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A Short Story for Labor Day Weekend
Hall had developed what to him seemed a bad but unbreakable habit of pretending to browse in bookstores anywhere, when, in fact, he was glancing about to see if real browsers were picking up his modest tome. Reviewers, such as had given it mention, largely denounced it as the work of a crank. However, because there seemed to be no such thing as bad publicity, Hall had agreed to be interviewed by a Chicago radio personality on that autumn afternoon. He was killing time in a Michigan Avenue bookstore half a block from the station's studio.
His attention had been momentarily diverted from the shelf on which his own book was displayed by the sound of a woman's voice exclaiming, "Hall! Hall Cash!" As he shifted his eyes in the direction of the voice, there she was: Lynn Morton, whom he had not seen in more than 50 years. The intervening decades had not been unkind to her. The amber of the hair, still abundant and gently waved, had begun to give way to the onset of gray. But the unrouged blush of her cheeks, the slightly upturned nose and the lips always on the verge of a smile had not changed. She stood there within arm's reach, his book in her hand. She was looking first at the cover, then at Hall's photograph on the back, not noticing the actual him standing so near. He tried to form the words to speak to her, but they died on his lips. He was, after all these years, still tongue-tied in her presence.
* * *
In reverie, he was taken back to an August evening many years before in Spencer, an up-state village where he had lived as a boy and Lynn and her family summered. It was "free show" night, an every-Tuesday-of-summer affair in Spencer when its merchants paid an out-of-town projectionist to play a two-reel movie on the large, whitewashed plank screen that had been set up in the village park. It was good for business.
Hall was compelled each week to escort his 10-year-old sister and one of her friends to the free show with the parental admonition that he was not for one moment to leave their side. For that, Hall suffered the taunts of friends and the pitying stares of girls his own age, who were apt to move in the social orbit of Lynn Morton -- on whom he had a secret but impossible crush.
And there she was that particular Tuesday, seated on her blanket spread out on the lumpy ground just a few feet from his. She looked over at Hall and winked at him. He could barely look back for his embarrassment. Hall's sister had observed a similar communication two days earlier at the Episcopal Church as Lynn and her family passed the Cashes' pew on the way back from communion. Over Hall's red-faced protest, the impious wink was reported by his sister later at the Sunday dinner table and was dismissed by his mother, who said, "Whatever it was, it could not have been a wink. They're summer people. They have their place, and we have ours. We best stay in it." Hall could only glumly agree. But there had been no mistaking it this time. It was a wink. Helpless in the face of it, and ignorant of any appropriate means to acknowledge it, Hall sat down on his own blanket to await the start of the movie.
A day or two later, Hall rode his bicycle down Lomond Lane, the shortest route between his home and the railroad station at which he was employed that summer as a baggage handler. Just as he drew opposite the Morton's lakeside cottage, Lynn stepped out of the back gate directly into his path. He locked his brakes and turned sharply to avoid striking her. She merely stood aside, smiling, as he, flustered and perspiring, dismounted. "I -- I -- I'm sorry," Hall said in abject apology. "But I was the one who walked in front of you," Lynn said, "I'm the one who should apologize. Except Mother always says our apologies shouldn't come empty-handed, so I'll make it up to you by taking you for a sail this afternoon. Go home and get your bathing suit and a pair of tennis shoes."
Mute before this unprecedented offer -- or demand -- Hall found himself noting that Lynn already had on her bathing suit. At 16, she had a figure, to be sure, although he knew he should not be taking a second glance at her well-tanned legs. His sense was that an hour had passed before he found his found his voice, but finding it, blurted out something about having to be on his way to work and that, in any event, he didn't own tennis shoes.
"You can use a pair of Daddy's," Lynn replied, apparently unwilling that her advance should be so easily spurned. "But I really do have to get to work," Hall said without much conviction. "Maybe another time?" Of course, he could scarcely imagine being given a second chance, and he remembered his mother's admonition about keeping his place.
"Maybe," Lynn said, looking directly into his eyes. Hall found that, despite his anxiety over being late for work, he could not make the first move. Lynn remained standing there, now with hands on her hips, which only drew his eyes again to the curved outlines of her young body. "Hall Cash," she said, "You're not like the rest. You ..." The shriek of a locomotive's whistle announced a train's approach to the nearby station, drowning out whatever else she was saying. The sound shocked Hall into a hurried remounting of his bicycle. The train would have much baggage and express to be unloaded: part of his job. As he pedaled away, he looked back to see if Lynn was still standing in the middle of the lane. She was, waving slowly to him. Before he could check himself, he was waving back.
Somehow there was neither hour nor day in what remained of summer for a sail with Lynn, as presumptuous as that social leap upward would have been for Hall. He saw little of Lynn -- once at church, again at the free show and once more when he spotted her a ways offshore at the tiller of the Morton sloop. She was calling to him something he could not make out.
Labor Day of that year came with low clouds and stifling humidity. In the cottages along Lomond Lane, preparations were being made for the arrival of the southbound evening train that would carry the summer people away to home, school and work in distant cities. Day laborers from the village had already put a few window shutters in place. Trunks appeared on porches awaiting the dray. Maids and housemen could be seen busy packing and cleaning.
Past all the activity, Hall rode his bicycle one more time to the station for the last day of his summer job before school began. He slowed as he approached the back gate of the Morton cottage. He dared imagine that Lynn might appear with an invitation to sail, though he knew the craft had been taken into dry-dock for the season. As he passed, however, there was no sign of Lynn.
Hall's afternoon at the station was busy as he tagged the luggage that arrived, load after load. He sorted it by destination and helped the elderly stationmaster lift it onto the baggage wagons. With a twinge of regret, Hall spotted one suitcase monogrammed "M.E.M," standing, he supposed, for Marilynn Elizabeth Morton. So did the afternoon give way to twilight as the summer people began to arrive at the station to await the train. Among them were the Mortons, Lynn in a starched white blouse, checkered skirt, argyles and saddle shoes. Hall did not permit his eyes to meet hers as he thought again of his mother's admonition about keeping his place.
Eventually news of the train's imminent arrival was broadcast by its clackety-clack rumble across the trestle north of town. And then, spewing steam, it was down upon the waiting crowd. As the passengers clambered aboard the cars, Hall and the stationmaster wrestled the trunks and suitcases into the baggage car. Soon enough, the conductor, the brass of his badge and vest buttons reflecting the light from the cars, called "All aboard," and with the wave of a lantern far back along the train and a blast from the locomotive's whistle, the wheels began to turn. Summer was officially over in Spencer.
Hall stood at the edge of the platform and watched the train, Pullman by Pullman, roll away into the darkness. As the last car passed him, he looked up at its open rear platform. There by herself was Lynn Morton, her hand held up as if in farewell. As the train receded, she lifted the hand to her lips and blew a kiss. When Hall turned to see for whom it was meant, he found himself standing alone in the circle of light from the station window.
* * *
In the summer of his 75th year, Hall passed through Spencer for the first time since his family had moved away many years before. The railroad was no more. Its right-of-way had long since been stripped of its track, and, in its place, condominiums had sprouted like morels in spring. The old station was decrepit and sagging. Its bricked platform rich with weeds was a melancholy testimony to neglect. Spencer's two-block main street had been prettied up, and the facades of its late 19th-century frame buildings had, after a fashion, been restored. Hall recognized no one on the street, and no one recognized him. On his way out of town, he drove up Lomond Lane on the outside chance that Lynn might be around, but he had not a clue as to what he would say if he encountered her. When he got to the familiar cottage, the name on the gatepost had been changed to Stanton. There was no one in evidence of whom he might inquire about what had become of the Mortons.
* * *
It was the following autumn that he saw Lynn in the bookstore on Michigan Avenue. He remembered in the moment that the Mortons had lived in Winnetka, and so, perhaps, she lived in that Chicago suburb still. Not more than five seconds had passed since Hall had heard Lynn speak his name, and, just as he had mustered the courage to speak hers, she looked at her watch, slipped the copy of his book back on the shelf and ran for the door as if late for an appointment. Just as so many years before he had stood dumb before a simple invitation to a sail, so now he could only watch her disappear into the crowd on the sidewalk. As he turned away from the door, his eye caught sight of a small business card on the floor near where Lynn had been standing. He picked it up. "Stanton & Associates," it said, giving an address of a building that must have been just across the street. He remembered the name "Stanton" on the gatepost up in Spencer and wondered what Lynn's connection with it, if any, might be. Meanwhile, he, too, left the bookstore and headed for the radio studio. As he prepared to cross the street, he observed a bus stopped at an odd angle from the curb, blocking the crosswalk. In his own hurry, he took another way.
* * *
Several months later, Hall was obliged to return once again to Spencer, this time for the funeral of a boyhood friend. It was nearly the end of March, yet few signs of spring were evident. After the service in the little clapboard church, he followed the cortege to the hilltop cemetery. The brief rite finished, he walked slowly to his car. He had been turning over in his mind going up Lomond Lane one more time to see what had been the old Morton place, and decided to do so knowing that no one would be around at that time of year. As he approached the cottage, he was surprised to see on the weather-worn gatepost, not the name "Stanton" as he had seen on his visit the previous summer, but once again the familiar "Morton."
Hoping that someone in the village might be able to tell him about the change in names, he drove to the post office. He asked the tired-looking clerk behind the wicket about the Morton cottage. "Who lives there now," Hall asked?
"Why, the Mortons," the clerk replied. "Young Fred Morton. His father, old Fred Morton, built the place in the '20s."
Hall told the clerk that only last summer he had seen the name "Stanton" on the gatepost. "Are those families related?" Hall asked. "Yeah, the Stantons were Henry and Lynn Stanton, old Fred's daughter. Mr. Stanton died a couple of years ago. Now her brother Fred, Jr., owns the place." Hall asked the clerk if Lynn came to Spencer anymore.
"Some times in the summer she came," the clerk said. "But not this past year. She was killed last fall. They say she walked right in front of a bus somewhere by her office down in Chicago. Died instantly. They buried her right up here in the cemetery."
Hall stood silent for a moment at the wicket, then, having managed a muffled "thank you," turned toward the door. Once out on the street he knew so well, he paused to gaze about at what was left to remember.
With nothing left to do then but leave behind Spencer and Lynn and the memories of former years, it occurred to Hall that he may have been the last person Lynn knew to see her alive. He would remember that to the end of his own days. Not realizing that Hall was standing within arms' reach, Lynn had spoken his name aloud. Trying but failing to form words, he watched her turn away and hurry toward what, just a minute or two later, would be her sudden death.
With a chill March wind off the lake at his back, Hall walked up the one-block-long street of Spencer one more time. He would not return, though he had long since specified that, when the time came, he wanted to be buried in his family's plot in the Spencer cemetery, which, as it happened, was adjacent to the Mortons.
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