Washington Is Situated ..

by JAMES HILTON

LOCATE and describe the capital of some foreign country,” said Mr. Leaper, turning away from the blackboard on which he had written those very words. He was a tall, thin man with a leathery skin, almost bald with a wispy gray mustache; an odd tribute to his personality was that generations of Havenhurst schoolboys had never been able to find a nickname for him. Or perhaps his own name suited him too well — Leaper; with his long striding legs he would march up and down the aisles between the rows of desks, waiting to pinch the lobe of an ear or to pluck a single hair from an inattentive head. Gently sadistic, obscurely kind, his face lit with glee when he found a chink in the armor of impenetrable boyhood — some facet of personality, or some incident in a boy’s past that could provide a constant cue for the kind of sarcasm he delighted in. For instance: —

“Of course, Harrison, your choice will be Washington. Indeed, I insist. We cannot afford to lose the fruits of your unique experience.”

The class obliged with a weary titter; they had heard it all before. Besides, Harrison was a prefect and sure to be captain of the cricket eleven next year; even Leaper could not score much off him.

As for Harrison himself, he just grinned and fixed a new nib in his pen. He was a shy, quietly happy boy, not good at expressing himself in words; he preferred algebra to essay-writing. Years before, during the war, his family had sent him to live with some friends in America. Old Leaper had somehow got to know this and had never ceased to twit him about it. It had been a joke at first, and then a hurt, but by now it was merely a bore. And it was no use explaining that he had never been to Washington.

“To work now, everybody! Even you, Harrison. With a subject so congenial your words should flow copiously. Ten pages will not be too much.”

More titters. They all knew old Leaper would be quite satisfied with two — enough, in all conscience, for an hour’s work on a hot June afternoon. The pens began scratching.

Harrison wrote “Washington” at the top of a page. Then he cupped his chin in his hand and stifled a yawn. The plick-plock of cricket sounded distantly from the playing fields; scents of summer came in through the open window; in another classroom there was singing.

He began to write: “ Washington is situated on the River Potomac, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. . . .”

Miss Pike had written that on her blackboard. She had red cheeks and was like a little dumpling. She taught the third grade. The school was much grander-looking than Havenhurst. It had a porcelain fountain in the hall, which squirted water upwards so that you could catch it in your mouth — Havenhurst didn’t have anything like that. The first morning Mrs. Nielsen, who was the wife of Dad’s friend, took him to the school and introduced him to Miss Pike, and Miss Pike introduced him to the class as “Johnny Harrison, a guest from England.” Nobody had ever called him Johnny before. She then talked a lot about England, Stratford-on-Avon, and the Trooping of the Colors. It made him feel embarrassed because everybody stared at him.

Then she gave him a drawing book and a box of crayons and told him to draw what he liked. That was fun. He drew a railway engine, but it was an English engine. Later he learned to draw an American engine. The chief difference was that American engines showed all their insides on the outside, which made them harder to draw. He was always interested in trains. The house where the Nielsens lived was not far from the railway, and all night if he lay awake he could hear them going “ Whoo-whoo ” in the distance. There was one train that came very slowly, because it was up a hill; there were two engines, one to push and the other to pull, and when they got to the top they signaled to each other — “Whoo-whoo” and then the answering “Whoo-whoo.” Most nights he heard that before he went to sleep. He had a bedroom with a heater that made it very warm in winter, too warm sometimes, and there were screens on the windows to keep out the flies. In England you always had a cold bedroom in winter and you did not bother about flies.

He wrote: “ Washington is not part of a state, but belongs to the District of Columbia, or D.C. as it is called. . . .”

“Welcome to Tanner’s Corner Pop 3275” it said on the signboard just beyond the bridge over the river. He asked Miss Pike what Pop meant and she said People. He was collecting American words as fast as he could, so when he went marketing with Mrs. Nielsen one Saturday night he said, “The streets are full of pop.” She laughed and told Mr. Nielsen, and everybody laughed because he had thought it was a real American word like “screwy,” which Mr. Nielsen said the world was. Anyhow, there were 3275 pop — people — in Tanner’s Corner. He counted one night all the names he knew, but he could only get to 115, most of them kids at school.

Willow Street was where all the stores were and also the Rialto. He saw Humphrey Bogart at the Rialto. He was nuts about Humphrey Bogart. Willow Street had the railway going through the middle with poles that let down when a train went across. Sometimes a goods — freight — train had seventy wagons — cars. It went through very slowly, holding up all the traffic. He watched the words on the cars. Erie, which was like a ghost story, and ATSF, which was like a sneeze, and one that sounded like the wheels going over the bridge over the river — Lackawanna, Lackawanna. You could walk on the station platform, but it was a low platform, not more than a step.

Across the road was Mr, Moeschler’s drugstore. You sat on a stool at the counter and had a milk shake. The big fan on the ceiling swinging round, the air blowing down in gusts, the marble cold under your elbows. A milk shake cost a dime and a nickel, but Kathie had a root beer float that only cost a dime. So for the two of them it was a quarter. (Nickel, dime, quarter, fifty cents, buck, five-spot, ten-spot, but Miss Pike said it wasn’t very nice to say buck, five-spot, and ten-spot. George said Bert Briggs always said it. Mr. Moeschler sometimes wouldn’t let him pay the quarter. “Chalk it up to Hitler,” he said.

Everybody was talking about whether Hitler would invade England. In one of his letters Dad said, “If I were Hitler I’d certainly have a shot at it,” and the Nielsens quoted this to everybody and said, “How English to put it that way.” And once during a history lesson Miss Pike closed the book suddenly and said, “I think we can stop here,” and when he looked over the page it was about the British setting fire to Washington in 1814. Only history, of course.

Miss Pike was very nice but she couldn’t keep order very well. George called her nose Pike’s Beak. Pike’s Peak, not Beak, was a mountain somewhere where there were motorcycle races. You said “Pike’s Peak or bust!” when you made up your mind to do something. When she drove her car into a lamppost everyone clubbed together to pay for the repairs, although Mr. Nielsen said she was a menace with that old jalopy of hers. It was a Ford Coupe . . . (Plymouth, Chrysler, Studebaker, Nash, Packard, Cadillac, Oldsmobile) . . . the Nielsens had a Buick. George could drive it but he wasn’t allowed to till he was sixteen. They used to watch the cars go through the town on Sunday — George had a game about the different states the cars were from. Many were NY, and often also there were Conn and Mass. Once they saw a California and a Wyoming in less than an hour. George liked cars better than trains. He said he could take a car to pieces and put it together again and sometimes he helped Bert Briggs at the gas station.

“ The city was captured and burned by the British in 1814. . .”

In England a boy didn’t work unless his parents were poor, but in America you could do odd jobs for pocket money, which was fun. He and George used to run round after school with the Tanner’s Corner Dispatch. You rode a bicycle and threw the papers as hard as you could into the front gardens. You could ride on the sidewalk — pavement — and the gardens had no fences. All the white houses along Sycamore, Maple, Linden, Elm. . . . Sometimes the paper got caught in trees, but George didn’t care.

George and Kathie were his best friends. Kathie was George’s sister. She was thirteen. Somehow he wasn’t ever shy with her, not as he was with girls nowadays in England. She got the bathroom first, because she had to leave earlier for Woodrow Wilson High, which was two miles along the road. She was Olivia in Twelfth Night. She used to say, “Johnny, can you hear my lines?” because George never would.

Once they went digging for clams in the bay. The bay was so bright in the sun you could hardly see it without blinking. You waded out till the water was over your knees, and whenever you felt a soft spot with your foot you dug in with your fingers and found a clam. The clams squirted when you picked them up. George and he got two pails full and Kathie half a pail, then they took them back to the house and George opened them with a knife. He cut himself but he didn’t care. George didn’t care about anything. Oh what a lovely day that was with the sun shining on the edges of the waves and the feel of the soft sand and the ride back in Bert Briggs’s station wagon. George wasn’t supposed to drive, but it was only a couple of miles down a dirt road — he didn’t care, because Bert was away for the day. Mrs. Nielsen chose the big ones for chowder. They ate the little ones out of the shell. He had never tasted clams before and he liked ice cream better. Then they listened to Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, which was about aeroplanes and very exciting, and Kathie said, “Too bad you’ve got to go back to England when the war’s over, Johnny,” and George said, “Maybe the war won’t be over for years and years.”

“The President lives in the White House, which is visited annually by thousands of sight-seers. . . .”

Miss Pike wrote sentences like that on the blackboard and you had to copy them. She got the sentences out of a book. Mr. Nielsen said it was very old-fashioned but he guessed Tanner’s Corner could stand it because she made swell cakes for the church socials. She was pretty old. Once she told the class about the days before there were school buses, when kids walked for miles along snowy roads to get to school. It was some little school in the country and Miss Pike was head of it. There were no other teachers there, that was why, George said. He didn’t care what he said about Miss Pike, but he liked her all right. And it was wonderful the way she described that little school — far more interesting than her lessons. When he told her his father was arranging for him to return to England she dabbed her eyes and said, “Oh dear, just when we’re all getting used to one another.”

“Another famous building is the Capitol, which has a large dome. . . .”

Most of that last night he lay awake, listening to the trains whoo-whooing in the distance. His father had written: “Now that Hitler seems to be tackling someone his own size. . . .” He showed that to Mr. Nielsen and it was quoted also, like the other bit about Hitler. “So you’ve got to go,” George said. “Sure,” he answered. He still said “Sure” instead of “Yes” sometimes, though he always remembered not to say “nuts” and “swell.” “Good-bye, Mrs. Nielsen. . . . Good-bye, Kathie. . . . Good-bye, Boxer.” Boxer was a boxer. The drive to the junction because the express didn’t stop at Tanner’s Corner. The other side of the sign by the roadside — “ Come again to Tanner’s Corner Pop 3275.” And another sign, “Soft shoulders,” which now reminded him of the girls he was shy of. The sunlight on the bay where the clams were, the cars all halted at the crossings (what a chance for George’s game), Lackawanna, Lackawanna over all the bridges.

“The Capitol contains the Senate and the House of Representatives. . . .”

Whoo-whoo. Whoo-whoo. . . . Another milk shake and a root beer float, please, Mr. Moeschler. . . . George, look! — South Dakota. . . . Oh say can you see . . . Oh say can you hear . . . my lines. . . .

Mr. Leaper, in the Masters’ Common Room, handed the half page of writing to Mr. Reeves with a gesture of disgust. “Perhaps you’ll give me your opinion of that for an hour’s work.”

Mr. Reeves studied it. He was a younger man and thought he understood boys better; he didn’t; he was merely liked by them better. “H’m — not very brilliant, I admit. — Who is it? Harrison? Shame on him! Quite a sound intelligence, though, when he cares to use it.”

“In your field, maybe. But this — one would have thought, since he was over there during the war —”

“Oh, then. But it was so long ago — they’ve all forgotten everything.” He was thinking of his own boy and the air raids as he added: “Perhaps just as well, Leaper, just as well.”