The Wapshot Chronicle

by John Cheever

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Moses’ career at college had been unexceptional and—but for a few friendships—there was nothing about it that he would miss; not the skimmed milk on his porridge or Dunster House upended like a sow above the threadbare waters of the Charles. He wanted to see the world. For Leander the world meant a place where Moses could display his strong, gentle and intelligent nature; his brightness. When he thought of his son’s departure it was always with feelings of pride and anticipation. How well Moses would do! Honora had tradition at her back, for all the men of the family had taken a growing-up cruise—Leander’s father included—rounding the Horn before they shaved, some of them, and on the homeward voyage lewdly straddling the beauties of Samoa, who must have begun to show some signs of wear and tear. Sarah’s habitual reliance on sad conclusions—life is only a casting off and we only live from day to day—helped her to bear the pain of having her first born plucked from his home. But where did all of this leave poor Coverly?

  The relationship between the two brothers had been stormy until a year or so ago. They had fought bare fisted and with sticks, stones and iceballs. They had reviled one another and had thought of the world as a place where the other would be exposed as an evil-tempered fraud. Then all this bad feeling had turned to tenderness and a brotherhood had bloomed that had all the symptoms of love—the pleasure of nearness and the pain of separation. They even took long walks together on the beach at Travertine, airing their most intimate and improbable plans. The knowledge that his brother was leaving gave Coverly his first taste of love’s dark side; it was gall. He didn’t see how he could live without Moses. Honora made the arrangements. Moses would go to Washington and work for a Mr. Boynton who was in some way indebted to her. If Moses had any regrets or hints of regrets they were lost in the confusion of his feelings and overridden by his passionate wish to get out of St. Botolphs and try his strength in the world.

  Sarah gathered those things that she thought Moses might need when he took up his life in a strange place—his confirmation certificate, a souvenir spoon he had bought at Plymouth Rock, a drawing of a battleship he had made when he was six, his football sweater, prayer book, muffler and two report cards—but, hearing him shout loudly up the stairs to Coverly, she sensed, in the notes of his voice, that he would leave these things behind him and she put them away again. The closeness of Moses’ departure drew Sarah and Leander together and refreshed those charming self-deceptions that are the backbone of many long-lived marriages. Leander felt that Sarah was frail and on the evenings before Moses left he brought her a shawl to shield her from the night air. Sarah felt that Leander had a beautiful baritone voice and now with Moses going away she wished he would take up his music again. Sarah was not frail—she had the strength of ten—and Leander could not carry the simplest tune. “You have to remember about the night air,” Leander told her when he brought her the shawl, and, looking up at him admiringly, Sarah would say, “It’s a shame the boys have never heard you sing.”

  There was a farewell party. The men drank bourbon and the ladies had ginger ale and ice cream. “I came over by Waylands’ pasture,” Aunt Adelaide Forbes said, “and that pasture’s just covered with cowflops. I have never seen so many cowflops in my whole life. There’s just cowflops everywhere. You can’t hardly take a step without ending up in a cowflop.” Everyone was there and Reba Heaslip came up to Rosalie and said, “I was BORN in the inner sanctum of the Masonic Temple.” They all talked about their travels. Mr. and Mrs. Gates had been to New York and had paid eighteen dollars a day for a room where you couldn’t swing a cat around in. Aunt Adelaide had been taken to Buffalo when she was a child. Honora had been to Washington. Mildred Harper, the church organist, played the piano, and they sang from the old hymnal and song books—“Silver Threads Among the Gold,” “Beulah Land” and “In the Gloaming.” While they were singing Sarah saw Uncle Peepee Marshmallow’s face in the window but when she went out onto the stoop to ask him in he had fled. Moses, going into the kitchen for a drink, found Lulu crying. “I ain’t crying because you’re going away, Moses,” she said. “I’m crying because I had this bad dream last night. I dreamed I give you this gold watch and you broke it on some stones. Ain’t that silly of me? Of course I don’t have the money to buy you a gold watch and even if I did you aren’t the kind of boy that’d break it, but just the same I dreamed this dream where I give you this gold watch and you broke it on some stones.”

  Moses left the next night on the 9:18, but there was no one to see him off but his parents. Rosalie was in her room, crying. “I won’t go to the station,” Honora had said in the same tone of voice she used at family funerals when she said that she would not go to the grave. No one knew where Coverly was but Sarah suspected that he was taking a walk on the beach at Travertine. Standing on the platform they could hear in the distance the noise of the train coming up the east banks of the river, a sound that made Sarah shiver, for she was at an age when trains seemed to her plainly to be the engines of separation and death. Leander put a hand on Moses’ shoulder and gave him a silver dollar.

  Moses’ feelings were strenuous but not sad and he did not remember the skimming fleet at the ten-minute signal before a race or the ruined orchards where he hunted grouse or Parson’s Pond and the cannon on the green and the water of the river shining between the hardware store and the five-and-ten-cent store where Cousin Justina had once played the piano. We are all inured, by now, to those poetic catalogues where the orchid and the overshoe appear cheek by jowl; where the filthy smell of old plumage mingles with the smell of the sea. We have all parted from simple places by train or boat at season’s end with generations of yellow leaves spilling on the north wind as we spill our seed and the dogs and the children in the back of the car, but it is not a fact that at the moment of separation a tumult of brilliant and precise images—as though we drowned—streams through our heads. We have indeed come back to lighted houses, smelling on the north wind burning applewood, and seen a Polish countess greasing her face in a ski lodge and heard the cry of the horned owl in rut and smelled a dead whale on the south wind that carries also the sweet note of the bell from Antwerp and the dishpan summons of the bell from Altoona but we do not remember all this and more as we board the train.

  Sarah began to cry when Moses kissed her. Leander put an arm around her shoulder but she would have none of it and so they stood apart when Moses said good-by. As soon as the train started, Coverly, who had boarded it in Travertine, came out of the toilet where he was hidden and joined his brother and past the table-silver factory they went, past old Mr. Larkin’s barn with this legend painted on it: BE KIND TO ANIMALS, past the Remsens’ fields and the watermans’ dump, past the ice pond and the hair-tonic works, past Mrs. Trimble’s the laundress, past Mr. Brown’s who ate a slice of mince pie and drank a glass of milk when the 9:18 rattled his windows, past the Howards’ and the Townsends’ and the grade crossing and the cemetery and the house of the old man who filed saws and whose windows were the last of the village.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It never rains but it pours. After saying good-by to Moses, Leander and Sarah came home to find this letter from Coverly on the hall table.

  “Dear Mother and Father, I have gone away with Moses. I know that I should have told you and that not telling you was like lying but this is only the second lie I have ever told and I will never tell another. The other lie I told was about the screwdriver with the black handle. I stole it from Tinicum’s hardware store. I love Moses so much that I couldn’t be in St. Botolphs if he wasn’t there. But we are not going to be together because we thought that if we separated we would have a better chance of proving our self-reliance to Cousin Honora. I am going to New York and work for Cousin Mildred’s husband in his carpet factory and as soon as I have a place to live in I will write and tell you my address. I have twenty-five dollars.

  “I love you both and would not want to hurt your feelings and I know there is no place finer i
n the world than St. Botolphs and our house and when I have made my mark I am coming back. I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else. But now I am old enough to go out in the world and make my fortune. I can tell this because I have so many ideas about life where I never had any ideas before. I have taken the framed copy of Kiplings IF with me and I will think about this and about all the great men I have read about and I will go to Church.

  “Your loving son, Coverly.”

  And two days later Rosalie’s parents telephoned to say that they would pick up Rosalie in an hour. They were driving to Oysterville. Soon after this a long black car that would have opened Emerson Cavis’ eyes came up the driveway at West Farm and Rosalie ran down the path to greet her parents. “Where did you get that green dress?” Sarah heard Mrs. Young ask her daughter. It was the first or at least the second thing she said. Then they got out of the car and Rosalie, blushing and as confused and embarrassed as a child, introduced them to Sarah. As soon as Mrs. Young had shaken Sarah’s hand she turned to Rosalie and asked, “Guess what I found yesterday? I found your scarab bracelet. I found it in my top bureau drawer. Yesterday morning before we had planned to go to Oysterville I decided to clean out my top bureau drawer. I just took the whole thing and dumped it out onto my bed—just dumped it out onto my bed and lo and behold there was your scarab bracelet.”

  “I’ll go up and finish packing,” said Rosalie, blushing and blushing, and she went in, leaving Sarah with her parents. The rector was a pursy man in clericals and sure enough, while they stood there, he began to scratch his stomach. Sarah disliked quick and unkind judgments and yet there seemed to be some striking stiffness and dryness in the man and something so pompous, monotonous and crusty in the notes of his voice that she felt irritable. Mrs. Young was a short woman, a little plump, and decked out with furs, gloves and a hat sewn with pearls—one of those middle-aged women of means, it seems, whose emptyheadedness smacks of tragedy. “The funny thing about the scarab bracelet,” she said, “was that I thought Rosalie lost it in Europe. She went abroad last year, you know. Eight countries. Well, I thought she lost her bracelet in Europe and I was so surprised to find it in my bureau drawer.”

  “Won’t you come in?” Sarah asked.

  “No thank you, no thank you. It’s a quaint old house, I can see that. I love quaint old things. And some day when I’m old and James has retired I’m going to buy a quaint, run-down old house like this and do it all over myself. I love quaint old run-down places.”

  The priest cleared his throat and felt for his wallet. “We have a little pecuniary matter to settle,” he said, “before Rosalie comes down. I’ve talked it over with Mrs. Young. We thought that twenty dollars might help repay you for …” Then Sarah began to cry, to cry for them all—Coverly, Rosalie and Moses and the stupid priest—and she felt such a sharp pain in her breast that it seemed as if she was weaning her children. “Oh, you must excuse me for crying,” she sobbed. “I’m terribly sorry. You must excuse me.—

  “Well, here’s thirty dollars then,” the priest said, handing her the bills.

  “Oh, I don’t know what’s come over me,” Sarah sobbed. “Oh dear. Oh dear.” She threw the money into the garden. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life,” she sobbed, and went into the house.

  Upstairs in the spare room Rosalie, like Mrs. Wapshot, was crying. Her bags were packed but Sarah found her lying face down on the bed and she sat beside her and put a hand tenderly on her back. “You poor child,” she said. “I’m afraid they’re not very nice.”

  Then Rosalie raised her head and spoke, to Sarah’s astonishment, in anger. “Oh, I don’t think you should talk like that about people’s parents,” she said. “I mean they are my parents, after all, and I don’t think it’s very nice of you to say that you don’t like them. I mean I don’t think that’s very fair. After all they’ve done everything for me like sending me to Allendale and Europe and everybody says he’s going to be a bishop and …” She turned then and looked at Sarah tearfully and kissed her good-by on the cheek. Her mother was calling her name up the stairs. “Good-by, Mrs. Wapshot,” she said, “and please say good-by to Lulu and Mr. Wapshot for me. I’ve had a perfectly divine time.…” Then to her mother she called, “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming,” and she banged with her suitcases down the stairs.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Writer’s epistolary style (Leander wrote) formed in tradition of Lord Timothy Dexter, who put all punctuation marks, prepositions, adverbs, articles, etc., at end of communication and urged reader to distribute same as he saw fit. West Farm. Autumn day. 3 P.M. Nice sailing breeze from NW quarter. Golden light. Glittering riffle on water. Hornets on ceiling. An old house. Roofs of St. Botolphs in distance. Old river-bottom burg today. Family prominent there once. Name memorialized in many things in vicinity; lakes, roads, hills even. Wapshot Avenue now back street in honkytonk beach resort further south. Smell of hot dogs, popcorn, also salt air and grinding music from old merry-go-round calliope. Matchwood cottages for rent by day, week or season. Such a street named after forebear who rode spar in Java sea for three days, kicking at sharks with bare feet.

  There’s nothing but the blood of shipmasters and schoolteachers in writers’ veins. All grand men! A true pork and beaner and something of a curiosity these days. Memories important or unimportant as the case may be but try in retrospect to make sense of what is done. Many skeletons in family closet. Dark secrets, mostly carnal. Cruelty, illicit love, candor, but no dirty linen. Decisions of taste involved. Voided bladder so many times; brushed teeth so many times; visited Chardon Street fancy house so many times. Who cares? Much modern fiction distasteful to writer because of above.

  There may have been literature of New England port—factory town also—period of ’70’s and upwards, but if so I have never found same. Shipyards prospering in writer’s early youth. Oak chips three feet deep in yards at foot of River Street. Lumber moved by oxen. Noise of adzes, hammers, heard all summer. Heartening sounds. Noise of seams being calked heard in late August. Soon will come the winter cold. Launching in September. Ships once crewed with flower of native youth, crewed then with lascars, Kanakas and worse. Bad times in offing. Grandfather on deathbed cried: “Shipping is dead!” Prosperous master. Writer raised among souvenirs of salt-water riches. Velvet cushions on deep window seats; now bare. Long garden in rear of house once upon a time. Geometric flower pots. Paths at right angles. Low box hedge. Four inches high. Father’s fancy poultry. Fantails. Homers. Tumblers. No dung-heap stuff. Man to care for garden and birds in times gone by. Local character. Good man. Been to sea. Wonderful stories. Flying fish. Porpoises. Pearls. Sharks. Samoan girls. Beached six months in Samoa. Paradise. Never put his pants on once in six months. Let the pigeons out each afternoon. Each type separately. Tumblers interested writer most.

  Sad times sometimes; sometimes gay. Thunderstorms. Christmas. Sounds of fish horn with which writer was called home to supper. Sailed with father on small schooner. Zoe. Moored at river in foot of garden on summer months. High sided; small, counter stern. Short overhang bow. Good cabin with transom and small galley. Thirty-foot water line. Moderate sail plan. Mainsail, foresail, two jibs set on jib-stay. One good-sized. She was dry in rough weather. She moved very well off the wind, quartering it or before it wing and wing, but “on the wind” or “up the wind” as they say today, she moved like real estate. Did not hold at all close going to windward and sagged off badly. Schooner crewed by Daniel Knight. Retired sailor. Old then. About five feet eight. 170 lbs. Broad-beamed and lively. Remembered square-riggers, Calcutta, Bombay, China, Java. Went out to Zoe in tender. First ceremony on getting aboard was meeting in cabin of father and crew. Libation of Barkham’s rum and molasses. I was not in at slicing of mainbrace; but I can smell it now. More savory world then, than today. Smell of ship’s-bread bakery. Green coffee beans roasted once a week. Perfumery of roasted coffee floated miles downriver. Lamp smoke. Smell of cistern water
. Lye from privy. Wood fires.

  Family consisted of self and brother, ten years my senior. Difference in ages seemed abysmal in early life. Later diminished. Brother named Hamlet after Prince of Denmark. Offshoot of father’s devotion to Shakespeare. Unlike gloomy Prince, however. Very frisky. Played baseball for hose company; also lacrosse. Won many foot races. Much loved by mother. Later the darling of Chardon Street hookers. Familiar figure at the Narragansett House bar. Good fighter both with gloves in gymnasium and bare fisted in street when necessary.

  In warm months writer slept in attic, surrounded by boyish museum of minerals and curiosities. Also facsimile of Chinese junk carved in ivory. Two feet long. Three balls of ivory within one another. Large as an apple. Brain corals. Sea shells as big as melons. Others like peas. Held to the human ear there was a sound like surf breaking on shore. Some shells with spikes. Two tame crows among cherished possessions. Taken from nest on Hale’s island in April. Swordfish spur and eye socket. Powerful odor from same. Attic illuminated by skylight, approached by several steps. Fine view of river to the sea.

  Sturgeon in river then. About three feet long. All covered with knobs. Leap straight up in air and fall back in water. Viewed from horse car running then between St. Botolphs and Travertine. One bobtailed car. You got in at the back end. Dingey Graves was driver. Been to sea. One voyage to Calcutta. Gave me free rides always and sometimes let me drive the horse. Hold the reins and see the sturgeon leap. Boyish happiness. Dingey was lovelorn. Harriet Atkinson was the object of his passion. She was of the first families but Dingey’s financial and scholastic rating was a blank. They loved but never wedded. In such a place many dark lanes for lovers’ meeting. Wooded river banks and groves. Love child raised by old-maid sister. Harriet exiled to Dedham. Dingey led life of quiet desperation, driving horse car.