Byron Beveridge, sitting across from me with his malodorous cigar, puffed away while reading copy. Debonair, tall, lanky, a local Company G Spanish-American War veteran, he customarily threw his legs across his desk so that I faced the patched soles of his boots. He fancied himself a man about town, some dandy or bon vivant. Arriving late, he made a big to-do about removing his fashionable three-button cutaway frock coat and bowler hat. Blond and pink cheeked, he adopted a rugged, blustery demeanor and liked to brag about female conquest.
Nodding to Miss Ivy, I left the city room, notebook in hand. As I walked on the wide-planked sidewalks of College Avenue, I began my routine stops. Before long, I stood in front of the poster announcing Houdini’s appearance at the Lyceum. Those massive chains around his body; those piercing eyes, challenging. What would he think of my interview when it appeared? Gripping my notebook, I headed up College Avenue.
Later that afternoon, already finished typing my morning copy, I met Esther for a sarsaparilla at Neumeister’s Drug Store. Esther would tag along on my weekly stop at the high school to gather information about drama productions, oratory contests, the honor society, athletic meets. As we walked, I buzzed about my interview with Houdini, and Esther, wide-eyed, told me I was the luckiest girl in Appleton. I beamed.
Both of us liked to drop in at the old Clarion office, where I’d been the Local and Personal Editor. The four years spent at Ryan High School had been happy ones, filled with chatter, laughter, achievement, friendships. Good, good days. A boat ride on the Fox, a picnic at Aloah Beach at Lake Winnebago. In winter an ice-numbing sleigh ride across the pond beyond the high school. Life in those high-school years was spent rushing in the hallways, rehearsing school plays, dancing at the Masonic Hall. Summer days were spent lounging, carefree, in the hammock under the backyard cherry tree, devouring a Robert W. Chambers romance. Life only became serious when I left those strong walls.
I loved the old school. On the wide auditorium stage where the school’s amateur theatrical society still mounted bowdlerized Shakespeare and creaky classics like Anna Mowett’s Fashion, I’d excelled at oratory and dramaturgy; my thunderous rendition of “The Man Without a Country” sailed over the acoustical heaven until I was woefully intoxicated with my own performance. Up there on that high school stage, up there, the lead role in A Scrap of Paper no less, the embryonic actress; and now, down there in the subterranean vault of the Crescent office. To the depths.
We walked into the building, greeted Miss Hepplewhyte, the secretary, who sat eagle-eyed by the front door, chronicler of tardiness and noise levels; errand runner, mistress of the moral accusation, finger pointer at any mischievous lad. “Perhaps, Miss Ferber, your hat is a little too showy for civics,” she’d suggested during my freshman year, a line I enjoyed repeating. She nodded at us.
But before Esther and I could maneuver past this unofficial sentry to Principal Hippolyte Jones’ office where we’d be welcomed by the overflowing man who looked like Santa Claus with his enormous belly and his white whiskers-St. Nicholas with a pince-nez, my mother described him once-we met Homer Timm, barreling out of his side office.
“Well, well, well. Fresh from a scintillating night at the Lyceum.” He bowed to Esther but not to me.
Homer Timm was dressed in the same shiny black broadloom suit he’d worn to the theater. While Principal Jones cared not a jot that I roamed the corridors during class time, Vice-Principal Timm cared a little too much, though he often masked his displeasure with his mechanical smile. He shared that smile with me now.
“I’m afraid Principal Jones is in a meeting with the mayor.” He slipped back into his office and returned with some scribbled sheets. “Here. The cast of the graduation production of The College Widow. Performance dates.” He frowned. “Satire should be off limits for school students.”
“And why is that?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Next year, perhaps, Weber and Fields doing Hoity-Toity.”
He bowed slightly. “Only if you return as our star.”
He turned away, leaving us standing there. I looked at Esther who was suppressing a fit of giggles, so we hurried out of the building.
We sat on a bench outside the front entrance, with me scribbling some notes about the Ladies Temperance Society Silver Medal Contest to be held at the Company G Armory. Esther nudged me and pointed. I looked up. “What?”
“Look.”
An ungainly man lumbered up the sidewalk toward the front entrance of the school. He paused to catch his breath, adjusting the coat that fit him poorly, and checked a watch fob. He shuffled with a pronounced limp, dragging a deadened leg as though pulling a stubborn tree trunk. Esther shrank back, hunched her shoulders, birdlike. The man slumped by, his leaden foot thudding on the wooden stairs.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Why is he here?”
Because, of course, I recognized Christ Lempke, a German immigrant who’d been wounded in the Spanish-American War. He’d been a farmer and mill worker living in a ramshackle homestead out on Bay Road, a genial man, friendly even. But the brief, splendid war had changed that. Returned home with a shattered leg and a dull, spiritless heart, he became a bitter man who hid away on the bleak farm. At the Fourth of July parade he looked unhappy, unresponsive to all the flag waving and firecrackers and hip-hip-hurrah. I always thought it odd that he even showed up.
Esther leaned in. “He brings Frana to school in the morning and collects her in the afternoon. He’s like her…warden. She can’t leave the school grounds, even for midday meal.”
Frana Lempke, like Kathe Schmidt, was another casual friend of Esther-and another pretty girl that I had little use for. Frana had a small speaking part in A Scrap of Paper, and, to my horror, garnered slavish attention from the giddy, applauding boys. Only rarely did Frana join Esther and other young people for boating excursions on the Fox because her family kept a close eye on her. Most times when Esther organized these breezy outings I chose not to go along, for I felt too much radiance coming off Frana and Esther, even off the annoying Kathe. Three beauties, and me. So I stayed home with a book.
Frana, a senior, sometimes worked for Esther’s mother during spring housecleaning or during the late-summer canning season. Frankly, I thought her too pretty and flighty to be allowed near pressure-cooked fruit and vegetables. Frana strolled down College Avenue warbling “I’m Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage” in a shrill soprano, which turned heads. She told perfect strangers that she intended to become a famous actress, an obvious ploy to get attention from the simpering, foolish men of the town who gazed long at her buxom farm-girl body, too mature for such a young girl. And one so ethereally fair-haired and blue-eyed. A girl, I felt, destined to collect dirty dishes in the dining rooms of the Sherman House.
“For Heaven’s sake, why is her uncle escorting her?”
“Well,” Esther confided, “I only just learned this. But you know how old-fashioned the Lempkes are. They’re German Puritans or something.”
“There’s no such thing, Esther.”
“Like Mennonites maybe.”
I got impatient. “So what? They’re strict Catholics. Does it matter?”
“Well, I guess someone told Frana’s father that Frana has been seeing someone.”
“For land’s sake, Esther, we aren’t living in the Dark Ages.”
“No, no. She’s been sneaking out after dark. And it’s an older man.” Esther waited, delirious.
I sat up. “Who?”
“Frana won’t say. No one knows. She told her father-so I heard-that she’s gonna marry him. He’s gonna take her to New York.”