Afternoon in April

by Philip Wylie

  "I know you hated me," I said.

  He turned his head aside, sadly. "Did you? Sure. I suppose kids guess those things. Even babies--"

  "I wasn't a baby when I found out. I was eleven." I told John about the letter. He sat still, and listened. Neither of us was very stable when I finished.

  "You see," I finally said, "that's why--leaving here is so incredibly hard on me.

  You--everybody--overcame a prejudice and made me one of you. That's why I've stuck out the past few days. You mean more in many ways--than any father. It's normal to love your own kids. But to take me the way you did--against the handicap--"

  He thought about that. "You've put in a lot of tough hours--weeks--years--haven't you? I remember when you ran away. How sorry I felt. How we went out on the fire engine afterward--"

  "And the locomotive."

  "Yeah. The locomotive." He drew his upper lip beneath his lower. "Frankie, do you think it would have made a difference in your life if you had known who your parents were?"

  I began to tremble--and yet, I had to remember my life. "I don't think I'd have been as happy--anywhere--as I have been here. The present doesn't matter. It would have made a difference--sure. Why, John?"

  "Because--" he pushed the heels of both hands against his forehead--"because I've known who they were for fifteen years. And I never told even Connie."

  That was what he had been deciding to say when he had stared at me.

  My nerves congealed. My ears whined. I had an impulse to throw myself upon him--to shout--to do anything to relieve the hammering danger in the words I said next.

  Yet I did not move and the question came in a remote, unfamiliar voice which was as calm as an object imprisoned in glass: "Who were they, John?"

  He stood up slowly and spoke with gravity. "There have been many times in past years when I almost decided to tell you. Knowing all about your parents and not telling you was like playing God, I suppose--and I shouldn't have done it." He gazed at me and nodded in agreement with himself. "I can see that it was wrong. Probably Connie did something parallel to it when she decided to put her own desire ahead of what she thought was best for us--and go away. It would be odd if I had sinned as heavily against you. Could you forgive me for that?"

  "Sure, John."

  He began to walk back and forth. "You must understand why I did it. You must.

  When first I detested you, I wanted to cast you out. When finally I came to love you, I wanted to possess you more even than my own children. I wrestled with myself over it often, and I convinced myself that it was better for you to believe as much as you could that you were a Sheffield than it was for you to know that you had another heritage and another name. I see now," he said heavily, "that it was all selfishness."

  I swallowed.

  "I should have let you know," he continued. "I should have let you know. I've been a cruel and bigoted fool. Some of the ways of your generation are better for this world than some of the ways of mine."

  CHAPTER XIX

  A single drop of cold perspiration ran down my spine. I couldn't stand it any longer--although I had a powerful feeling of sympathy for John and the sturdy quietude with which he had devoted himself to us. "For God's sake," I whispered, "tell me who they were and get it over with!"

  He swore softly and enragedly at himself. "Frankie! They were all right! They were swell people! I'll show you what I know about them. Your father was a sea captain and his wife was a nurse--"

  I felt myself falling toward darkness. I leaned against the chair's back. I shut my eyes and held my jaws together. The blackness cleared a little and I squeezed down with the muscles in my abdomen. They were all right. Swell people. Sea captain--married to a nurse. Married. I realized that I had almost fainted.

  "Are they--still living, John?"

  "No!" He sounded shocked. "If they were, I would have told you, of course!"

  "Oh."

  He stood up and took a key-ring from his waistcoat pocket. He walked across the room to the window-seat and threw off its cushion. He lifted the seat and held it up with his shoulder. I went over to help him. Under the seat was a heavy chest and at first I thought it had belonged to my father--for it was wooden and iron-bound and looked as if its place was the sea. But it was John's. The key opened it. Inside I saw neatly tied bundles of letters and documents--small boxes that contained things imaginable and unimaginable--childhood treasures, maybe--tops--Iove letters from dimly remembered girls--a Croix de Guerre, I knew--because we'd never seen John's medals. I thought that John also had a hiding place--a sanctuary of tangible memories--that corresponded to my trunk with its false bottom.

  He fumbled for a moment and then he took out a particular bundle. The paper was time-bleached. He handed it to me--and from it came the scent of aged documents. "Your readoption papers--after I found out who you were. And a letter from a man named Elias Griggs, who knew your father. And your mother. Also the reports of the lawyers I hired to find out what relatives you had. There are some third cousins in Scotland, I believe--

  and that's all we could trace. Your mother had one aunt and I took care of her when you were six and seven. She died before you were eight."

  I had broken the string and I was shuffling the documents feverishly. The first thing I discovered was that my name had been Thomas Treat MacBurney.

  Not Frankie. Tom.

  I read hastily through a number of whereases. I saw the court order that had changed my name. It was dated May, 1922.

  Then I came on the letter from Elias Griggs. It was in a fat envelope which bore a string of stamps I remembered dimly. The handwriting was round and regular-the writing of a man who had taken every advantage of a grammar school education because he had known that was all the schooling he would have--writing that lacked the affected individuality of a high school or a university.

  "Sit down," John said. "Read it to me." I tried to read it out loud. But the first paragraph stopped me--so he took it.

  "Dear Mr. Sheffield:

  "Your letter informing me that you have adopted the son of Douglas and Sylvia MacBurney has reached me and I am grateful for it. I talked with Mr. Slavens, your attorney, and asked him in all frankness about you so that I would be satisfied in my years ahead and peaceful in my grave to know my friend's child was in the hands of upright and worthy people under loving care. I beg to assure you I am so satisfied, and I wish you God's blessing for taking Thomas. If I was interfering in so doing, I beg your excuse, but Douglas was a man all men loved and none will forget in this earth so I would have marched through burning brimstone to secure the proper upbringing for his child. The world is peopled with those who owe lives and happiness to Douglas MacBurney, who died a hero beyond mortal attainments and may the Lord rest his great spirit."

  There I handed the letter to John, who went on reading it in a low, contemplative voice. I could imagine its author, a rough, religious mate--sitting under a swinging ship's light--composing this all too brief biography for a man he had never seen--and for me.

  "'About myself there is little to say. I was born in the Faith in Penobscot, Maine, and shipped as a cabin boy in 1879. I was Douglas MacBurney's First Officer for eleven years on three vessels. I am now Third Officer on the Belinda, a cargo boat of thirty-six hundred tons, age and steam having somewhat depressed my station in life. But about Captain MacBurney volumes could and indeed should be written. He was a whale of a man. A bluenose--that is to say, his folks hailed from Nova Scotia--although he had been born in the United States and was a citizen. A more God-fearing man never lived, nor a stronger. I've seen him throw two insolent scoundrels clear over an anchor winch, one with each hand and at the same time. He stood six feet two in his socks and he was made of pure Bristol steel and teak.

  "'Douglas knew half the Bible by heart and I guess all of Shakespeare. He was a lusty singer and I've seen him blasting a chanty into the wind to hearten men south of the Horn, or fetching mist into their eyes in the doldrums. He lived a ba
chelor and I thought he'd die one, for his lectures on women and grog would have turned Jonathan Edwards in his grave from jealousy. He was fifty-six when he fell in love with Sylvia Doremus and he married her between voyages to Africa.

  "'I saw her only once. She was a fair-haired woman from the Hebrides, without kin in America, and she worked as a trained nurse in a hospital in Boston. She was as pretty as a cameo with the straightest gray eyes I've ever seen in a woman's head and not an ounce to fluffy-dove in her. Being married didn't change Douglas, as nothing could have, but no man was ever made happier by the sacrament and he spent a whole summer in Marblehead with his bride after the last African voyage.

  "'When the Company put us on the China service, we took the Mabel Pruitt to Hong Kong and Shanghai and the island ports, in which latter Douglas lost his life during the 'quake at Lukubola. The island was a sweating jungle where two thousand natives worked a tin mine and we took off ingots once a year there. A hundred whites, mostly British and Dutch with some American missionaries, steamed out the long months between ships on Lukubola and there was a volcano in the middle as perfect as an ice cream cone, green, except for a couple of lava stripes down the side, which were black.

  "'We put in there on our first trip and when we got home, Douglas had a son. He was named Thomas Treat after his father's father and his mother's mother, and when we sailed again we carried the proudest skipper in Boston. On our second trip to Lukubola we'd taken on half our ingots, which make as fine a ballast for a stout ship as you could want, and the blacks, which aren't like Africans, were swarming in and out of the hold, when there was a rumble of warning and the mountain blew up.

  "'One minute it was sunny and so hot you could pour tar like tea and the next the sky was black, every soul was flattened, and half the island had heaved up into the sky.

  The blast stood the ship on her beam ends. Men rolled overboard like peas. And a great chunk of mountain fell on the forecastle, mashing it the way a sledge would a peanut.

  Douglas and I had been in the chart room when it started. We got one boat over and all the men left aboard were in her before the Mabel Pruitt went down. Douglas stepped off a flooded deck, the last man, and we picked up all we could before the tidal wave came in.

  "'Lukubola was the name of the island and of the town there. Half the houses were mashed when we came ashore and hot mud was pouring from the sky. It would have been black as night then, but the whole center of the island was flickering and spewing so you could see the way you can in bad lightning, only this was yellowish light. Douglas sent his men ranging through the town and dragged everybody towards the fire and away from the sea, though some wouldn't go that way. The wave that came in took them, and most of the houses, and the docks and warehouses.

  "'By six that night there were several hundred of us up the road toward the mine.

  The lava was thundering down through the jungle and a party came up from the shore, about dead, saying that the whole island was settling into the sea. Douglas was still calm and he hadn't been hurt yet, and he looked at the poor devil who brought that news and said, "Then we'll have to get off the island." I can still remember how those words sounded and how I said to myself, though I was half-crazed, If Douglas MacBurney says we'll get off, we will.

  "'We returned to the water and the condition of the people we passed was pitiful in the extreme. The harbor boiled like a kettle of porridge under the scalding muck that fell into it, sulphurous air rasped our lights and windpipes, men among us fell some from chunks of pumice and some from wounds they had received in the holocaust. But the great sweep of water had receded and the sea was again navigable if we could find anything wherewith to escape upon it. That the island was sinking could not be doubted, and as the water rose the earth ground and gyrated beneath us. At Douglas' command of,

  "Rafts!" we fell to--using the abundance of flotsam along the changing shore.

  "'I entered the raging tumult at his side. So vast an amount of volcanic matter had been spouted into the bay that the water was hot. Through it about forty of us swam for the junk, and some drowned on the way and stones fell on others, so that thirty-odd reached the dragging gear and twisted ropes at the vessel's side.

  "'There we clung, gathering our resources to board her. Then the crew saw us and prepared not to receive us but at all costs to repel us. They were armed with dirks and long swords as well as poles and heavy objects of every description which they pitched down upon us. The awfulness of that circumstance may have exaggerated my memory, but I recall the scene even now with terror, and I believe that there were twice our number of grinning heathen at the rail when Douglas led us through the fallen shrouds and aboard.

  "'From the first Chinee he encountered he received a slash that would have slain an ordinary man. But his assailant paid dearly. Douglas reached inside the arc of his sword and took it and split him through. We who followed soon had lost our lives or availed ourselves of arms at similar cost. It was a foul ship, its rigging wrecked, mud slimy now upon it, and over that we swiftly laid the red cloak of our blood. In that battle Douglas was a god such as the barbaric Romans worshipped in ancient times, invincible Mars himself, so that through the thick of it I saw him split men and hurl them overboard to clear his heathen's sword, using his two hands, and tossing them as if they were hay on a fork. Certainly he was no swordsman yet surely there has never been swordsmanship to equal it.

  "'His monstrousness made up for a score of men and those Chinee we did not slay retreated like rats and finally threw themselves into the water, squealing and floundering.

  We had won the ship, but when I came near to Douglas through the carnage we had made, I found him sitting on the deck with the handle of a knife protruding from his right breast. He would not draw it out, lest he bleed to death the more rapidly, but superintended the raising of a jury mast. With the heathen's sail, we made the turbulent shore and those who still lived came aboard, four hundred and sixty-three in all. Laden with human cargo, we put off from Lukubola and before dawn we reached clean water and a clear sky over the southern portion. To the north the smoke and flame of the island darkened the world.

  "'I tended Douglas in those last hours. His agonies were severe but so great was his joy at having been instrumental in the rescue of so many souls he scarcely seemed to notice. To me he committed his wife and child. There were several frightful explosions before his death and I learned afterward that the entire island had gone down with them.

  He seemed to know that, in his last moments, and to feel his titanic work had not been unnecessary, and even the killing of so many heathen justified. He succumbed murmuring the name of Our Lord.

  "'Hardship attended us. Many of that company aboard the junk never saw land again. We drifted for eight days. Then another isle was sighted and though many feared to go upon it, we found sweet water there and made it our home. From it we were taken after eleven months in two parties to the Straits Settlements by the schooner Annabelle.

  "'And even then, ill fortune was to follow me. On the return cruise we were dismasted and sorely delayed so that I did not reach Boston for nearly two years following that disastrous embarkation. I sought Sylvia MacBurney at once only to find that her babe had been smitten by paralysis and barely recovered. After that, and after assuming that her husband had been lost, she had gone to Chicago to a new position. I went there, and could not trace her.

  "'Because she was the widow of a man so justly famous and celebrated, the police bent their energies and resources to the search. She was traced back to New York and then to the State of Connecticut. She had sickened with tuberculosis, and the shock over her husband had perhaps somewhat affected her mind. A family who had employed her as a domestic reported that she had lived in dread of an accident or mishap to her child. I spent two years more in searching. And finally I found the hospital in which she had died.

  "'They had kept her effects, pathetic trifles, and in them a faded photograph of Douglas and herself taken that summ
er at Marblehead. Thus I identified her. But the child I could not follow. She had stumbled into the hospital on a winter night sick unto death and saying that she had left her baby where it would not be affected by her contagion.

  The nurses and doctors assumed her talk of a child was mere delirium. And so a noble woman passed away, having done what she imagined was her best for her son.

  "'This, dear sir, virtually concludes the story. I have, at your suggestion, waited upon Mr. Slavens in New York and examined the wrappings in which the child was left and they have lifted my last doubt, for among them was a blanket I myself presented to Douglas when the child was born, a small, soft thing, embroidered with the infant's monogram. Your foster son, is therefore, the true offspring of Douglas MacBurney and as such I send my well-wishes. He is the son of a great man.

  "'I have assured myself that the child will be better reared in your home than in any which could be provided by myself or by his father's friends. Therefore I am content to leave him in the care of you, and of Our Lord. I am an old man and grateful. Rear the boy with studiousness, for his breed is rare. His father was the greatest man I have known on all the seven seas. If I can ever be of use, I shall gladly serve you. Whether or not you tell him of his origin will be for you to decide at some later time. And may God's Grace guide your judgement.

  "'Your obedient servant,

  "'Elias Griggs."

  John folded the last page and put the letter back in its envelope. I had been sitting there with my eyes shut. There was nothing to say. I knew now why I'd always had strange feelings about the sea. I could not measure my emotions. I was free. I had a place on earth--a superb place. But what made my heart beat as if it would burst through my ribs was not that. It was a lurking reality, a fear I had never faced which had come to light only to be annihilated. Because I had not dealt with it, no one will understand the violence of my recognition of it, or the ecstasy of relief from it. For I knew now that if ever I had sons of my own they need not suffer my inadequateness of physique. I knew I had been miscast by circumstance, not misborn. My father was a giant. My sons might be. Then, indeed, my blood ran inside me proudly and I felt the stuff of immortality, courage, strength, joy.