run off. Your father said to ask you if you know where he might have gone."
"He goes everywhere. He roams." Even as I said it, I knew where I would look for him. "I'm cold, Mother. I'm going to go get dressed."
Mother bit her lip. "No, I think you should stay down—" Then she looked at my bare feet and my thin nightgown. I was hugging my arms around me.
"All right," she said. "Run up and put on some warm clothes. But come right back down. And don't—"
"I already promised, Mother. I won't go into Mary's room."
When I came downstairs, Mary was wrapped in an afghan and asleep on a corner of the parlor sofa with a chair pulled up beside so that if she rolled she wouldn't fall. I had dressed hastily and needed help with the back buttons of my brown plaid dress. Mother was in the kitchen, and I could hear Naomi's voice. Naomi always arrived early in the morning, even on rainy Sundays like this.
I went into the kitchen, needing to be where there was warmth.