Sons From Afar

  When he had folded his letter and sealed it into the envelope, he spent some time sitting back, trying to remember the place where he had spent the first ten years of his life. The pictures his memory came up with were blurry at the edges, and faded quickly into one another—he remembered the children’s room at the library, the way it filled with sunlight, the way motes of dust floated in that sunlight; he remembered the way their little house was hidden among sand dunes with long sparse beach grass to cut at your bare feet; he remembered the store where Momma had worked, and being given chunks of fried bread by the owner’s wife, thick, hot, chewy chunks of sweet dough, dusted over with confectioner’s sugar. He remembered a map of the original thirteen colonies he’d done in third grade. His mother—with a terrible rush like a wind rising up suddenly across the night, he remembered the kind of worry he’d lived with that last year or so with Momma, not knowing what to say because you never knew what she’d answer, because her answers didn’t make any sense to him. He remembered pretending not to hear the other kids calling him names, especially bastard, even though he had no idea of what the word really meant then, he just knew it was a name they said to hurt him. He remembered sitting there at a blue desk, pretending he was deaf, and the way they got bolder because he didn’t dare get up and look at them. Dicey had always hit out at anyone trying to pick on her, like Sammy did, but James didn’t know how to fight. He’d seen the bloody noses and swollen faces, the cut knuckles, after fights; he could imagine how that felt, he could almost see how bad the flesh and bones looked, under the bruised skin. He remembered—he stopped remembering because it hurt him, the confusion of feelings toward his Momma, he’d felt so sorry for her and been so angry, and he didn’t know how to do anything more than be as smart as he could in school. What they would have done without Dicey, he didn’t know. She had herded them all down to Gram’s house that summer, when Momma left; no matter what got in their way she kept on going. And then James remembered—as if it was just happening—how it felt when Gram said they could stay, stay here, stay home with her. It had felt as if the sun was rising up inside of him, as if magic had happened, better than magic, a miracle. Sitting at his desk in his bedroom on the second story of the old farmhouse, with the wind whispering outside his open windows, remembering, James felt again the sudden joy when Gram said it was okay for them to stay. Like the whole school chorus singing out the “Hallelujah Chorus,” it was that kind of feeling.

  James looked out of the window at the night, where he couldn’t see anything. He’d used to think that Maybeth was the one who might, like Momma, slip away into depression and quiet lunacy. But now he thought, probably he was the one who might, because he was the one who was so different from the rest of them. Dicey and Sammy never seemed to be afraid. James was the one it was so easy to make afraid, who could make himself afraid by just thinking. Even Maybeth, who was the shy one, timid, could withdraw into herself, and not be afraid. James had thought about them: Maybeth was almost exactly like Momma, and not just in her looks; Sammy and Dicey, for all they looked so different, were a similar mix of Tillerman and whoever their father was. James figured, he was probably the exact opposite of Maybeth, so he was probably like his father. Whoever that was.

  Gram had said their father was the kind of man who sailed close to the wind, James remembered that, and she’d said he was the kind of man who’d gamble, and probably cheat, too. That was great, just great. Wasn’t that great? Another reason not to ask Gram about him. James pushed the typewriter to the back of the desk and opened his history book.

  * * *

  The next morning, James put his letter into the mailbox. He pulled up the flag, to let the postman know there was outgoing mail, and closed the little metal door. Maybeth either didn’t notice or assumed he’d written to Dicey. She didn’t ask him any questions; Maybeth wouldn’t ever ask, if she thought you didn’t want to say. Sammy had gone off on his bike twenty minutes earlier. James—looking around at the moist brown fields and the pale sky filled up with filmy clouds—regretted not having ridden his bike in to school.

  He crossed the road to stand next to Maybeth. She was dressed almost exactly like him, in jeans, shirt, and sweater, but you’d never mistake Maybeth for a boy. It wasn’t just her figure, although she had a really good figure. It was the way her hair curled around her head, too, the way her eyes looked at you, something about the way she held her shoulders and when she moved—feminine. “It’s warm,” James said to her.

  “Yes,” she said, her mouth turned up in a not-quite smile, her hazel eyes peaceful.

  “You okay for school today, and all?” James asked.

  She nodded. She’d tell him if there was something she didn’t understand, in math or English or science. Maybeth didn’t need any help in home ec—she got B’s in the course, her first B’s ever in school, and they’d probably have been A’s if there hadn’t been some written tests she had to take. Chorus, too, when she was in ninth grade next year and got grades in chorus, that would be an A, James was willing to bet. He was honestly glad there were things Maybeth was good at. She earned her C’s and D’s with hard work, and he never could see how she just kept on trying, working, not being discouraged by the grades. He couldn’t see how she did it, but he sure respected her for it.

  “There’s a unit test in science on Thursday,” she told him.

  “We’ll start on it tonight,” he assured her.

  The school bus lumbered around the big curve and drew up in front of them, filling the quiet morning with the noise of its engine and the smell of gasoline. They climbed on. Maybeth went to sit with friends, a bunch of girls who called down the length of the bus to her. James slid into an empty seat. As soon as his backside was settled on the stiff plastic, and his bookbag was at his feet, he felt the mix of dread and anticipation he couldn’t seem to get used to. He’d have to go to practice at the end of the day, for a couple of hours. There was no getting out of that. If it rained, they had chalk talks, where James couldn’t understand what the coach was saying and just sat there hoping nobody would ask him any questions, watching the clock tick the minutes away, trying to push the hands faster with his mind. But before the day ended in practice, it would begin with French. French was the only class he had with Celie Anderson.

  Mr. Norton had the twenty-four students in French II-A sit in alphabetical order, so James could watch Celie Anderson from the middle of the third row; he could start off each day with his eyes filled with Celie Anderson. He never got tired of looking at her. Her hair, which he had finally decided was mahogany-colored, was cut shoulder length and hung thick, straight, and heavy. When she moved her head, her hair brushed across her shoulders, brushed against her cheeks. She had dark eyebrows, with almost no curve to them, and dark eyelashes that set off her greenish eyes as perfectly as black velvet sets off diamonds. Her nose was straight, narrow, and just the right length. Her face was almost heart-shaped and her skin, whether creamy pale in the winter or tanned from summer sun, was smooth and clear. All the makeup she ever wore was just the faintest lipstick on her mouth. She didn’t need anything to make her look better. Celie Anderson almost always wore skirts, with a light blouse in warm weather, with sweaters for cold seasons. She wore fall colors, mostly, rusts and brown, gold, but she had one black turtleneck sweater that was James’s favorite. In her black turtleneck, she looked like a New York actress, dramatic, and full of passions. He thought Celie Anderson was about the same height as Maybeth, but they looked entirely different. Maybeth was really pretty, round and strong looking; Celie Anderson looked delicate, beautiful. James watched Celie Anderson that March morning. She bent her head over the French book and her mahogany hair moved, like a curtain, brushing against her cheek.

  She was popular, of course, but he didn’t think she was going steady with anyone. She’d come to Crisfield in ninth grade; he’d first seen her the first day of French I-A. All of James’s classes were A, the most advanced. Celie was only in the advanced French b
ecause, he found out by listening to what she told the teacher, she’d lived for two years in France. Her parents were divorced, he found out by listening from his corner of lunch tables in the cafeteria. She lived with her mother, who worked in a real-estate office and wanted to be a painter. That was how Celie had gotten to live in France, because when her parents were divorced her mother went off to France to study painting, taking Celie along with her.

  So, James thought, they had in common a lack of father, he and Celie Anderson. He loved to hear her speak French, say anything in French, even something as commonplace as conjugations or putting the right pronoun into a sentence. She made the language sound graceful and quick, the way she spoke it. Mr. Norton enjoyed it too, James could see that in the expression on the teacher’s face. Celie wasn’t that good with grammar; she just had a broad vocabulary, which probably came from having actually used the language.

  Some days, James said good morning to her—but never bonjour—he had a terrible accent—and sometimes she lifted her face to answer hi, looking right through him. “Good morning,” he said, that morning.

  “Hi,” she answered, not seeing him.

  James minded, but he guessed he didn’t mind as much as if she’d absolutely ignored him. He went right back to his seat beside Andy Walker. He opened his notebook and took out the homework. He watched, out of the corner of his eye, the way Andy checked his own homework paper against James’s, changing things when they didn’t agree with what James had written. This had been going on all year, and Andy had never said a word to James except now, on the baseball squad, occasionally Andy would grunt in James’s direction. James figured, Andy had to know James knew that Andy was copying, if only from the way James always hunched his shoulders and angled his body so Andy could never copy from him during tests. Sixty-four was the highest Andy had ever gotten on a test. James knew that from watching papers returned. That made him laugh, inside himself. Andy would never say a word, but he needed James in order to get the C he had to have to go on in French. James didn’t know how Andy had ever gotten into this A section, except he must have sat next to somebody smart last year too. Mr. Norton seemed to think that Andy tensed up on tests, and Andy didn’t contradict the teacher. During tests, Andy did a lot of rustling around in his seat and throat clearing, a lot of erasing and writing over; he always kept his paper until the last minute. That was one of the games students played, to convince a teacher they were really trying, so the teacher would be a little easier on them when it came to grades. In James’s experience, the game usually worked. It worked for Andy anyway.

  James wished he could figure out some game for getting through baseball. Or at least, he wished he could figure out some way of not always looking like the worst, slowest, weakest, stupidest, when they stood in rows and did warm-up exercises. The coach, a big burly man with a big voice that could carry across the whole diamond, had no interest in James except every now and then to say, “Come on, Tillerman, a little sweat never hurt anyone.” Andy Walker, of course, was up in the front row, his light brown hair damp at the hairline, his body perfectly coordinated. James jumped and ran, did sit-ups and stretches, making himself keep on, hating it. To avoid thinking about how he looked, and what everyone was probably thinking of him, he kept his mind busy. That March day, he concentrated on the letter he’d mailed, figuring out how long it would take to get an answer. If you figured it would leave Crisfield in the evening, go up to Baltimore probably, then Boston, then it would be three or four days to Provincetown. Maybe two or three days to be answered there. Three or four days back. He should hear during the first week of April. That allowed for a couple of weekends, when nobody worked and mail wasn’t delivered. So he’d know in the first week of April what his father’s name was. Then he could start figuring out how to track him down.

  Besides, James reminded himself, standing at the end of a line of boys that faced another line for the throwing and catching drill, not looking at any of the faces opposite him for fear of what he’d see if they were looking at him, it looked good on a college application if you played a sport. Colleges wanted well-rounded people, not just brainy types. Brainy types, if they didn’t do anything else, colleges figured they were liable to be dorks. Colleges didn’t want dorks any more than anybody else did.

  The ball, which was going quickly down the lines, thrown and caught, back and forth, came closer to James. He nerved his body, and tensed his arms, getting ready. He hoped it wouldn’t burn into his glove the way it sometimes did, coming in so fast that it stung his fingers even through the leather, and hurt, causing him to fumble it. You could break fingers catching wrong, he was willing to bet. Nobody else seemed bothered by the ball coming at them fast, coming too fast, coming at their faces. They’d probably all had fathers playing catch with them from the time they could stand up alone, showing them how to catch and how to throw. He wouldn’t have had anyone to do that with, even if he’d wanted to waste his time throwing a little round object around, catching it.

  When James finally got back home, the daylight was fading and hunger was like a knife in his stomach. If he’d had the strength, he would have jogged up the driveway from the bus, just to get to the kitchen sooner, but he was too worn down to hustle. He walked up the driveway, enduring hunger, then around to the back. Inside, he dropped his books on the table and grunted hello at his grandmother. Gram barely turned around to look at him from where she was peeling the skins off carrots. He was glad she ignored him. He was too hungry even to talk. He poured himself a glass of milk, drank it, ate a banana and then a handful of cookies. The hunger faded, dulled by food, and he turned around to face the room. Something smelled good, some kind of pot roast.

  “You know, you come in here like you haven’t eaten for a week,” Gram said.

  “I feel like maybe I haven’t,” James said. “Anything I can do?” She had a pot of peeled potatoes in water on the stove.

  “Nope. It’s all been done.”

  James took the pitcher and mixed up more milk, because he’d finished what was made. They used dried milk, which was thirty percent cheaper than regular. Gram made their bread, too, which saved about seventy percent of the cost. She bought flour in hundred-pound sacks from Tydings grocery store. Maybeth’s piano teacher, Mr. Lingerle, brought out the sacks for them, when they ran out, or Jeff Greene loaded one into his station wagon, if he was home from school. Gram’s bread was about three hundred percent better than anything you could buy in a store, even the fancy brands which they would never have bought anyway because of the cost. Dried milk was only about fifty percent worse than regular, so James figured they came out well ahead. He stirred the milk and water with a wooden spoon until all the granules had been absorbed, then put it into the refrigerator to chill.

  Gram was watching him. “You look to be growing again.”

  At her tone of voice, James laughed inside himself. Baseball was over for the day and his stomach wasn’t empty, and Gram said he was growing as if she’d discovered mealworms in her flour. Gram thought he was smart and easy to handle, he knew that; she liked him, and she knew him too. He didn’t worry about what she thought of him, because he knew. “I sure hope so,” he said and let his laughter leak out.

  “I hope you’re properly grateful to your sister,” Gram reminded him, because Maybeth would be the one to let down the hems on his khakis and jeans, and make whatever adjustments were possible in his shirts. “You don’t laugh enough,” Gram said, unexpectedly.

  “There’s not much funny,” James told her.

  “Sometimes, I know what you mean. Are you going to start on your homework before supper?”

  “Are you going to make gravy?” James answered, as if he was negotiating a deal.

  “Go away,” was all she answered. She didn’t need to say more. He always started his homework before supper. She always made gravy with pot roast.

  James took his books into the living room, where the big desk was set out in front of tall bookcases. Mayb
eth was practicing piano. James moved quietly behind her into the room, even though he knew how hard she was to disturb when she was playing. He set out the algebra book and his papers. This was one of the times he liked best: Maybeth playing the piano (Mozart, he thought; the quick melodic symmetry of the music was probably Mozart) while he did homework, math for preference. The music constructed its design in the air and the equations marched out onto his paper, the music and the math, matched up together somehow.

  Maybeth sat straight-backed at the piano, wearing an old brown sweater Gram had knitted for James years ago. Her head, curls the color of yellow corn ripened in the sunlight, bent forward a little, and her hands moved over the piano keys. The music tumbled out, filling the room, generous. Her hands were what made the music, her hands and Mozart and the piano. James sometimes wondered how it was that Maybeth, who was so slow at everything else, even the cooking and sewing she had a natural ability for, could be so quick and sure with music. He never wondered why everybody liked Maybeth so much. One look at her face, with the mouth that turned up a little at the ends, ready to be happy, and you knew Maybeth would never hurt anyone. He reminded himself to set aside a couple of hours after the dishes for studying science with her, and went back to the algebra problems, graphing parabolas.

  * * *

  By the time the first week of waiting for an answer from Provincetown was behind James, March had turned cold again. Dark winds and dark rains rattled at the windows all night long. On days when it wasn’t actually raining, a thick mist rose up, shrouding the landscape, as if the clouds had sunk down out of the sky and settled onto the flat land. Shapes came up at you out of the mist, spiny fingers of trees, squat thick squares of buildings. Even when it was daylight, it felt like night. At the end of the second week of waiting, James figured that his letter was going to be ignored, because it came from a kid. He should have had an answer by now, he thought. He began to calculate how long he should wait before he sent a second letter. He began to wonder how to write a letter that sounded like he was a grown-up, so they’d have to answer it. Maybe he’d write in Gram’s name. It wouldn’t be a crime to forge her signature on a letter, would it?