The Cape Ann (16 page)

We bought three tickets for her, and she climbed the stairs to the tilted platform and slid into the capacious semicircular seat. The man who ran the ride lowered the bar in front of Beverly to prevent her flying out when the platform spun dizzily around. Eight or ten others climbed the stairs in twos and threes, and filled other seats in the circle. Beverly was the only person riding alone.

“Hang on tight,” I yelled as the man threw the switch and the machine started up, slowly at first, then gaining speed until Beverly was whirling past like a wild creature, hair flying, thin body flinging itself one way, then another, goading the seat to spin more recklessly.

I felt dizzy, and after a bit I retreated, sitting under a cottonwood and looking away, afraid Beverly would propel herself right out of the seat and into a tree. Beverly stayed on for three rides. Maybe from her I could learn to be daring and unafraid.

Close by me, in the shade of the same cottonwood, three men were talking in low voices, punctuating their conversation with dry, humorless laughter. One was Axel Nelson who, with his wife Min, owned and operated the Harvester Arms Hotel. The other two were much younger, maybe eighteen or twenty, and unknown to me. All wore second-best trousers and white shirts, open at the neck, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

The day I’d sold tickets at Mr. Navarin’s Sinclair station, Axel Nelson had bought eight, saying that he’d pass some out to hotel guests stuck in town over the holiday. Maybe the two men with him were such guests.

I would have paid little attention to them except that one of the younger men was smoking, and instead of dropping the cigarette and crushing it with his shoe when he was finished, he tossed the butt carelessly away, hitting my arm. I cried out, not much hurt,
but startled. Sparks from the cigarette, like little needles, burned on my forearm, and I put the injured part to my mouth.

“Are you all right?” Axel Nelson called, without bothering to come see for himself.

“Yes.”

“Damned fool,” he swore softly to the fellow who’d been smoking. “Watch what you’re doing.”

I was surprised to hear Mr. Nelson talk that way to a guest. The Harvester Arms didn’t do a land-office business. The young man must be a regular.

At last descending the stairs of the tilt-a-whirl, Beverly called, “What you want to do now?”

“Swim.”

Off we ran. “I wish I knew how to dive,” I said.

“You have to be able to swim to the raft if you’re going to dive,” Beverly pointed out.

For a long time we swam in the waist-high water around the dock. Mama came down to the water to watch. “My goodness,” she said, surprised, “you really
can
swim.”

After Mama had admired and fussed over us, and legged it back up the path to the baked goods booth, cautioning me to be careful and not drift out too far, Beverly grew bored with swimming in shallow water.

“I’m going to do some belly flops,” she informed me and churned away to the raft.

I practiced swimming and lifting my head out of the water to breathe. It was easier now that the sun was falling low and the lake had grown calm. The only waves were the ones I was making. The surface of the water was so placid, it looked as though you ought to be able to sit right down on it. For a long while I stood beside the dock, watching Beverly and the older children on the raft, cavorting like monkeys.

Sometimes they jumped pell-mell into the water, creating a big splash that got the others wet, wetter than they already were, at least. Then the ones who got splashed made a big to-do about it and tossed the splasher into the water when he tried to climb out onto the raft. It looked like more fun than anything I’d ever seen. I wanted to be one of the children who got tossed into the water, who squealed and giggled and pulled themselves out, flinging themselves right in again, splattering water in all directions, like a
diving elephant. I wanted to be part of that silliness of flying arms and legs.

If I could get out there, I’d be able to belly flop and splash. I knew I could. Hadn’t I already learned how to swim today? The serene stretch of intervening lake beckoned. “You can do it. I’ll help. I’m like a table now, that you can crawl across.”

Goose pimples covered my arms. I was growing cold, standing still. If I swam, I’d get warm again. I could just
start
to swim toward the raft. If I felt tired, I could turn around and swim back. Beverly would do it. Beverly wouldn’t stand around all night like a scared baby, hugging herself and growing cold.

I began inching forward, advancing almost imperceptibly, the water rising on my body until it was beneath my arms. Then, giving a hop to launch myself, I started to swim toward the raft. Right away I knew I had made a mistake. I had waited too late in the day. I was tired all over, especially my arms. And I was cold. Numbed and leaden, my limbs were less and less willing. No matter how hard I drove them, they barely moved. But without a solid place to put my foot down, I couldn’t turn around. I didn’t know how.

Would anyone notice? There was a Knight, Mr. Beverton, who had spent the day watching out for swimmers in trouble. Would he see me? Would he know I was in trouble? Although it was late and the sun’s red rays lay slantwise across the darkening lake, there were still many picnickers in the water.

I wasn’t sure I could call out. I had almost no wind left, and I couldn’t keep my head out of the water for more than a moment. That moment was needed for gulping air. As my arms and legs grew weaker and my body sank lower into the water, it was more difficult to raise my head high enough to breathe.

If Mr. Beverton noticed me at all, how did I look? Did I look like someone who knew how to swim and was making her way to the raft? Or did I look like a beginner: tired, in trouble, and about to drown?

Wouldn’t it be nice if Mr. Beverton got into his rowboat and, without making a fuss, rowed out to me and said, “I know you don’t need help, but would you like a ride in my rowboat?”

If a fuss were made, Papa would find out and I’d be in trouble. He’d never let me forget. If it were known that Mr. Beverton had had to save me, Papa would be embarrassed and angry. His embarrassment and anger would be multiplied by the number of people
who had seen, who knew that I had nearly drowned. It would be a reflection on him. Some people might even blame him. If I could find the strength to call, I still wouldn’t.

But if I drowned, what about my soul? I remembered the long list of sins, mortal and venial, neatly entered in my notebook. My soul was bound for hell. And Papa would inevitably find the notebook. He would discover the sort of child I had been. Even dead, I didn’t think I could face that disgrace and humiliation, that betrayal of him.

In the watery blur of my visions, outer and inner, a hand appeared, reaching for me, grasping hold of my hand and tugging mercilessly. Something hard edged slammed into my chest and a raspy, boyish voice exclaimed, “Godsakes.”

Eventually, between us, we hauled me onto the raft. I lay there for a long time, only vaguely aware of children squealing, gently rocking the raft with the vigor of their play. A pleasant, drunken inertia overcame me. It wasn’t only that I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. Over me Beverly’s voice declared, scolded, advised, but she might as well have been in Red Berry for all that I could hear.

As I lay nearly passed out on the wet raft, twilight fell. One by one the children swam back to shore. Parents called, loons cried, dim lights winked on in the park. The merry-go-round lights blazed, and its music pounded across the water and seemed to shake the very earth beneath the lake.

“It’s getting dark,” Beverly pointed out. “Mr. Beverton’s gonna call us to come in. We gotta go back.”

“I can’t.”

“Godsakes. You shouldn’t’ve swimmed out here. You just learned today. That was stupid.”

“You go,” I told her. I was shivering and my teeth chattered so that I could hardly get the words out.

“You want me to send Mr. Beverton out?”

“No! Don’t tell Mr. Beverton.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Godsakes.”

“Tell Mama to get me.”

“What about your pa?”

“No!”

Beverly belly flopped into the water and was gone. I was too sleepy to watch her. Willingly I slipped down into a profound unconsciousness. I didn’t hear Mama’s voice or Beverly’s. Then Beverly was shaking me hard, impatiently. “Get up. Your ma’s here.”

With great effort I moved my head, laying my face down on the other cheek. In the purple gloom Mama sat in a rowboat, Mr. Beverton’s, her hands at the oars, keeping the boat tightly alongside the raft.

“Get up, Lark,” she said in a serious, subdued voice.

Beverly pulled my arm hard enough to loosen it from the socket. As I struggled to my knees, she held onto me. “Sit on the edge of the raft,” she told me, “and put your feet in the boat.”

I did exactly as I was told because I was not able to form an independent thought. It was all I could do to hang on to Beverly’s simple words and interpret them. With Beverly and Mama both helping, I finally lumbered into the rowboat, falling in a heap between two seats.

“Here’s your towel,” Beverly said, putting it around my shoulders.

Later, I found myself lying in the back of the truck, Beverly in her overalls sitting beside me, bouncing down the road to town. I was feeling very bad. My face was burning and my head throbbed. The rest of me, despite an old blanket, was freezing. My stomach began to rise ominously. I pounded on the cab. The pickup ground to a halt. Hanging my head over the side, I threw up. Mama climbed down out of the cab and came around to the back. She held my head, then wiped my face with the towel. “Done?”

I nodded and lay down. Beverly moved to make room for Mama, and we were on our way again, the truck jouncing and swaying, the night air rushing past.

“Where’s Beverly?” I demanded, waking in my crib, dressed in my nightie.

“Papa took her home.”

There was a knock at the kitchen door. Mama hurried to answer.

“Well, now, where’s the patient?” an avuncular voice inquired. As if Dr. White didn’t know. As if he hadn’t been here dozens of times. Between October and May, I never had fewer than four bouts of tonsillitis or bronchial pneumonia. “You took her temperature?”

“It’s a hundred and four on our thermometer,” Mama said.
They were in the kitchen. “I can’t help thinking about… President Roosevelt,” Mama stammered. Though I was drifting in and out of sleep, I was sure I’d heard right. President Roosevelt?

“I wouldn’t worry,” the doctor assured her, seeming to know what Mama meant.

His dry, cool hand was on my brow, my cheek. His fingers were lifting my eyelids. “Open,” he said, sticking a thermometer in my mouth. “Keep it under your tongue. Don’t talk.”

My eyelids were heavy and swollen feeling, so I kept them closed. The bed springs whined as Mama sat on the edge of the bed, waiting.

“She was in the water a long time today,” she told the doctor. “Too long. I was busy and not paying enough attention.”

“Whatever it is, today didn’t cause it,” he said.

“I don’t know. Hadn’t Roosevelt been swimming? So many people seem to get… sick after they’ve been swimming. She got overtired, I know that. She couldn’t even sit up on the way home.”

After the thermometer came out, Dr. White grasped me under the arms. “Sit up now, Lark, so I can have a look at that throat.”

Mama carried the bedside lamp and held it high. Dr. White took out his little flashlight and his tongue depressor. “How does your throat feel?” he asked.

“Hurts.”

“Hmmmm,” he murmured, studying my throat, this way and that, asking me to say “ahhhh,” directing the light from Mama’s lamp more to the left. Then he snapped off his flashlight and felt my glands. Straightening at last, he said, “Looks like the same old problem to me. I’m not going to paint her throat tonight. I’ll stop in tomorrow and have another look. Give her an aspirin now and take her temperature again in an hour. If it goes higher, call me.”

Mama followed him into the kitchen and saw him to the door, thanking him for coming, relief melting her voice almost to tearfulness. It was as though she credited the doctor with warding off the dreadful contingency having to do with President Roosevelt.

“I was planning to go to my sister’s in a couple of weeks,” Mama told the doctor. “She’s expecting around the first of July, and she’s had a hard time. Do you think Lark will be able to go?”

“Hard to say. I’ll be able to tell more in a day or two.”

But I have to be there when the stork comes. I’ve got to catch the baby
.

FOR THE NEXT FOUR
or five days, I was flat in my crib. Dr. White returned to paint my throat four days running. I made a scene every time, crying and begging, but I might as well have saved my energy.

For the first week, it was soup and tea and tea and soup, and late in the afternoon, for a treat, a tall glass of Coca-Cola with ice and a straw. The day after the picnic, Beverly came calling. I heard Mama at the door.

“She okay?” Beverly asked.

“She has a bad case of tonsillitis,” Mama told her, “but she’ll be well in a couple of weeks.”

“Godsakes.”

“I don’t want you to catch Lark’s germs,” Mama explained, “but maybe you could put your head in and say hello. Don’t go near the crib,” she warned.

Beverly poked her head in the doorway. “You still sick?”

I nodded. It hurt to talk.

“You know that money you had after you paid for the tilt-a-whirl?”

I couldn’t remember.

“It was with your towel. I went down to Lundeen’s.” From behind her overalls she pulled a big, thick coloring book with a mama and baby giraffe on the cover. “I think it’s about California or someplace where there’s lions and elephants and alligators.” She heaved the book across the room and into the crib.

“It’s real nice,” I whispered.

“You got Crayolas?”

Again I nodded.

“Then I’ll come back and color with you. Don’t color all the pages.” She turned and was gone.

In the kitchen Mama said, “It was nice of you to bring Lark a present. Would you like some cookies before you leave?”