Finally, Sara’s little fingers went between the chicken wire too far, and she was slightly nipped by one of the ducks. She immediately dropped the bread, pulled back and fell backwards onto the ground. Clara reached down to pick her up, and as she grabbed the child’s hands there was a tremendous flash of light.
SAMARIA CITY, IDAHO—STUART FAMILY HOME, FALL, 1932
The transparent form of eleven-year-old Clara stood in the doorway of her parent’s room. She could see her father looking in the mirror over the dresser. He appeared unshaven and unwashed, and he kept shaking his head as he stared at his own grim reflection. His eyes were moist and the dark rings under them suggested that he had gone a very long while without sleep. Mabel Stuart lay face down on the bed, sobbing. Standing in the doorway, transparent Clara looked back and forth between her mother and father and was suddenly filled with fear and apprehension. As she wondered what could have caused such sorrow, there was a tremendous flash of light.
SAMARIA CITY, IDAHO—BAPTIST CHURCH, FALL, 1932
The Stuart family sat in the front pew, as numerous citizens from Samara City filed into the back of the church. The invisible form of eleven-year-old Clara stood against the windows, watching in wonderment as Baptists and Mormons alike came in to take a seat. Mr. and Mrs. Hurley from Hurley’s Grocery and Drugstore were there. Mel Johns, owner of the Sinclair service station came in behind Mr. Harker, the Mormon Bishop. In fact, everyone that Clara knew seemed to be in attendance. She heard a couple of the women whisper such things as, “It is such a shame,” or “Oh, my God, what a tragedy.” But when she heard Katie Abbott’s mother whisper to her eleven-year-old daughter, “Poor Mabel Stuart,” Clara swung around and looked at her family sitting in the front row.
She could see her mother and father, Grandfather Stuart, Benjamin, Jason, and Emily and herself all sitting there as if they had been crying. In addition to the tears, the two things that amazed invisible Clara most of all were the fact that her two brothers were not fidgeting in their seats, and that she and Emily were sitting next to each other. Suddenly she realized that Sara was nowhere to be found, and it was then that Clara saw the tiny casket sitting up near the front of the church. Standing there invisible, she began to cry.
HUNTSVILLE, UTAH—SUMMER MORNING, 2006
“You know, I had been the one responsible for that child. I was just the right age to help take care of her. I got to dress her for Sunday service, struggling with those hook buttonholes that Mama used to sew on our clothing. Even before that incident with the kitten, I had long wanted a child of my own . . . and Sara had finally come along. We were very close.
“Looking sideways that day, I suddenly knew something I didn’t want to know—little Sara was going to die.”
Clara Cabot wiped a tear from her eye, and Joan reached inside of her purse to get a Kleenex for her aunt. Even through her tears, Clara couldn’t help but notice several crumpled packages of cigarettes.
“Don’t worry,” Joan reassured her, “I haven’t been smoking on account of the baby. Are you going to be okay?”
Clara nodded, “You know, we had a little hand-me-down tea set, and Sara and I would often have a tea party, just sitting, and laughing, and being there together in the house. This is the child that came into my life. And it felt very much like she was mine. When she died, well, it just devastated all of us.
“That summer Sara was four, she started complaining about her stomach hurting. It hurt her so bad, she was crying. Mama tried ginger ale, and castor oil and mustard packs, and whatnot. Who was to know that her crying had something to do with an appendix—I had never even heard of such a thing. Sara cried and cried, and Mama was at her wit’s end. Finally, Papa fetched the doctor from Malad. It was the doctor who discovered that Sara’s appendix had ruptured. It was removed but it was too late.”
“I’m so sorry.” Joan offered another Kleenex but Clara waved it aside. “It must have been hard never seeing Sara again.”
Clara seemed surprised, “Oh, I saw her a few times after she died.”
“What!?”
Clara smiled. “I saw her a few times.”
SAMARIA CITY, IDAHO—STUART FAMILY HOME, FALL, 1932
Eleven-year-old Clara was sitting by herself next to the duck enclosure. She wiped tears from her eyes, and sat staring at the ducks. Off in the distance, her father looked toward her and seemed to contemplate coming to get her, but he shook his head and changed his mind. As Clara cried, she started writing Sara’s name in the dirt with a stick. As she retraced the letter S, more tears came to her eyes; suddenly, she heard a soft call that sounded like her name.
Clara looked up and was startled to see the transparent form of four-year-old Sara standing next to the duck enclosure, smiling back at her. Sara waved:
“Hi, Clara,” came the soft sound of her four-year-old sister.
HUNTSVILLE, UTAH—SUMMER MORNING, 2006
Clara was speaking: “So often Mama had told me that these things were just my imagination, but I knew differently that day. Sara was real.” Quickly, Clara changed the subject. “But it’s Huntsville the Tribune wants to hear about and not some four-year-old child dying of her appendix.”
Clara adjusted herself in her rocking chair, took one sip of lemonade and began again. Joan habitually glanced at her watch to see the time.
“We were on the verge of becoming another Ogden. Everyone talked about the jobs the military would be bringing in, not to mention the customers for the barbershop, and the restaurants, and the hotel. By this time, we even had a beauty salon, and I remember thinking how citified some of those women were, what with their colored nails, and all of them reading Look magazine beneath the dryers. Even the Emporium Theatre over on Main Street was getting the same movies they were showing over in Ogden. It was quite an exciting time for us . . . quite an exciting time.
“You know, Joanie,” Clara added as an afterthought, “if I ever get depressed or unhappy about something going wrong in Clara Cabot’s life, I often go there. Much of that time was simply wonderful.”
FOUR
HUNTSVILLE, UTAH—HUNTSVILLE AIR FORCE BASE, MAIN ENTRANCE, 1955
Two Air Force privates finished hanging the sign on the newly erected entrance to “Huntsville Air Force Base.” As they stood for a moment to admire their work, a white 1955 Ford Fairlane passed through the guard station and was saluted, as it carried the base’s Colonel. The car turned onto the road leading in front of Joe and Clara Cabot’s Victorian house, just beyond the base’s perimeter. The Cabot home was the last one on a street, which contained a dozen houses—the final remnant of the 1920s neighborhood that had disappeared to make room for the airfield after the war. It was only in the last three years that closed door sessions somewhere in Washington, DC had given the small airfield its “Air Force Base” designation. The term had not been greeted with fanfare by anyone on Clara’s street. “Who needs an Air Force base in the middle of Utah?” one of the Cabot neighbors had asked angrily. “What are we planning to do, attack Wyoming?”
The Colonel’s car drove past five miles of wheat fields and scrub oak before coming to the railroad crossing that intersected Huntsville’s Main Street. After the crossing, the Ford turned right onto Main and passed the beauty salon, the Emporium