Cascade

by Maryanne O'Hara

  Someone called her name. Zeke, coming up the sidewalk. “Just the person I wanted to see. I need you tonight.”

  “Need me for what?”

  Zeke ran the annual summer evening band concert series; the series would start in a matter of hours, and he and the other selectmen had decided to present her with an award. “For your efforts to save Cascade.”

  She tried to refuse. She had no right to accept any award. But Asa came out of the drugstore and Zeke told him the plan, and then neither man would listen to her protests.

  “Here’s the thing,” Zeke said. He stepped closer to give her his complete attention, and she was reminded why Zeke was the kind of man who ran things. He was always warm and friendly, and made people feel included and liked, but at heart, he was a serious man. “It’s about more than just you here. You’re the kickoff to this hope that it’s my duty as head of the selectmen to keep alive. For morale. People don’t have much else.”

  “Put that way, I guess I don’t have much choice.”

  Zeke smiled and shook his head. “Nope. The bandstand, seven sharp.”

  Seven, the time Jacob was due to meet her at the playhouse.

  Zeke headed off toward the Brilliant, but Asa lingered, one foot on the running board. She saw him calculating the hours ahead—the miles of rutted roads, the meetings with suppliers, the certainty of at least one flat tire, factoring in the time to fix it. “I wish I could put this trip off but I just can’t,” he said. “Maybe I can get back early. Silas won’t mind if I skip supper.”

  “Oh, Asa, get your buying done and visit with your brother.” He was always grateful for a hot meal and a chance to catch up with Silas before making the long trip back. “There’s really no need for you to rush back just so you can see Zeke Davenport hand me a piece of paper with the town seal on it.”

  “I’ve always liked the first concert, though. And the second issue will be out tonight.”

  “Buy it in Hartford and show it to Silas. I’ll probably take the award and go straight home.” How desperate she was, how anxious and stupid and pathetic. Desperate to grab a snatched hour with a man who was saying good-bye.

  When Asa finally drove off, she didn’t know what to do with everything churning up inside her and so spent a few hours in town before heading home—sweeping the playhouse, opening the cupboards to air them, putting in a grocery order at the Handy.

  The note had been tucked inside an envelope, addressed to her and left on the back porch, propped up on the threshold.

  My dear Mrs. Spaulding, I would very much like to have a private word with you. Please phone me at your earliest convenience, at either the Cascade Hotel (CA-3) or at the office we’ve set up (CA-19). Yours, Elliot Lowell

  She called the switchboard and asked Lil to put her through to the hotel. Ella Mayhew said that Elliot Lowell was long gone, and the man who answered the phone at the water-board office, when she tried there, said he was out in the field.

  Dez debated with herself, the phone in hand. Jacob had asked her not to call his house, but she had little choice, it seemed, considering the circumstances.

  No one answered.

  She looked around the quiet house. The tick-tick-tick of the clock was numbingly slow. The hours would drag till seven. She couldn’t garden—not with her chafed hands. Even holding a mop hurt. And her mind was still too rattled to focus on painting. She spent some time tidying the kitchen, then finally settled on the sofa in her studio with the book Asa was reading, It Can’t Happen Here, fiction based on the coming election and the rise of fascism. But it was disturbing, and she set it aside to glance through the other articles in last week’s Standard. The new weekly Roper’s Poll question was, “What kinds of people do you object to?” Gossips, troublemakers, she thought. The short story was about a working girl who didn’t want to give up her job to have a baby. Dez skimmed through the piece to see how it would end—though she knew from the beginning that the stock character would realize that a baby was far more satisfying than business could ever be.

  Late in the afternoon, Zeke’s delivery boy, Sam, knocked on the back door with the carton of groceries. Lying on top was the new Standard, and Sam was full of shy praise. She tipped him a nickel, and when he was gone, picked the magazine off the top of the pile. The table of contents listed the postcards on page 56 and there they were: Postcards from Cascade. Her eyes quickly scanned the feature, the paintings and text familiar yet startling, so slick and permanent on the page. The colors were fine, the reproductions spot-on. She reviewed each sentence: no mistakes. She read the entire copy three times, then gazed out the window, feeling relief, allowing herself a jolt of pleasure. It was good, she was pleased, but it was disconcerting, too, how within minutes her work could feel so much part of the past.

  That was silly. She opened the Standard for another good look. The magazine fell open to the previous week’s Roper Poll results, which she read with dismay. “What kinds of people do you object to?” The majority response, at 35 percent, had been, simply, “Jews.” At 27 percent, coming in second: “cheap, loud, boisterous people.”

  She tried to phone Jacob three more times, each time wishing it was possible to make a call without an operator knowing about it. The three times Lil put her through, there was no answer. At six, she ran a quick bath and then put on a casual, soft green dress with pearl buttons. She replaced her scuffed canvas shoes with black leather flats. She pinned her hair back, applied some Precious Coral lipstick to her mouth, and walked to town to accept her award.

  27

  She was on the bandstand ready to receive the award—the band momentarily paused, instruments resting on their laps—when she saw Jacob’s truck rolling down Spruce Street. Zeke was saying pretty much what he’d said to her on the sidewalk, that he represented the town in presenting her with a formal award for the appreciation of her efforts. The band, a quartet out of Amherst, men in the red-and-white-striped jackets and straw boaters of an earlier time, their brass instruments flashing in the waning light, looked on with courteous smiles. As she climbed the miniature steps to join Zeke on the podium, Jacob’s truck turned left on Chestnut Street.

  She cleared her throat, suddenly nervous in front of all the upturned, expectant faces. She imagined that people were looking at her funny and spoke too quickly, too falsely vivaciously, hoping no one would notice Jacob. She thanked the crowd and said, “As you will see, one of this week’s postcards is this very scene, a nostalgic look at—” but their attention was being diverted, a murmuring spreading across the crowd “—a quintessential American summer band concert. So thank you.”

  The truck rolled to a stop in front of the playhouse.

  Zeke waved a hand to corral the crowd. “Regardless of what happens to our beloved Cascade, we will be forever grateful to this lady artist…”

  There was the beginning of applause, but eyes turned to the peddler’s truck, to Jacob getting out of it, and Wendell breaking away from the crowd, taking off across the common, Dwight lumbering behind.

  The quartet looked on with mild curiosity. Zeke was briefly distracted, too, then clapped for everyone’s attention. “Thank you, Dez Spaulding!” he bellowed, clapping so heartily that the crowd, stunned for a moment, belatedly joined in, then matched his exuberance.

  Dez pretended very well. She accepted the award—a piece of paper that basically reiterated Zeke’s words, and which was stamped with the official seal of Cascade. She descended the steps, where everybody close to the stage and less distracted by the situation on Chestnut Street squeezed her arms, shoulders, and hands to offer congratulations. Everybody except Lil, who inclined her head toward where Dwight and Wendell were climbing into Jacob’s truck.

  “Your friend’s in trouble.”

  What did she mean? And how would she know? Most eyes, either surreptitiously or blatantly, watched the truck turn around and drive toward Main Street. The quartet was starting up again, “Get Yourself a Sweetie and Kiss Your Troubles Away,” popular
back in the early twenties, when the easy, postwar years had seemed like relief, like respite, and everyone had banked on life continuing that way forever.

  Lil stood with folded arms and a stony expression. Her marceled waves were gone, hair pulled back into its usual twist.

  Did the ribbon salesman leave, Dez wanted to ask, then saw that yes, that was exactly what had happened.

  Zeke, passing around his copy of the Standard, called her over. People congratulated her, they asked to see the award. A cluster of women bent over the magazine, exclaiming over the recognizable landmarks, the tiny, precious details.

  Dez was signing her name to Ethel Bentonford’s copy when she overheard, behind her, the first poison dart of gossip, heard Dot King say to Popcorn’s mother, “Well, I never did care for that Jacob Solomon.” It was as if Dez’s ears flattened backward, like a horse’s, straining to listen. Popcorn’s mother said she’d heard that Stanley’s widow was with Dwight when Bud told his story of seeing Jacob up at Pine Point. “And Dwight was real careful, well, he’d have to be, with her there. He told Bud, ‘I’m real reluctant to go out there and start questioning a man like that. Looks like an accident no matter where it happened.’”

  “I just don’t trust those Jews, though,” Dot murmured, in a regretful manner that said she hated having to state such a thing, but that sometimes unfortunate truths needed to be voiced.

  Dez turned to see Popcorn’s mother lay a hand on Dot’s forearm. “And neither does Mrs. Smith! She insisted on those policemen asking him a question or two. And wasn’t it fishy he drove into town tonight. Who knows what’s up his sleeve?”

  Dot spoke gravely. “I do believe I know, but I’m not in a position to talk about it right now.” Her lips settled into a tight line. “Let’s just say that poor Addis shouldn’t have been so trusting, either.”

  Dez could not imagine what Dot was talking about. She only knew she had to get away from them all. She rolled the award up tight and pushed it deep into her pocket, edging away from the crowd until she reached a point where she could slip, unnoticed, to the playhouse. On the front steps, she looked back over the common. From this distance, the scene looked remarkably like her postcard. The styles she had drawn were twenty years past, but the elms, the evening haze, the moths, the light—all of these were unchanged. The scene looked timeless and idyllic, and every person in the country who saw it would sigh with recognition and loss.

  However, those warm truths she had sketched, the truths that readers of the Standard wanted to see, were a fanciful product of nostalgia. The real crowd, gathered around the real bandstand, illustrated truth, and it was dismaying to watch Dot King’s gossip spread visibly: heads turning, one to another. Groups of two becoming groups of four, then six. Mouths moving, and as the story spread, the pinched, satisfied looks of those telling the stories transferring to those who listened.

  Or so she imagined.

  What were they saying? She did not know. But she knew this: her small success, however applauded at first, would soon enough incite a certain amount of resentment and envy. Her eyesight blurred and it was as if she were seeing every incarnation of every public gathering on the Cascade Common. Those idyllic nights before a play, in the days when William Hart was the town’s most imposing citizen. William Hart—educated, well-traveled, and wealthy, who could have lived anywhere and chose Cascade.

  She saw the November day her mother died, the way the sound of noise built on the common, not the normal noise of the town, but the sound of something momentous and important. She saw herself flinging open the front door and running out to the street with the flu mask everyone was supposed to wear, fitting it over her face. The bells in the Round Church clanged, the fire truck blew all its whistles, rang its bells. Everywhere, people were throwing off their flu masks. Dez threw hers off, too, thinking, wildly, that the flu was cured, that somehow Dr. Proulx would be able to bring her mother back. But it wasn’t the flu they were cheering about, it was the war. The war was over and one of the neighbors’ Irish maids, gleefully dancing in circles, suddenly looked down and saw Dez. Get on home with you now! Sickness shouldn’t be out in the streets!

  And William Hart, hadn’t his luck turned, beginning with the loss of his wife and son? But he’d suffered in the Crash like so many others, and really, wasn’t that some kind of justification, a natural righting of what was wrong? Was it fair that some should have so much and others so little? And now all that was left of those Harts was the daughter who’d been overblessed with a good husband and here she was now, dallying with the traveling Jew.

  That was what she imagined they were saying—or would soon be saying. Twilight deepened into true dusk, turning the air dark and soft. Lanterns were lit, strings of electric light turned on. She slipped into the dark, down the north side of the common until she was well past the crowd, searching the streets for Jacob’s truck. It was parked in front of Town Hall, engine still steaming, making crackling noises. In the basement—police headquarters—light shone through the grilled windows.

  She hesitated; she couldn’t just barge in. But she had to barge in. Her mind scrambled for an excuse and came up with something lame but reasonable: she could ask Dwight if he’d happened to see Asa before he left for Connecticut. Do you know what time he left? He mentioned he was going to stop in to see you.

  She picked her way down the dimly lit stairwell. The door stood slightly ajar, casting a triangular shadow on the floor. She rapped on the frosted window, turned the knob. “Dwight? Wendell?”

  Silence. Inside, the two desks were empty, but beyond them, in the holding cell, Jacob was sitting on a cot, his eyes glimmering in the dim light. He sat unmoving, the door to the cell wide open.

  “What is going on?” she whispered.

  He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.

  “Why are you here, Jacob? Where are Dwight and Wendell? What is going on?”

  “Oh, they seem to think I may have done all manner of things.”

  His voice sounded disembodied, and she stepped closer, wrapping her hands around the iron rungs. “What manner of things?”

  “Oh.” He lifted one hand and looked at it as if he didn’t recognize it. He counted off on his fingers. “One. Tampering with ‘Mr. Asa Spaulding’s property.’ Thereby, two, causing the death of the water man. Shall I go on?”

  She sat down gingerly, on the very edge of the cot. “What have you told them?”

  He let a moment pass. “What haven’t you told me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were on your husband’s property. You must have known.”

  She was quiet. “I thought if you knew we were on Asa’s land, you’d feel morally obligated to leave.”

  “Of course I would have.”

  It was not the time to argue, to point out that every acre of woods out there belonged to Asa, that they would never have been able to go for that last walk. “Have they arrested you?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But they did ask me—and rather politely, too, I must give them credit—to stay and answer some questions. They’re fetching a man named Lowell.”

  “They can’t do this to you. You have rights.”

  “Do I?”

  “Of course, Jacob. What’s wrong with you?”

  Why didn’t he just get angry? She couldn’t stand this part of him, this broody, self-absorbed quality.

  “They wanted to know why I was back in town tonight.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told them the truth, that I was here to deliver goods to Al Stein. They said why so late and I explained that Al is pretty orthodox, doesn’t work any more on the Sabbath than he must, to feed his family.”

  He saw that she didn’t really understand what he was saying and added, somewhat impatiently, “Al asked me to make the delivery after sundown. And Wendell thought he caught me in some kind of lie because everyone knows the Sabbath day is Sunday. What kind of intellect am I dealing with here? No wonder I want to
get the hell back to New York.”

  She murmured noncommittally.

  “And just today,” he said bitterly, “we got word from my cousin. Buying from Jews has been declared a ‘treason to the people.’ His own neighbors smashed his windows, the windows of his little shop. And as I was driving here, I was thinking about it, and I thought, Well, at least I live here, where people can say things about me, but they can’t do much more. And then I drive into town and I’m accosted and accused, and I think, Where is there a secure place in this world?”

  “There is no such place,” she said. Somehow she had always known that. Only, where Jacob found that truth disheartening, she found it oddly freeing. Because what was security? It was a word, an abstract idea, grasped at by people who believed they needed it, who hadn’t yet discovered their own strength. She had so wanted to believe in security that she’d married a man for all the wrong reasons. And what had her sacrifice for security gotten any one of them? A tombstone for her father two months after the marriage. A locked-in state of mind for herself and Asa. In the beginning, so unthinkingly, she had gone along with Asa’s idea of security, of what was right, as if it was carved-in-stone truth: that life was about planning children, about working, and about sticking with marriage vows. But security was an illusion. Look at the bulldozers threatening the playhouse, the house on River Road, all of Cascade, and the men in all those newspaper photos in every city in the country, standing in lines, waiting for meals, for charity.

  “I guess they found some kind of chain up at Pine Point,” Jacob was saying. “Pine Point—now that’s the very same place where two hundred people picnicked two weeks ago, if I’m not mistaken, but no one thought of that. No, they automatically deduce that the chain must belong to me.”