Cascade (29 page)

T
hey were outside the drugstore, packing up the Buick for Asa’s trip to Hartford on Saturday morning, when Dez learned just how bad the idle gossip had become.

“So Bud stopped by earlier,” Asa said. “He wanted to confide in me.”

Dez glanced up. It was still early; the streets were quiet, just a faint sound of distant hammering coming from the direction of the boys’ camp. Asa was bent over the front seat, fiddling with the gas pedal. “About what?”

“He said he saw Jacob near the Pine Point road, too, and now he’s wondering, naturally, why he was out there where there are no houses, nothing, two days in a row.”

Dez became conscious of her hands and arms, still in the process of fitting a box of empty 7-Up bottles on the floor behind the front seat. She looked up at Asa, who had stopped his nonsense with the gas pedal and was watching her, waiting for her response.

“What are you saying, Asa?”

“Bud was thinking he should tell Dwight and Wendell.”

“Tell them what?”

“That Jacob was out there,” he said. “But you know Bud. It bothers him to have to point the finger at someone.”

“He doesn’t have to point any fingers at all.”

“True, but I told him, ‘You just go and tell Dwight and Wendell. Just tell them what you saw. It’s a fact you’re stating, not blame. Just stating a fact.’ Because what do we all really know of Jacob Solomon, anyway? Yes, his father was a good man, but that doesn’t mean he is.”

“
I
know him. Do you forget that? I know him very well. Has Bud spoken to them yet?” She had to curb an impulse to drop everything and run over to the police station. “Because why do this to Jacob? What possible motivation would he have to harm your dam or Stan or anything at all? This is crazy.”

“It’s fishy, though. Why was he hanging around there? Was he on my property? Maybe, and I don’t know why, and I don’t like it.”

“Jacob is an honest man.” She would have to try to get in touch with him, warn him before he showed up in Cascade tonight.

“Well, it’s up to the boys to decide what to do with Bud’s information. If he’s innocent of any wrongdoing, it will come out, won’t it?” He rested a hand on the car door. “Anyway, Bud got me thinking. When I get back I’m going to tell them I opened the dam, lay it all out on the line. If I’m in any way responsible, I need to own up to it.”

Mrs. Raymond opened the door and called to him. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared inside the store.

Dez got to her feet. The sun shone down on the top of her head. A boy ran by, calves flashing white above red socks. It was Saturday. Only a week had passed since she’d soared with the first
Sunday Standard
publication. Now she had plummeted from those heights, and it was as if it had happened to another person. Her next installment would appear by late afternoon but she felt far removed from it.

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.

S
he 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.