My Brother's Keeper

by Marcia Davenport

  When he raised his head it was because the smell was so evil, a strangling sour smell which had settled in his belly and would soon make him sick. So he thought of air. Slowly in painful jerks his mind, like that rusted wheel, began to gather feeble momentum. Could he stand up? It was a long time before he tried. It was longer before he dared let go of the iron footrail of the cot, to try his balance without holding on; longer still before he put one shaking foot ahead of the other and shifted his weight. But he could walk. Then he must find a door, he must see how to get out of here, since that was why he had decided he must walk. The door was down at the end of this long stinking place, down to the right of the high, barred window.

  Then he was outside, standing in a pool of water to his ankles, with rain sluicing down to plaster his ragged shirt to his body. This sensation was familiar. This belonged with something that lay on the other side of the high black wall that cut off everything he knew except that that place in there was a cellar. Standing in the rain, shivering, watching people hurry into a house; standing in the rain cold and soaking wet, and somebody saying something. Standing in the rain, he heard it again, he was sure he heard it, then he was not sure; no, why had somebody said something? Who had said it? What had he heard, standing in the rain? Are you beginning to catch on?

  The high black wall collapsed. Randall Holt raised his filthy hands to his temples and staggered towards the side of the building behind him and leaned against it and the wheel spun, greased and swift and cruel. Now the other balance of a scale loaded with nightmare came riding up, while the time since that Friday afternoon sank down, lost, drowned, forever gone. His hands slipping down his cheeks touched heavy stubble, he wore nothing but a tattered shirt and trousers. The rain streamed down and he gave a cry of terror at a brutal roaring noise bursting suddenly overhead. Cowering, he looked up; it was the elevated; a train of cars crashed by. He turned, wavering on his feet, and holding on to walls and ledges, made his way to the corner. He saw that he was on the Bowery. Other figures like his own stumbled and shuffled past him, their broken shoes squelching water. Nobody looked at him. On the corner there was an eating-place, spewing out a reek of stale frying-fat and bad coffee. His stomach heaved, but he was empty too. He hesitated on the pavement, looking through the dirty window at a few ragged men humped over cups and bowls. His hand went to his pocket. Then he remembered standing before the mirror in his room, a Friday, what Friday—how long ago? He had flung on some clothes—he looked down at the same shirt and trousers—and stuffed some loose bills and change in one pocket and his watch on its chain in the other. And rushed out—to the beginning of this. His hands groped in the trousers pockets. In the left one there was half a dollar. In the right one he touched metal, and pulling it out, he saw a short piece of the chain from his watch with his bunch of keys at one end. He stood with the keys in his hand wondering why somebody had left him fifty cents and torn his watch from its chain, leaving his keys. But they’re my keys, he said half aloud. My keys.

  The keys meant his things and his little desk and his locked secret places, and those meant the house and the house meant Seymour. He could not think about Seymour, and all the rest of it was dim; very far away. If he should let it rush at him it would come crashing down, a savage thing like that train up overhead, driven by some devil who would as soon kill a dozen Randall Holts. But he meant to outwit that devil. He would not let the whole train run him down, car after car crushing his mangled body after the first one had struck him. He could avoid that, and the avoiding meant also protecting his things. They were safe so long as he had these keys. He must remove everything from the house, watching to be sure when Seymour was out, keeping his visits secret until he had got all his things and taken them to some safe place. This would be an exhausting job and take a long time; to do it would be like uncoupling one car from that murderous train, in which he and his things would be safe, while the rest of the train hurtled on anywhere. He would never see Seymour again, never see any part of that train or any passenger in it.

  Should he go now and begin the long, secret task of carrying away his things? Shaky on his feet, he stood and weighed the question. The smell from the eating-place bored at his nostrils and twisted his empty gut. It was repellent, but he was weak and knew he should eat. After that, he thought, I could go to the house. It is afternoon, he saw by the clock on the wall in the eating-place, and Seymour will be out. Mr. Holt is never at the office in the afternoon. He is never at home either. Randall’s mind swung wildly away from the thought of where Seymour might be, or with whom. He tried to think of something else, something concrete. I have money in the house, he thought. Clean clothes, several suits. He would need them. He hesitated on the corner for a long time. Then he turned into the cheap restaurant and clambered unsteadily onto a stool at the counter and ordered food and coffee.

  When he came out into the wet cavern of the street he had two dimes and a nickel in his pocket. He started to walk north on the Bowery. The cold rain wrapped his thin shirt and trousers round his body and legs and soon he was shivering. The greasy food and bad coffee lay uneasily in his stomach; he had got a moment’s warmth from them but no strength; he was still weak and now he felt sick besides. He began to wonder whether he was strong enough to walk all the way to the house, and presently he decided it would be better to take a street car. But I can’t get into a street car looking like this, he thought. And I haven’t money enough for a cab. Even if I had there are no cabs in sight. He leaned against the side of a building and stood with his hands to his temples, trying to make sense of all this. A while ago he had decided something, but now he could not remember exactly what. He was becoming more confused all the time. What had he figured out about Seymour—that he would be in the house or not? He could not recall. It seemed to him that whatever it had been, Seymour stood facing him at the end of some enormous effort he had meant to make. No, he thought, his head swimming, I can’t go through with that. I don’t want to see Seymour. He said the words aloud several times. Ragged, drunken men staggered past him, taking no notice of a derelict talking to himself in the streaming rain. Oh, I’m not going to the house, he muttered. I didn’t mean to do that. He was unsure what he had meant when he was trying to decide something before.

  He began to walk again, blindly, and oblivious of directions and street signs. He turned several corners in the maze of slum streets east of the Bowery, and having nothing to do instead, he kept on walking. After a time the narrow streets crammed with tenements and swarming people began to look different. They widened, and he walked out suddenly onto the river-front, faced by the hulls and stacks of a long row of ships at their piers. He was bewildered. He was not sure where he was, but these were certainly not the North River docks only two blocks from home. I couldn’t have got there so soon, he thought; and I didn’t mean to go there. Where am I? He thought then to look for a street sign and he wandered about, peering, until he saw one: Peck Slip. From its very unfamiliarity he knew; this must be the East River. Those dirty-looking small ships were freighters. Some were high in the water, some low, loaded and ready to sail.

  He stood gazing dully at the rusty stern of a loaded ship. It was marked Comanche, Galveston. That’s a long way away, he thought. Texas. How would a ship get from here to Texas? He was not sure. He was wondering about it when a man appeared at the taffrail and hailed him.

  “Hey,” he yelled. “You want to ship?”

  “What?”

  “Want a job? Deckhand?”

  “Why—” Randall stood shivering, not knowing what to say. “When?” he asked stupidly.

  “Tonight. Need three hands. Look like you want a berth, do you?”

  “Why—yes.” Randall spoke without any volition at all. “Where do you go?”

  “Coast. Gulf. Galveston. And back. Hurry up, make up your mind. I’m goin’ ashore to sign on two more. Want the job or not?”

  “Why—sure.” As soon as he had said it Randall wanted to take it back. This w
as a nightmare. He could not go off on any ship, he would die of seasickness. But, he thought, if I don’t do this I’ll have to go home. The idea of any alternative eluded his confused mind. This is the way not to see Seymour. I’ll do it. “How long will you be gone?” he called up to the man.

  “Three-four weeks. Plannin’ a cruise? Don’t fart around now, take it or leave it. I’m in a hurry.”

  “I’m coming,” said Randall.

  The man jerked his thumb back over the side at the gangplank leading into a square black hole. Randall walked round as if he were sleepwalking, climbed the gangway, and disappeared into the hold.

  Four weeks later, on a sunny afternoon at the end of September, he walked down the same gangway to the same pier at Peck Slip. He wore a soiled blue shirt and denim trousers, his face was deeply tanned, his hands stained and calloused. His hair was bleached almost white. In his pocket he had four dollars and sixty-eight cents. He was thin, but muscled and toughened as he had never been before, and though he had no wish to repeat the experience, it had not been too bad a one. On both voyages, out and in, he had been desperately sick between Norfolk and Cape Fear. Last week off Cape Hatteras they had roped him into a dirty bunk and left him like a corpse for twenty-four hours. But otherwise the sea had been calm. Coasting around the Gulf, with calls at Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, had been interesting enough to compensate for the hard labor, the bad food, and the half-dozen toughs among whom he had lived, imitating their habits and their speech for fear of being different. The best of it had been that it had amounted to an anaesthetic. He had almost entirely succeeded in his intention not to think. Whether he had really put his brother, the past months, and above all, Renata Tosi out of mind; or whether he had only managed to stave off their reappearance, he had at least had a respite. He felt calm, unconfused, and certain what he meant to do. He would go straight to the house, sure that Seymour would not be there at this time of day. He would clean himself, get properly dressed, pack his clothes and his most important possessions, and go and find somewhere to live. Then, taking care always to avoid Seymour, he would go to the house every day and gradually he would take away his things, carrying as much as he could at a time until he had removed them all. Beyond that he had not taken thought or made a plan.

  He reached the low iron gate at the pavement and stood for a moment, fingering the keys in his pocket and looking up past the littered front yard at the blank blinded face of the house. I might, he thought, be looking at the family tomb. He heard the feet of people passing up and down the street behind him. He wondered if they thought him a tramp; they could not know that he belonged here—that he once had, he corrected himself. He walked up the path, selecting from his bunch the key to the front door. He unlocked the door and shut it quietly behind himself; he was always quiet by habit, but now, even with Seymour out as he must be, Randall felt stealthy because in some way that seemed important. He stood for a moment in the front hall, noting that nothing seemed changed and wondering for the first time exactly how long he had been gone. Twenty-seven days on the Comanche; how many days before that in that fearful place which was only an ugly, clouded memory? He would never know. That had become a scab, the material of tough scar-tissue, beneath which lay the wound … he must not let himself feel … or even think …

  He mounted the stairs, quietly, wondering at the musty smell of the house and whether it had always smelt like that, and he turned at the top to go to his own room. Then he jumped and gasped, gripping the newel-post; and almost fled.

  “Who is there?” said Seymour’s voice from inside his own room. The voice was frail and low. It held Randall still when he would have run. You don’t mean to see Seymour, he told himself, and put his foot on the step to go down. “Who is there?” he heard again, weaker and with a frighteningly helpless note. Randall swallowed and passed his hardened hand across his eyes. He meant to go, he meant to go straight back down those stairs. Against his will he turned and moved and said, walking into the room, “It is I.”

  Seymour lay on his bed, with his hands folded on his chest. His eyes were closed. When he heard Randall’s voice his right hand flung out; he stiffened as if to raise himself but he kept his head still and Randall heard him choke or sob in a hoarse low cry. Randall strode to the bed and took Seymour’s hand and said, “What is it? What’s happened to you? Look at me, Seymour!”

  Seymour moved convulsively; his left hand together with his right closed on Randall’s, but his eyes remained closed. He said, and Randall heard that he was in tears, “Oh, Randall. Randall. God bless you.”

  Randall fell on his knees, his free hand touching Seymour’s face. “Please,” he said, “Brother, open your eyes and look at me. Tell me what has happened to you.”

  “Are you all right?” Tears slid from his closed lids down Seymour’s cheeks, and he clutched harder at Randall’s hand. “Tell me, are you?”

  “Yes, yes, never mind about me. I’m fine.” Randall stared at Seymour’s face. A terrible idea was beginning to work into his mind, a suspicion so frightful that he dared not face it. “It’s you that matters,” he said. He passed his free hand lightly over Seymour’s forehead, watching the white, set face; watching, wondering. Suddenly he cried, “Seymour! Open your eyes!” He saw Seymour’s mouth tighten, the long jaw move in an effort at control. “Seymour,” he whispered, “can’t you open your eyes?”

  There was a dreadful sound, a groan or a sob; the eyes remained closed. Randall shook with terror, watching Seymour struggle in what he would understand later was the last stand of fanatical pride and courage in defeat. “Please,” he begged, “can’t you open your eyes, Brother?”

  “I can open them,” said Seymour in a hoarse whisper, “but I am blind.” He began to sob like a child.

  “Brother … Brother …” Randall bent over him. “Oh my God, my poor Brother … And I left you alone. Oh, Seymour, what have I done?”

  “I drove you …” Seymour tried to master his tears. “It was I who—think what I did to you! I deserve this. Worse than this.”

  “No. No.” Randall put his fingers against Seymour’s closed eyelids, a curious reverent gesture as if to make contact with a talisman. “No, Brother. I left you alone; oh, I can’t bear it! Tell me. Tell me what it is, when it happened. Tell me everything.”

  “Haven’t you always known, Ran?” Seymour spoke only after a long silence. “I thought you had.”

  Randall shook his head wretchedly. He said, “How could I? How could I imagine it would end in this? I only thought—” For a moment he could not speak. Then he said, “Have you known for a long time, Brother? Do you mean you’ve gone on for years?—with that much courage, knowing this was hanging over you? Oh my God.”

  “What else would a man do?”

  “I don’t know. I’d never have been so brave. When did you first know, how long—?”

  “For years, since long before Mama died. I’ve known, and when I haven’t wanted to know, Willingdon has reminded me. But you fight a thing like this, you fight hard.”

  “What is it, Brother? What happened to your eyes?”

  “Oh,” said Seymour drearily, “does the name of it matter?”

  “Of course it does. Everything matters. I have to know. Oh, to have left you alone to face this! Tell me what it is.”

  Seymour sighed. “A condition called high grade myopia with eventual detachment of the retina, which is what has finally happened. It’s progressive and incurable and for years he’s warned me to stop doing this and that and every other damned thing until I’ve done them all almost out of—oh, hell. You understand.”

  “Was the—all the driving and being outdoors this past summer? Was that very bad?”

  “Probably. He says the end wasn’t precipitated by too much exposure to light, that it would have happened anyway. But it certainly didn’t help.”

  “And now? Brother, is it—you know what I mean.”

  “Final? Hopeless? Yes. I’m not quite totally blind y
et.” Seymour’s voice began to regain some of its normal firmness. “I will be soon. It doesn’t matter how soon any more, because I can’t see enough to use my eyes for anything. I can see—oh, shapes, if they’re very large. Or the difference between light and dark, that’s about all. And it hit me just the way he said it would. One day I just couldn’t see anything any more.”

  “When was that?”

  “Oh—” Seymour paused. For the first time he let his eyelids roll slowly open and Randall looked with piteous anxiety at the grey eyes, visibly no different than before. It was inconceivable that they could not see; looking at them he pressed Seymour’s hand hard and for one moment was about to insist he could believe none of this; it was on the tip of his tongue to cry “Look at me, Brother! Say you see me!” Then he bent his head in abashment, such an exclamation would have been the greatest cruelty. Seymour lay perfectly still, as if staring at the ceiling overhead, and Randall stayed close to him and presently repeated, “When was that, Brother?”

  Seymour did not answer immediately. He turned on his side, facing Randall, and closed his eyes again and Randall suspected he had begun to weep once more. He felt the tremor of his muscles. But when Seymour spoke he said steadily, “Five days after you—went away.”

  “Did your doctor say it was brought on by shock?”

  “You mean, do I know everything that happened?”