The Sea Is My Brother: The Lost Novel Read online

  The were now on Broadway, strolling along the spacious pavement; Wesley stopped to peel his orange over a city refuse basket, and after a pause during which he frowned with dark pity, he said: “I used to know a young seaman by the name of Lucian Smith; he used to try to make me read, because I never did do much reading.” He dropped the last peel in the basket with a slow, thoughtful flourish. “Luke finally made me read a book; he was a good kid and I wanted to make him feel as though he done me a favor. So I read the book he gave me.”

  “What was it?”

  “Moby Dick,” recollected Wesley.

  “By Herman Melville,” added Everhart, nodding his head.

  Wesley tore the orange in two and offered a half to his friend. They walked on, eating. “So I read Moby Dick; I read it slow, about five pages a night, because I knew the kid would ask me questions about it.”

  “Did you like it?” Everhart asked.

  Wesley spat out an orange grain, the same grave frown on his countenance: “Yeah,” he answered.

  “What did the Smith kid ask you about it?” persisted Everhart.

  Wesley turned his troubled face on the interrogator and stared for a few moments.

  “All kinds of questions,” he finally told him. “All kinds. He was a bright kid.”

  “Do you remember any of his questions?” Everhart smiled, conscious of his inquisitiveness.

  Wesley shrugged: “Not offhand.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “The kid?”

  “Yes . . .”

  Wesley’s frown disappeared; in its place, an impassive, almost defiant stoniness manifested itself in his averted face.

  “Lucian Smith, he went down.”

  Everhart shot a scowling look toward his companion: “You mean he was torpedoed and drowned?” Everhart said this as though incredulous of such a thing; he rushed on: “He’s dead now? When did it happen? Why did . . . where was it?”

  Wesley thrust his hand in his back pocket, saying: “Off Greenland last January.” He produced his seaman’s wallet, a large flat affair with a chain attached. “Here’s his picture,” he announced, handing Bill a small snapshot: “Smith’s a good kid.”

  Everhart, taking the snapshot, was going to say something, but checked himself nervously. A sad face gazed out at him from the photograph, but he was too confused to make anything further of it: Wesley’s brooding presence, the sounds of the street gathering tempo for a new day, the gay sunshine’s warmth, and the music from a nearby radio store all seemed to remove this pinched little face with the sad eyes to a place far off, lonely, and forgotten, to unreal realm that was as inconsequential as the tiny bit of celluloid paper he held between his fingers. Bill handed back the picture and could say nothing. Wesley did not look at the picture, but slid it back into his wallet, saying: “Where do we buy the eggs?”

  “Eggs . . .” echoed Everhart, adjusting his spectacles slowly. “Up ahead two blocks.”

  On the way back, laden with packages, they said very little. In front of a bar, Wesley pointed toward it and smiled faintly: “Come on, man, let’s go in and have a little breakfast.”

  Everhart followed his companion into the cool gloom of the bar, with its washed aroma and smell of fresh beer, and sat near the window where the sun poured in through the French blinds in flat strips. Wesley ordered two beers. Everhart glanced down and noticed his friend wore no socks beneath his moccasin shoes; they rested on the brass rail with the calm that seemed part of his whole being.

  “How old are you, Wes?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “How long have you been going to sea?”

  The beers were placed before them by a morose bartender; Bill threw a quarter on the mahogany top of the bar.

  “Six years now,” answered Wesley, lifting the golden glass to the sun and watching the effervescence of many minute bubbles as they shot upward.

  “Been leading a pretty careless life, haven’t you?” Everhart went on. “Port debaucheries, then back to sea; and on that way . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’d never care to plant some roots in society, I suppose,” mused the other.

  “Tried it once, tried to plant some roots, as you say . . . I had a wife and a kid coming, my job was a sure thing, we had a house.” Wesley halted himself and drank down the bitter thoughts. But he resumed: “Split up after the kid died stillborn, all that sort of guff: I hit the road, bummed all over the U.S.A., finally took to shipping out.”

  Everhart listened sympathetically, but Wesley had said his piece.

  “Well,” sighed Bill slapping the bar, “I find myself, at thirty-two, an unusually free and fortunate man; but honestly I’m not happy.”

  “So what!” countered Wesley. “Bein’ happy’s O.K. in its place; but other things count more.”

  “That’s the sort of statement I should make, or anyone of the creative artists whose works I talk on,” considered the other, “but as for you, a doubtlessly devil-may-care roué with a knack for women and a triple capacity for liquor, it seems strange. Aren’t you happy when you’re blowing your pay in port?”

  Wesley waved a disgusted hand: “Hell no! What else can I do with money? I ain’t got no one to send it to but my father and one of my married brothers, and when that’s done, I still got too much money—I throw it away, practically. I’m not happy then.”

  “When are you happy?”

  “Never, I guess; I get a kick out of a few things, but they don’t last; I’m talkin’ about the beach now.”

  “Then you are happy at sea?”

  “Guess so . . . I’m home then anyway, and I know my work and what I’m doin’. I’m an A.B., see . . . but as to bein’ happy at sea, I don’t really know. Hell, what is happiness nohow?” Wesley asked with a trace of scorn.

  “No such thing?” suggested Bill.

  “You hoppin’ skippin’ Goddamn right!” asserted Wesley, smiling and shaking his head.

  Bill called for two more beers.

  “My old man is a bartender in Boston,” confided Wesley. “He’s a great old buck.”

  “My old man used to be a shipyard worker,” Everhart supplied, “but now he’s old and feeble; he’s sixty-two. I take care of him and my kid brother financially, while my married sister, who lives in my place with her crum of a husband, feeds and cares [for] them. The kid goes to public school—he’s a doughty little brat.”

  Wesley listened to this without comment.

  “I’d like to make a change; spread my wings and see if they are ready for flight,” confessed Bill. “Know something? . . . I’d like to try the Merchant Marine for a spell!”

  “How about your draft status?” Wesley asked.

  “Just registered so far, unless my notification came in this morning’s mail,” pondered Bill. “But by heavens I really would like the idea!” Everhart lapsed into a musing silence while the other lit up a cigarette and inspected the glowing tip. He could use a little money, considering that the old man would soon require a hernia operation. What was it the doctor had said? . . . seven months? And the kid might want to go to Columbia in five or six years.

  “How much money can you make on a trip?” asked Bill at length.

  Wesley, with a mouthful of beer, held it for a moment, tasting it with relish.

  “Well,” he answered, “depends. You’d make a bit less as ordinary seaman. The Russian run would net you around fourteen hundred bucks in five or six months, with pay, sea bonus, port bonus, and overtime. But a short run, like the Iceland or coastwise to Texas or South American run wouldn’t add up to that much in one trip.”

  Well, two or three short trips, or one long one would certainly make a tidy sum. Everhart, who made thirty dollars a week at Columbia, sharing the rent with his sister’s husband, had always had enough money, but never enough to realize any savings or lay the foundations for future security. He often managed to make a few extra dollars tutoring private students at examination time. But since
1936, when he was awarded his master’s degree in English and was fortunate enough to land an assistant professorship in the university, he had more or less coasted along, spending whatever money he kept for himself and living out a life of harangue with students, professors, and people like George Day; living, in short, a casually civilized New York City existence. He had studied hard and proved a brilliant student. But the restlessness which had festered in his loquacious being through the years as assistant professor in English, a vague prod in the course of his somehow sensationless and self-satisfied days, now came to him in a rush of accusal. What was he doing with his life? He had never grown attached to any woman, outside of the gay and promiscuous relations he carried on with several young ladies in the vicinity of his circle. Others at the university, he now considered with a tinge of remorse, had grown properly academic, worn good clothes with the proud fastidiousness of young professors, gotten themselves wives, rented apartments on or near the campus, and set about to lead serious, purposeful lives with an eye to promotions and honorary degrees and a genuine affection for their wives and children.

  But he had rushed around for the past six years clad in his cloak of genius, an enthusiastic young pedant with loud theories, shabby clothing, and a barefaced conviction in the art of criticism. He’d never paused to appraise anything but the world. He had never really paid any attention to his own life, except to use his own freedom as a means to discuss the subject of freedom. Yes, he was Everhart who had told his classes, one triumphant morning when the snow lashed against the windows, that art was the revolt of the free. . . .

  Theories! Lectures! Talk! Thirty dollars per week; home in the evening, while the old man snored in his chair, correcting papers and preparing lecture notes; down at the bar with George Day, studying for his master’s, talking over beers and making wry observations on everything; plays, concerts, operas, lectures; rushing around carrying books shouting hellos to everyone; weekend wild parties with various acquaintances; then back to Sunday—the Times, those fine dinners of his sister’s, arguments at the table with her radio store owner of a husband, damn his smug hide, and a movie with Sonny at night in the Nemo, full of Columbia College students throwing things from the balcony. Then back to Monday morning, a class, a quick lunch at the Sandwich shop, reference work in the afternoon seated in the library, a quick beer before supper, and a lecture by Ogden Nash in McMillin at eight-thirty. Then back to the bar for a quick beer, long discussions with the boys—Day, Purcell, Fitzgerald, Gobel, Allen . . . as drunken a mob of pseudo-scholars as he was ever privileged to behold—and finally home to a dying old father, a busybody sister, a self-appointed humorist of a brother-in-law, a noisy kid brother, and a horrible looking poodle dog.

  Bah! Then Everhart retires, placing his horn-rimmed glasses on the dresser, and stretches his pudgy frame in the bed and wonders what the hell it’s all leading to!

  Well, now it had come to this; at thirty-two, a queer-looking assistant professor, known amiably around the whole place as “Shortypants.” The price of trying to be unpretentious! Do like the others, radiate professorial dignity, and they will call you William or Professor Everhart. To hell with it!

  Lost? That poet’s word . . .

  “Thinkin’ of shipping out?” Wesley interrupted the other’s reverie.

  Everhart directed a scowl toward him, still lost in his own thoughts; but he finally answered: “If only for a change, yes.”

  “Let’s have another beer,” suggested Wesley.

  Everhart had to laugh: “We’d better be getting back, the girls are waiting for the eggs and us.”

  Wesley waved a scoffing hand.

  They had more beer; and more. In forty-five minutes or so, they each consumed eight glasses of cold, needling ale. They decided to go back. Everhart felt decidedly tingling by this time. All through breakfast he told them all he was shipping out with Wesley, repeating his decision at measured intervals. George Day, who had by this time risen, sat eating his breakfast with an ill-tempered scowl, munching quite noisily and with no acknowledgement of the presence of the others.

  Everhart, feeling quite gay from the beer, slapped George on the back and invited him to go shipping in the Merchant Marine with him. George turned up a drawn, rather gloomy countenance, and with the help of an already dour face, heavy with tired flesh, he made it known that he was averse to the suggestion.

  Ginger drew a toast from the grill and laughed: “Don’t you have a class this morning, Georgie?”

  Day mumbled something that sounded like “Ancient History of the Near East and Greece.”

  “Poof!” scoffed Everhart, flourishing his fork, “Come with me and see the Near East.”

  George snuffed briefly down his nose and muttered through a mouthful of toast: “You don’t think, do you Everhart, I’m taking the course because I want to know something about the Near East. The Near East is as dear to me as a glass of milk.”

  “Ha!” shouted Everhart. “Port Said! Alexandria! The Red Sea! There’s your East . . . I’m going to see it!”

  George belched quietly, excusing himself after a moment of afterthought.

  Polly, perched on Wesley’s lap, ruffled his hair and wanted to know if he had a cigarette. While Wesley drew a package from his coat pocket, the girl bit his ear and breathed warmly into it.

  “Now, now Polly!” giggled Ginger.

  After breakfast, Ginger shooed them all out and locked the door. She had worn a brown suit with stitched seams and double slit pockets in the jacket; beneath it she wore a casual sport shirt.

  “This is the suit I have to model this morning,” she chattered to all in general. “Twelve ninety-five. Don’t you think it’s cute?”

  “No frills, no flubs!” commented Everhart.

  “Could I get one cheap?” demanded Polly from Wesley’s arm. “See how much you can get it for; I’ll give you the money. I think it’s classic!”

  They were now in the street. George Day, very tall and shambling, dragged along behind them, not quite capable of maintaining any sort of morning dignity. Polly strode beside Wesley chatting gayly, while Ginger and Everhart talked through one another about what ever occurred to their minds. Near the 110th Street subway entrance Ginger left them. “Oh look!” cried George, pointing toward a bar across the street. Ginger, ready to cross the street, turned: “You go to your class, Day!” She ran off across the street for her subway, her trim little heels clacking a rapid staccato. “How,” George wanted to know in general, “can a woman with legs like that be so cruel?” Near 114th Street, George left them with a brief “Goodbye kids” and shuffled off toward his class, hands dug reluctantly in his pockets.

  “A gentleman and a pseudo-scholar,” Everhart observed. A group of girls in slacks walked by in the warm sunlight, laden with tennis rackets and basketballs, their multi-colored heads of hair radiant in the morning glitter. Wesley appraised them with a frank stare. When one of the girls whistled, Polly whistled back. Near a small cigar store, a tall curly haired youth and another shorter one with glasses, paid their respects to Polly with a rhythmic whistle that kept in time with her long, loose stride. Polly whistled back to them.

  They turned down 116th Street toward the Drive.

  “I’d better be getting home or my aunt will brain me,” said Polly, laughing on Wesley’s lapel.

  “Where do you live?” asked Wesley.

  “On the Drive, near the Delta Chi house,” she told him. “Look, Wes, where are you going now?”

  Wesley turned to Everhart.

  “He’s coming with me,” said the latter. “I’m going home and breaking the news to the folks. I don’t have to ask them, but I want to see if it’s all right with them.”

  “Bill, are you really joining the Merchant Marine? I thought you were just drunk!” confessed Polly with a laugh.

  “Why not?” barked Everhart. “I want to get away from all this for awhile.”

  “What about the University?” Polly supplied.

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nbsp; “That’s no problem; all I have to do is ask for a vacation. I’ve been at it for six years without a break; they’ll certainly grant me the request.”

  Polly returned her attention to Wesley: “Well, Wes, I’m expecting you to call on me at six tonight—no, I make it seven, I have to get a manicure at Mae’s. We’ll have another wild time. Do you know any good places we could hit tonight?”

  “Sure,” smiled Wesley, “I always have a right big time down in Harlem; I got some friends there, some boys I used to ship with.”

  “That’s swell!” sang Polly. “We can go there; I’d like to see a show before, though; let’s go downtown to the Paramount and see Bob Hope.”

  Wesley shrugged: “Suits me, but I’m broke just now.”

  “Oh the hell with that, I can get some money from my aunt!” cried Polly. “What about you Bill? Want me to call Eve for you? I don’t think she’s doing anything tonight; Friday today, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” mused Bill. “We’ll see about tonight; I’ll call you up. I have to see Dean Stewart this afternoon about my leave.” Everhart’s face, wrinkled in thought and indecision, was turned toward the river. He could see a line of underwear strung along the aft deck of a tanker, and a tiny figure standing motionless beside the four-inch gun on a turret.

  “I can see someone on that tanker,” smiled Bill, pointing toward the distant anchored ship. “Why isn’t he ashore having a good time?” They all gazed down the street toward the tanker.

  “Too much fuss on the beach for him,” affirmed Wesley in a strange, quiet voice. Everhart shot an inquisitive glance toward his companion.

  “Wesley!” commanded Polly, “Pick me up at seven sharp; don’t forget! I’ll be waiting . . .” She backed away with a frown: “Okay?”