Sons From Afar

by Cynthia Voigt

  “But you didn’t have to ask. You could have just gone ahead and done it, skipped school.”

  “I could have,” Sammy agreed, turning back at the door. “But James is no good at lying.”

  “And you are?”

  “I can, yeah,” Sammy told her, as if she didn’t already know that. “But I don’t need to lie to you.”

  “That,” Gram said, “is just what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t. I don’t even want to,” Sammy said, running off to find James.

  He heard Gram’s voice asking behind him: “Why not?”

  * * *

  Rev. Smiths picked them up at the end of their driveway, at quarter after eight. James had made Sammy wear good khaki pants and a button-down shirt, because he didn’t want them to look like just kids. Sammy thought since they were kids, there was no reason to pretend they weren’t. James was all spruced up, his hair slicked down from having been combed with water, even wearing one of the old striped ties Gram had brought down from the attic. If his arms hadn’t been too long for the sleeves, he probably would have worn his jacket.

  When Rev. Smiths’s car stopped for them, Sammy got into the front seat and belted himself in. The Smithses had an old black car they seemed to have had for about a hundred years, but they’d had seat belts put in. James got into the backseat.

  After they had greeted one another, they all kept quiet. Sammy looked out the window, all along the road up through Princess Anne to Salisbury. This was farmland, flat under a broad blue sky, lowland, with shallow ditches dug at the edges of the fields to drain off water. The highway was ditched at its edges too. Sammy knew the car was moving, but it looked like it was the scenery that moved. He breathed deeply. It was a plump spring morning, the air swollen with warmth. Not heat. Heat would start coming in about the end of May, but now, in late April, it was spring. Spring was about the most perfect season in Maryland, with everything bursting into flowers and little green shoots just pushing up out of the dark fields. Light shone from a blue sky that wasn’t dark at all, just deep, pale blue. Light glowed over the land. It was almost as if it was the earth giving off the light, the air was so full of soft brightness. Sammy felt at home in spring—his whole body felt like one of those sprouts, swelling up and pushing out to be . . . whatever he wanted. The only advantage summer had over spring was that school was out in the summer.

  After Rev. Smiths had made the turn onto Route 50, he broke the silence in his car. “Sammy? What did you think of the new Mina?”

  “You mean her haircut? I guess her hair’s not much longer than yours, now.”

  “Not much, if any,” Mina’s father agreed. “How do you like it?”

  “I thought she looked—strong,” Sammy said. He liked the haircut a lot.

  “I guess she is that. But it doesn’t look like a woman’s hairstyle to me. Well, it’s of a piece with those caftans she’s wearing these days. I guess, she wants to tell those people up North she’s not ashamed to be who she is.”

  “Mina does what she wants,” Sammy told Mina’s father, who should already know that, better than anyone.

  “It’s just that she’s so different from her brothers and sisters.” Rev. Smiths wasn’t really worried about Mina, Sammy could tell. He was just finding out what Sammy thought.

  “All brothers and sisters are different,” Sammy explained. “Aren’t we, James?” he asked, looking over his shoulder. James nodded. “And Louis,” Sammy added, “Louis isn’t a bit like Mina.”

  “About the last thing Louis would want to do is walk out into some courtroom and argue,” Rev. Smiths agreed. “Mina’s going to be a lawyer, and nothing will stop her, not money, not color, not sex—I wonder sometimes what she expects of herself. That girl is always surprising me.” He didn’t sound like he minded that; he sounded proud. “I ask her,” he smiled to himself, “if she’s ever thought about the Pharisees.”

  Sammy had no idea what Rev. Smiths was talking about. But James entered the conversation at that. “You think all lawyers are Pharisees? Do you have something against lawyers? I’m probably going to go into law.”

  “Are you going to right all the wrongs of the world, too?”

  “I doubt that. All I hope is to make a good income, probably in business. I don’t think I’d be much good in a courtroom.”

  “So you see law as a business—not as—what shapes society?” Rev. Smiths looked at James in the rearview mirror.

  “Do you mean shaping society like the Ten Commandments do?” James asked, leaning forward.

  Sammy looked out of the window at the day around him, and didn’t pay much attention as they talked and talked. James had forgotten that Sammy was the one who was more at ease with people, Sammy thought. Sometimes, smart as he was, it looked like James didn’t know beans about himself.

  * * *

  Rev. Smiths parked behind a church, the chunky gray stones of which looked warmed by sunlight. It had a steeple that pointed up into the deep sky. Sammy waited for James to get started on his agenda for the day. He was pretty sure James had an agenda. And he was right.

  They started off at the hospital, where a friendly woman with big glasses, wearing a bright red smock, sat behind the reception counter and tried to help them. She talked to James between answering the phone, receiving flowers, and directing visitors which way to go. But she didn’t know about records of birth, especially since they don’t know what year they were looking for. “All the old records are at the state archives, in Annapolis,” she told them. “They’re kept at the Hall of Records. Or the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in Baltimore.” She was sorry, because she really did want to be able to help them out. “The hospital only keeps records on file for a limited number of years. The doctor who delivered the child might remember, but . . . maybe this person wasn’t even born in a hospital. A few decades ago many women still had their babies at home. I’m sorry, boys, I just can’t think of anything else. Unless you want to go to Annapolis and look at the records there.”

  “But—” James said.

  “Thank you,” Sammy interrupted. Couldn’t James figure out there was nothing more to be learned here? He went back outside, knowing James would follow. Before James could begin to say whatever he was thinking of complaining at Sammy about, Sammy asked him, “What’s next?”

  “Next?”

  “You have a plan, don’t you? What was next, if the hospital didn’t know anything?” Sammy made himself speak patiently. He didn’t remind James that they didn’t have all day. They had to meet Rev. Smiths by three.

  “The school, but—”

  “Where’s that?” Sammy interrupted again. James had made a photocopy of a map of Cambridge. Their school library had maps, and for a dime you could make a copy. James pulled the map out of his pocket and unfolded it carefully.

  “We have to go back downtown, then out this Glasgow Street.” James showed Sammy on the map. “But it’s going to be just like the hospital, and I never thought of that. He’d have to be born about forty years ago, don’t you think?” Sammy hadn’t thought, but James wasn’t really asking the question. “Probably, at that time, the elementary school wouldn’t have been so far out of town, if he was even living here when he went to school. I mean, he could have just been born here, then moved away. I never thought of that. Did you?”

  Sammy hadn’t thought of anything.

  “I’m going to have to get to Annapolis somehow.” James stood there on the sidewalk and let the people coming and going move around him, hurrying into the hospital, hurrying out of it.

  “Isn’t there a school trip in May? To see the Colonial buildings or something? Maybe they go to this Hall of Records.”

  “You have to stay with the group. Besides, it costs money.”

  “I’ve got some money left, I told you. So, what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess, we might as well try the school.”

  Sammy could have laughed, but he t
hought James would mind being laughed at. They walked back toward the center of town, across the little bridge that went over the town creek. A railroad used to run right down there. The tracks were still set in the ground, and an old station house, just one low room, stood at the end of the tracks, its roof dull and windows boarded over, its faded wooden paint covered with graffiti. The tracks stopped there too, with only the broad Choptank River ahead. They turned onto High Street, the main street, long and broad, stretching away from them. The buildings were big and square, with big square glass windows lining the sidewalks. Cambridge was a small city. Sammy liked the walking, and looking around at stores and people. Most of the people they saw were women, because it was a school day and a workday. Some of the women were wheeling babies in strollers, some of them carried shopping bags, and some just sauntered along studying the store windows. None of them paid any attention to Sammy and James.

  Once they turned off the main street, they were back in a residential district, and had the sidewalks to themselves. They walked on down toward a redbrick building, with a short square tower for its front entry, like a kid’s castle built out of blocks. “There it is,” Sammy said, in case James had missed it. The way the building sat back from the road on a generous spread of lawn, and something about the long, many-paned windows, told him it was a school.

  “That can’t be it. The map shows it much farther out of town. Unless I’ve gotten the scale all wrong. And there isn’t any playground.”

  “It looks like a school to me,” Sammy said.

  When they approached the front of the building, a sign set on the grass announced that this was the Board of Education. “I told you,” James told Sammy.

  Sammy just pointed to the white concrete slab over the doorway. Set into the concrete, like letters cut into a tombstone, were the words CAMBRIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. So it used to be a school. Sammy didn’t say I told you, but he was thinking it. He waited for James to lead on out to the new school building, wherever it was. But James turned up onto the sidewalk that led to the front door.

  “What’re you doing?” Sammy hurried along behind his brother.

  “It was a long time ago, so the school records are likely not to be in a new school, but they might be here,” James said. He sounded excited. “This was lucky, our finding this.”

  Inside, it was more obvious that the building had been built as a school. Three broad steps led up to a small foyer; two long hallways went off, one to the right and one to the left; the floors were dark brown linoleum squares; the doors that lined the hallways were closed. One door had a little black sign sticking out into the hall. RECEPTION, it said. James moved toward it.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Sammy said.

  “I don’t,” James told him. “You don’t even know where it is. Can’t you wait?”

  No, Sammy couldn’t and didn’t see why he should. There was bound to be a bathroom along the corridors. Schools had lots of bathrooms. “You go ahead, I won’t be long, I’ll find you.”

  “I’ll wait,” James told him.

  Sammy went down the hall, past the door to reception, where a woman sat at a desk piled with papers and file folders, talking on one phone while another rang. He found a men’s room, and was as quick as he could be. The long mirrors over the sinks reflected his own face back to him: he looked like he was having a good time. Well, he was. He figured they’d spend all day chasing their own tails, but he didn’t mind. It was a kind of adventure, and it made James happy; besides, Sammy wasn’t sitting at a desk in a classroom looking out at the sunny day through a window. He went to find his brother.

  As soon as James saw Sammy coming, he stepped into the reception office. Sammy guessed James was feeling impatient. When he got there, James was already in the middle of a conversation, so he just stayed by the door, not interfering.

  “I think so,” James was saying. “I’m looking for—”

  “Of course,” the woman interrupted. She stood up and came around the desk, holding her hand out to shake, as if she had been expecting James. She wore a khaki cotton suit, belted at the waist with a belt made from rope. When she got up from her chair she tugged down at the skirt with one hand, the one she wasn’t holding out to James. She banged her leg into the corner of the desk. “I’m Mrs. Wylie,” she said, rubbing at her bruised thigh. Her glasses slid down her long nose and fell off.

  Luckily, they were held around her neck by a metal chain. Sammy stood in the doorway, enjoying this. Mrs. Wylie looked frazzled. Her skirt was rumpled and her blouse pulled out at the waist a little. Her light brown hair curled wispily up all around her head and down below her ears. She put her glasses back on and ran her fingers through her hair, as if she knew it was messy and wished it wasn’t but didn’t expect to be able to do much about that. When she did that, her white blouse pulled up still further, so she pulled it down again, pushing it into the belt of the skirt with her fingers, which didn’t work very well to keep it tucked in. She never did get James’s hand shook.

  “I’m so glad to see you. You don’t have any idea. I guess Marietta told you how desperate I am. Well, you can see for yourself, can’t you? I assume you know how to file. All you need is to know the alphabet. Do you know the alphabet?”

  “Yes,” James said. He was trying to figure out how to take the conversation back to where he’d started it.

  “That was stupid of me. I know a college student has to—” Mrs. Wylie stood in front of James and smiled up at him. She was a little woman, little height, little hands and feet. She giggled, as if she were a seventh-grade girl, Sammy thought. Her pale skin was scattered with freckles. She hadn’t paid any attention to him at all; she probably hadn’t even seen him.

  “I didn’t even ask your name. You must think I’ve no manners at all.”

  “James Tillerman,” James said, “but—”

  “How do you do?” Then she did shake James’s hand.

  “Hello,” James answered politely. “I was wondering—”

  “Do you type?” she asked.

  “Not too quickly, but I’m accurate,” James answered.

  Sammy stood in the doorway trying not to laugh out loud. She wasn’t listening to James and James couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. Mrs. Wylie noticed him, then.

  “You’ll have to wait a moment,” she told Sammy. “We have a crisis here. I won’t be a moment.” She turned back to James: “Because I don’t know if Marietta told you that there is typing to be done, too, it’s really general office work more than simply clerical.”

  “But you haven’t—” James started.

  “Oh,” She put her hand back into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I never mentioned the pay, I just assumed you’d take the job.” She giggled. “I’m not usually this foolish. I’m a little rattled today, as you must have noticed. I am sorry. It’s not much,” she told him. “It’s only three dollars and ten cents an hour. That’s below minimum wage, I know.”

  “That wouldn’t be bad,” James said, “if—”

  “No benefits either. It’s only a temporary position. But Marietta was supposed to explain all that to you.” Mrs. Wylie went back behind her desk and sat down again, more businesslike now that she was cross. Sammy just grinned. She put her glasses back up on her nose and picked up the phone. “You look awfully young anyway.”

  James just stood there, in front of the desk. He didn’t say a thing. Sammy would have butted in and explained, but he was busy keeping his laughter down.

  “Well—?” Mrs. Wylie asked James. She held the phone in her hand, her fingers ready to dial it. She looked at him over the top of her glasses, which were already slipping back down her nose.

  “I didn’t come about a job,” James said, finally spitting it out.

  She put the phone back in its cradle. Her cheeks stained pink. She covered her face with her hands, and giggled behind them. Then she sat up straight and secretarial, looking right at James. “You shouldn’t have let me think you had,
” she told him. “This job is enough to drive me crazy without your help. You’d probably have been a big help, too, you have that look about you. I hope somebody shows up. What is it you want then?”

  “I’m wondering how to find out if somebody went to school in Cambridge,” James said. “It’s sort of—a genealogy project. This is my brother who came with me.”

  “Ah,” she said, her eyes going back to Sammy. He nodded at her to say hello. She nodded back. “Now I see,” she said. “I’ve made a mistake.” She was ready to enjoy her mistake, but James didn’t give her any time.

  “I was wondering if you could show me any records from—I’m not sure, about forty years ago.”

  “Oh no,” she said. Her glasses dropped down to the end of their chain. “If you had any idea of what state those records are in, in the first place, after years and years of understaffing—but you can’t just go through school records. It’s not allowed. They’re confidential.”

  James just turned away as soon as she said that, giving up right away.

  “Don’t you even know a name?” Mrs. Wylie asked, half getting up from her chair. She looked at Sammy, as if she were apologizing: “He didn’t even tell me a name.”

  “Verricker,” Sammy answered. “Francis Verricker.”

  “I’ve never heard of him.”

  James had turned back. “What about any family with that name?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of. But then, you see, this is the Board of Education and I wouldn’t have the local names to mind the way the schools would, or teachers. You said it was forty years ago?”

  “That’s an estimate,” James told her. Sammy could see that James was hoping again.

  “Probably, then, you’d do better to talk to someone who was here at that time, in the schools—exactly how old is this person you’re trying to trace?”

  “We don’t know. We think he’d have been in grade school thirty or more years ago. If he went to grade school here. Is there anybody left from that long ago?” Sometimes Sammy worried about James. He hoped so hard and gave up so easy.