The Wapshot Chronicle

by John Cheever

  Father’s star descending. Handsome man. Straight. Black haired. People said was spoiled and idle but never believed same. Loved same. Made four voyages to East Indies. Proud. Cousins found work for him in gold-bead factory but he refused. Why not? He was a proud man, not meant to make gold beads. Many family conferences. Dark country of visiting relations. Whispering in the parlor. No money, no supper, no wood for fires. Father sad.

  And a grand and glorious autumn that was too. Leaves coming down like old cloth; old sails; old flags. Solid curtain of green in summer. Then north wind takes it away, piece by piece. See roofs and steeples, buried since June in leaves. Everywhere gold. Midaslike. Poor father! Mind coarsened with sorrow. Trees covered with gold bank notes. Gold everywhere. Gold knee deep on the ground. Dust in his pockets. Bits of thread. Nothing more. Uncle Moses came to the rescue. Mother’s brother. Big, fat man. Uncouth. Ran wholesale business in Boston. Sold novelties to four-corner stores. Threads and needles. Buttons. Ginghams. A booming voice like a preacher. Shiny trousers. Threadbare. Walked the four miles from Travertine to St. Botolphs to save eight-cent horsecar fare. Famous walker. Once walked from Boston to Salem to foreclose on a creditor. Slept in livery stable. Walked home. Offered father house in Boston. Work. “The cities is where the money is, Aaron!” Father hated Moses. Had no choice. Moses always spoke of losses. Sad. Lost four thousand dollars one year. Lost six thousand dollars next year. Lived in big square house in Dorchester with For Sale sign on same. Wife made underwear of flour sacks. Two sons; both dead.

  Good-by to St. Botolphs then. Let the tame crows go. Loaded few possessions onto wagon including Hallet & Davis rosewood piano. No room for swordfish spur, shells or corals. House for sale but no customers. Too big. Old-fashioned. No bathrooms. Furniture packed in Tingleys’ wagon night before departure. Horses stabled in barn. Slept last time in attic. Waked by sound of rain 4 A.M. Sweet music. Left homestead by dawn’s early light. Forever? Who knows? Brother and writer to ride on tail gate of wagon. Mother and father to travel by cars. Little wind before dawn. Boxed compass. Not enough to fill your sails. Stirring leaves. Good-by. Reached house on Pinckney Street after dark. Run-down place. Stair lifts rotted. Windows broken. Moses there. Shiny pants. Preacher’s voice. “The house is not in good repair, Aaron, but surely you’re not afraid of a little hard work.” Slept first night on floor.

  Went to visit Moses in Dorchester following Sunday. Walked all the way. Horsecars running but mother thought if he could walk to Salem and back we could walk to Dorchester. Burden of poor relations to set good example. Late winter morning. Overcast. Wind from north, northeast. Cold. Out in farming country barking dogs followed us. Strange figures we cut. Dressed for church, marching up dirt roads. Reached Uncle Moses’ at two. Big house but Uncle Moses and Aunt Rebecca lived in kitchen. Sons, both dead. Moses carrying wood from shed to cellar. “Help me, boys, and I’ll pay you,” he says. Hamlet, father and me carried wood all afternoon. Got bark all over our best clothes. Mother was in the kitchen sewing. Night falls. Cold winds. Moses leads us over to the well. “Now we’ll have a drink of Adam’s ale, boys. There’s nothing more refreshing.” This was our payment. A drink of cold water. Started home at dark. Miles to go. Nothing to eat since breakfast. Sat down on the way to rest. “He’s a Christly skin, Sarah,” father says. “Aaron,” mother says. “He buys and sells on the exchange like a prince,” father says, “and he pays me and my sons with a cup of water for carrying his Christly firewood all afternoon.” “Aaron,” mother says. “He’s known everywhere in the trade as a skin,” father says. “He counts to make ten thousand and when he only makes five he claims to lost five. All the goods he sells are shoddy and damaged in the loom. When his sons were sick he was too stingy to buy the medicine and when they died he buried them in pine-wood coffins and marked their graves with a slate.” Mother and Hamlet walked on. Father put an arm around shoulders; held me tight. Mixed feelings, all deep, all good. Love and consolation.

  Father. How to describe? Stern faced, sad hearted. Much loved, never befriended. Aroused pity, tenderness, solicitude, admiration among associates. Never stalwart friendship. Child of bold seafaring men. First tasted love in Samoa. Honest as the day was long. Perhaps unhappily married. Standards different in those times. Fatalistic. Never quarreled. Only Irish. Perhaps fastidious principles. Hatred for Moses deepened. Worked hard but complained of sharp practice. Mother’s sisters often at house. Whispering. Father complained of numerous visitors. “My latchstring’s always out for my relations,” Mother said. Father often played checkers with writer. Shrewd checker player. Faraway looks.

  Writer entered Latin school. Stood at head of class of forty. (Report card attached.) Country boy in high-water britches. Delivered newspapers in winter before dawn. Moon still in sky. Played on Common. Lacrosse. Snowball fights. Skating. Some baseball. Vague rules. No river embankment then. Copley Square was a dump. Full of hoopskirt wires. River at low tide smelled of sea gas. Trust writer was cheerful. Happy. Excepting father no unhappy memories. Hard now to reconstruct. Epizootic epidemic. (1873.) All horses in city killed. Few oxen imported but little sound of wheels, hoofs. Only street callers. Coalie-oilee man. Knife sharpener. Played checkers late with father. Heard bells ring. Church bells but no church. Loud. From all corners of the compass. Praise, Laud and Honor. Among bells sounds of people running. Went with father to roof. Excitement fast growing. Bells louder on roof. Glory be to God on the highest. Clamor. Saw great fire at waterfront; Great Boston Fire.

  Ran downstairs, down Pinckney Street with father. Boston’s burning! Joined hose company on Charles Street. Ran at father’s side all the way to waterfront. First more smoke than flame. Hellish smell of burning chattels. Shoes, wallpaper, clothes, plumage. Joined bucket brigade. Eyes sore from smoke. Coughing. Father made writer rest back of safety cordon, but rejoined brigade later. Worked most of night. Walked home at dawn. Dead tired. Smoky city. You could see from Washington and Winter streets through to the harbor. Old South Church was scorched. Way through to Fort Hill were smoking ruins. Dawn-light reddish in smoke. Bad smell. Tents on Common for refugees. Strange sight. Babies crying. Fires for cooking. Clink of water buckets like ghostly cowbells. Scenes of upheaval, suffering and humor. Down Charles Street the scavengers. Worse than Indians. Armies of thieves. Sewing machines, dishes, celluloid collars, two dozen left shoes, ladies’ hats. Barbarians all. Hit the feathers at sunrise.

  Moses burned out. Heavily insured. Cleared ten thousand. Expected to clear twenty. Claimed to have lost ten. Crocodile tears. Well-known skin. Opened up new business six weeks later in new building. Continued sharp practice. Father complaining. Aunts and cousins in and out of house like dog’s hind leg. Whispering. Father not home for supper. Not home after. Never ask questions. No sign of father for three days. Church on Sunday. Took walk. Grand and glorious spring day after New England rains. Cheerful. Passed brick house near junction of Pinckney and Cedar. Heard woman’s voice calling, “Boy, boy, oh you!” Looked up to window. Saw naked woman. Big brindle bush of hair like beard. Plain face. Man enters picture. Strikes woman. Draws curtains. Went on walking to river. Resolved never to walk by house looking for woman again. Resolved to keep mind clean, body healthy. Ran a mile on riverbank. Had clean thoughts. Admired sky. Water. God’s creation. Walked straight back to junction of Pinckney and Cedar streets. All resolves broken. Shame faced. Looked in window and saw woman again. Dressed now in voluminous house dress. Picking leaves off geranium plants in window. Later found name was Mrs. Trexler. Member of church in good standing. Poor soul.

  Walked home at dusk. No father. Uncle Jared playing flute. Mother at rosewood piano. Sterling silver flute. Faite en France. Acis and Galatea. Writer heard music from room. Later Jared’s farewells. Was called then to kitchen where mother and brother were having confab. Smelled trouble. Mother, saintly old woman. God bless her! Never one to admit unhappiness or pain. Cried at music, sunsets. Never human things. Remember her at West River, wiping away tears while sh
e watched sunsets, colored clouds. Dry eyed at all funerals. Asked me to sit down. “Your father has abandoned us,” she said. “He left me a note. I burned it in the fire. Moses knows. He says we can stay on here if we persevere. Your school days are over. You will go to work. Hamlet is going to California. We will never talk about your father again.”

  Writer first tasted sorrow then. Bewilderment. The first of many hard knocks. Noticed kitchen. Dartmouth pump. Stain on ceiling like South America. Mother’s sewing bag made from scrap of old silk dress worn at St. Botolphs in happy summertime. Printing on stove; Pride of the Union. Saw everything. Gray in mother’s hair. Cracks in floor. Smoke on lamp chimney. A poor Yankee trait. Writer remembers turning point in life as cracked dishes, soot on glass, coal stove and pump.

  Writer looked for work next morning. Plans afoot for Hamlet’s trip. Joined a company. Cousin Minerva put up the cash, sailed in June. Hamlet, mother’s favorite. Planned to begin sending money home in seven months. Save us all. Big farewell party for Hamlet. Moses, head cheese. All the rest too. Jared, Minerva, Eben, Rebecca, Juliana, many more. Jared did sleight of hand. Pulled brooch out of Minerva’s topknot. Made watch disappear. Took same out of vase made of lava from Mount Vesuvius. Mead to drink. Homemade. Delicious. Mother played piano. Hamlet sang. Sympathetic tenor voice:

  Youth and pleasure go together,

  Soon will come the winter cold

  Not a dry eye in the house. A dark night. Many lamps. Parting is such sweet sorrow. Not sweet for me.

  Father gone. Hamlet sailing away. Writer left alone with dear old mother. God bless her! Stern company though. Writer led clean life. Cold bath every morning. Stone Hills boat club. Single-oared shells. Gymnasium twice a week. Missed father, brother. Father most. Lonely places. Bedroom hallway. Staircase turning. Looked for father in crowds. Straight back. Black coat. Walking home from work. Always looked for father in crowds. Looked in stations both north and south. Looked on waterfront. Watched disembarkations of all kinds. Passenger ships. Fishing boats. Ghosts rattle chains. Live in castles. Gauzy things with kindly voices mostly. Partial to blue light. Vanish at cock’s crow. God give me such a ghost I cried.

  Asked mother once for news of father but received no reply. Spoke later of old times. Asked me if I remembered St. Botolphs. Reminisced. Plums on Hales Island. Picked a bushel basket every year. Recalled famous church picnic with twenty-one varieties of pie. Sails. All good things. House still empty. Falling down. Old mother’s eyes brightened. First time she ever seemed gay. Laughing, talking about old river-bottom place, Godforsaken. Took advantage of high spirits and asked once more for father. “Is he living or dead?”

  “Remember one night last autumn when we had steak and tomatoes for supper?” she said. “The Boston police notified me while you were at work the day before that your father had been found dead in a Charles Street lodging. I made all the arrangements with no help from anyone. Early in the morning I took the body in the cars to St. Botolphs. Mr. Frisbee said the words. No one else was there at the grave. Then I came home on the cars and cooked a good supper for you so you wouldn’t think that anything was wrong.”

  Blow to feelings not improved by receipt of enclosed letter from Hamlet: “Hello old scout. We reached this happy land after traveling 7 months and 9 days. I stood the trip well although the hardships of the voyage exceeded my anticipations. Out of a company of thirty, seven of our brother argonauts were taken by the grim reaper. My own skin is hale and hearty and we’re a whip-cracking, bushy-bearded, sun-burned brother-hood, bound to make our million or go to H—.

  “We made the passage from the Isthmus to San Francisco in the company of many women and children, going to be reunited with their loved ones. There is nothing in the world like the arrival of a ship in San Francisco to pluck at your heart-strings. I wish you could get out here and see the sights. I pity you in that musty old burg, compared to which San Francisco is an honest to G——d beehive. However the necessities of life were costly—board was four dollars a day and we lingered in San Francisco only a week and then came north where provisions still set me back two dollars a day. When you see Cousin Minerva don’t spare the hard facts.

  “Among us is an Irishman whose name is Clancy and is from Dedham. He is come out here to find a dowery for his daughter so that she can marry into the “edicated” classes. There are also 3 carpenters, 2 shoemakers, a blacksmith and many other trades represented including the genteel art of music for one of the company has brought his violin with him and entertains us at night with symphonius strains. We had no sooner settled here than Howie Cockaigne and me got to work with our pick-axes in the bed of the river and when we had been digging for less than an hour two Mexicans came along and offered to buy the digging for an ounce of flour-gold and so we took the offer and had our first gold in less time than it takes to tell and you see that with gold selling at $5.60 an ounce and if our luck holds out we will be making forty or fifty dollars per day. Now under Captain Marsons leadership we are making a race in the river and turning its course so that we will be able to take the gold out of the dry bed.

  “Don’t expect many letters from me Old Scout because this happy land is still wild and as I am writing you now the ground is my chair and the night is my roof. But oh its a grand feeling to be out here and even with the professor playing symphonius strains on his violin and bringing back to me the sweet remembrance of all by-gone days there isn’t a king or a merchant prince in the whole world that I envy for I always knew I was born to be a child of destiny and that I was never meant to be subservient to the wealth, fame, power, etc. of others or to wring my living from detestable, low, degrading, mean and ordinary kinds of business.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  To create or build some kind of bridge between Leander’s world and that world where he sought his fortune seemed to Coverly a piece of work that would take strength and perseverance. The difference between the sweet-smelling farmhouse and the room where he lived was abysmal. They seemed to have come from the hands of different creators and to deny one another. Coverly thought about this one rainy night on his way to Cousin Mildred’s, wearing a rented tuxedo. “Come for dinner,” she had asked him, “and then we’ll go to the opera. That ought to be fun for you. It’s Monday night so you’ll have to dress. Everyone dresses on Mondays.” Cousin Mildred’s apartment was in one of those large buildings that Coverly, on his first day, had wondered if he would ever penetrate. Looking up at the building Coverly realized that by all the standards of St. Botolphs it would be condemned as expensive, pretentious, noisy and unsafe. It could not be compared to a nice farm. He took an elevator to the eighteenth floor. He had never approached such an altitude and he entertained himself with some imaginary return to St. Botolphs where he regaled Pete Meacham with a description of this city of towers. He felt worldly and saturnine like a character in a movie. A pretty maid let him in and took him into a parlor for which he was completely unprepared. The walls were half-paneled like the dining-room walls at West Farm. Most of the furniture he recognized since most of it had been stored in the hayloft when he was a boy. There, over the mantelpiece, hung old Benjamin himself, in his peignoir or Renaissance costume, staring out into the room with that harsh and naked look of dishonesty that had made him so unpopular with the family. Most of the lamps had come from the barn or the attic and Grandmother Wapshot’s old moth-eaten sampler (“Unto Us a Son Is Given”) was hanging on the wall. Coverly was studying old Benjamin’s stare when Cousin Mildred blew in—a tall, gaunt woman in a red evening dress that seemed cut to display her bony shoulders. “Coverly!” she exclaimed. “My dear. How nice of you to come. You look just like a Wapshot. Harry will be thrilled. He adores Wapshots. Sit down. We’ll have something to drink. Where are you staying? Who was the woman who answered the telephone? Tell me all about Honora. Oh, you do look like a Wapshot. I would have been able to pick you out in a crowd. Isn’t it nice to be able to recognize people? There’s another Wapshot in New York. Justina
. They say she used to play the piano in the five-and-ten-cent store but she’s very rich now. We’ve had Benjamin cleaned. Don’t you think he looks better. Did you notice? Of course, he still looks like a crook. Have a cocktail.”

  The butler passed Coverly a cocktail on a tray. He had never drunk a martini cocktail before and to conceal his inexperience he raised the glass to his lips and drained it. He didn’t cough and sputter but his eyes swam with tears, the gin felt like fire and some oscillation or defense mechanism in his larynx began to palpitate in such a way that he found himself unable to speak. He settled down to a paroxysm of swallowing. “Of course, this isn’t my idea of a decent room at all,” Cousin Mildred went on. “It’s all Harry’s idea. I’d much rather have called in a decorator and gotten something comfortable but Harry’s mad for New England. He’s an adorable man and a wizard in the carpet business, but he doesn’t come from anyplace really. I mean he doesn’t have anything nice to remember and so he borrows other people’s memories. He’s really more of a Wapshot than you or I.”

  “Does he know about Benjamin’s ear?” Coverly asked hoarsely. It was still hard for him to speak.

  “My dear, he knows the family history backwards and forwards,” Cousin Mildred said. “He went to England and had the name traced back to Vaincre-Chaud and he got the crest. I’m sure he knows more about Lorenzo than Honora ever did. He bought all these things from your mother and I must say he paid for them generously and I’m not absolutely sure that your mother—I don’t mean to say that your mother was untruthful—but you know that old traveling desk that always used to be full of mice? Well, your mother wrote and said that it belonged to Benjamin Franklin and I don’t ever remember having heard that before.”