The Silent Boy

Katy awakes to the first snow of the year. School is out for a snow day. Peggy notices that the Stevensons’ tea towels were left on the line and have frozen solid, and Katy’s mother says their hired girl will probably be reprimanded for it. Katy’s father leaves to check in on a young patient recovering from surgery and an elderly woman who is dying peacefully. Katy goes outside to play with Austin and Laura Paisley, who are making a snowman. They see the snow-roller come through and flatten a road, and then men and boys come out to shovel the walks. The Stevensons’ hired girl comes out to take care of the frozen tea towels, and Katy wonders if she wishes she could be in school instead of serving another family. Nell comes out, and Paul Bishop flirts with her, reminding Katy of the time she saw Paul come up behind Nell and put his face in her hair and nuzzle her. Jessie Wood appears with her sled, and they all trek to the sledding hill. Katy is afraid to try the big hill, so she sits on the sled with Peggy and has fun. She then spends the afternoon on the baby hill, helping Peggy with Laura Paisley while Nell and Paul remain behind on their own. Katy notices that Peggy is embarrassed by the way Nell behaves, but Nell “didn’t care what others thought” (77).

Nell comes over to Katy’s house to visit her sister Peggy. Nell is in a bad mood because the weather has spoiled her plans for her day off. She and Peggy go upstairs, and Katy gets the impression that they don’t want her to join them. Katy finds her mother to complain about feeling left out, and Mrs. Thatcher shows her the memory book she is working on. Katy sees pictures from her parents’ wedding and their trip to Niagara Falls, and a photo of a trip to the lake Katy took with Jessie when they were both four years old. Katy recalls the Fourth of July trip with the two families. She remembers playing on the beach and seeing fireworks. She also recalls wandering off into the reeds and enjoying the sounds of her frantic family and friends searching for her so much that she hid until she fell asleep. Her family eventually found her, and she loved the attention and the idea that everyone was so concerned about her. She also enjoyed hearing her friend Jessie crying: “she deserved to cry, because she owned a tin pail with bright paintings on its side” (85). She recalls the end of the night, lying on her father’s lap and watching the fireworks for the first time. She does not share how much she remembers with her mother, only that she does remember the trip. As Katy listens to Peggy and Nell upstairs, she imagines that she and Jessie are like Peggy and Nell, “one quiet and watching, tidy and careful. The other, banging a shovel against a bright tin pail. Eager. Brash. Impatient. Shrill” (89).

One cold winter evening the family is enjoying a fire and listening to Dr. Thatcher read aloud from David Copperfield when he is called away to the hospital. He doesn’t return until the morning, telling them that there was a fire at Schuyler’s Mill and many men were burned and injured. He tells them that some people want to blame Jacob Stoltz, but luckily there were witnesses to prove that he was not responsible: “one of the late workers lighted a cigar and the dust burst into flame like an explosion. People saw the whole thing. The Stoltz boy wasn’t even there” (92). Katy wants to know what it was like to work with the burn victims, and Peggy tells Katy that she mustn’t speak of these things around her mother or else the unborn baby will be “damaged” (93). Peggy shares her belief that “babies can be marked […] I heard of a woman who was frightened by a runaway horse, and her baby was born with a mane and tail” (93). Peggy also says that the boy who works at the grocery store has a mark on his face because his mother saw something frightening while pregnant. Katy laughs because she knows this can’t be right and decides to ask her father later. She asks Peggy if being marked is the same as being touched. Peggy tells her, “My mother says ‘touched by the Lord’” (95) and explains that while her mother loves Jacob, her father is very disappointed with him. Jacob’s father wants a boy who can take over farm duties, and it bothers him that Jacob is too sensitive to participate in butchering. Katy doesn’t understand how Jacob can drown kittens but not do the butchering. Peggy explains that kittens are not loveable at first, that when they’re first born they aren’t the same as the kittens Katy knows, and “Jacob does it quick and then forgets it, and even the mother cat don’t seem to care” (96). Jessie arrives to play, and Peggy asks Katy to keep Jessie away from the ironing because she is a troublemaker and often dirty. Katy takes Jessie to her room to play with paper dolls. They cut out dolls and furniture from catalogs, and Jessie notices the foul smell in their bathroom from Dr. Thatcher’s night of working with the fire victims.

One week later they learn of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. Katy is overwhelmed as she pictures the young women, the same age as Peggy and Nell, being burned or jumping from the window to avoid the fire. She doesn’t know how to properly mourn people she doesn’t know, so she makes up “a little prayer for Mary Goldstein, age eleven, who has died that day” (101). She recites this prayer “every night for several weeks. ‘Dear Mary Goldstein, please be happy in heaven and don’t be frightened or on fire ever again, and now you can fly instead of falling” (101).