The Sea Is My Brother Read online

  “So long,” said Everhart, waving briefly.

  “Adios,” added Wesley.

  Polly turned and shouted: “Seven tonight!”

  Bill and Wesley crossed the street, halting while a dairy truck purred past. “I live right up here,” indicated Everhart, pointing up Claremont Avenue. “Christ it’s hot today!”

  Wesley, hands in pockets, said nothing. A distinguished looking old gentleman walked by, nodding briefly at Everhart.

  “Old man Parsons,” revealed the latter.

  Wesley smiled: “I’ll be damned!”

  Everhart smote the other on the back and chuckled goodnaturedly, reposing his hand for a moment on the thin shoulder: “You’re a rare duck, Wes!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  We Are Brothers, Laughing

  Everhart’s home proved to be a dark, rambling hall leading to various rooms on each side. More books, magazines, and pamphlets than Wesley had ever seen were strewn everywhere in bookcases, on shelves, and on tables.

  Bill’s sister, a rather unceremonious woman in the midst of her house work, shouted at them over the whining roar of a vacuum cleaner to keep out of the sitting room. They walked down the dim, narrow hall to Bill’s own bedroom, where books were evident in even more quantity and confusion than in the rest of the apartment. A spacious window opened on the green lawns and luxuriously leafed trees of the Barnard College campus, where several of the girl students sat chatting away their summer session.

  “Here,” said Everhart, handing Wesley a pair of binoculars, “see if you can detect any compromising postures down there.”

  Wesley’s face lit up with silent mirth; binoculars to his eyes, his open mouth widened as the humor of the situation heightened his delight.

  “Fine,” he commented briefly, his silent laughter at length beginning to shake his thin frame.

  Bill took the binoculars and peered seriously.

  “Hmm,” he admitted.

  “That you Billy?” a man’s voice called from the next room.

  “Yeah!” called Everhart, adding to Wesley: “The old pater . . . wait a second.”

  When Bill had gone, Wesley picked up a notebook and glanced briefly through it. On the flyleaf, someone had written: “Give them Tom Wolfe the way he should be given—America’s song in the ‘Angel,’ one of our best songs, growing from thence to satire—the satire of ‘Hill Beyond,’ not simply the bite of a Voltaire but the grandeur and beauty of a Swift; Wolfe, immense gangling freak of a man, striding Swift in our complacent midst!” On another page, figures were inscribed apparently a budget account, subtracting and adding themselves in a confused jumble. Beside the word ‘operation’ stood the sum of five hundred dollars.

  Wesley picked up another notebook; it was full of references, subreferences, and notations; a photograph fell out from between the pages. Wesley glanced at it with the minute curiosity of his nature; a man stood before Grant’s Tomb holding the hand of a small boy, while a plump woman stood nearby laughing. Underneath, in ink, a hand had scrawled the identities: Father, Billy, Mother—1916. Wesley studied the background, where busy little men strode past in the performance of their afternoon duties and ladies stood transfixed in gestures of enthusiasm, laughter, and curiosity.

  Wesley replaced the faded brown picture with a slow, hesitant hand. For a long while, he stared sightlessly at the rug on the floor.

  “Funny . . .” he muttered quietly.

  From the next room, he could hear the low rumble of men’s voices. Down in the street below the open window a baby wailed from its carriage; a girl’s voice soothed in the noon stillness: “Geegee, geegee, stop crying.”

  Wesley went to the window and glanced down the street; way off in the distance, the clustered pile of New York’s Medical Center stood, a grave healer surrounded at its hem by smaller buildings where the healed returned. From Broadway, a steady din of horns, trolley bells, grinding gears, and screeching trolley wheels surmounted the deeper, vaster hum from the high noon thoroughfare. It was very warm by now; a crazy haze danced toward the sun while a few of the more ambitious birds chattered in sleepy protest from the green. Wesley took off his coat and slouched into an easy chair by the window. When he was almost asleep, Everhart was talking to him: “. . . well, the old man leaves me my choice. All I have to do now is speak to my brother-in-law and to the Dean. You wait here, Wes, I’ll call the jerk up . . . he’s in his radio repair shop . . .”

  Everhart was gone again. Wesley dozed off; once he heard a boy’s voice speaking from the door: “Geez! Who’s dat!”: Later, Everhart was back, bustling through the confusion of papers and books on his desk.

  “Where the hell? . . .”

  Wesley preferred to keep his eyes closed; for the first time in two weeks, since he had signed off the last freighter, he felt content and at peace with himself. A fly lit on his nose, but he was too lazy to shoo it off; it left a moist little feeling when he twitched it away.

  “Here it is!” muttered Everhart triumphantly, and he was off again.

  Wesley felt a thrill of anticipation as he sat there dozing: in a few days, back on a ship, the sleepy thrum of the propeller churning in the water below, the soothing rise and fall of the ship, the sea stretching around the horizon, the rich, clean sound of the bow splitting water . . . and the long hours lounging on deck in the sun, watching the play of the clouds, ravished by the full, moist breeze. A simple life! A serious life! To make the sea your own, to watch over it, to brood your very soul into it, to accept it and love it as though only it mattered and existed! “A.B. Martin!” they called him. “He’s a quiet good enough seaman, good worker,” they would say of him. Hah! Did they know he stood on the bow every morning, noon, and night for an hour; did they suspect this profound duty of his, this prayer of thanks to a God more a God than any to be found in book-bound, altar-bound Religion?

  Sea! Sea! Wesley opened his eyes, but closed them rapidly. He wanted to see the ocean as he had often seen it from his foc’sle porthole, a heaving world pitching high above the port, then dropping below to give a glimpse of the seasky—as wild and beautiful as the sea—and then the sea surging up again. Yes, he used to lay there in his bunk with a cigarette and a magazine, and for hours he would gaze at the porthole, and there was the surging sea, the receding sky. But now he could not see it; the image of Everhart’s bedroom was etched there, clouding the clean, green sea.

  But Wesley had felt the thrill, and it would not leave him: soon now, a spray-lashed day in the gray green North Atlantic, that most rugged and moody of oceans . . .

  Wesley reached for a cigarette and opened his eyes; a cloud had come across the face of the sun, the birds had suddenly stopped, the street was gray and humid. An old man was coughing in the next room.

  Everhart was back.

  “Well!” he said. “Done, I guess . . .”

  Wesley passed his hand through the thin black mat of his hair: “What’s done?”

  Everhart opened a dresser drawer: “You’ve been sleeping, my beauty. I saw the Dean, and it’s all right with him; he thinks I’m going to the country for a vacation.”

  Everhart slapped a laundered shirt in his hand meditatively: “The noble brother-in-law whined until I made it clear I’d be back with enough money to pay up all the half-rents and half-boards in this country for a year. At the end, he was fairly enthusiastic . . .”

  “What time is it?” yawned Wesley.

  “One-thirty.”

  “Shuck-all! I’ve been sleepin’ . . . and dreamin’ too,” said Wesley, drawing deep from his cigarette.

  Everhart approached Wesley’s side. “Well, Wes,” he began, “I’m going with you—or that is, I’m shipping out. Do you mind if I follow you along? I’m afraid I’d be lost alone, with all the union hall and papers business . . .”

  “Hell no, man!” Wesley smiled. “Ship with me!”

  “Let’s shake on that!” smiled the other, proffering his hand. Wesley wrung his hand with grave reassurance.


  Everhart began to pack with furious energy, laughing and chatting. Wesley told him he knew of a ship in Boston bound for Greenland, and that getting one’s Seaman’s papers was a process of several hours’ duration. They also planned to hitchhike to Boston that very afternoon.

  “Look!” cried Everhart, brandishing his binoculars. “These will be more useful from a deck!” He threw them into the suitcase, laughing.

  “You don’t need much stuff,” observed Wesley. “I’m gonna get me a toothbrush in Boston.”

  “Well at least I’m going to bring some good books along,” Everhart cried enthusiastically, hurling dozens of Everyman volumes into his pack. “Greenland!” he cried. “What’s it like up there, Wes?”

  “I ain’t seen it; that’s why I want to go.”

  “I’ll bet it’s a God-forsaken place!”

  Wesley flipped his cigarette through the open window: “Never saw Greenland, been to Russia and Iceland; Africa in 1936, eleven ports on the Gold coast; China, India, Liverpool, Gibraltar, Marseilles, Trinidad, Japan, Sidney, hell’s shuck-all, I been all the way to hell and gone and back.”

  Sonny Everhart, a boy of ten years, entered and stared at Wesley: “Are you the guy what’s the sailor Bill’s goin’ wit?”

  “This is my kid brother,” explained Bill, opening the closet door. “Don’t pay any attention to him; he’s a brat!”

  Sonny squared off to box his big brother, but he only waved a playful arm and went back to his packing.

  “He thinks he’s tough,” announced Sonny. “One more year and I’ll lick him easy.” To prove this, he vaulted over the back of an easy chair groaning with books and landed on his feet to stand poised and indifferent.

  “Let’s feel your muscles,” offered Wesley.

  Sonny walked over and flexed his little arm. Wesley wrapped a thin brown hand around it and winked knowingly, nodding toward the older brother.

  “Six months most,” he reassured Sonny.

  Sonny laughed savagely. Wesley rose to his feet and put on his coat slowly.

  “D’jever see a German?” asked Sonny.

  Wesley sat down on the edge of the large chair. “Sure,” he said.

  “Did he try to shoot you?”

  “No; this was before the war,” explained Wesley.

  Sonny jumped on the seat, landing on his knees. “Even then!” he cried.

  “Nope,” said Wesley.

  “D’jever see a submarine?”

  “Yup.”

  “Where?”

  “I seen one off Cape Hatteras; they sunk our ship,” he returned.

  “What you do?” shrilled Sonny.

  “I jumped over the poop deck, feller.”

  “Ha ha! What a name for a deck! Poop!”

  Wesley’s eyes widened in silent laughter; he placed his hand on Sonny’s head and rolled it slowly, growling. Sonny leaped back and slapped his hips: “Brah! Brah!” he barked, pointing his forefingers. Wesley clutched his breast and staggered over.

  “Brah! Brah! Brah! Full o’ holes!” informed Sonny, sitting on the bed.

  Wesley lit up another cigarette and threw the empty pack in the waste basket. The sun was back, spilling its warmth into the room in a sudden dazzle of afternoon gold.

  “My Pop used to fix ships,” Sonny continued. “Did you ever see my Pop?”

  “No,” confessed Wesley.

  “C’mon,” urged Sonny. “He’s right here.”

  Everhart, busy rummaging in the closet, made no remarks, so Wesley followed Sonny into the dim hall and into another room.

  This particular room faced the inner court of the building, so that no sun served to brighten what ordinarily would be a gloomy chamber in the first place. A large man clad in a brown bathrobe sat by the window smoking a pipe. The room was furnished with a large bed, an easy chair (in which the father sat), another smaller chair, a dresser, a battered trunk, and an ancient radio with exterior loudspeaker and all. From this radio there now emitted a faint strain of music through a clamor of static.

  “Hey Paw!” sang Sonny. “Here’s that sailor!”

  The man turned from his revery and fixed two red-rimmed eyes on them, half stunned. Then he perceived Wesley and smiled a pitifully twisted smile, waving his hand in salute.

  Wesley waved back, greeting: “Hullo!”

  “How’s the boy?” Mr. Everhart wanted to know, in a deep, gruff, workingman’s voice.

  “Fine,” Wesley said.

  “Billy’s goin’ with you, hey?” the father smiled, his mouth twisted down into a chagrined pout, as though to smile was to admit defeat. “I always knew the little cuss had itchy feet.”

  Wesley sat down on the edge of the bed while Sonny ran to the foot of the bed to preside over them proudly.

  “This’s my youngest boy,” said the father of Sonny, “I’d be a pretty lonely man without him. Everybody else seems to have forgotten me.” He coughed briefly. “Your father alive, son?” he resumed.

  Wesley leaned a hand on the mottled bedspread: “Yeah . . . he’s in Boston.”

  “Where’s your people from?”

  “Vermont originally.”

  “Vermont? What part?”

  “Bennington,” answered Wesley, “my father owned a service station there for twenty-two years.”

  “Bennington,” mused the old man, nodding his head in recollection. “I traveled through there many years ago. Long before your time.”

  “His name’s Charley Martin,” supplied Wesley.

  “Martin? . . . I used to know a Martin from Baltimore, a Jack Martin he was.”

  There was a pause during which Sonny slapped the bedstead. Outside, the sun faded once more, plunging the room into a murky gloom. The radio sputtered with static.

  Bill’s sister entered the room, not even glancing at Wesley.

  “Is Bill in his room?” she demanded.

  The old man nodded: “He’s packing his things, I guess.”

  “Packing his things?” she cried. “Don’t tell me he’s really going through with his silly idea?”

  Mr. Everhart shrugged.

  “For God’s sake, Pa, are you going to let him do it?”

  “It’s none of my business—he has a mind of his own,” returned the old man calmly, turning toward the window.

  “He has a mind of his own!” she mimicked savagely.

  “Yes he has!” roared the old man, spinning around to face his daughter angrily, “I can’t stop him.”

  She tightened her lips irritably for a moment.

  “You’re his father aren’t you!” she shouted.

  “Oh!” boomed Mr. Everhart with a vicious leer. “So now I’m the father of the house!”

  The woman stamped out of the room with an outraged scoff.

  “That’s a new one!” thundered the father after her.

  Sonny snickered mischievously.

  “That’s a new one!” echoed the old man to himself. “They dumped me in this back room years ago when I couldn’t work any more and forgot all about it. My word in this house hasn’t meant anything for years.”

  Wesley fidgeted nervously with the hem of the old quilt blanket.

  “You know, son,” resumed Mr. Everhart with a sullen scowl, “a man’s useful in life so long’s he’s producin’ the goods, bringin’ home the bacon; that’s when he’s Pop, the breadwinner, and his word is the word of the house. No sooner he grows old an’ sick an’ can’t work any more, they flop him up in some odd corner o’ the house,” gesturing at his room, “and forget all about him, unless it be to call him a damn nuisance.”

  From Bill’s room they could hear arguing voices.

  “I ain’t stoppin’ him from joining the merchant marine if that’s what he wants,” grumbled the old man. “And I know damn well I couldn’t stop him if I wanted to, so there!” He shrugged wearily.

  Wesley tried to maintain as much impartiality as he could; he lit a cigarette nervously and waited patiently for a chance to get out of this up
roarious household. He wished he had waited for Bill at a nice cool bar.

  “I suppose it’s none too safe at sea nowadays,” reflected Mr. Everhart aloud.

  “Not exactly,” admitted Wesley.

  “Well, Bill will have to face danger sooner or later, Army or Navy or merchant marines. All the youngsters are in for it,” he added dolefully. “Last war, I tried to get in but they refused me—wife n’kids. But this is a different war, all the boys are going in this one.”

  The father laid aside his pipe on the window sill, leaning over with wheezing labor. Wesley noticed he was quite fat; the hands were powerful, though, full of veinous strength, the fingers gnarled and enormous.

  “Nothin’ we can do,” continued Mr. Everhart. “We people of the common herd are to be seen but not heard. Let the big Money Bags start the wars, we’ll fight ’em and love it.” He lapsed into a malign silence.

  “But I got a feelin’,” resumed the old man with his pouting smile, “that Bill’s just goin’ along for the fun. He’s not one you can fool, Billy . . . and I guess he figures the merchant marine will do him some good, whether he takes only one trip or not. Add color to his cheeks, a little sea an’ sunshine. He’s been workin’ pretty hard all these years. Always a quiet little duck readin’ books by himself. When the woman died from Sonny, he was twenty-two, a senior in the College—hit him hard, but he managed. I was still workin’ at the shipyards, so I sent him on for more degrees. The daughter offered to move in with her husband an’ take care of little Sonny. When Billy finished his education—I always knew education was a good thing—I swear I wasn’t surprised when he hit off a job with the Columbia people here.”

  Wesley nodded.

  The father leaned forward anxiously in his chair.

  “Billy’s not a one for the sort of thing he’s goin’ into now,” he said with a worried frown. “You look like a good strong boy, son, and you’ve been through all this business and know how to take care of yourself. I hope . . . you keep an eye on Billy—you know what I mean—he’s not . . .”

  “Whatever I could do,” assured Wesley, “I’d sure-all do it.”

  “Yes, because I’d feel better if I knew someone experienced was sorta keepin’ an eye on him . . . you know what I mean, son.”