As I walked down Main Street the following Friday, however, I could see that many broken store windows were still boarded up. Main Street itself was not yet open to traffic since the pavement was cracked, broken or heaved up in many places. The look and feel of gloom pervaded the town.
But not at Exley’s Drug Store. Excited people were streaming out the front door and hurrying toward the river. Some were running.
“What’s happened?” I asked one man.
“Freight train jumped the track just a few minutes ago. Other side of Railroad Bridge.”
It must be a big wreck, I figured, with so many sprinting to the scene. Quickly I rushed to the Sentinel to pick up my camera and notebook. Then I joined the streams of people all going in the same direction.
But there was something puzzling: many were carrying containers. A boy had an empty milk bottle, a girl had a fishbowl. A man in a red plaid shirt was carrying a thermos jug.
We crossed Railroad Bridge, then Route 143, and saw the train dead ahead with the engine facing us, freight cars strung out behind. From where I approached, it did not look like a wreck at all: the engine was on the tracks, as were a string of dirty red and yellow freight cars that stretched out of sight around the curve behind. Finally we saw the problem: the last three tank cars and the caboose were lying on their sides. It was like a gigantic reproduction of Tim’s electric train jumping the track after a too-fast run.
The center of attention seemed to be the last tanker; there was a small split in a metal seam near its top. From this rupture red fluid was spurting, fountain-like. A man in dungarees rushed forward and used his cupped hands to get a deep drink. “Hey, folks,” he shouted, “good California wine!”
“Ain’t nobody here gonna plug that hole,” came one voice.
Loud applause.
Three men emerged triumphantly from the caboose waving tin coffee cups. Each in turn thrust his cup under the red fountain, took a nip, then, in the growing conviviality, passed the cup to someone else. But bigger receptacles were now arriving from every side.
Then I saw them. But it couldn’t be! Tim and Anne-Marie with the largest container of all—Mother’s galvanized washtub balanced precariously on Tim’s wagon.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted, grabbing Tim by the shoulder.
“Let go, Julie! We wanna get a little wine before it’s all gone.” He wrenched himself free.
“But—a washtub!” I exclaimed, following him. “What would you do with a washtub of wine?”
“Lots of things. We’ll figure that out later.”
Crazy kids! They had never seen wine in our home, with Mother and Dad both being teetotalers. Nor had my father even used wine for communion services—only grape juice. Tim and Anne-Marie were heading for trouble. And yet I didn’t try to stop them. Something of the carnival spirit was getting to me too.
Nearby, I was astonished to see Sam Gaither, the clothing store owner, with Floyd Townsend, the barber, happily passing a milk bottle of the wine back and forth between them.
The ground beside the railroad tracks had already been six inches deep in mud before the tanker had tipped over. Now hundreds of scrambling feet were churning mud and wine together into a slippery, sticky morass. Soon it was sloshing over people’s shoe tops, splashing onto pants legs and dresses.
“Get in line, everyone.” Gilio Mazzini, son of the local shoe repairman, was tugging and pulling along—of all people—the crippled Barry Sims on his platform on wheels. Barry was hugging a square lard can with the look of one going to a party.
As people poured in, a jubilant holiday mood soon prevailed. No one seemed to mind standing in the glutinous ooze of wine and mud, nor inching forward in the line. As the townspeople sipped wine and filled their containers, I figured that the downtown area must now be empty.
No shoes would be sold today. Wade Stover and his brother Alcorn were lurching back and forth, holding each other up and offering a strident, off-key rendition of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad.”
Salvatore Mazzini, mender of shoes, immediately ahead of Bryan McKeever in line, was in a jolly state of euphoria. He saw me and bowed from the waist. “Buon giorno, signorina,” followed by a flood of sonorous Italian words ending with festa.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Mazzini. Yes, it is a real festival—”
He shouted to a friend, “Ce la farai, amico. Non te la prendere.” Then his laugh boomed out. His big stomach shook. His handlebar mustache jerked and bounced as if it were about to jump rope.
When it was Mr. Mazzini’s turn in line, he peeled off his jacket, spread his feet wide, and thrust his wide-open mouth into the red stream. The wine flowed down his throat smoothly, as if he had not bothered to swallow. The crowd cheered.
How the mood of our town had changed! An hour ago Alderton had been gloomy, gray . . . the town more than half wrecked by the flood . . . merchants with customers who had no way of paying their bills . . . a procession of able-bodied men with families to feed but unable to find jobs . . . eyes on the ground, glazed by all the mud, murky skies, no stars to see . . . nothing on the horizon. Then suddenly a party, with no invitation required. Something to laugh about, to be carefree about, like children. Drink from the biggest punch bowl in the world, folks. Joke with neighbors you haven’t spoken to in months.
For a few minutes I backed off, watching and making a few notes on my pad. Carefully I took several pictures. No out-of-town photographers were covering this episode!
Then I saw that Tim and Anne-Marie’s turn had come. When the stream of wine struck the bottom of Mother’s tin tub, it sounded like someone squirting a hose into a metal drum. With the tub filled within four inches of the brim, Tim tried to pull the wagon from underneath the fountain. It would not budge. Anne-Marie strained to help by pushing from behind. Still no movement.
“Get that thing goin’,” someone shouted.
Embarrassed, I moved forward, leaned down and added my strength to Anne-Marie’s. With that the washtub rocked sideways, spilling wine on my shoes and socks and splattering my dress. I had almost slipped to my knees when I felt a viselike grip on my arm.
“Let me do it.”
It was Randolph Wilkinson. “I’m always around when you’re in trouble, Julie,” he chortled. With ease his muscular arms lifted the wagon onto higher ground so that Tim could pull it away.
“It’s all rather silly, isn’t it?” I stammered, aware that once again, the man I dreamed of as a prince was seeing me as soiled as a scullery maid.
The journey back was agony as we tried to keep the tub from tilting and spilling the wine or from sliding off the wagon. When we turned into Bank Place, our rambunctious puppy, Boy, came streaking to meet us, barking joyously and leaping up to lick us in glad welcome. The moment of truth was approaching. What would we say to Mom and Dad? How could they use a tub full of wine?
As we stopped in front of the house, the Editor, who had been ill and in bed most of the day, walked slowly out the front door. From his vantage point we must have presented a strange tableau. “Where on God’s green earth have you children been?” he asked.
“To the big train wreck, Dad,” I answered.
But Dad was staring at the wagon. “What—have—you—got—in—
that—tub?”
Anne-Marie piped up, “Dad, it’s good red wine.”
“It’s what?”
I took over, talking staccato-fast. “A tank car full of California wine on its way to a bottling company in New Jersey overturned just beyond Railroad Bridge. Wine spurted out. The whole town was there with pitchers and bottles and cups, quite a scene. I think it’s a front-page story—”
“Hold it, Julie. We’ll talk about the story later. Meanwhile, we now have a tub full of wine!”
Tim mumbled, “It’s only half full now.”
“Where did you get the tub?” Dad asked sternly.
“From our basement—it’s Mom’s washtub.” Tim’s voice was low.
&
nbsp; Thrusting Anne-Marie aside, Dad stuck one fingertip into our prized booty, then his finger to the tip of his tongue. “M-mmm, that’s wine, all right.”
My father turned back to us. “Exactly what will you do with it?”
Silence.
Finally Anne-Marie suggested almost inaudibly, “Sell it to the Episcopalians for communion wine?”
Dad choked and swallowed hard. He turned sideways, pulled out his handkerchief and coughed into it. “For the sacrament of holy communion, eh? How thoughtful! Well, let’s go tell your mother about this great find of yours.”
As we approached the house, Mother appeared at the door. Dad prepared the way. “Louise, the children have had quite an adventure with an overturned wine car . . .”
Mother’s face was a study. I waited for an explosion, knowing how she felt about alcoholic beverages. Silent communication seemed to pass between our parents. When she opened her mouth, only one strangled sentence came forth, “You can’t bring that dirty stuff in here.”
“But, Mother, wine kills germs,” Tim protested.
“Nonsense!”
“We could strain it, Mom,” Tim persisted.
Mother withered him with one look.
“You could cook with it, Mom,” I put in. “Gourmet recipes, stuff like that.” Even in my ears it sounded a mite limp.
Our father took over at that point. “Let’s get the tub to the basement for now.”
While Mother looked on with disbelief, Dad helped us carry the tub down the stairs and into the cellar. After he found some empty half-gallon jars for us, we filled them and poured the rest of the wine down the basement drain.
Throughout dinner, Mother said little. A certain grim quality in her silence made all too obvious the strong feelings she was choking back. Later I overheard her talking to Dad in the kitchen.
“Kenneth, how can you allow that stuff in the house? What would your parents think?”
“What my parents would think has nothing to do with it.”
“And you a clergyman!”
“Have you forgotten, Louise, that Jesus drank wine?” Then, warming to his subject, “Do you realize how much water He turned into wine at the wedding feast in Cana? Those jugs held twenty to thirty gallons.”
Mom ignored this burgeoning sermon. “Kenneth, the basement smells like a winery. What got into you, encouraging our children to bottle that stuff?”
“Louise, dear, I couldn’t throw it out now. Not after what they went through to get it here. Relax! We’ll dispose of it later. I’m simply not going to squelch that kind of initiative.”
I worked hard on the story, trying to bring to life how a train accident and a ruptured wine car had lifted the spirits of our townspeople. The Editor patted me on the shoulder after he read it. The article appeared in the next issue. On the front page. With my first byline.
The long, dismal Pennsylvania winter, followed by the disheartening flood, had made everyone yearn for spring.
Then in late April, all at once it happened. The earth was renewed! On the steep mountainsides towering over Alderton wild crabapple, rhododendron and laurel burst into bloom. All over town forsythia bushes were masses of yellow exclamation points. The cherry tree in our back yard was a drift of pale pink. Beyond were the locusts, fragrant with clustered white blossoms, a haven for the honeybees.
On a Sunday afternoon, with my back against the trunk of a locust tree, my journal on my lap, I let myself be flooded with a wild assortment of yearnings and dreams of the future.
Life was also changing for me in a number of ways. After my eighteenth birthday, I had obtained my driver’s license. Mother and Dad relaxed their restrictions on my use of cosmetics. Experimenting, I was astonished at how a little lipstick and eye makeup seemed to improve my social life.
Or was part of this a change in my attitude? For I was learning to make small talk with the boys—even to laugh at some of their jokes, instead of just looking at them with embarrassed disapproval. I didn’t understand how and why these changes were taking place in me; perhaps it all came from my desire to be less of a loner.
But dating boys my age, I was discovering, still did not fulfill my inner dream of real romance. Try as I might to focus on the boys in my high school crowd, my thoughts always turned back to Randolph Wilkinson.
Why? At twenty-five he was so much older, and from another country and culture, already a man of experience. His family was wealthy. His speech reminded me of Leslie Howard, the charming British actor. All of this made me more than a little self-conscious around the Englishman, not to mention my tendency to tumble in the mud at his feet or spill ink all over myself as I did that afternoon when he came into the Sentinel office. Or fall on my knees before him in a puddle of wine. These memories stung me like nettles.
Yet dream on I did. Plus spending hours of research at the local library where I sought out everything I could find about the Wilkinson family home near the village of Wolsingham, County Durham. The facts I uncovered filled pages of my notebook. What really sent my imagination soaring was discovering a full-color reproduction of the Wilkinson family’s coat of arms and crest, with these explanatory sentences underneath it:
The Wilkinson name is very old, one of the 25 verified names attached to the Magna Carta (1215). The original coat of arms belonging to this family is of very ancient date. The crest is of more modern origin, and was granted September 18, 1615.
“Of more modern origin . . . 1615!” How can we consider anything in the United States of America old? I wondered ruefully.
What puzzled me was the strange symbolism—two unicorns at the top of the crest, then a larger unicorn rising from the crown. What did they stand for?
And then the family motto: Nec rege, nec populo, sed utrioque. With the help of the vocabulary in my second-year Latin book, I was able to translate it: Neither for king, nor for people, but for both. But what did that mean? There had to be a story behind it.
Questions were stacking up in my mind to ask him. Silly, I scolded myself. Randolph Wilkinson is a man of the world who can take his pick of all available females. Why would he be seriously interested in the likes of you? Cut out your silly daydreaming, Julie.
For some reason the Kissawha dam also kept intruding into my thoughts. Twice I had dreamed that it spurted water on me as I walked carefully by the lake. Meanwhile, the call from Mr. Benshoff, the dam inspector, had not come. The Englishman had warned me that the Club people wanted no publicity. Probably this included the inspector. Should I call Mr. Wilkinson again about it? No, I decided, that would only annoy him.
My father continued to worry us. Just when he seemed better, his body would start shaking and he would go to bed. Yet the loan from the bank had certainly eased our financial pressures. We were beginning to see meat now and again on our dinner table.
Dean Fleming and the Editor continued to find time to get together, including most of one Saturday. Dad returned so weary that night that we assumed that he and Dean had spent the day working around the Fleming farm.
Thinking about Father, I turned to my journal:
I have been wondering all over again why Dad decided to leave the ministry. Surely there was more to it than the unfortunate Mattie Howard episode. Something damaged his faith and helped to bring on these attacks of malaria.
My pen lifted. How I longed to see inside my father’s heart, especially since I had become active at Baker Memorial Church. Spencer Meloy had so challenged my thinking that I felt a need to know more about what I believed and why. Understanding about Dad would help me with that.
Over the months the first excitement of my proofreader job at the Sentinel had worn off. Most Alderton news items were not interesting, and proofreading advertisements was ho-hum monotonous. There was an increasing number of advertisements too through Dad’s persuasive efforts with local merchants—hardware, food specials, furniture items, and Exley’s one-cent sales.
Late one afternoon, after Miss Cruley had left, the pr
oofs spread out on the table before me were duller than usual—a ladies’ tea at the Methodist church, advertisements for shirts and Kelvinator refrigerators, a sale of ladies’ dresses. Determinedly I plunged in. Then I heard the front door open, and there was Randolph Wilkinson. He gave me a cheery greeting as he walked by and into Dad’s office.
Concentrate on the proofs, silly!
I could clearly hear the Editor’s booming pulpit voice and then the English one. Decisions about paper stock, typeface, and quantity did not take long. Then Randolph was standing near me.
“Did you and your family drink all that red wine?” There was amusement in his voice.
“Good heavens, no. My parents are teetotalers. Dad finally let us bottle some of it in the basement.”
“I see. There’s a trick to bottling wine. Better check it out with an expert.”
“Thanks, Mr. Wilkinson. We’ll look into that.” I wondered if he had noticed my byline on the wine-car story.
He turned to leave. “Well, good-bye for now, Julie.”
He was at the door when impulsively I called to him. “Mr. Wilkinson, what do the three unicorns in your family crest stand for?”
The young Englishman spun around and stared at me for a moment. “How did you know about that?”
“I looked it up in the library.”
“You found our family crest in the Alderton library?” He began walking slowly back to my work table.
“Yes, in a book about the history of British families dating back to the eighth century. Yours was in it. And the family motto in Latin—how does it go?— ‘Neither for king, nor for people, but for both.’ What’s the story behind that?” I did not tell him that the Alderton library had borrowed this book for me from Pittsburgh’s Mellon Library.
The astonishment and interest on the Englishman’s face threatened to wreck any composure I had left. “But why? I’m a bit thick. I say, was this some sort of class assignment?”
I steadied my voice in an effort to sound coolly casual. “No-o, nothing like that. I was just curious—nothing more.”