Sons From Afar

by Cynthia Voigt

  Toby gladly started in again. James listened, carefully, thinking of Toby as just one brief life, but thinking how Toby was all wrapped up in something much larger than himself, something that really interested him. Toby was doing all right by his life.

  “Do you know?” James interrupted. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you turned out to be really famous. One of the pioneers of astrophysics. One of the really big men, the men who really contribute something.” He said it because he meant it.

  Toby’s eyes got watery for a minute, but James didn’t mind. Even if Toby had burst into tears, what did tears weigh in all the time that had passed? If Toby felt like crying, and cried, that was what was important.

  CHAPTER 8

  Sammy cut James off in the middle of asking “Do you ever wonder—?” with “You know I don’t.”

  He’d about had it with James standing around as if he didn’t have two hands like everybody else, standing around while somebody else did the work. It wasn’t that Sammy didn’t like hard work, or this work. In fact, kneeling there in his grandmother’s vegetable garden, pulling out weeds, loosening the soil around the plants, his hands covered with dirt and the sun hot on his bare back, on the soles of his bare feet, too. There wasn’t much he liked better.

  Then why was he getting angry at James? If James helped, it would just be more work for Sammy. Sammy knew how James worked at things he didn’t like—carelessly, that was how. If James were to help out, Sammy would have to watch him, to be sure his brother was thorough enough, getting the tiny new weeds as well as the bigger more full-grown ones. He’d have to check that James picked them all up, because if you left any behind they’d just root where they lay. That was the way weeds were. Weeds would just root down wherever they found themselves. Like the Tillermans, Sammy thought. That idea made him smile.

  “We’re like weeds,” he said, over his shoulder to James’s legs. James had just returned from the long Saturday hours at his job, where they paid him for sitting down.

  “No, we’re not,” James said.

  “Maybe you’re not,” Sammy said. And maybe James wasn’t, maybe James wasn’t strong enough and needed more careful tending. For sure, James didn’t want to be a weed. He wanted to be a lawyer and wear three-piece suits and rake in the money.

  Not Sammy. Sammy just wanted to be left alone, like a weed to grow on his own. Into whatever he was going to grow into. Something that had sunlight and sweat, he thought. Like a tennis player. His fingers dug down around the wide-spreading root system of some grassy weed, loosening its roots. Sammy pulled the thing out of the soil and tossed it into the heap he was making. He looked back up the row of eggplant bushes. Their long leaves were opened now to the sun, like pairs of hands cupped out to catch the heat and light.

  Or an astronaut. In his own way, even though he lived in an enclosed environment, an astronaut worked with sweat and sun. Or a farmer, too, he thought, moving on his knees to the next plant. He picked up the clawed cultivator and dug into the tight soil around the plant’s slender stalk. James wouldn’t even offer to gather up the piles of weeds. James just stood there, thinking. Not doing anything. Just standing there, probably thinking about this father business again. He’d never told Sammy what he found in Annapolis. Sammy hadn’t asked, either. He wasn’t going to ask—this was James’s fixation, James was the one interested. But he wondered what had been so bad that James had found out, so bad that he wouldn’t even tell Sammy. Who didn’t even care.

  James sat down on the long grass at the edge of the garden, at the end of the row Sammy was weeding. The grass needed mowing, too, but James would never think of doing that until you told him he had to. James picked at the soles of his sneakers. Sammy pulled at weeds. The sun poured down. Inside the house, Maybeth and Gram were working on the upstairs—opening windows, emptying closets and drawers to wash everything out. If James wasn’t going to work out here, he should go help them. From the garden, Sammy could sometimes hear their voices, sometimes a distant car, or gulls a way off, fighting over something. The buzzing drone of insects was the only steady noise on this windless day. Sammy straightened back and wiped the sweat that was rolling down his forehead. He could feel the way his hands left another smear of dirt along his face.

  He liked dirt, liked being painted up with it. He liked sinking down into a tub full of warm water to get clean again. Even if he’d rather be playing tennis right now, if there was only somebody he could play with, there wasn’t anything he’d rather be doing right now than what he was doing. It was contradictory, he knew, but it was true, both of it.

  “In Annapolis,” James began. Sammy looked over at his brother. With his narrow face and thick dark hair, something about the way the button-down shirt looked on the slender body, James looked like he came from an entirely different family from Sammy. Sammy waited.

  “When I was there,” James said. He was watching his own clean hands pull grass out of the ground.

  If he was going to pull things up anyway, Sammy thought, why not weeds. He waited. Finally, he asked, “You never told me about Annapolis.”

  “It wasn’t a big success. The Hall of Records didn’t have anything, or, if they did, I couldn’t get in to find it. So I just hung around most of the day. We’ve been there before, do you remember?”

  “Yeah.” Sammy remembered. Except for the worry about Momma, he’d enjoyed that wild summer, or a lot of it.

  “It was weird, being back there, with everything so different. But there was a library full of books—”

  Sammy didn’t want to hear about books.

  “And it made me wonder about—all the different lives people have lived, all the different things there are to be. It’s really amazing, how many different things there are to be in your life.”

  Sammy returned to the work at hand.

  “Because he was smart, they said, they both said.”

  “Who?”

  “Him. Our father. And he had a regular family even if they weren’t having an easy time of it—besides, I don’t think much of anyone who had an easy time during the Depression. But out of all the things to be, he turned out a sailor. He wasn’t even an officer. And before that he was some kind of crook.”

  “A gambler,” Sammy corrected. “Not even a real professional gambler.”

  “Yeah, but he was crooked. The thing is—” Out of the comer of his eye, Sammy saw James lean forward, the way he did when he was having ideas and trying to tell you about them. “It makes me wonder if there was something in him, some character flaw. Something wrong about him.”

  “He just sounded to me like someone who always tries to find the easy way out,” Sammy said, thinking that there was a lot of that in James.

  “But don’t you see? If he was so smart, he couldn’t kid himself about that. Because it takes just as much work to figure out and then take the easy way. Anybody knows, there isn’t any easy way.”

  The way James handled ideas, following them down like fingering loose the root systems of weeds, that wasn’t any easy way. So Sammy guessed maybe he didn’t have to worry about James.

  “Maybe he just liked trouble,” Sammy suggested.

  “Yeah. That’s what I wonder. But you know you told me to be myself?” Sammy didn’t remember, but it sounded like something he’d say. “You were right—don’t look so surprised, you’re not stupid. You were right about that, because it doesn’t matter—if you imagine all those lives over the thousands of years, any one little life doesn’t matter a bit.”

  Why, Sammy wondered, did James find that such good news? What was so great about not being important at all? Sammy was pretty important to himself.

  The sun was getting hot, which made him think of summer, which made him remember the end of school coming up and the question of how to get someone to take James’s place crabbing, which made him remember the projects that teachers seemed to like to have due right at the end of school. “James? You had an English project, didn’t you? When you were
in seventh grade?”

  “Yes, why? Do you?”

  “A’course, and in science, too. What did you do?”

  “When?”

  “For your English project.” Teachers tended to repeat assignments from year to year. The English was anything you wanted to do, but you had to write a five-page report, with a list of the books you’d read, and you also had to stand up and talk about it in front of the class for about five minutes. Sammy wasn’t worried about the talking. He knew he could fool around for five minutes easy. He wasn’t worried about the writing, once he sat himself down to it. But he couldn’t think of anything to report on.

  “I did a report on Ursula LeGuin, the science-fiction writer.”

  “I remember.” Sammy got back to work. His hands were clearing the soil of any weeds which might choke the growth of the vegetable plants. “That was the year you and Toby read all that science-fiction stuff.”

  “And fantasy.” James wasn’t paying attention.

  “What happened to Toby? I haven’t seen him for—ages.”

  “Nothing. He’s still around.”

  “I kind of liked him. He was weird. You must have had other ideas, though, didn’t you? What were some of the ones you didn’t do?”

  When James didn’t answer him, Sammy turned his head to see why. James had leaned to crouch forward on the grass, he looked like some dog at the water’s edge the way he was crouched there next to the garden. James looked—bad. He looked—not exactly sick, and not exactly frightened, not exactly furious, but—bad.

  “What’s the matter?” Sammy had his hands full of weeds.

  “Don’t you do that,” James said. Sammy didn’t know what James was talking about. “Don’t you dare ask me to do that report for you.”

  Sammy didn’t even want him to and he’d never said that. He opened his mouth to inform his brother of just that, but James stood up.

  “You tell me, and you act like all you do is just be yourself, but you aren’t being as much of yourself as you can. So don’t ask me.”

  Sammy dropped the weeds and stood up to face his brother, because he didn’t know what James was talking about, but James was spitting words at Sammy like Sammy had done something awful. If it was a fight James wanted, he’d get one.

  “Listen—” Sammy warned.

  “No, you listen. You act like you’re so stupid—”

  “I do not.” He did not.

  “Like you’re not smart, then, and you are, but you never get around to using it. Your brain. You just let it sit there in your head, lazy. And ask me to do the work for you. That’s cheating, Sammy. Don’t go lazy-brained kidding yourself about that.”

  “I don’t cheat,” Sammy said.

  James didn’t listen, as if he were talking to himself, not Sammy, or talking to somebody who stood where Sammy stood but wasn’t Sammy. “Like our father,” James said.

  “I don’t cheat,” Sammy repeated stubbornly. “And you know it. Take it back, James.” Nobody could say something like that to him and not have a fight coming. Sammy watched James figure that out, and back off, the way he knew James would.

  “It sounded like cheating to me.”

  “That’s because you weren’t listening. I don’t want you to do the report, just suggest some ideas. I don’t have any idea what to write about. I’m not the one with ideas, you are. Remember? So don’t go throwing all this cheating stuff at me—and where you got it from I don’t know, but it’s from you, not me—when all I was asking you for was what you thought might be good topics.”

  James stood, and stared, and said nothing.

  Sammy was ready to fight, but he was just as ready to get worried. Here he’d been thinking that James was cruising along, a little conceited about his job, maybe, but feeling okay. Then it was as if Sammy had opened a little door just a tiny crack and all this dark poisonous stuff came pouring out—and it stank, too, whatever it was. James should know better than to accuse Sammy of being a cheater, like their father. James should know better and probably did. Then what was all this stuff about?

  “Just possible topics?” James finally said.

  “Yeah. But never mind.” Sammy hunkered back down to work. He almost didn’t want to talk to James anymore, again. He didn’t even care if James took it back or not. It was scary, all that stuff pouring out of him.

  “I’m sorry, Sammy. I really got it wrong, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah. You did.” Sammy looked at James. Their glances connected, and Sammy was glad of that because James was worried too. “You don’t often get things so wrong.”

  “Tell that to some people I know. Or, people I don’t know, that’s more true.”

  “Whaddayou mean, you mean girls?” That would make sense—maybe; James and girls, or a girl.

  “Oh, girls, who ever knows what they think.” James sat down again. “I’m really sorry, Sammy. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Okay,” Sammy said. “It’s okay.”

  “Except about selling yourself short,” James corrected himself. “That part, I think I do mean.”

  Sammy didn’t let his face show that he’d heard, but he had. He just didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I thought about doing a history of Crisfield,” James said, then. “For my report.”

  What a snore, Sammy thought. That was a snore and a half.

  “Or Tolkien, because we’d been reading him, too. And I really wanted to do Plato, but that was just to show off because nobody, not even Toby, knew about Plato.”

  “Probably the teacher didn’t either.” The only reason Sammy knew the name was because James had talked on and on about the guy for a while.

  “Yeah. So, anyway, I didn’t. Or mythology, I considered mythology, too. Toby thought about doing the tarot cards, you know?” Sammy didn’t. “Fortune-telling cards, they’re really old. I think they’re Egyptian in origin, and there are some strange stories about them.”

  “Maybe I’ll do mythology,” Sammy said.

  “We’ve got a lot of books on that here,” James told him. “I guess our grandfather got interested in it. It would make a good topic.”

  “Maybe I’ll look for them after dinner. Thanks for the help, James. The only thing I could think of was that old Francis Scott Key report I gave in fourth grade.”

  “A report you gave in fourth grade? You’d give it again?”

  “I’d have added stuff. I’d have changed some stuff.” Even so, Sammy grinned to himself, it would have sounded like a fourth grade report, which would have been pretty funny. As long as you did something, teachers would pass you. He could picture how it would be, he could hear himself giving this fourth grade report and the way the class would catch on. Miss Karin would probably catch on first and he bet she’d enjoy it, too; she did a lot of laughing. She seemed to think seventh graders, and especially Sammy, were pretty funny. It was tempting, and maybe he would just rewrite that one; he didn’t mind looking stupid.

  Sammy pulled out a clump of weeds and tossed it over, then moved down the row. What did James mean, anyway, calling him lazy?

  * * *

  With less than four weeks until summer, it was as if all the teachers suddenly woke up. Tests and projects, all the wrap-up things, everybody was assigning more homework, making the classes toe the line because there was so much to be done before they graduated from seventh grade, before they moved on to the high school, where, if they thought things were tough here . . . Even in PE they had wrapping up to do.

  At the end of every year, all the students were weighed and measured during one of the PE classes. The weights and heights were entered onto their records. The school nurse was in charge, but the PE teachers did the actual measuring, writing down, and keeping the gym quiet. While this record keeping was going on, the kids milled around in groups that moved slowly along toward the scales.

  When it was time for the seventh graders to line up, Sammy made sure he was next to Custer. Custer would be a good person to work with. “So what
are you doing this summer?” he asked.

  Custer kept his voice low to answer, although his eyes looked eager, excited. “I’m going out West. To a ranch. It’s a camp, actually, but—I’ll learn to ride western style, not this eastern stuff for shows, but like cowboys. There’ll be some white-water canoeing, too. And I’m going to learn how to shoot. A gun.”

  “A real gun?”

  “No, a water pistol.” Custer punched Sammy on the arm. “I’ll learn how to use one of those Darth Vader death rays, too, there’s a two-week course on death rays.”

  Sammy laughed. “How to shoot like a storm trooper?”

  “They never hit anyone,” Custer pointed out.

  Sammy explained it to him: “It used to be black hats. Now it’s bad shots. That’s how you can tell the bad guys—they miss. How come you’re doing that?”

  “My father grew up out West. Not California, that’s not the real West, he lived in the Rockies. In the mountains. He didn’t live on a ranch, but he had some friends who did and they used to go off, on horses, with bedrolls just like in the movies. They’d camp out. They had to take their guns, because it was dangerous—and he wasn’t any older than I am. He shot rattlers and jackrabbits. My grandfather used to shoot moose and deer for their winter meat. You know that moose head we have?” Sammy remembered it, a huge gentle-faced hairy head under wide antlers. “My grandfather shot that.” Sammy used to feel sorry for that moose. He didn’t tell Custer that. “My father would wear just an Indian loincloth, they all would, and they’d fish for their meals and cook the fish over the fire. He says the West is an experience he doesn’t want any son of his to miss, so I’m going to this camp. We’re all going to drive across the country, my sisters and everyone, and I’ll fly back at the end of the summer.”

  “That sounds great,” Sammy said. It did. He wouldn’t have minded it for himself except he didn’t have any father to want him to do it.

  “I’ll probably go back for lots of summers. Dad says, the mountains are a good place to grow up. He says it teaches you things about being a man.”