Most of the tops of the scattered boxes were open. Odd corners of cloth protruded in dark tongues beneath the single light by Richard Prowder's head.
Henry asked, “What brings you up here on a rainy Christmas Eve?"
Prowder turned to survey the mess he had made.
"Something ... Just something I wanted. With all the crap up here, you'd think the one thing I wanted would still be here."
Despite the mess, it did not appear to Henry that anything had been removed.
He said, “I thought your sister was having it all taken away."
Prowder's disgust returned. “She never finishes anything. It's always up to me."
Henry decided to avoid arguing. “She was pretty wiped out by the downstairs. She probably forgot about this."
The assessment produced a mutter in response, and Henry moved toward the pile of boxes under one empty angle of roof. Broken chairs and cracked flower pots were piled neatly together beside an old radio, the wooden cabinet of a television, and bundles of hangers. The television reminded Henry of a black-and-white model they had still used at home when he was very young.
Prowder suddenly said, “Have you seen a boat up here?” The renewed irritation in Prowder's voice made the question seem comic to Henry.
"A boat?"
"A boat. A big boat. About two feet long. Plastic. Something I built once ... with my father."
The hesitant addition of “with my father” reminded Henry of Mary's words about their family discord.
Henry mused, “No ... I built a boat with my dad once. A sailboat. Lost it on Jamaica Pond the day the paint dried."
Prowder shook his head and knelt to rip open another box. “It sank?"
Henry smiled at the memory now. “No. It was a windy day. Dad told me not to try it. The fishing line pulled loose, and it headed right away. I think some kids got around to the other side before I did and stole it while I was busy. Dad was giving me an earful."
Prowder said, “That's what fathers were made for."
Henry nodded. “I guess. I guess I wasn't very good at listening."
Prowder waved a hand. “Does it matter? You're just supposed to do what they want you to do. Families are not a democracy."
Henry tried to keep a smile as he answered. This was not a fellow he wanted to be talking with about democracy on Christmas Eve.
"No. Democracy only works with adults. And then they have to want to be cooperative. I wasn't very cooperative when I was a kid."
Prowder stood up and watched as Henry grabbed several of the boxes of books and moved them close to the door. Henry's assessment must have sounded impersonal.
Prowder's voice calmed. “You never knew my father. Everything had to be done right. There was a system for everything. Everything had a purpose.... Look at this.” He pointed with a free hand. “Every shelf was labeled. But he was the only one who knew what the labels meant. It was his system. It was his way. Now I can't even find my own crap."
The small plea came in his tone at the very end of the words. Henry set a second box down.
"Maybe I can help?"
Richard Prowder pushed another box aside with his foot. “I don't think so."
Henry said, “I'm not in a rush. Let me see the labels."
Prowder tilted the light in the direction of the shelves. They were lettered and numbered by hand on thin strips of yellowed paper. It was a very familiar-looking code.
Prowder's voice lowered to a hopeless resignation.
"What makes it even harder is that he packed everything in old clothes.” He waved at a box by Henry's leg. “That one there is my snowsuit from when I was maybe six years old. You have to unwrap everything to tell what it is. It's filled with glasses. He even used my mother's old brassieres, for heaven's sake."
Remembering Mrs. Prowder's story of her husband's trick with a chair as he carried her mother's china to the attic, Henry pointed to an opened box close to the shelves.
"What was in that box there, dishes?"
"Yes. How did you know?"
"The call number behind it. See? ‘NK.’ Its the same subject code they use in libraries. At some point when I was a kid I stumbled on the code for china—as in porcelain. It was on a removable label in a brass tag at the end of a row of shelves at the library. I used to switch it over to the ‘DS’ section, to Chinese History. My idea of stupid fun. Mrs. Smith, the librarian, would go bananas. She finally caught me. She banned me. She kicked me out of the library for six months. I've always been thankful."
Prowder frowned. “Why thankful?"
Henry said, “Because it made me buy more books. And then I had to sell them to get the money to buy more."
Prowder rolled his eyes. “I forgot. Mary told me you were a bookseller."
Henry said, “So what would your father call a boat—nautical—naval. Look for a code that starts with the letter v."
Prowder wiped the moisture on his forehead with his sleeve.
"A toy. He called it a toy. That's why I left it up here. I told him I was putting away my toys."
Prowder's voice had grown suddenly tense. Even so, that was a memory Henry shared as well.
"Why do you want it so badly just now? You want to give it as a Christmas present to someone?"
Prowder shook his head. “No. No. I just wanted it for myself.... It was probably the last thing we ever really did together."
Henry nodded and scanned the labels. He was not sure of the code for toys. His own father was never too fond of buying toys. Matthew Sullivan gave his son tools for Christmas, and his daughter as well. A set of screwdrivers. Three different types of hammer. But it was true that they had made toys together.
Henry said, “My dad was a pain in the ass, but he left me alone, mostly. I think that's what bothered me more, when I was a kid. He let me roam a little too much. He only had a few rules. No smoking in the house. No girls in the house. No drugs anywhere, and be home by seven in the winter and nine in the summer. Period."
Prowder said, “You had it easy."
Henry answered, “I broke every rule I could get away with."
Prowder asked, “What did your mother say?"
Henry scanned the semidark with a squint.
"She was ... gone then. She died when I was twelve."
Prowder's voice sharpened. “Oh ... Well, your dad was just trying to make it a little easier on himself that way—trying to keep it simple."
Henry turned.
"Right! That's what he always said. Keep it simple."
Prowder said, “I wish my father had the same idea. My father had rules for when the rules were broken."
Henry ducked to where shelves filled the lowest slant of the roof. His knees cracked as they folded against the wood of the floor. He admitted, “I thought my dad didn't care. I used to think he didn't love me. That's how stupid I was then. It was just his way. He always had trouble expressing himself out loud."
Prowder stood aside to keep the light on Henry.
"Well, my father was a lawyer. He knew the Latin for everything he said in English. He had a motto for everything we should do in life."
Henry strained his eyes into the dark in front of him.
"Does ‘TIT’ mean anything in Latin? It's not a library code I know of. I would have remembered that for sure."
Richard Prowder fell on his knees and scrambled below the eave.
"Titanic. That's it!"
Putting a finger into a flap of the box, Richard Prowder dragged it out, still on his knees and pushing other boxes out of the way as he reached the center beneath the light. The dried tape fell away. With all the flaps open, Prowder removed a bleach-mangled towel and wadded bundles of old socks. Beneath them, on the bed of a blue dress that might have once belonged to his sister, was a ship.
"The Titanic.... “Henry repeated. That was something he had never thought of. “When did the Titanic sink?"
Prowder answered absently, “April 12, 1912,” absorbed with his own m
emories. The finely detailed ship gently arose from the box in Prowder's hands.
"Too early,” Henry said.
Prowder turned. “Too early for what?"
Henry's eyes studied the ship in front of him. “Just something that popped into my head. Someone who disappeared. It would have been very romantic if she had gone down on the Titanic."
Prowder asked, “When did she disappear?"
Henry said, “1915 ... Sometime around April, 1915."
Prowder held the boat at arm's length, the light reflecting on the painted metal work. He said, “How about the Lusitania, then? The Lusitania sank in May, 1915."
Henry bumped his head rising to his feet.
He would have fallen down the stairs had he tried to land on any one of them. His hand slid on the rail, slowing his descent until the heat of the friction was too hot, and then pushed off as he landed on his feet. His key was out of his pocket by the time he had made it down the next flight to the third floor. He did not bother to close his door. The light from the hall kept him on course to the book by the window.
It would be in the Hubbard bibliography. There was a short biography there. He had breezed through it once. He had seen something there on the Lusitania!
On May 7, 1915, the British passenger ship Lusitania was sunk off the coast of Ireland by a German torpedo. One thousand, one hundred and ninety-eight people died, among them Elbert Hubbard, his wife, Alice, and her assistant, Mrs. Evers.
He read the paragraph, just a few words, several times.
When Henry climbed the stairs again, the door to the attic was closed. He had no one to tell. Albert was home with his family. Henry could wish him Merry Christmas and then tell him, but the line was busy. He could not sit. He could not stay. The clock in his room said it was nine. Time to be home, even in the summer. But it was winter. It was Christmas Eve. He had an excuse for being late.
Henry grabbed his coat, and on the way out he grabbed the bag with the eggnog and the rum from the floor beside the front door, removing the package of cigarettes as he walked and burying them deep in his pocket. The old man did not approve of smoking. The old man would be surprised—but he needed a few surprises.
Marcus Evers, the cynic, died in France at the Battle of the Somme, July, 1916. Marcus Evers, the disappointed man, went to cover the war in Europe after finding out that Helen Mawson, the woman he loved, had died on the Lusitania. Running off to war must have been a small distraction for a heart so drowned.
"Man has created death.” Yeats had said. His mother told him that more than once, so that he might remember, because he was too young then to know what she meant. “Man has created death,” he said again, unconsciously, aloud on the trolley to Brookline. A woman ladened with Christmas packages turned to the sound of his voice and moved away. Henry smiled at her, and she shifted further.
When he was twelve, death had been given a name. He had learned that death could not be halted. The sound of death was the echo of rubber heels in empty halls. The feel of death was cold. The shadow of death was the clear cloud of space separating the darkness in the stiff plastic universe of an X-ray film. He understood that death brought an untouchable emptiness and that the threat of death was what fear was.
It was only now, so many years later, that he asked himself why he did not fear life instead. All the pain and misery was in life. In death there was nothing. All the sorrow and shame was in life. In death there was nothing. What he feared was nothing. Pain was the cut and scrape in pursuit of life. All desire was in life. All hope. And all that he could ever want or lose was in that sweet misery.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the seemingly depthless patience of my family who have always been my encouragement, my first readers, and my most constructive critics. A special thanks goes to Frank M. Robinson who read my early efforts in this series and hit me up-side the head when I needed it (he bears no blame for my misuse of his advice—but I think the first sentence should be dedicated to him). And if they will allow, I must thank Gavin, and Kelly, and Jed, for what they do.
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About the Author
Vincent McCaffrey (vincentmccaffrey.com) is the owner of the Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop. For nearly thirty years it was a landmark for book lovers on Boston's Newbury Street. He recently moved the bookshop online and runs it from Abington, MA.
He reports: “I have been paid by others to do lawn work, shovel snow, paint houses, and to be an office-boy, warehouse grunt, dishwasher, waiter, and hotel night clerk. I have since chosen at various times to be a writer, editor, publisher, and bookseller—and managed to pay myself occasionally for that. But the one thing I am sure of is that I was very good at shoveling snow...."
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Visit www.lcrw.net for information on additional titles by this and other authors.
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