Authors: Jane Smiley
Early was not only an excellent prospect, but also a promising one. That he was neither
attentive nor comfortable she put down to his eccentric education and his universealtering occupation. Every so often, she would make some unexpected remark that
indicated to Margaret that she was saying much less than she was thinking--one of these
was "When all is said and done, my dear, a busy man leaves his wife considerable leeway
to follow her own impulses." Another one was "I always thought a masculine presence in
the house had a warming effect." Another: "Look at Robert! Not the most promising
specimen at first, but thriving now."
Margaret began to have a fated feeling, as if accumulating experiences were
precipitating her toward an already decided future. Once, shortly before Christmas, there
was both a heavy snowfall and a long freeze, and Margaret took Lawrence to ice-skate.
That fall, she had the boys with her quite often, because Beatrice was again with child
and not feeling well ("The sure sign of a girl," said Lavinia). Everyone in town younger
than sixty congregated on the ice, which was in a low-lying lot south of the town square
and not far from the hotel. She saw Captain Early as soon as he arrived, and well before
he saw her guiding Lawrence with two hands along the edge of the ice. She watched as
Captain Early strapped on his skates, which made him even taller, and affixed his top hat
more firmly on his head (still taller), and sailed among the other skaters like a schooner
among sloops (she had yet to see, except in pictures, either a schooner or a sloop, but they
were naval, he was naval--it was a good comparison). And then she felt a sort of pleasing
dread as he skated toward her. He took off his hat, and his smile was as big as she had
ever seen it. In order not to glare, she kept her gaze on Lawrence until she had made her
own face welcoming. He said, "All factions foregather upon the glazed surface."
"You've
returned."
"Time has stopped, indeed, Miss Mayfield."
She said, "Pardon me?"
"I was assaying a little joke. My responsibilities in Washington have to do with
ascertaining the exact time, for naval purposes, by measuring the progress of the stars.
While I am here, therefore--"
They smiled together. She said, "This is my nephew Lawrence. He's doing quite
well today."
Captain Early clapped his hat back on his head and seemed to collapse, but in fact
he was only squatting down to speak with Lawrence, who quailed, though he was
normally a rowdy boy and not easily daunted. Captain Early's voice seemed to surround
them. "Two plus two!" he demanded.
"Four," said Lawrence. His own age, thought Margaret.
"Three
plus
three!"
"Six." (A softer voice.)
"Four plus four!"
"Eight." (Very quiet.) This one Margaret was surprised the boy knew.
"Five plus five!"
Something inaudible emerged from Lawrence. She bent down and said, "What do
you reply to Captain Early?"
Lawrence now yelled in the defiant manner she was more familiar with, "I said
'Enough!'"
Captain Early barked out a laugh and said, "Indeed, ten is often enough." He
laughed again, and Lawrence laughed with him, his sassiness fully restored.
Then Captain Early shook her hand heartily, and skated away. She watched him
in the crowd. Most people stared at him. He exchanged greetings with a few, but no
lengthy conversations. One or two people looked from him to her and back again.
Later that week, Lavinia and Margaret were invited to the Earlys' for supper. The
horse and the sleigh came for them. Once again the house was warm, and once again the
supper was very good, and just a little more festive. Mrs. Hitchens nodded agreeably and
said, "Yes. Oh, yes, indeed," every time Captain Early spoke. But this time Captain Early
didn't speak much. He complimented his mother on the supper, told them that the
exposition was still behindhand, and allowed as how some of the athletic performances
scheduled to take place that summer, at the Olympic Games, which had been moved from
Chicago to St. Louis, could well be "enlightening." Mrs. Hitchens asked what the
Olympic Games were, and they were told that these were a competition between amateur
athletes from all parts of the world.
"Don't you remember?" said Mrs. Early. "They had them in Greece several years
ago, and then in Paris."
Lavinia and Mrs. Early discussed Christmas greenery and scarlet fever, and
Margaret told how Aurelius had finally died--"a blessing not to go through the winter,"
said Lavinia, and possibly Beatrice would send them another horse, "but horses are such
a bother," and everyone nodded, including Captain Early, who said, "Everyone will have
an automobile soon enough," and Lavinia said, "Can you imagine?" Margaret could tell
Lavinia was uncomfortable, because her tone of voice got suspiciously brighter each time
she spoke, and then she said, suddenly, "You know, Margaret here once witnessed a
hanging. A public hanging. But she doesn't remember a thing about it."
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Early, but gracefully, as if Lavinia were still talking about
Aurelius.
"She was five, or almost. It was the day Elizabeth was born. Her brother
Lawrence took her. I don't know what he was thinking."
"I remember that," said Mrs. Early. "It was quite an event. The last time in this
town for such a thing, thank goodness."
Captain Early said nothing for a moment, then, "That was the week John and I
went upstate to look for geodes. We took the train to Hannibal and then trekked up to
Keokuk."
Mrs. Early said, "You should see the boxes of rocks in the cellar. I'm sure there
are diamonds in there somewhere."
Captain Early said, "I sometimes feel as though I remember everything." He said
this in such a somber voice that Lavinia immediately added, "Margaret has such a good
habit of looking on the bright side of things."
This was when Mrs. Early, who was sitting catty-corner to her, momentarily put
her hand over Margaret's and gave a squeeze. The older woman's hand was warm, and
she said, "That is a personal quality that I've always appreciated."
But it was not a lively supper. Captain Early went back to Washington soon after,
and Margaret had the distinct feeling of staring into her own future, the same feeling she
had had so long ago, at the Fourth of July parade where John Gentry had fallen off his
chair and Robert Bell had seen his possibilities expand. The play had begun. The
customary ending was promised. Her own role was to say her lines sincerely and with
appropriate feeling. At her age, she thought, she should know what those feelings were,
but she did not.
As if to answer this question, Lavinia made sure Margaret was ever helpful that
winter and spring. If people were down with any sort of fever or pleurisy or rheumatism
and couldn't do for themselves, Margaret was the one who carried the baked beans to the
house or did the extra housework or went uptown to the store for provisions, especially if
the ill person was a maiden aunt or a widow or an impoverished woman of any sort. She
quilted at the church with ladies who had time on their hands, making rough comforters
to be handed out to those who couldn't afford their own. Lavinia's constant topic of
conversation was the misfortunes of these women, and the greatest of these was finding
themselves alone and unprotected in a world everyone acknowledged to be
unsympathetic and even dangerous. Every time Margaret settled into a chair and opened a
book, Lavinia wondered aloud whether Beatrice needed a hand, and maybe Margaret
should walk over there ("The fields are quite hard with this frost") and stay for a few
days, doing laundry. Margaret's future, as a result, seemed to narrow to a point, and the
point was this room, where they were knitting in air so cold that they could see their
breath by the lamplight.
Mrs. Early sent them things: dishes of brandied plums or a mincemeat pie. She
sent them oranges once, and books, of course, and special tea from Ceylon or China. She
came by and read them parts of the captain's letters, which they could see were lengthy
and neatly written. He had a good command of language, and liked to walk, so she often
read them his descriptions of his perambulations in Washington and Virginia--"Beloved
Mother, Here in Washington, the winter is well advanced, and spring at hand. I went with
Wilson Sunday into Rock Creek Park. The grass was up, in the tenderest threadlike
shoots, and the air was fragrant with moisture rising from the earth as we strode across it.
Wilson showed me where he uncovered a hand-ax and some spear points, demonstrating
to all and sundry (or those willing to accept the truth) that America has been peopled for
many thousands of years, just as Greece and Egypt have. The evidence is, of course,
fascinating, but I could not keep my eyes or my mind off the dogwood, which is in
flower, and the violets and toadflax." Margaret had to admit that there was something
wonderfully elegant about such outings, something far, far away from the sighs and
heavy fabrics of the quilting circle.
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition opened later in the spring, and everything in
the world was changed by it, but Lavinia and Margaret did not make their first visit until
the beginning of June.
Truly, it was not like anything Margaret ever saw before or afterward. It had been
promised that they would get the whole world into one end of Forest Park, and it seemed
as though they succeeded. Dora spent the entire summer at the exposition, supposedly
writing about it for various papers near and far, but really, she told Margaret, she could
not bear to leave, even when the weather was hot and the crowds were pressing and the
roads (miles and miles of them) dusty. Mrs. Bell had a proprietary pride in the fair, and
would hear nothing but praise for the beautiful trains in the Palace of Transportation, the
astounding electrical display in the Palace of Electricity and Machinery, the thrilling pipe
organ in the Festival Hall, or, for that matter, the contortionist outside of Mysterious
Asia. The world was jumbled together, with the Irish Village right beside the Tyrolean
Alps, but they got used to that. After three days, they went, dazzled and bewildered, back
to stay with Elizabeth in Kirkwood, and then returned home, only to go back to the
exposition in July, when it was much hotter but there was even more to look at. It was
then that they met Captain Early, who was staying in St. Louis with his mother and Mrs.
Hitchens, and "doing the whole thing."
The first day, they ate ice cream in the Tyrolean Alps; the day after that, they
looked at the sculptures in the Colonnade; the day after that, they watched an athletic
contest. Captain Early was in his element, and seemed eager to squire her about and show
her every mechanical miracle on display. The contortionist and the pipe organ were not
nearly so much to his taste as the
Moving Picture in Hardware
, or the ladies making
corsets by machine, or even the enormous teapot. He was mildly diverted by the display
in which criminals were measured, part by part, in order to demonstrate their criminal
tendencies, and, indeed, he did take her to the Human Zoo, where all the races of man
were shown off (and Geronimo was there, too). He was more animated than Margaret had
ever seen him. He took her arm and hurried her here and there, but also was attentive to
all of her possible desires--would she care for more ice cream, or for a sausage wrapped
in a bun, or for some cherries? He seemed as unaffected by the heat as he had been
unaffected by the cold on that strange winter day of their first meeting. Margaret saw now
that he was not exactly like other mortals--he knew more, saw more. His mind worked
more quickly and surveyed a broader landscape. Others stared at the three-thousandhorsepower steam turbine and the two-hundred-kilowatt alternator nearby, even removed
their hats in awe, but Captain Early laughed aloud with delight at the two machines. He
seemed positively joyful as dusk fell. He took Margaret's elbow, halting her on the path,
and then he gestured with his arm, and electrical lights lit up all around the park, as if he
himself were sparking them. Margaret gasped.
That was what won her in the end. Captain Early knew all about electricity, and it
seemed to her, as he spread his arms and raised his hat off his head only to put it back on
and laugh, that he was presenting her with a hidden and powerful force, asking her to
observe and embrace it, while everyone else seemed capable only of gawking. And she
did think, just then, that if it was meant for a man and a woman to share something with
each other that they did not share with anyone else, then, somehow, for Captain Early and
herself, this was it, the strange effervescence of the impending twentieth century, of
bright light beginning in one place and instantly being in another place in a way that you
did not sense with a candle or even a star.
As she felt this, they walked on. He was careful to anchor her hand on the sleeve
of his jacket, and to pat it from time to time. But, as she told Lavinia that evening when