A Star for Mrs. Blake Read online

  “I’m telling you for your own good,” Essie said. She had to shout above the clatter. “Your brother-in-law is askin’ for it, right out flouting the law.”

  “Just what are you referring to?”

  With Big Ole Uncle Percy there were always possibilities: stealing wood, stealing lobster traps, spitting, shooting at the racket boys from Portland—

  “I’m referring,” Essie said archly, “to importing illegal alcohol. As if you didn’t know.”

  Ah yes, that too. But Big Ole Uncle Percy was only getting his small draft of the spoils of Prohibition, brisk business on the craggy coast of Maine. You could hide a Canadian steamer loaded with booze in those coves, where bootleggers had radio stations to warn the ships, and armored cars to deliver the goods to upstanding Republicans at private clubs in Bangor. Percy was just the chump in the rowboat.

  “Everybody knows,” Cora said mildly.

  “Don’t mean we have to stand for it.”

  A secondary conveyer belt was grinding into action, moving rows of flashing cans. The edges were razor sharp. Cora would not give Essie Jordan the satisfaction of drawing blood and kept her eyes on her work.

  “Essie, it’s no shame that your own husband was arrested for disturbing the peace. He’s not the only man who likes to take a drink.”

  The blue eyes fired. “That’s not true.”

  “Nobody cares, Essie.”

  “Men are weak. That’s why decent women fight against the devil alcohol. You think it don’t affect you because you ain’t married.”

  “You know full well my husband died. It was a long time ago,” Cora added with a twist of bitterness. “Maybe so long you don’t remember.”

  “I know you was married,” Essie sneered. “The point is, now you ain’t.”

  It was afternoon and the sandwich man did not come. Mr. Healy patrolled the tables in the rubber apron he always wore, tweed cap on his swelled head. Cora’s neck ached and she was thirsty. There were no good memories in this reeking place. Even in fair weather, even while their mother was alive, the cannery yard was cluttered with mountains of decaying vegetable matter and clamshells fought over by swarming birds. Mr. Healy counted the ocean as his garbage dump and the tide as his street sweeper, but nature didn’t always oblige, and the facility was usually surrounded by scarlet pools of fish gore. This was the summer playground for the village kids, where they threw rocks at wild cats and raccoons.

  The trays of fish kept coming. The cans kept flashing past. Essie’s snide little jab had been aimed at Cora’s friendship with Linwood Moody, a sweet-tempered soil scientist she’d known since high school, who’d recently lost his wife in a car accident. They’d been seen around town together, so what? You call bean supper in the church basement a tryst? Still, Cora’s stomach clenched at the unprovoked attack. How could a person be so put off all the time? It was like Essie Jordan ate mustard for breakfast. There was only one way to put the poor lonely woman out of her misery.

  “Essie?” Cora shouted. “How’s your rugging coming?”

  Essie was an expert in the art of making rag rugs. Her coils were pulled so tight it was like she turned old bedsheets into steel cables.

  “Comin’ fine, I guess.”

  “Mrs. Grimble said you’re making braided chair seats for the spring fair.”

  “That’s right. Round ones.”

  “What kinds of colors?”

  “Blues, mostly. Got some nice bright purple from a housedress that belonged to Aunt Dot.”

  “Memories in every braid, isn’t that the truth?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I find it calms the heart.” With no response from Essie, Cora plunged ahead: “Say, did you know I’m going to be chairman of the July Fourth church fair?”

  “Ain’t you always?”

  Cora bit her lip and let it pass. “I’m thinking we could use some help,” she went on. “How would you like to take over on the crafts committee?”

  Essie blinked several times. Her eyes scanned the room with suspicion.

  “You’re asking me to run it?”

  “Nobody knows more about rugging and weaving than you. I’ll bet you could draw in some good people. What do you say?”

  Essie took her time in answering. Something like this—although she’d never admit it—she wanted to keep close to her chest as long as possible; prolong the warmth and softness before it bolted off like one of her black cats. Just then, the steamy room was filled with daylight. Everyone looked up in surprise. The big door had been slid open and the town postmaster, Eli Grimble, stood in the wide space. He’d come on his horse and sleigh, and the stomping of the thick-coated animal and the ringing of its harness were like silent pictures as the clanking of the machinery overtook all other sounds.

  Mr. Healy strode up and shook his hand, expecting a bundle of mail, but Eli Grimble kept peering into the dimness and gesturing until he sighted Cora Blake. No doubt he found her easily. She had been staring right at him as if with some kind of second sense. After a moment Mr. Healy motioned that she step forward and the eyes of all the other packers followed. Now she was outside in the cold fresh air and the drifts of snow were tinged with sunset.

  “Went by your house—” Eli began.

  “What’s wrong? Are the children all right?”

  “Yes, not to worry, your niece said you were out here, so I thought to come. You have a letter. From the U.S. government.”

  He held out an official envelope with her name neatly typed.

  “The government? Whatever for?”

  Mr. Healy leaned over her shoulder. “Paid your taxes, Mrs. Blake?”

  “Of course I paid my taxes!” Cora said.

  When she realized the letter was from the War Department she had an unnerving sensation, as if the ground was tilting under her feet. It was just the same as thirteen years ago, when the envelope had contained a handwritten note in pencil from someone named Harris in the Adjunct General’s Office saying that Samuel Blake, her only child, had been killed in action in Montfaucon, France. The letter had been delivered by Eli Grimble, with this same horse and a two-wheeled buggy. There’d been no snow yet, as it was October, near the end of the war. Eli Grimble had come all the way out to Tide’s End Farm to deliver the news, along with the minister and Doc Newcomb.

  “What’s going on?” Mr. Healy asked.

  The postmaster shrugged. “Seems important.”

  Cora tore the envelope open and made them wait while she took her time reading it. Then she read it again, just to be sure. Finally she looked up from the letter and smiled broadly, maybe the first time she’d ever looked happy in that place.

  “I won’t be needing work this spring, Mr. Healy.”

  “Pleased to know that, Mrs. Blake. Meanwhile, you got plenty of work today,” he said, and walked toward the factory.

  “Don’t you care to know the reason why?”

  Eli Grimble leaned close. “You can tell me,” he offered, the biggest gossip in town.

  “Mr. Healy!” she called with exuberance she’d never dared before.

  “What?”

  “There’s a reason why.”

  The boss dug his boots into the slush and turned with exaggerated patience.

  “I guess you’re going to tell me whether I like it or not. All right. Why?”

  “I’m going on a trip.”

  A group of curious packers had gathered in the doorway. Cora said it loud enough that all of them could hear. Especially Essie Jordan.

  “I’m going to Paris,” she announced. “On an ocean liner. First-class.”

  March

  There was never any question in Cora’s mind that she would be on that boat. The War Department had pledged to send any mother or widow whose loved one was killed in military service during the war and buried overseas on a pilgrimage to visit their graves in the American cemeteries in Europe. How could she not stand up and be counted? No matter what the hardship might be in leaving the island, it was the right thing to do. She had a duty to Sammy as well as to the country. She knew it, clear as day.

  The decision had come a lot easier than the wrenching choice she’d been forced to make thirteen years before, when her grief was still fresh—whether to have Sammy’s body shipped back home or permanently interred in France. Everyone in town had a different opinion. Some said yes—let their final resting place be overseas, to show America’s commitment to her European allies. Some thought hell no, bring the boys back home, where they belonged, because we never should have gone to war in the first place. The rest of the country was fervidly divided as well. In the end, the War Department left the choice to the families.

  Cora didn’t even know how to think about it. She wanted Sammy close, but what was best for the country? He had left home to serve—was she being selfish to want to bring him back? She yearned to ask her father’s advice, but Grandpa Harding had died the spring just before Sammy enlisted, and so she heeded the words of the biggest daddy of them all, Theodore Roosevelt. He and his wife had decided that their son Quentin should be buried over there, and strongly urged other parents to do the same.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt and I have always believed that where the tree falls, there let it lay,” he wrote.

  It was a poetic image that appealed to Cora’s good sense—things die and go back to nature. But was it too much to ask for yet another sacrifice, after losing Sammy in the first place, not to have his marker in the town cemetery next to her parents and sister in the Harding family plot, along with the Higgins, Noyes, Spofford, Pressey, and Haskell clans that had inhabited the island since the Revolutionary War? Not to be able to stop by for a visit anytime she pleased?

  A decision was called for, and she’d have to make it on her own. It was a fair day
in March 1919, four months after Armistice. A kindly sun and stiff breeze had dried the linens by noon. There was chop in the harbor out to the bay. Cora had been walking north on Eaton Road, over to Elizabeth Pascoe’s to buy her scrumptious homemade maple sausage. She had received two cards from the Graves Registration Service. The first gave the location of Sammy’s temporary burial. It was a place in rural France called Chaudron Farm, map reference 78.6-02.4, although of course she didn’t have a map. He was in grave number 72, identified by his dog tags, which were apparently nailed to a stake. The second card asked that she state her relationship to the deceased and answer yes or no to the question “Do you desire that the remains be brought to the United States?”

  In the spent garden of the last house before a stretch of woods, she came upon the odor of geraniums. Geraniums always smell as if they’re dying anyway, that turpentiney scent, which even when they’re bright with flowers can bring a melancholy mood. These were nothing but a browned-out tangle along with last year’s yarrow and veronica. Cora kept walking, but what was on her mind and in her heart were two different things. Instead of going straight to Elizabeth’s she took a right at the Cross Road, which led to the town cemetery.

  Sarah Bently, Elizabeth’s mother, had been walking in the road as well, but the poor thing didn’t know where she was. She wore a housedress and slippers and her knobby fingers worked desperately to keep her cardigan closed. Cora stopped and buttoned it for her, speaking calmly about ordinary things. Battered blue veins showed through the thin skin at the old woman’s temples, as if the endurance it took to stay alive had become visible. Sarah said she was going to the hospital. She meant that she was going to die, as she was walking toward the cemetery also. Cora waved at Elizabeth, who was running after her mother.

  A hundred-foot sycamore marked the entrance in the rock wall around the graveyard. Even bare, its network of zigzag twigs seemed to fill the sky. Although the sun was shining, it could not penetrate the chill that rose from the creek at the bottom of the hill on which the family plots were laid. Nothing moved in this timeless place but shadows. Cora strolled between the stones, familiar as the houses on her street, calmed by a porous quiet that let in just birdsong. “Lost at sea, November 3, 1845.” “Drowned in Havana, June 15, 1893.” Many of the inscriptions were too worn to be read.

  As if a veil had been lifted, Cora began to accept the possibility that Sammy might not be buried here. It was not his place. He was a young man just making his way. He was part of the future, not some distant past. Behind that veil was a parade of patriotic ideals, each more rousing than the next, a drumbeat of Americanism that finally solidified the image in her mind: He deserved to be in the field of honor in France. He made the world safe for democracy and he should be part of that future—the future of a peaceful world. He was truly an American hero, loyal to his friends, never hesitating to fight for what was right—Good Lord, he’d always been like that, even when he was nine years old.

  It must have been around eight o’clock at night. Cora had been at her sewing table in the parlor of the farmhouse and looked up to see a double pair of headlights. They had no phone service and no electricity, only a generator that ran on kerosene. It was pitch-black out there, deep country dark, the nearest neighbor a quarter mile away. Seeing those headlights made her heart beat like mad. There were only two cars on the island; one belonged to the doctor and the other to the sheriff. Both were on their way to her door.

  Sammy had been warned about saltwater ice. The danger of it was drilled into every local child. If you fell through the ice on the Lily Pond, you had a reasonable chance of staying put, but when the harbor froze, even if it was two feet thick, there would still be strong ocean currents raging underneath. You’d get dragged under and swept all the way to China.

  An Irish family with five rough boys had moved next door to the yellow stonecutter’s cottage where Avis lived. She was up in Ellsworth, leaving the door unlocked as she always did in case someone needed to come in from the cold, and, in fact, Sammy had stopped by. The newcomers were from Boston and therefore smarter than Sammy and his friends and with more tricks, too. That day it had been fifteen below. The harbor had congealed into a solid glacier all the way out to Isle au Haut. The temptation to walk across from end to end was like a free bowl of jelly beans. The boys from Boston challenged the locals to a race. No sleds, no skates. Boots only. Nine went out, seven returned—slipping and falling, snot running down their bright red faces, screaming for help. One of the outsiders, a ten-year-old named Patrick, stumbled into a hole halfway across and was stuck with his butt in freezing water and his feet up on the ice, arms flailing, unable to move. The other was lying on his belly, on liquefying frost a couple of feet away, trying to reach him with a flung-out scarf. That was Sammy.

  The cars stopped by the side door of the farmhouse and the headlights cut out. Sheriff Lundt and Doc Newcomb trooped him inside like a prisoner, wrapped in a blanket, tiny ice particles in his hair and shaking with cold. Cora slid halfway across the floor on her knees to get him safely inside her arms, and Sammy held on. His poor ear was like a block of ice against her cheek and his lips were thin and blue.

  “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  She soothed him—“Don’t worry, as long as you’re safe”—and ran for another blanket, then propped him up at the kitchen table while she got the kettle on and hot water bottles going.

  She poured the men big shots of whiskey. Both were riled in the way that comes from a near disaster. They said Sammy deserved a whipping, like the other kids who were being punished by their parents, for even stepping foot on saltwater ice. A double whipping, because when they shouted at him to get the hell out of there he refused to budge, stubbornly attempting to reach the boy with the hopelessly wet scarf. They’d had to make a human chain from shore and rescue two boys, as by that time Sammy could barely stand up on his own, about to succumb to the frigid air. And why he’d risk his life for a mick, Sheriff Lundt couldn’t comprehend, going on about “people from away” coming into their waters and stealing traps, shooting at local fishermen.

  “They don’t belong here,” he said.

  Nine-year-old Sammy couldn’t stop shivering, but his intense blue eyes were defiant and his fists clenched.

  “Patrick’s my buddy,” he told the authorities, right to their skeptical faces. “You always go back for your buddy.”

  “He’s your buddy?” mocked the sheriff. “What about your mama? What about the heartache you caused her?”

  Cora straightened her back. “I’m proud of what he did,” she said. “I think he showed fast thinking for a boy his age.”

  Sammy didn’t look at her, but she had her hand on his shoulder and could tell that he was glad she’d said it.

  The doctor advised warm liquids and bed rest. They got up to leave and at the door he said, in a sympathetic way, “It’s not your fault, Cora. A boy needs a man around to discipline him.” It left her with a sick feeling, as if it really were her fault, going all the way back to the choice she’d made, against everyone’s expectations, to raise the boy with her parents and sister—without the husband, who obviously wasn’t here to give her son the whipping he deserved.

  Sammy didn’t understand all that, but he did feel the rebuke aimed at his mama.

  “I hate them,” he murmured, his eyes drooping with fatigue. “I’m leaving and never coming back.”

  Cora told him that was fine, after he had a hot bath.

  The shadows moved. Her knuckles ached from the dampness of the creek bed, and she realized it was late afternoon. Leaving the cemetery, she resolved to have him buried overseas, but not without a sharp stab of doubt that she had betrayed something else, deep within. She’d have nothing in her hands of him. This was truly the “final sacrifice,” as the papers called it. She’d given up the baby that had come from her body, and the yearning to protect him and keep him close, no matter what. She couldn’t have said such a thing out loud without embarrassment for both her and her son—and yet, she felt she had surrendered something in favor of what was more important. Important to whom? To the country, she told herself emphatically.