Cape Cod

by William Martin

  Only Tom cared, but he could tell no one. He had spent six months in a coma. And he had not spoken since, nor did he seem to understand what had happened. But when Elwood put him in front of a canvas and slipped a paintbrush into his hand, the first thing he painted was the house. And it was all that he had painted since—from the inside, from the out side, in daylight, by starlight, under clouds, in the sun. House on Billingsgate, Number 1, Number 10, Number 15…

  Tom Hilyard was left in a fog that no one would ever penetrate. And two days after his accident, a dory fisherman named Samuel Isaac Nance disappeared into a Grand Banks fog from which he would never emerge.

  There had been a strange symmetry in these lives. Nance had been born on the voyage that brought Tom’s parents together. They were forced to begin a new life on the same night and the same beach. They were lost to their families in the same week.

  And the next generation—Sam Nance’s son Perez, Tom Hilyard’s nephew Johnny—would continue the tradition. They would glance at each other on a brilliant August afternoon in the year 1910, but both would be focused on Charles Bigelow and his political ambitions.

  ii.

  A photoflash burst and damn near blinded Johnny Hilyard, but people across America wanted to see a Pilgrim descendant, a Cape Cod lad with rosy cheeks, straw hat, new red braces holding up his pants, and a gen-u-ine Cape Cod clam rake in his hands, so Johnny stood still for the picture.

  But the music. Good Lord, he’d never heard anything so loud in his life—Marine Band blasting “Stars and Stripes Forever” right in his ear, louder than the Pamet foghorn.

  This was the greatest day that had been seen at Cape Cod since the signing of the Mayflower Compact, that’s what Johnny’s uncle Elwood had said: the dedication of the Pilgrim Monument. And here was Johnny, right in the middle of it, holding the hand of his uncle Tom, who held a canvas-covered painting and smiled, as though he knew exactly what was going on.

  On the speakers’ platform beside Tom stood the Dickersons—husband in buckled plug hat and breeches, wife in white cap and apron—playing the Pilgrim couple with their Pilgrim daughters. Dorothy, nineteen, held the key to Provincetown. Little Agnes, ten, twitched about as though the only thing she was holding was a full bladder.

  From the platform at the base of the monument, Johnny looked out across a sea of straw boaters and summer bonnets, celluloid collars, starched blouses and bustles, a human sea held back by a double line of sailors, from the monument all the way to the wharf. And out in the harbor lay seven warships of the Great White Fleet, symbol of the nation that Johnny’s ancestors had founded right here in Provincetown.

  A good Protestant nation, his uncle Elwood called it, but in this crowd, not all faces were Yankee faces. The Mashpee Wampanoags in the receiving line were easy to pick out. Uncle Elwood had also taught him to know the florid Irish, the dusky Portagees, the bravas…

  Brava. No compliment, but Perez Nance would rather be called brava than nigger, and better nigger than half-breed.

  Nance was standing down by the wharf, near the line of roadsters at the President’s gangplank, waiting.

  When the first dignitaries emerged from the grand saloon on the presidential yacht, the Navy Band began to blare “Washington Post,” and the brass nearly blew Perez’s straw boater off his head.

  He had dressed in his best for this occasion. He had carefully bleached his only pair of white ducks. He had bought a new-style rounded collar and pinned it to his only fancy shirt, the one with the red stripes. To that he had added a blue silk necktie. And he had given his black handlebar an extra coating of wax. Before the day was out, Perez Nance, age twenty-three, would be famous.

  Would the reporters call him brava or Portagee? Nance would have said Portagee. That was what his mother’s father had been, married to a woman whose parents had been brava. Portuguese blood for certain. On the other side, his grandfather had been a slave owner, his grandmother a light-skinned slave, probably part white herself.

  With each generation, the Nances had grown whiter, and when Perez fell in love with Dorothy Dickerson, daughter of one of the oldest Provincetown families, he had imagined that his children would be the whitest of all, Pilgrim Portagees in the place where America began.

  But the man now standing on the fantail of the President’s yacht had seen to it that Dorothy Dickerson would never be Perez’s wife: Charles Bigelow, Republican state senator, cousin of the Dickersons.

  Bigelow had come to Provincetown when he heard what he called an ugly rumor: Dickerson was allowing a brava to court his daughter. This was unacceptable, he said, in a family that descended from the Pilgrims. It was also unacceptable that a politician who had run regularly on the nativist plank should be related, however distantly, to a brava. Dickerson had been looking for just such an excuse to prohibit his daughter from seeing Perez Nance. And Dorothy being an obedient girl…

  Perez put his hand into his pocket and wrapped it around the grip of the .22 pistol. Since the assassination of McKinley, the Secret Service protected their Presidents like jealous husbands, but no one would be worried about a state politician. If Perez could breach the double line of sailors, he might be able to rush the yacht…

  The yacht was called Mayflower, appropriately, thought Charles Bigelow. It had carried Teddy Roosevelt, and now, settling lower into the water, it carried all three hundred and twelve pounds of William Howard Taft. Before the day was out, Bigelow would appear in a photograph with the monumental Taft in the foreground, the Pilgrim Monument in the background, and guarantee himself another ten thousand votes in the senatorial primary.

  “A big fat puffin’ pig, if you ask me.” Heman Bigelow had been invited aboard as the oldest living descendant of the First Comers, and would say whatever he damn well pleased.

  Fortunately for Charles, the President and the rest of his entourage were still inside the yacht’s grand saloon. The Bigelows were leading the way because they were assigned to the first of the roadsters lined up on the wharf below.

  “You have to show some respect, Pa,” Charles chided as he led his father toward the gangplank. “He’s the President.”

  Heman Bigelow’s ninety-three-year-old head wobbled along under the weight of a prosperous top hat. “Fat is fat. Belly like that could capsize a Cape dory.”

  “Men of girth are respected men,” Charles slapped the belly beneath his blue jacket.

  “Eh? Men of birth?” Heman aimed his brass ear trumpet at his son.

  “And who’s had better birth than the Bigelows?” Charles said.

  “Bigelows havin’ a birth? Who?”

  As Charles and his father came to the top of the gangplank, a great cheer rose from the crowd on the dock. Charles Bigelow’s belly filled with pride. He had fought for these people. He had stood against the Irish Democratic horde of Massachusetts, and he took the applause as a vote of approval in the political sunshine.

  He raised his chin and gave the crowd a wave. Then the yacht listed slightly. He realized they were cheering for the President, who was emerging from the grand saloon, behind Charles and his father. Pride turned to bile in Bigelow’s stomach. He brought his outstretched hand to rest, like some kind of tethered bird, atop his head, and he smoothed his hair. Then he hurried his father down to their roadster.

  Most people were watching the President descend the gangplank, and a few were betting on whether it would hold him, but as Bigelow settled into the open car, he noticed a man in a straw boater and a big black mustache—very familiar—looking straight at him.

  “Damn Eye-talian pile of rocks.”

  Charles turned to his father. “What?”

  The old man was looking at the tower that now loomed over the town. “Design an Eye-talian tower, bring in a bunch of Irishmen to build it, make all the Congregationalists turn over in their graves.”

  The old man was right. The monument to the Pilgrims had been modeled, for some unfathomable reason, after the Mangia tower at Siena, Italy. All that
Charles Bigelow could think of was a Roman pope standing at the top, arms outstretched, spewing a Latin blessing on the Pilgrim land.

  All that Johnny Hilyard could think of as he waited on the speakers’ platform was the majesty of it, rising two hundred fifty-two feet above the town, the tallest thing between London and New York.

  “Hey, Johnny.” Mr. Dickerson leaned down so that the bogus buckle on his Pilgrim hat glinted in Johnny’s eye. “What’s the paintin’ your uncle’s brought for the President?”

  “First Light, it’s called. Ain’t that the one, Uncle Tom?” Johnny called him “uncle,” though he was a second cousin. Johnny’s grandfather, Ephraim and Tom’s father, Isaac, had been brothers.

  Jesse Dickerson peered at Tom Hilyard as though he were inanimate. Most people believed that, in all save his art, he was. “Do you think he’d mind if we took a gander at it, a little sneak of a peek?”

  So Johnny gently lifted the canvas that covered it, and Tom grabbed the painting away like a starving man snatching food.

  “Tom”—Johnny’s stomach went cold—“this ain’t the right one.”

  “What?” asked Dickerson. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why’s he so mad?” Little Agnes was frightened by the strange, sudden anger in the old man beside her.

  “The wrong paintin’,” said Johnny.

  Tom shook his head.

  “Can’t give that to the President.”

  Then the cheers rolled up the hill. The brass of the Navy Band rose to do battle with the Marine Band at the monument. The parade was coming. The President would soon be here… and with him Charles Bigelow.

  In his roadster, Bigelow thought about his introduction, which would be neither too long nor too windy. Afterward, they would remember him for his brevity as much as his eloquence.

  In the crowd behind the procession, Perez Nance surged along, his hand wrapped around the gun.

  On the speakers’ platform, Johnny Hilyard tried to grab the painting, but Tom shook his head and held tight. A line of spittle dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  Then Johnny saw Uncle Elwood’s white linen suit, pushing through the crowd. He was carrying a large square package that had to be First Light.

  So Johnny let go of his uncle’s arm, stroked his hand, said whatever soothing words he could think of. It was now a race between the procession and Elwood P. Hilyard.

  The two bands drew close enough that they could play “Stars and Stripes Forever,” like two streams becoming a single river. At the sight of the President, Mr. Dickerson straightened his hat and shouldered his old blunderbuss. Mrs. Dickerson’s hands began to flutter around her daughters.

  Good Lord, what a walrus the President was, thought Johnny, right down to the drooping gray mustache. But he was no jolly fat man. He took to the job of greeting the public like a lawyer might take to cleaning fish. And whoever had laid out that dark suit in the heat must have been trying to torture him. As he lumbered up to the platform, his face went from a peaked white to a kind of whale-meat red that was truly frightening.

  Charles Bigelow stepped up to the lectern, smoothed his mustache, patted his brow, and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ ”

  Ten thousand hats were removed as one, and twenty thousand people turned to the flag. Johnny scanned the crowd for his uncle’s white Vandyke. Once, twice, and even on the third pass, his eyes fell on the face of a man near the speakers’ platform, a dark man with a black handlebar mustache.

  The face was not unusual in a town that was half Portuguese, but the man was not looking at the flag. His eyes were fixed on someone on the platform. And Dorothy Dickerson’s eyes were fixed on him. She looked as distressed as a fisherman’s wife watching a storm roll over the bay. She might even have shaken her head and moved her lips, as if to say something to him.

  But Johnny didn’t have time to think about Dorothy or the Portagee, because the anthem was ending, the hats were going on again, and Bigelow was declaiming to the President and the crowd, “It is our honor to descend from the people who founded America at this place in 1620, and our privilege to honor them with the tower that Americans of Pilgrim descent from across the continent have built….”

  And so on and so on and so on. Johnny’s father Zachary said Bigelow was one of the biggest windbags on Cape Cod. Uncle Elwood always added, “But he’s our windbag.”

  “And now let me introduce our Pilgrim family, the Dickersons of Provincetown, to bestow upon you, Mr. President, the key to Cape Cod.”

  Johnny didn’t watch the Dickersons. His knees were beginning to shake. Elwood seemed to have filled with water and sunk into the sea of people. And when Johnny and Tom were introduced to the President and to the audience, Johnny wanted to drive his rake into the planking and anchor himself right where he was.

  “Go ahead,” whispered Agnes. “Just don’t get too close. His belly’s so big, you can’t see his face.”

  “Thanks, Aggie.”

  “And he smells.”

  Johnny glanced once more into the audience. No white suit, no Vandyke… only the eyes of that Portagee.

  “Come along, John,” urged Bigelow, “can’t hold up the ceremony.”

  All right, then, thought Johnny. Let Bigelow face the damn painting, right here, in front of the Pilgrim Monument, the President, and twenty thousand people. He took his uncle by the elbow and led him forward.

  And Bigelow introduced them: “A little Cape Cod clam digger and the finest artist we know.”

  The boy raised a finger in front of his uncle’s nose, a sign for the old man to wait. Then he took a deep breath and looked over the big hillside of the President’s belly, rolling up to the turkey-stuffed double chin.

  “Mister-President-this-is-a-Cape-Cod-clam-rake-the-gift-of-the-people-of-Brewster-We-hope-you-like-it.”

  Taft leaned forward and took the short-handled rake, then made a few remarks about digging clams on the Chesapeake. “I thank you, young Mr.—” It seemed the President had forgotten Johnny’s name, so he invented one. “Young Mr. Clamrake.”

  That was why he was President, thought Johnny. He could always think of something to say. “Johnny, sir, Johnny Hilyard is the name.”

  “Johnny Clamrake Hilyard,” corrected the President, and everyone on the platform laughed politely.

  “Now then”—Charles Bigelow thrust his mustache into Johnny’s line of vision—“bring your uncle Tom forward.”

  Johnny could see the white suit at the platform steps. Elwood was talking to one of the Secret Service men, and Johnny thought about stalling. Perhaps he could give the President a demonstration with the clam rake.

  But the mute—and some said incoherent—Tom Hilyard seemed to understand what Bigelow had said. He stepped forward and held out the painting.

  Johnny looked at the beaming faces of the President, the governor, old Heman with the hearing trumpet in his ear, Charles Bigelow with his political ambitions stitched like his watch fob across his vest, and he thought, I’ve done what I could. He pulled the cover away.

  “Murder on the Mayflower,” Johnny mumbled, so softly as to be unheard. And he saw what he had expected—benign puzzlement on the President’s face, curiosity from the dignitaries surrounding him, and a red, sputtering rage flooding from Bigelow’s chin to his hairline.

  “Mr. President”—Bigelow pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow—“there’s been a mistake.”

  “Steak?” shouted Heman Bigelow, who could see about as well as he could hear. “The Pilgrims didn’t have steak.”

  “Quiet, Pa.”

  Heman looked at the President. “Steak dinners on the Mayflower. Who ever heard of such a thing? Take him away.”

  “Johnny,” said Charles Bigelow, “perhaps you should show your uncle back to his place.”

  Tom shook his whole body and tried to shove the painting into Taft’s hands. Secret Service men were moving. Johnny was grabbing his uncle by the arms. Bigelow w
as saying something about Tom’s violent rages, and Elwood’s white linen suit was squeezing through the crowd on the platform.

  But the confusion lasted only a moment, like a little williwaw of sand blowing up on the beach. Then there was a pop. The sound of a firecracker. Or a gunshot.

  People in the crowd ducked. Secret Service men put their hands on their guns and pressed themselves around the President. Memories of William McKinley’s death were still fresh. But not even a puff of smoke rose from the crowd.

  That was because the smoke was contained in a pocket.

  The little explosion, whatever it was, punctuated the scene. Tom Hilyard’s emotion faded, and he was led back to his seat. The President accepted First Light from Elwood while Charles Bigelow shoved Murder on the Mayflower into the hands of Dorothy Dickerson. Then the band began to play.

  Perez Nance kept his hand around the gun in his pocket until the President came to the lectern. Then he limped away, leaving a trail of blood from the twenty-two caliber hole he had shot in his foot.

  iii.

  That afternoon Charles Bigelow hosted a clambake for members of the Pilgrim Association at the Hilyard House Hotel. He conveyed them from Provincetown on a chartered white steam yacht that came gaily in on the high tide. The band oom-pahed at the dock, pennants fluttered atop every turret, and red, white, and blue bunting danced in the breeze.

  Elwood Hilyard could not have been prouder than Bigelow was of his investment in the great white edifice that rambled along the shore like the Rosa rugosa along the fence in front of it. The hotel had been a fine idea after all.

  Bigelow was disappointed that neither the President, the governor, nor Senator Lodge had accepted his invitation. A nod from a Republican stalwart would have been most welcome as the 1912 campaign approached. Nevertheless, it was a day to celebrate his heritage with others of like blood, and some of them would open their pocketbooks when he set his sights on Washington.

  So he played the gracious host on the veranda, in the tent on the lawn, and down at the beach, where lobsters, clams, and corn were steaming in a pit of seaweed and hot stones. He had lost his wife the year before, but thanked God for his three sons, the best ambassadors a man could want, and he was especially pleased that his youngest, Theodore, was escorting a beautiful Pilgrim and distant cousin, Dorothy Dickerson. He and his fine family would make everyone forget the strange little scene on the speakers’ platform that morning.