The Cape Ann Read Free Page A

a gilded, three-foot wooden key, was the mayor, with Mrs. Stillman shy and weeping beside him.
    The boy with Hilly held tight to his charge and glanced anxiously around. That, at least, is the way Bill McGivern, who was already mustered out, remembers it.
    But Hilly broke into an open-mouthed smile and began flailing his arms in time to the music as if he were conducting the band. The young man beside him spoke some words to him, and Mrs. Stillman ran to fling her arms around her son, but Hilly ignored them. The arm flailing seemed to lift him to a higher level of excitement, and Hilly commenced to jig precariously. Neither his mother nor the attendant soldier could restrain him.
    Grinning and flailing and jigging, Hilly careened back and forth across the station platform. Helpless, Mrs. Stillman watched, clutching her coat around her.
    Suddenly Hilly stopped. His smile slid away, and he cast his eyes down to the front of his trousers. The widening stain of urine there seemed to amaze him.
    The band concluded “Tipperary.” Hilly raised his eyes and took in the gathered crowd, bewilderment crimping his features. Staring again at the stain, he spread his hands to conceal it and crumpled to the platform on his knees.
    The crowd began to crumble and disperse. Finally there were only the three of them on the platform: Hilly on his knees, Mrs. Stillman crouched beside him, and the attendant soldier standing guard.
    Hilly’s purely physical wounds—shrapnel in the neck and chest, and trench foot severe enough to necessitate amputation of several toes on his right foot—healed, though he would always walk with a rolling limp. But Hilly’s mind had carried him back to early childhood. About age five, people speculated. Doctors held out hope that he would recover his sanity spontaneously, but it was only a hope, not a prognosis.
    Hilly and his mother lived in a small apartment over Rabel’s Meat Market on Main Street, across from the post office. When Mrs. Stillman was home from school, where she still taught thirdgrade, Hilly sat at the window in his room watching people come and go on the street below, particularly the steady flow in and out of the post office. There was no mail delivery in Harvester, so everyone picked up their own. Hilly liked to see people coming out with packages and imagine what was in them.
    After Mrs. Stillman left for school in the morning and Hilly had eaten the breakfast laid out on the kitchen table, he dressed himself and descended the outside stairs, drifting out onto Main Street. So proud was he of being able to dress himself that one spring morning, a couple of months after his return, Hilly hobbled naked down the stairs, carrying the garments Mrs. Stillman had left on the chair beside his bed. Hitching his way into Rabel’s Meat Market, he threw down the clothes and grinned widely at Mr. Rabel, Mr. Rabel’s apprentice, and three ladies come to do marketing, exhorting, “Watch.” Then one at a time, Hilly picked up the articles of clothing, held them up to show his audience, and painstakingly pulled them on, taking great care to match buttons to buttonholes. Two of the three ladies ran out of the store without their purchases. The third, Bernice McGivern’s sister, Maxine, who was Dr. White’s nurse, remained, and when Hilly was done dressing himself, she clapped and told him he was a clever boy.
    That was the first of the Hilly Stillman stories. Although his mother persuaded Hilly never again to appear in public without clothing, short of taping his mouth and tying him to a chair, she could not prevent his going out and talking to people on the sidewalk. Most people turned away when they saw him. They crossed the street to avoid him. Boys taunted him, and if no one were around to stop them, they pelted him with stones, chasing him home and up the wooden stairs outside the butcher shop.
    Women were frightened by Hilly. He lacked decorum. He would be on you, talking six to the dozen, before