The farm children were waiting in the corridor each morning when Miss Peale arrived at school: Henry Eickmeier, Chauncey Hoeffer, Peggy Schultheis, and Richard Dickey, who’d ridden into town at dawn on his father’s milk truck. In the cloakroom they stowed coats and galoshes, hats and gloves. Miss Peale settled in at her desk and looked over her lesson plans. The farm children did not speak to one another; familiar as cousins, they didn’t see the point. They sat quietly at their desks, waiting for the town children to arrive.
First came the hoodlums, in a noisy pack: Jerry Bernardi, Joseph Poblocki, and John Quinn. At the back of the room they sprawled heavily in their chairs, scraping the linoleum. At the end of the day Miss Peale would have a pupil reorder the desks, or simply do it herself.
Gradually the others filed in, the studious boys who spoke up in class, the shy girls—Dorothy Novak, Helen Lubicki—who never said a word. At the front of the room sat the pretty girls: Nellie Stiffler, Theresa Bellavia in her tight sweater, Angela Scalia, the homecoming queen. Evelyn Lipnic seemed out of place in that crowd, a redhead with a lovely complexion, sweet and mannerly and, in Miss Peale’s estimation, not as fast. At the center of the hive, as always, was Alan Spangler, smiling and dapper in a plaid sport coat. Their arrival caused a reaction among the hoodlums, a kind of heightened alertness. From her vantage point, Miss Peale saw it like a ripple in the water. The pretty girls seemed not to notice. According to Edna O’Shane, who taught art and music, they had fiancés overseas, young men in danger. Boys their own age could not compete.
They were the class of 1943, that year’s models. In other years there had been other quiet Schultheis girls, other lovely Scalias; a long series of incorrigible Bernardis, Poblockis, and Quinns. Most were coal miners’ children, the sons and daughters of pinners and cutters—raised in company houses built by Baker Brothers, their chores and meals dictated by Baker shifts. There were a few exceptions: the Bellavias owned a bakery in Little Italy, the Spanglers a hat shop on Main Street. Bernardi’s Funeral Home catered to the new foreign families, Italians, Irish, and Slavish—a business that, given the general fecundity of Catholics, seemed destined to thrive. Viola Peale was, herself, a lifelong member of St. John’s Episcopal, built by her father’s cousins Chester and Elias Baker—the original Baker brothers for whom the mines, and the town, were named.
The homeroom period was for administrative purposes. Miss Peale took attendance and read announcements. On Saturday morning the Key Club would sponsor a collection drive, old tires and scrap metal for the war effort. Students’ families were encouraged to donate. Report cards would be issued on Thursday, the last day before Christmas vacation. Thursday evening the glee club would perform its annual Christmas concert.
“Starring Alan Spangler!” Nellie shrieked, squeezing his shoulder.
Miss Peale gave her a reproving look.
At the bell the students rose. The pretty girls collected their pocketbooks. Alan Spangler lingered at Miss Peale’s desk.
“You have to try these, Miss Peale.” His voice was warm and resonant, Edna O’Shane’s best tenor. He reached into his jacket and produced a tin of lemon drops. “My dad buys them in Pittsburgh. My mom can’t get enough of them.”
“That’s kind of you, Alan,” she said, flushing. “Though it’s a bit early in the day for candy.” She was uncomfortably aware of the boys at the back of the room, Poblocki’s gruff laughter, Quinn cracking a joke in a low voice.
Alan Spangler seemed not to notice. He grinned, showing his dimple. “Take one for after lunch. It’s nice to have something sweet.”
A few snowflakes scattered as Viola drove across town. She had stayed late to grade papers, and already dusk was falling. She groped for, and eventually found, the switch that turned on the headlamps. She was not a confident driver. The car, her father’s ancient Ford, never traveled beyond the town line.
At home Clara was chopping vegetables for soup. “The basket came,” she said.
Viola glanced into the parlor. A giant package sat in the center of the table, wrapped in clear cellophane. Her sister had shown unusual restraint. Each year at Christmas, their cousin Chessie sent a massive fruit basket—not the usual apples and oranges but bright, sweet clementines, tiny champagne grapes, a whole pineapple with the leafy crown attached. (Where one found such produce in Bakerton, Viola couldn’t imagine. In winter the selection was slim indeed.) The basket arrived with a generic note, on company letterhead:
COMPLIMENTS OF BAKER BROTHERS,
MINERS AND SHIPPERS OF COAL
Delivered, always, by one of the Baker maids, as if to remind the sisters that their cousin was an important man, busy running ten coal mines, the welfare of an entire town heavy on his shoulders. The slight was lost on Clara, who would, if Viola didn’t stop her, attack the basket like a hungry orangutan and devour its contents in a single day.
Her sister was sweet-tempered and didn’t mind the scolding. At school she’d been called slow. As labels went, it was not inaccurate. Clara moved through life at a deliberate pace, as though the smallest decisions—shoes or boots, rice or potatoes—called for long consideration. And yet she was an excellent cook, a careful housekeeper, skills Viola had never bothered to acquire. Since their parents’ death, the sisters had looked after each other. Neither had ever lived alone.
After supper, Viola took a walk uptown. The stores were open late for holiday shopping, the sidewalks busy, the windows bright. Even the Jewish merchants had decorated; Friedman’s Furniture glowed with twinkling red lights. A speaker piped carols into the chilly air, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” The atmosphere was festive, and yet there were sober reminders—two blue stars in Izzy Friedman’s window, his sons Neil and Morris serving overseas—of the boys who might not return.
She wandered down Main Street, studying the shop windows. Each year she bought a few modest gifts—scented soap for Edna O’Shane, a scarf or sweater for Clara, who would have preferred some useless trinket. She had always been indifferent to clothing. Without Viola’s prodding, she would go to church in her slip.
She paused in front of Spangler’s Hat Shop, known all over Saxon County for its window displays. In defiance of the season, someone had created a kind of Caribbean fantasy: against a painted backdrop of sand and ocean, mannequins sat in lawn chairs, dressed in colorful swimsuits and drinking summer cocktails. Absurdly, each wore a beautiful hat. The hats were strawberry-pink and lemon-yellow, nothing a woman would buy this time of year. And yet the tableau was irresistible. It was impossible to walk past the window, impossible not to step inside.
As she stood gawking, a hand snaked through a seam in the backdrop and placed paper umbrellas in the mannequins’ glasses. Then Alan Spangler appeared in the window. He knelt to clip a bracelet around a mannequin’s wrist. When he spotted Viola, he smiled and waved her inside. “Miss Peale! It’s nice to see you.” He had removed his sport jacket; his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. “How do you like my display?”
“It’s enchanting,” she said. “This is your creation?”
He grinned. “I accept full blame. My dad thinks I’ve lost my mind.” He lowered his voice. “It’s working, though. We’ve never had a busier Christmas.”
“Well, congratulations.” Her eyes darted around the shop, the dozens of hats on wire stands. For her sister, it would be a wasteful gift: the hall closet was full of unworn hats. Each Sunday Clara donned an old green cloche of their mother’s, stylish twenty years ago.
“We just got a whole truckload of new merchandise. I haven’t put them out yet. You can have first pick.” He crossed to the front door and turned the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. “We close at eight, but you’re a special customer.”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” she protested.
He disappeared into a back room, calling over his shoulder: “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Viola waited. Somewhere a radio was playing. On the counter was a pile of fashion magazines, Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. She hadn’t bought a new hat in years. She and Clara lived within their means, her weekly paycheck plus the small inheritance from their father.
Alan reappeared with a stack of hatboxes piled to his chin. “I picked these especially for you.” He opened a box and took out a maroon beret. “Try this.”
Viola took the hat and placed it carefully on her head. He pointed toward a mirror. “It’s lovely,” she said.
“Don’t make up your mind yet. Not until you see this.” From a larger box, he took a simple woolen sailor. “Don’t look yet.” He placed the hat on her head, frowned, adjusted it minutely. To her astonishment, his fingers brushed at her forehead, loosening a lock of hair. “You have beautiful hair. We don’t want to cover it completely.”
It was a remarkable thing for a boy to say to his teacher, but Alan said it simply, without self-consciousness. He was a natural salesman, born, if the Creator actually thought of such things, to sell ladies’ hats. Growing up around the shop, he’d developed a way with the female customers, a warm and practiced ease. It explained his popularity with the girls at school. Bakerton men were not known for social graces. Next to other local males—the girls’ gruff fathers and crude brothers—Alan Spangler was a prince.
He stood behind her and studied her reflection in the mirror. “I had a hunch it would suit your complexion. Bring out the blue in your eyes.”
Viola blinked. He was right: her eyes, gray in most lights, looked distinctly blue. “It’s marvelous,” she said softly—forgetting for the moment that he was her pupil, forgetting everything but this new vision of herself, no longer a dowdy schoolmarm but a striking blue-eyed woman with beautiful hair. Such was the power of an elegant hat.
She turned to face him, hesitating. It seemed indelicate to ask. “What is the price, exactly?”
“Nineteen dollars.”
“Oh, my.” She had never spent so much on a hat in her life. “It’s very tempting. But Christmas is just around the corner. I should be buying gifts for others, not myself.” She took a final look at her reflection, the vivid blue eyes she’d never seen in a mirror. Reluctantly she removed the hat.
“I’ll put it aside for you, in case you change your mind.” Alan’s eyes twinkled. “This hat is made for you. There isn’t a woman in Bakerton who could wear it so well.”
“Thank you, Alan,” she said, flushing. “You’re quite a salesman. Your father must be very proud.”
She buttoned her coat and headed out into the cold. A stiff wind had kicked up. Walking home, she felt warmed from the inside, hot with pleasure and embarrassment. Bakerton was a small town. Mindful of appearances, she had always kept a certain distance from her pupils. Any passing pedestrian might have seen her through the glass door, alone in the shop with Alan Spangler, giggling like schoolgirls as he placed the hat on her head. And yet in the moment, she’d felt no discomfort. She hadn’t felt such freedom, such warm and easy happiness in another’s company, since she was a girl.
That night, naturally, she dreamed of Edgar. She often did, but that night it was certain to happen. There was no doubt.
They had called themselves cousins, though in fact their fathers were. Viola’s, an accountant, had been brought over from England by his cousins Chester and Elias Baker. When the first Baker mine prospered, Herman Peale had been hired to keep the books. Edgar was Chester Baker’s son—born, like Viola, at an extraordinary moment, the dawn of the new century. They had in common a feeling of destiny, a fascination with the future: the modern wonders not yet invented, the unimaginable miracles to come.
From birth they’d been closer than siblings. Viola’s sister, Clara, was too slow for their games; Edgar’s brother, Chester Jr.—known as Chessie—too serious, too old. As children they’d chased each other through the Baker house, a rambling mansion on Indian Hill. At Jefferson Elementary they were inseparable. Another boy would have been teased for playing with a girl, but Edgar was a Baker. At eight or nine or ten, the miners’ children were old enough to know the difference.
Looking back on those years, Viola could summon few memories of her parents or Clara and none whatsoever of her schoolmates. Her long happy childhood had been spent in Edgar’s orbit.
Then, when they were both fourteen, Edgar was taken away—enrolled, like his brother, Chessie, at the Wollaston School in Connecticut, impossibly far away. At Bakerton High, Viola was sick with loneliness. From the miners’ children she felt hopelessly separate, and yet she was no Baker. The schoolmates she’d always ignored returned the favor, leaving her friendless in the small class. In those days, few pupils finished high school; they left for the mines or the dress factory, the family farm. In 1917, Viola’s year, Bakerton High would graduate a class of twelve.
She lived for the summers, when Edgar returned for three glorious months of riding and long walks and picnics and tennis, a game he’d become obsessed with at school. On rainy days they spent hours at the piano. Viola played competently, Edgar beautifully. Every summer they mastered several duets. Each May their reunion was awkward. Edgar seemed at first a different person, a handsome and beguiling stranger with a shockingly deep voice. In a day or two the effect would dissipate, and Viola would recognize her own Edgar, dearer to her than anybody; as familiar as her own self.
They had three such summers, sun-filled, precious. Then, in the fourth summer—they didn’t know it would be the last—everything, everything changed.
Edgar came home in time to attend her graduation. Viola, the class valedictorian, saw him sitting in the audience next to a boy she didn’t recognize. Later she was introduced to Bronson Baker—Edgar’s first cousin and her second. The boy’s mother, finding Bakerton uninhabitable, had divorced Elias Baker when Bronson was a baby and taken him back to England to live. When England went to war, Bronson had been sent to military school in South Carolina. Now he’d come to spend a summer with the father he barely remembered.
Viola loved him on sight.
He was their own age, their own blood, but stirringly different. Since birth Viola and Edgar had resembled each other, fair and slender, with fine blond hair that turned almost white in the sun. Bronson was not tall, but his body was thick and powerful. She loved his square shoulders, his curly hair, his cultivated accent. He was the first boy she’d ever met who could drive an automobile. On summer evenings the three cousins raced along the back roads in his father’s Maxwell touring car, the only automobile for miles.
Each morning Viola watched the boys play tennis. She’d never realized—Edgar was too kind to let her see—that she was a weak player; now, watching him with Bronson, she understood how patient he’d been. With Viola he’d never kept score, but now each point was fiercely contested. Edgar played with grace and precision, Bronson with fury: explosive speed, a blistering serve.
In a trance of longing, Viola sat on the grass, hugging her knees to her chest.
She wished desperately for Bronson to approach her, though how a boy did this—with words, a look, a touch?—she couldn’t begin to say. She had never been alone with him. Playing cards or croquet or riding in the Maxwell to the new picture show uptown, it was always the three cousins together. All her life, Edgar had been Viola’s dearest companion. Now she found herself wishing—shockingly, horribly—that he would disappear.
Instead the opposite happened. Viola herself became invisible. Once or twice, when the moon was full, the boys set off on horseback to camp on Garman Ridge in an old canvas tent. On hot afternoons they went swimming in Deer Pond, an activity unsuitable for females. Miserably she watched them set off in the Maxwell.
“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” Edgar said sweetly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Viola answered, hating him and Bronson both.
The summer marched on toward its inevitable conclusion. America had joined the war in Europe. It was known, though not discussed, that the boys would be called up to serve. One morning in early August, the three cousins set off on a long hike, Bronson’s idea. All summer long, he’d been itching to climb Indian Hill.
“Why?” Viola asked, genuinely curious.
“Because it’s there,” Bronson said.
The strongest by far, he carried their supplies in a rucksack strapped to his back. They attacked the hill and found a path into the wood. Bronson led the way, armed with a compass, Edgar a few paces behind. Viola struggled to keep up, encumbered by her skirt.
At noon they reached the summit. The view was picturesque: an alternating pattern of forest and farmland, the fields laid out like a patchwork quilt. To the north and west were two mine tipples, Baker One and Baker Four.
On a flat rock they ate their sandwiches. Viola rose and dusted off her skirt. The air had grown muggy; the woods hummed with insects. She wished herself at home in a cold bath.
Bronson pointed in the distance, toward Deer Ridge. “We can get there in an hour, if we pick up the pace. The first half is all downhill.”
Edgar frowned. The downslope was steep and rocky, he pointed out, with few trees to grab on to.
“We’ll go one at a time,” Bronson said. Military school had taught him to give instructions; to all three, his leadership seemed inevitable. “Otherwise, if the first man stumbles, we could have a pileup. You first,” he told Edgar. “When you get to the bottom, give a whistle and stand clear.”
“I should stay with Viola,” Edgar said. “In case she needs help.”
More and more, the boys spoke of her in the third person, as though she weren’t actually there.
“I’ll go with her,” Bronson said curtly. And then: “If she fell, what would you do about it? You can’t carry her. You aren’t strong enough.”
Edgar flinched.
Why, he’s insulted, Viola thought. She hadn’t, herself, considered the words harsh. She’d been distracted by the thought of Bronson carrying her, his thick arms beneath her, pressing her to his heart.
Edgar set off down the slope, agile as a cat. As his white shirt disappeared from view, Viola was aware of Bronson beside her, so close she could hear his breath. “I hope he’s all right,” she said to fill the silence.
Without warning, he grasped her shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth.
It wasn’t at all what she’d imagined. She was conscious of their teeth colliding, his wet tongue pushing into her mouth, his hands grasping through her skirt. Later, undressing for her bath, she would see where his fingers had clutched her, a constellation of small bruises on her backside.
He pulled her roughly to the ground.
His body seemed heavy enough to kill her. Her lungs were panicked, useless. Her rib cage, surely, would shatter under his weight. Edgar, she thought, where are you?
She felt rough hands beneath her skirt and then a breathtaking, searing pain, his fingers up inside her. This isn’t happening, she thought.
Finally he let her go. He rolled off her, breathing heavily. Her blouse was dirty, her skirt torn.
“Wipe your eyes, for God’s sake.” He got to his feet. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You’ve been after it all summer.”
The truth of the words cut her open. That, of course, was the shame of it: everything he said was true.
“I fell,” she told Edgar when they met him at the bottom of the hill.
“I can see that.” He took her hand. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Viola shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“This hill is too rugged for you. For me, too. I say we stage a mutiny.” Gently he brushed some debris from her hair. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
At the end of August, Bronson left for Camp Lee, Virginia. Viola and Edgar rode with him to the train station; they stood on the platform waving goodbye. In September Edgar was drafted. Viola stayed behind and waited. Nothing happened for a long time, and then everything did.
Edgar returned in May, as usual. Or so Bakerton was told. In truth his body was never recovered. Chester Baker arranged for a closed casket, an empty box to be buried in the family crypt.
As Viola had once wished him to, Edgar had simply disappeared.
The morning of the funeral, she bathed and dressed; at least she must have. Her memory was blurred like a photograph ruined by water, the endless flood of her own tears. She attended the funeral with her parents and Clara. At St. John’s Episcopal they sat in the second pew, behind a row of Bakers. The service had already begun when Bronson Baker crept in through a side door, an old woman—his mother?—clutching his arm.
For a moment it seemed that Viola was dreaming. She’d believed him still in France, still fighting; no one had said a word about his return. Later she would understand the reason, but in that moment she felt she’d lost her mind. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her in the forest, the secret mutilation that would not heal. And yet the sight of him affected her as it always had. For an entire summer she had studied him hungrily, stirred by his beauty. She couldn’t, now, see him any other way.
At the graveside she watched him, the old woman at his side. Mourners crowded beneath a black tent. Bronson himself stood a few feet from the coffin. During the hymns, the blessing, he seemed overcome by emotion. He bawled loudly, unself-conscious as an animal, his eyes streaming tears.
The other mourners stared at the ground.
The service ended; the coffin was lowered. The old woman took Bronson’s arm. He was led away weeping, docile as a child. Viola hurried after them. Suddenly her wild grief had a focus: Edgar was gone forever. But Bronson, by some miracle, had returned.
She called his name. Later she’d wonder what exactly she’d hoped for. His arms around her, a word of comfort? A journey backward to another summer, when the road belonged to three cousins in a Maxwell, the only automobile for miles.
Bronson turned. He stared at her without recognition, his eyes glazed. His mouth twitched spasmodically.
“It’s no use, miss.” The woman was younger than she’d looked from a distance, too young to be his mother. She explained in a hushed voice that she was Bronson’s nurse, hired by the family. His mind had been affected by the shock of battle. Among other things, he had lost the power of speech.
Viola watched her lead him away, toward the Maxwell parked at the cemetery gate. He climbed in on the passenger side. A moment later his father approached and got behind the wheel.
She never saw Bronson again. He was sent back to England to be looked after by his mother, and in the fall Viola enrolled at the State Normal College. A year later she stood at the front of her own classroom, at Fallentree Primary School.
The pupils were in high spirits, vacation in the air. The girls filed in, chattering excitedly. Alan Spangler stopped at Miss Peale’s desk. He wore a handsome sweater, red for the holiday, cashmere possibly. He sucked a lemon drop. “For my throat,” he explained. “You’ll be at the concert, won’t you?”
“Of course.” She had promised to come early to hand out programs for Edna O’Shane’s big night.
“I have two solos.” Alan grinned, showing his dimple. “I’ve been practicing for months.”
Viola called the class to order, no easy task, and took attendance. Only one pupil, Helen Lubicki, was absent. Looking over the day’s announcements, Miss Peale understood why.
“We at Bakerton High are saddened to report the death of Private First Class Peter Lubicki,” she read. Helen’s brother had been killed in action, his body sent home from Italy. A funeral Mass would be held Saturday at St. Casimir’s.
She glanced up from her mimeographed sheet. A few of the girls looked ready to cry, and even the hoodlums were silent. In five short months they would be turned loose into the world, beyond the daily tending of Miss Peale, the protection of Bakerton High.
After the second bell she crossed the hall to Edna O’Shane’s classroom. At the school Edna was an oracle of sorts, an authority on town gossip. Peter Lubicki, she told Viola, had not attended Bakerton High. He’d come of age before Roosevelt’s law and gone into the mines at fourteen.
“We should go to the wake,” Viola said, surprising herself. “To pay our respects. We can stop by after school.”
Edna gaped as though Viola had proposed a safari in Africa. “Viola, why on earth?”
It was a difficult question to answer.
“His sister is in my homeroom,” Viola said, as though that explained it. That she’d never, in her memory, exchanged a word with Helen Lubicki seemed beside the point.
There were no streetlamps on Polish Hill. The only light came from interior windows, the company houses alike as matchsticks. The Lubickis’, at the bottom of the dead-end street, was no different from the others, except that the family owned—or had simply appropriated—the land adjacent. In summer they planted every inch of it—not a garden but, with nine children to work it, a small subsistence farm.
The road was unpaved. Viola looked in vain for a flat place to park. Finally she pulled off the road, scattering gravel. There were no other cars in sight.
She stepped out of the car and approached the house. A cluster of men stood smoking, not speaking. Two blue stars hung in the front window: another Lubicki son was serving overseas.
The mean little house was crowded with people—large women serving food, a flock of unruly children underfoot. A wooden casket stood in a corner of the parlor, its lid closed. Two women in babushkas knelt before it, their lips moving silently. Viola knelt beside them and bowed her head in prayer.
She drove home carefully, grateful for the empty roadway. Snow was falling, the pavement frozen in spots. The night was moonless, the road lost in shadow. The air seemed filled with ghosts.
A male figure limped alongside the road, heading in Viola’s direction. She felt a sudden chill.
The boy held one arm close to his side, as though it pained him. His left arm hugged a large box. The car’s headlamps picked out blond hair, a red sweater. Viola rolled down her window and stepped hard on the brake.
“Alan? Is that you?”
He shielded his eyes against the headlamps. In the strange light, his mouth seemed to be covered in blood.
“For heaven’s sake, what happened?” She threw open the car door. “Are you all right?”
He nodded mutely, his eyes streaming. Gingerly he touched his face.
“Come with me. You’re bleeding,” said Viola, her heart racing. “You need to see a doctor.”
He got into the car without protest, setting the box in his lap. Viola groped for the light switch. His right eye was swollen shut, his cheekbone scraped, his lip split. She saw that his mouth was covered not in blood but red lipstick. “My God, Alan. Who did this to you?”
“I’m going to miss the concert.” He stared straight ahead at the lights of the high school blazing in the distance. “Strange, isn’t it? To see the school open after dark.”
Viola started the car. “I’m taking you home. Your parents can call a doctor.”
“No! My father can’t see me like this.” His voice broke. “Take me to the store, Miss Peale? I have a key. I can clean up there.”
They rode in silence. Alan directed her to an alley behind the hat shop. Viola parked and engaged the brake.
They sat a moment, not speaking. He would not meet her eyes.
“I brought this for you,” he said softly. “I was going to give it to you after the concert. It’s ruined now.”
They both stared at the box in his lap.
“I was walking to the concert,” he said. “It was dark. I didn’t even see them coming.”
“Alan, why?”
The question hung in the air.
“They hate me,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve always hated me.”
“Who? Who hates you?”
“Boys.”
Viola reached for his hand. “They’re just jealous,” she said, “because all the girls like you.”
Almost imperceptibly he shook his head. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m eighteen now. I don’t need a diploma. I can go live with my sister in Washington and get a job.”
No, Viola thought. Alan was a good student, and his family owned a profitable business. Unlike his classmates, who’d be swallowed up by the mines or the steel mills, he had an actual reason to stay in school.
“You can’t,” she said.
“What choice do I have? I can’t live in this town.”
The words had the terrible bite of truth.
“Alan, listen to me. If you drop out of school, you’ll be drafted immediately.”
He shrugged. “Now or six months from now, what’s the difference? At least I’d get out of here.” He opened the passenger door. “Thank you, Miss Peale. You’ve been very kind to me. I wish I had something to give you.” He held the hatbox to his chest. “I won’t even show you what they did to your hat. It would break your heart.”
Viola watched him climb the back stairs to the shop.
In a daze she drove down Susquehanna Avenue—past the Polish church, the company store, the sign her cousin Chessie had erected, with typical grandiosity, near the train depot, so that no visitor could avoid seeing it. BAKERTON COAL LIGHTS THE WORLD.
I can’t live in this town.
Viola’s cousins were the only boys she had ever loved. One August afternoon they’d abandoned her to go swimming. Lonely, dejected, she had taken Edgar’s horse on a hard ride. She rode out to the end of Deer Run Road, to where the Maxwell was parked. Through dense trees she’d watched them, naked but not swimming, Bronson and Edgar as tender as girls.
She was unsure what exactly she’d seen, or if she had even seen it, until the day of Edgar’s funeral: Bronson standing at their cousin’s grave, weeping like a widow.
Classes resumed the second day of January. In homeroom Miss Peale took attendance. Two desks were conspicuously empty. Joseph Poblocki had turned eighteen; now beyond the grasp of Roosevelt’s law, he’d dropped out to work in the mines. Peggy Schultheis had dropped out, too, to do God knew what on the family farm. It happened every year: seniors disappearing in the final semester, a few short months before graduation; young people pulled away by family obligation or need, constraints Miss Peale would never understand.
To her relief, Alan Spangler was present. His eye had healed, his lip nearly so. He sat a little apart from the pretty girls—off to the side, in the desk abandoned by Peggy Schultheis. At the final bell he rose without speaking, the first pupil out the door.
In May the school year ended, and one by one, the boys were drafted: Henry Eickmeier, Chauncey Hoeffer, Richard Dickey, Jerry Bernardi, John Quinn. Bakerton, more and more, became a town of women—a place that might have suited Alan Spangler, except that he, too, was called up to serve. Like Edgar and Bronson, like Viola, he was a child of the century. Silently Miss Peale blessed him, and hoped.