Father Poole liked the story that Ben Benson was telling. The old man lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, and continued as smoke escaped from his mouth and nostrils while he spoke.
“One day me an’ my best friend at the time, Pearcy Morgan, dared each other to climb to the top of the maple. We teased one another about bein’ too sca’ed to do it, but then I remembered some rope my old man had in one o’ his drawers. It was long and thick. Don’t even know why he had it. Pearcy an’ I, we run down to my house, just a little two-bedroom flat above the bank, and took that rope before sta’ting back up the hill. Facin’ north, her lowest branch was about fifteen feet high. We made several attempts to get the rope to wrap around that branch, but Pearcy finally succeeded.”
Ben Benson snapped his fingers at Father Poole, who was grinning widely. “Then Pearcy and me tied a bunch o’ that rope into knots like a chain. This took a while, but when we were done we had a ladder. Rungs to put our feet in, an’ climb that mother we did. We climbed her so many times that we could climb blindfolded. But no matter how many times we scaled her branches, we never broke a one! We always respected the lady. We knew a broken branch would hurt her, much as a broken leg would hurt you or me. Once we thought we might build a tree house up there, but we knew that’d hurt her. We even thought to name her but then realized that would be silly. Names a’e for people an’ dogs an’ cats. We didn’t think it’d be fair to the maple to bring her too much into our world. So we let it be. But we did climb halfway to her top several times, an’ each time it got easier. She’s a maze o’ branches goin’ every which way. Why, still to this day I could go up there blindfolded, honest!”
Father Poole chuckled as if to say, “Of course you can, old man.”
“I tell ya, Father,” said Ben Benson. “You think the view from the top of this hill is magnificent. The view from the maple is beyond words! I’m even thinkin’, as I’m tellin’ ya this right now, that I’m gonna take you up there with me some time. You know what we even did once? We created a game called “Sheddin’.”
Father Poole was puzzled. “Sorry. ‘Shedding’?”
“Yep!” Ben Benson said. “Sheddin’. Pearcy an’ me, we’d always go up there an’ shed. One of us’d climb up our rope chain to her lowest branch, lock our legs, and hang upside down. Then the other would come up the chain, about three quarters of the way, grab onto the other’s hands, let go of the rope, and we’d swing together back and forth. It was like sheddin’ a tear, ya know? You know how a tear sta’ts? It pools in your eye and then slowly drips down. Well, that’s what Pearcy and me would do. Hangin’ slowly upside down, the tear forms and slowly drips. The other one climbs up, and we lock hands. The tear grows longer. We swing back an’ forth, back an’ forth, the tear just rollin’ down her cheek. We were that ol’ maple’s tears. An’ I swear to you that whenever we would go sheddin’ on the maple, she’d dance for us. We’d both seen it. Whether we were the one hangin’ upside down or hangin’ by the hands, we’d feel the wind in our hair. Pearcy an’ me, that tree was our spot. Good ol’ Pearcy. He went an’ got hisself killed at Gettysburg durin’ the Civil War at 23 years old. Shot right in the head. They said it seemed to be at close range. I’m confident some hillbilly rebel called him a no-good, goddamn Yankee before he done him in. Now you tell me, what’s so ‘civil’ about that?”
Father Poole noticed a small tear in the corner of Benson’s left eye. Meanwhile Ben blew his nose into a handkerchief, wiped his eye with his sleeve, lit another cigarette, and continued.
“Now gettin’ back to your question. That there rectory o’ yours was built for a purpose. I’m surprised that old priest—uh, what’s his name again?”
Father Poole answered, “Father Carroll.”
“Carroll! That’s the fella. He come two years or so after the church and rectory were completed. Now the fella before him, nice ol’ guy by the name o’ Ka’somethin’-ski. You know, one o’ them Pollock names. Well, he had the idear o’ openin’ some sort of halfway house for criminals. You know, help the poor and unfortunate, as if your church ain’t got enough problems of its own. Je-ody! Well, once Father fat-ass come… .”
Benson turned to Father Poole and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, Father. Believe me, I ain’t a blasphemin’ the man.”
The priest shook his head, dismissing the old man’s rudeness as trivial.
Benson went on, “I ain’t got one ounce of disrespect to the Almighty ur nuthin.’ It’s just that I didn’t really see eye to eye with your Father Kimble.”
“Carroll,” Poole corrected the old man again.
“Yep!” exclaimed Ben Benson. “I jus’ don’t know how names come and go from my mind. Well now, let me see. I believe Carroll viewed the idear as ridiculous. I heard him say once to A’gyle Hobbs, ‘What would this hill look like with recently released criminals livin’ here? Workin’ down below durin’ the day and then comin’ back up here at night? Having them messin’ up my rooms, worried that they might rob the church!’ Of course he didn’t say it like that, him being a stutterer an’ all that, but that’s the gist of it. Yep! He put that idea to rest quick! I cahn’t say I blamed the fella. I wouldn’t want my hill corrupted with the likes o’ thieves, murderers, an’ preverts. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of an orphanage. Get some little ones up here. That’d be nice, but I suppose things changed. It’s been too long since the lahst idea for your rectory was proposed. I guess it’s just too late to change things that were set by those who have no use for fixin’ what ain’t broke. So, Father, enjoy all that space you got to yourself!”
The two men then talked about other things, mostly Mr. Benson’s childhood and early years on the hill. They stayed clear of any more talk about the rectory, Mrs. Keats, Argyle Hobbs, or Sister Ignatius.
About an hour later Argyle Hobbs was making his way up Holly Hill. As the sun came up, he heard faint voices, almost as though shouting, coming from just beyond the back of the rectory. He made his way around the building, following the voices. Reaching the rectory, he saw something incredible. Ben Benson and Father Poole were climbing the maple tree. As they shouted like young school children, all of the tree’s branches began to sway. A cool breeze began blowing on the hill to welcome the new morning.
BOOK II
The Poor Lost Souls of 1929
Ten
A Morning like No Other
One morning in late October 1929, at precisely 7:25 a.m., Mr. Arthur Nichols, as he always did, opened his front door, walked out two or three steps, and bent down to pick up his newspaper, the Portland Daily Chronicle. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary for the newly retired schoolteacher on this particular day. The sky was blue, the clouds were few, the air was cool at fifty-one degrees, and a few birds chirped in the nearby oak tree, which stood tall and firm next to his house.
Upon opening his front door, Mr. Nichols felt the sudden change of temperature. He immediately grabbed the lapels of his robe and pulled one over the other to cover his naked chest. When he was a schoolteacher, he had always equated the unwelcome change of weather with the commencement of a new school year. The sight of yellow-orange leaves reminded him of shouting children, the smell of chalk dust, and long hours of grading.
However, this was the first school year in which he found himself unemployed. At 58, Arthur Nichols was a relic. His hair was now mostly gray, his skin was wrinkling, and his hands were now beginning to suffer the ill effects of arthritis. For the last few weeks after retirement, Mr. Nichols was becoming accustomed to living his life on a schedule much different than the one he’d known as a schoolmaster, a schedule that he was beginning to call “a bloody rut” by this time.
Arthur Nichols began spending his retirement, or his “twilight years” as his school principal called it, in the following manner with little change. First, he would wake up at 7:00 a.m., which, if you had told those who knew the man that he’d be
sleeping till such an hour, they probably would have told you, “Why, the man is most likely worn down from working as hard as he did for so many years—grading papers, planning lessons, keeping young minds engaged six hours a day, day in and day out.” Then, after putting on his robe and visiting the bathroom, he’d go down to the kitchen where his wife Mabel would make his favorite breakfast: eggs over medium with two slices of toast, lightly buttered, and a pot of black coffee. At least it was his favorite until he had had it consecutively for the eighth time.
When he was employed by Wheelwright Academy, Arthur Nichols would wake up so early in the morning, sometimes as early as 4:30, that his wife would still be fast asleep. Nichols was never one for cooking, so he’d just burn some toast on the stove and butter it in a mad frenzy, which was his way when it came to getting to the school as early as he could.
In fact, the earlier Mr. Nichols arrived at work, so much the better. He hated the clamoring of students before classes began, and he couldn’t stand the other teachers who would see him hard at work preparing for class and interrupt him simply to talk nonsense. Usually it was something trivial, such as asking him the time or inquiring whether any coffee was left in the pot, so it became a necessity for him to have as much time to himself as possible because he loved the peace and quiet that arriving at the schoolhouse at 6:00 a.m. offered.
Wheelwright Academy was the only educational institution in Holly and staffed eight teachers for its nearly 200 students, who ranged in age from ten to sixteen. Children under the age of ten were home-schooled. Rather than clustering them together according to age, students of all ages were thrown into subject classes because there weren’t enough teachers for all six age groups. Wheelwright Academy’s eight teachers, Mr. Nichols being one of them, had two different classes each, enrolling students with age differences varying from one to six years.
There were four subjects and two teachers for each one. The curriculum consisted of mathematics, history, reading, and writing. Due to the huge disparity in students’ ability, differentiation of instruction was the order of the day. This was a challenge, to be sure, since each class had between thirty and thirty-five students. A teacher in one of these classes thus would need to make out four different lessons per day—one for the ten—and eleven-year-olds, another for the twelve—to thirteen-year-olds, a third for the fourteen—to fifteen-year-olds and still another for the graduating class of sixteen-year-olds. Each class lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, with an hour set aside for lunch.
With a schedule like this, faculty attrition at Wheelwright Academy was considerable. One of the eight teachers invariably left each year. Replacements almost always came from neighboring towns who didn’t know how the Academy worked until after they had accepted the job. But Arthur Nichols, “history professor extraordinaire” as he was known, worked at the Academy for twenty-seven years, spending endless hours there, arriving early enough to greet the maintenance man, who’d light the furnace first thing in the morning, and leaving late enough in the evening to see all the lights extinguished.
Now that he was retired, too much of a good thing became the norm for Arthur Nichols, who now, having finished half of his tired eggs over medium with lightly buttered toast and black coffee, got up from the table to perform his next usual task of the morning. Having grabbed a piece of hard chocolate candy from the dish on the kitchen table next to his coffee cup and putting it into his pocket, Nichols hastened out of the kitchen to retrieve the newspaper.
Normally you would expect to have your paper by the time you sat down to breakfast, but not in Holly. Jordy Fitzpatrick, whose parents regularly attended Sunday Mass at St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church, partly because they simply loved Father Poole, always delivered his newspapers late since the indolent paperboy wouldn’t even think of getting out of bed before 6:00. He never made it to Mr. Nichols’ front steps until the end of his route at about 7:15 a.m.
Anxious to grab his newspaper and retreat back into his warm house, Arthur Nichols thought, It’s getting awfully chilly. Hell, why wouldn’t it? It’s Halloween tomorrow, and this Indian summer’s been relentless. The cool morning was a great relief in fact to the former schoolteacher, and within ten seconds it felt positively refreshing. By New England standards it had given people a renewed feeling of spring fever, since, with the exception of one or two days in October, it had been unseasonably warm.
Mr. Nichols was enjoying the sudden change in climate so much that he decided to break with tradition and read his paper on the porch. His front door still being open, he called to his wife in the kitchen, “Hey, Mabel. Bring me out another cup o’ coffee. The heat’s broke. I’m gonna sit and enjoy it a spell.” He sat down in his porch swing, opened the paper to the front page, sank back into the cushion, and began to rock.
Before his eyes could scan the paper, they caught sight of something strange. It was a boy walking past the Nichols’ picket fence with his hands deep in the pockets of his overalls. Arthur Nichols reckoned this boy to be about ten or eleven, which made him immediately wonder why the boy was not on his way to school, since he wasn’t carrying a lunch bucket or a single book.
Nichols’ suspicion that the boy was not enrolled in Wheelwright Academy was further validated by two more details: first, the boy was headed in the opposite direction of the school and seemed to be hesitating in walking to wherever it was that he was going; and, second, he was colored. Mr. Nichols presumed this boy to be new in town, since he knew of no Negro families residing in Holly. What’s more, as of June 1929 the total population of Wheelwright Academy was 100% white.
Arthur Nichols wasn’t one to separate people according to their race or religion. He was, after all, liberal to the core and believed in equal rights for Negroes. Still, as a lifelong resident in a completely homogenous town, Arthur Nichols could not but be struck by seeing a child of color walking down the street.
“Hello there!” Mr. Nichols shouted in an excited voice, and then recoiled once he saw the boy jump back a step.
The Negro, dressed in a brown shirt with dark blue overalls, studied Nichols. He gave an impression of a boy frightened. The child quickly looked in the direction he was walking, then back to the side of the street from which he had come. To Arthur Nichols it appeared that the boy was getting ready to run, so the man acted quickly.
He got up from the porch swing, tucked the newspaper under his right arm, extended his left hand, and called out in a much milder tone than before, “Wait, son! Don’t leave.”
The boy stopped, a look of skepticism on his dark brow. He allowed the former schoolteacher to open his front gate and come out onto the street and approach him.
“Hello, son,” Nichols said cordially.
The boy said nothing. He just stood there, having nothing to say in response to the kind man.
“You must be new in town.”
Still the boy said nothing. Arthur Nichols continued, a bit at a loss for words, sensing that the boy didn’t trust him.
“I teach school here. Actually I used to teach. I’m retired.” The boy still gazed up at him, expressionless and mouth closed tight. “What’s your name, son? How old are you?”
Again no response.
At this point Arthur Nichols knew that, if he were going to get anywhere with this child, he’d have to do all the talking and perhaps even entice him. Nichols remembered the piece of chocolate candy he had put into his pocket as he left the kitchen. He reached in and pulled it out. The silver foil, on which stuck some gray lint from Nichols’ pocket, shone in the sun as he showed it to the boy. This got the child’s attention. Paying Mr. Nichols no mind, he was now completely captivated by the candy, and began licking his lips.
“Would you like this?” Mr. Nichols asked him.
The boy stared hungrily for a few more seconds at the candy and then turned to Arthur Nichols as if seeking approval. He nodded at Nichol
s, who then handed it to him slowly so as not to scare him again. The boy took the candy with both hands as if he were afraid of dropping it. He quickly unwrapped it and tossed it into his mouth.
Arthur Nichols suspected that the boy hadn’t eaten, but he didn’t know for how long.
It was hard candy, and after one attempt to bite down the child grimaced wildly. The schoolteacher was amazed that the boy once again tried to bite down and break it.
“Hey now, son! Take it easy, or you’ll break every tooth in your mouth. You have to suck on it.”
The boy paid Arthur Nichols no mind and made a third attempt, this time succeeding. The sound of the candy breaking between the child’s teeth made Nichols wince, since it sounded as though it must have hurt.
“Okay,” said Nichols. “Now that you’ve triumphed over the evil candy ball, what’s say you tell me your name?”
The boy was still chewing and showed no enthusiasm for wanting to speak, so in the interim the retired schoolteacher figured he’d go first. “I’m Mr. Nichols.”
The boy swallowed the sticky chocolate candy, which he frankly didn’t think tasted very good but was glad nonetheless to have had it. He then said in an almost inaudible voice, “Jonas.”
Nichols, who felt that he’d somewhat eased the child’s apprehension, bent down a bit, put his ear in the direction of the boy, and asked him to repeat what he’d said.
“J-Jonas. Jonas be my name.”
Still leaning over to be closer to the child’s mouth, Arthur Nichols repeated, “Jonas? Jonas what?”
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