The Cape Ann Read Free

before. Hilly’s father died when Hilly was a baby. Mrs. Stillman taught third grade at the public school to provide for herself and little Hillyard. A cousin, a young farm girl, had come to live with them in town for a few years to help out with Hilly, but she got into trouble and had no husband, and she disappeared, evaporated into thin air.
    When Mama heard this story, she said, “I hope she lit out for California. I hope it was a married man, and he gave her money to get to California. Maybe she’s in the movies now.”
    Mama said this at a sodality meeting and word of it got back to Papa who said that if Mama felt that way, she was no better than that pregnant whore. Mama hit him with a rolled up
Liberty
magazine and Papa slapped her across the face so hard that she had a bruise and couldn’t go to bridge club or sewing club for a month. After that Mama cooled toward sodality.
    I often thought of Hilly Stillman’s cousin and her baby in California. Did they have an orange farm or was the cousin in the movies, as Mama had suggested? I hoped they had an orange farm. It would be pleasant for the baby, playing among the trees and having all the oranges she wanted. Oranges were a luxury in Minnesota in the thirties. Grandpa Browning complained that fellows on relief got oranges but folks who had to work for a living couldn’t afford them. It didn’t occur to me that Hilly’s cousin would be inher middle years now, the baby in its thirties. I imagined them in the warm shade of orange trees, a young mother and her toddler.
    Mrs. Stillman nearly lost her job after the cousin took off, pregnant. Although this all happened around the turn of the century, people continued to speak of it in 1934 when Mama and Papa came to Harvester.
    A committee made up of several German Lutherans, a number of Baptists, and a Methodist approached the school board and demanded that Mrs. Stillman be dismissed. After all, they pointed out, the offending cousin had been living under the Stillman roof when she got pregnant. Where was Mrs. Stillman when this was going on?
    It was a narrow decision. Mrs. Stillman’s job was saved by one vote. The town was divided by the issue, and the German Lutherans decided to build their own elementary school.
    Bill McGivern said that when Hilly was growing up, he took a lot of razzing about all of it, and about being a mama’s boy as well. He was always waiting around school for her instead of slipping off and doing daring, forbidden things that would get him into the proper kind of trouble.
    When President Wilson declared war on the Central Powers, Hilly was the first boy from the county to volunteer. A big fuss was made over him. His picture appeared in all the weekly and biweekly papers in St. Bridget County. Girls promised to write him, and everyone was proud to have known him, to have been his friend.
    Hilly was sent to France, where he brought glory upon himself with his daring in battle and his courage in the rescue of fallen comrades. At home Mrs. Stillman was invited everywhere. When he was decorated by both the French and the American governments, Hilly’s picture again appeared in all the papers. Three different Harvester girls were circulating the story of their imminent engagement to Hilly.
    Word that Hilly had been wounded and news of the end of the war arrived at nearly the same time. A great armistice celebration was held in the school gymnasium, and Mrs. Stillman was installed on a throne bedecked with bunting and flags.
    When Hilly’s wounds had healed as well as they ever would, he was shipped back to Harvester, where news of his return had preceded him. Lurching down the steps of the railway car,accompanied by another soldier, sent to see him home, Hilly was nearly blown sideways by the spirited strains of “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary.” Assembled before him at the station were the high school band and a throng of a thousand flag-waving citizens. Right down in front, clutching