Chapter Six

The next morning Jack telephoned the Scarsdale real estate agent and we learned that the tenant was already living in our house. He and his wife had moved in the previous afternoon, and the agent thought it was going to be difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge them. What reason could we offer for wanting to cancel the lease? How had our situation changed overnight? He suggested we call the people directly and explain our problem.

I made the call. Mrs. Shaffer answered and began telling me how much she and Harold were enjoying our house. I said we’d been having second thoughts about renting it, and she replied sweetly that it was too bad but she and Harold loved the place too much to give it up now. She did agree to discuss the matter with him when he returned from Dallas in a week or ten days.

“We’re stuck,” Jack said. “We’ve signed the lease and accepted their check. Of course, maybe until we cash the check—”

I had deposited it. I had stopped at our bank in Scarsdale on the way out of town in the morning.

“All right, we’re stuck, but only until her husband comes back. Then we’ll have to persuade them to find another place. We won’t charge them for the time they’ve been in our house. In fact we might pay them something for the inconvenience.”

“From what I was told about Shaffer, I don’t think a few bucks will sway him.”

“Something will—your health or something. We’ll think of a good reason.”

Duff had come into the room. “Why don’t you tell the man the truth?” he said. “Tell him your son has been caught up in the evils of country life and you have to get him back to innocent suburbia.”

“Don’t be a wise guy,” Jack told him.

“Isn’t it the truth? Isn’t that why you want to go back?”

“We intend to go back because we’ll all be happier at home,” I said.

“I’m happy here,” Duff said.

“We know what’s best for you,” I informed him.

“Well I’m not going back.”

He stood there grinning defiantly. His face seemed dirty and I noticed that his beard was beginning to grow. Although he had been wearing his hair long for some time, it now seemed lank and greasy. To me his whole appearance was one of deliberate sloppiness, in spite of the fact that his clothes were what he usually wore—jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers.

“Go to your room, Duff,” his father told him quietly.

He stared at Jack for a moment, still grinning, then turned and obeyed. Or at least he went upstairs.

“That’s something different,” Jack said ruefully. “That’s never happened before.”

It was almost incredible conduct. Duff had never defied us. “It’s this place,” I said. I didn’t really believe that—intending the remark only as comfort for Jack—but then I remembered what Stephanie had said. Coincidentally, or maybe not, she came in then, bringing him some vitamin tablets, and I wondered if she had heard the conversation with Duff. She had certainly heard my remark to Jack, because she glanced at me briefly, then blushed and looked away.

I wish now I had followed her out of the room and insisted that she tell me more of what she had talked about the night before. At that time, if I had been aware of what I was facing, I think I still might have been able to manage Duff. If I had known then what I know now, I would have cajoled him, bribed him, drugged and bound him, if necessary, in order to get him away from the Caine farm.

For the next couple of weeks however, we were in a period of relative calm. There were no more episodes of defiance from Duff and indeed his whole manner seemed to change again. He was the mannerly, quiet and neat-­appearing boy he had been of old. And his relationship with Franny became what it had always been, not exactly idyllic, but a normal brother-­sister thing in which he put her down occasionally, but was still loving and protective toward her.

With Stephanie he was respectful but subdued. They had little to say to each other, but they didn’t appear to be trying to avoid each other either. Duff didn’t seem to be embarrassed by her presence and she didn’t seem to be afraid of him. Dr. Fowler came to see Jack every few days. (“Try to get service like that in Scarsdale,” said Jack.) The cast was off now and he was getting around very well on crutches.

I then suggested to Stephanie that we could get along without her help. She reacted by beginning to weep.

“Please don’t make me go home,” she sobbed.

“No one is making you go anywhere,” I said. “As I recall, you wanted us to leave a while ago. What if we had gone back East immediately, as it seems to me you suggested we do?”

“I thought maybe you’d take me along.”

“Oh, Stephanie,” I said disgustedly, “go get yourself another job.”

“I can’t. They won’t let me.”

“Your parents? How can they prevent you? You’re not a child.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Let me get this straight. Do they want you to stay here, or is it just that you want to stay?”

She hesitated. “They’d like me to stay here with you and keep you living in the house. I’d like to be with you somewhere else.”

“Why are you so fond of us?”

“You’re different from the people I’m used to. At dinner you talk about things—books and music, things like that. At home we never talk at dinner.”

I didn’t think our table talk was all that cultivated, but I let it pass. “You can stay for another week or so, Stephanie,” I said, “then we’ll examine the problem again.”

“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Caine.” She clutched my hand. “And will you think about my going back East with you too? Maybe just to travel with you, if nothing else.”

I agreed to consider it, but I had no intention of taking her along. She was beginning to seem seriously neurotic to me, and I didn’t want to be responsible for her. At that time, my determination to leave hadn’t diminished in the least, even though I wasn’t making any headway with the Scarsdale tenants. Mr. Shaffer was just as adamant as his wife about giving up the lease.

Compounding the problem was the fact that Jack was settling in on the farm. He had apparently put the Duff-­Stephanie episode out of his mind and was writing a book. It was to be a novel, about the advertising business presumably. We never discussed it, and I haven’t looked at the four or five filled yellow legal pads he left.

I know now I should have called the real estate man and insisted that he find us another place, no matter what the cost. If nothing was available in Scarsdale, then we should have gone somewhere else, maybe to my sister’s in Albany. She has a big house and no children, and while I can’t say she would have been eager to take us in—we have never really gotten along—she would have accepted the situation if I had presented it as an emergency.

Then it was mid-­August and the school year was almost upon us. Something would have to be done soon. I assumed that Duff’s and Franny’s records had already been transferred to Cainesville, and reversing the process might take some time.

I decided to have another talk with Duff, hoping to get his cooperation, but at the same time resolved that we were not going to be on the farm when school started, no matter what he wanted. He was, as usual, reading from the books and newspapers in the upstairs storeroom on the afternoon I went up to see him. He hadn’t been out of the house for several days, as far as I knew.

“You look ill,” I told him when he finally noticed me. He was sitting cross-­legged on the floor reading a book. His face was flushed and he was trembling.

“Maybe I have a little cold,” he said.

I put my hand on his forehead. As I did so, he closed the book and casually put it on a stack of other books an arm’s length away. All the books were old with worn leather bindings.

“You don’t seem to have a fever,” I said. “You should be outside, though, on this beautiful day, and not cooped up here in this stuffy room. What was that book you were reading?”

“Just an old history book.”

“It’s in Latin, isn’t it? I didn’t know you could read Latin.” I picked up another book from the floor. “Do you read Greek too? You’ve never studied it in school, have you?”

“No, but I’ve picked up a smattering of both languages on my own.”

He had never mentioned it, and I didn’t remember ever seeing any books in Latin or Greek around the house in Scars-dale.

“I used to be able to read a little Latin,” I said. “We all had to study it for a couple of years at Sacré Coeur Academy. That was before the Church became liberated and threw out the Latin rites.”

“Do you know the Mass in Latin?” he asked.

“I used to.”

“You must say some of the prayers for me sometime. I’m very interested in such things. There’s a beautiful Catholic church in Cainesville, Saint Mary’s. I’ve been there several times. The pastor, Father Fogarty, is a very interesting man.”

“Duff, school is going to be starting soon.”

He took my hand. “Mother,” he said earnestly, “I’d like to go to school here for at least one semester. I really would.”

“Impossible, Duff.”

“Mother, I’d like to write a book about the Caine family. As long as Dad is writing a book, why couldn’t I do it too? There’s so much fascinating material here. Let me show you.” He rummaged in a pile and pulled out a tattered book without a cover. “Here’s a history of Ashland County. The county was created in 1846, but the town of Ashland was laid out much earlier—in 1815. Cainesville was settled even before that. Hosiah Caine went there from Connecticut in 1795, and then a year or two later he moved out here.”

“Duff . . .”

“His oldest son, Enoch, was killed and scalped by Delaware Indians in 1806. It must have been awful for his mother, mustn’t it?”

“Yes, awful.”

“Of course she had a number of other children, including the one who became General Caine. He’s said to have killed quite a few Indians himself, when he was younger than I am now.” Duff took a large scrapbook from a stack of similar ones. “Here are some newspaper clippings about him. Aunt Hannah made some notes in the margins.”

He selected a page for me to read and pushed the book over. The clipping was from the Ashland Times of February 15, 1883. The heading was ashland county resident honored, and the two-­paragraph story stated that Brigadier General Duffin H. Caine had been proposed for membership in the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion, an organization of former Union officers who had served with distinction during the war. Next to the clipping was a faded line written in a spidery hand. “He was a great man.” The verb was underlined several times.

“Why did she have to be so emphatic about it?” I asked. “Did somebody suggest he wasn’t a great man?”

“Well, you know, Dad told us about how some of his neighbors didn’t like him.” Duff turned the pages and showed me a clipping from May, 1862. I read part of it.

Colonel Caine took command of the Ohio Brigade on the second day at Shiloh after General Wilkinson was killed. Taking a position on the right flank of General Grant’s Army, he led his cavalrymen in charge after charge against Confederate General Wallace’s Division . . .

“He was made a general himself after that, and fought in several more battles before he was captured,” Duff said. “And even though he was captured in the western area of fighting, he was taken to an eastern prison—Libby Prison in Richmond—for greater security.”

“He must have been considered an important prisoner.”

“He was. He was one of the greatest cavalry leaders in the war, maybe the very greatest on the Union side. He was never recognized as such though by his contemporaries.”

“Why?”

“Oh, politics, I suppose. Maybe he wasn’t enough of a self-­promoter.” Duff took the scrapbook and put it back on the stack. “Anyway, you can see there’s a lot of valuable material here.”

“It’s transportable, isn’t it? We could rent a trailer and take all those books back East with us.”

“But it’s not only these books, Mother. It’s the books in the libraries in Ashland and Cainesville and all the microfilms of newspapers I need to read. Mother, couldn’t we please stay here for just one semester?”

“That gets us into January. That would be half the winter.”

“It’s not so long. The time will pass before you know it. And if we go now, I’ll always think it was because you didn’t have any faith in me. Also, it occurred to me that maybe you’re afraid this place has had a bad effect on me, and I’d like to prove to you that it isn’t true.”

“Did Stephanie tell you that?”

“Stephanie? No, I don’t talk much to her anymore, Mama. I realize now that what happened between me and her was just a part of growing up. I know myself a lot better now and I’m posi­tive that nothing like that will ever happen again. Mama, won’t you please agree to stay for just a few more months?”

I hesitated. “I’ll think about it,” I said finally. “I’ll talk to your father.” We both knew that didn’t mean anything. If Duff could sway me, the battle was won. Furthermore Jack no longer wanted to leave either, if he ever did.

“All right, Mama,” Duff said solemnly. “I know you’ll do what’s best for me.”

I held his hand for a moment and was struck by how old and tired-­looking he seemed. I thought then that maybe it was the light that made his face so long and gaunt and caused the shadows under his eyes.

Well, I went downstairs, God help me, and told Jack I had decided that we ought to stay at the farm for one school semester. I said that by the end of that time the real estate man ought to be able to find the Shaffers another place comparable to our own. Jack nodded agreement and hardly looked up from his writing.