I had put up at a boarding house on lower Fourth Street near the Bowery. Occupied by Irishmen, laborers like myself, it was run by a Mrs. Porter, a woman of indeterminate age with a rumpled face, hard agate eyes, and breath that more often than not reeked of whiskey. Her food, mostly stews, potato puddings, and pig’s trotters, left much to be desired. But the beds were clean and not shared by daytime sleepers, as they were in other rooming houses. Best of all, Mrs. Porter minded her own business, asking no questions, offering no advice. That suited me fine. Sympathy and wise words were the last things I wanted.
My fellow boarders, great obstreperous fellows with names like O’Malley, Shea, and Drummond, poked good-natured fun at my Virginia accent, but I took no offense. On pay days they invited me to join them at Shaughnessy’s, their favorite watering hole, in the heart of the Bowery. The sawdust-floored pub was thick with smoke and shouting Irish brogues.
I went along, but felt out of place, like a sober parson who had mistakenly wandered into a riotous bacchanal. Indeed someone did call me a parson, not in fun but in malice. I tried to ignore him, but when he went on to add several epithets, including “bastard,” it brought me upright, triggering a red-hot temper too long held in check. I would have bashed him then and there, but I was restrained by some of Shaughnessy’s sporting customers, who had been spoiling to see a “proper” fight.
A space was squared off, a referee appointed. After removing coats, my opponent and I stood apart, glaring at each other. He was a large man, swarthy as a gypsy, with dark, bushy brows meeting over his nose. Because he was several inches taller and about twenty pounds heavier, the wagers going around, along with foaming tankards of ale, were mostly on him. What that blasphemous Irishman and his backers did not know was that the muscles under my shirt were deceptively hard, that I had not been drinking as heavily as it might have seemed, and last and most tellingly, that I had been a first-class boxer at Washington and Lee.
Poor sod, except for the first blow, which he got in before the “Go” signal, he never had a chance.
After that I gave up Shaughnessy’s and did my imbibing at Mazer’s, a chophouse on Tenth Street. It also had a laboring clientele, but of mixed extraction—Scandinavians, Ukranians, Scotch Irish, Yankees, and even a southerner or two. I felt more at home there, more anonymous and less likely to be involved in an altercation for which I had no taste.
Besides food and drink. Mazer’s offered the services of the “girls upstairs,” three or four prostitutes somewhat past their first bloom. Each evening they would drift down to the bar for a drink, singly or in pairs. One of them caught my eye. She had dark hair and in the murky tavern light bore a vague resemblance to Sabrina. One night I made her an offer. On closer inspection upstairs, the resemblance vanished. Nevertheless, I bedded her, a labored coupling that gave me no real pleasure. When I later heard that a good many of the whores of Lower Manhattan (and not a few of Upper Manhattan) carried diseases, I gave up on women.
Snow fell on the first of December, a thin flurry of transparent flakes borne on a bone-chilling wind from the river. The weather seemed to have no effect on street life. The mutilated beggars in their greasy rags still whined for pennies, the painted whores haunted their staked-out doorways, and the derelicts sprawled in the sewer. If I went out at night I carried a knife and watched my shadow. In some sections, thuggery ran rampant. One could expect, and often receive, a blow on the back of the skull only to awaken later with empty pockets and shoeless feet.
It was a dangerous city, but no more so, I daresay, than others of comparable size. San Francisco, for instance, had its share of mendicants, trollops, and thieves. The Barbary Coast, with its sleazy bars, brothels, and chili parlors, could vie with the Bowery in mayhem and wickedness any day of the week. But there was a difference between the two cities. San Francisco retained an atmosphere of openness and vivacity. There one could breathe, one had space, and even in the meanest street one might catch a glimpse of sea or sky. But in New York, where tenements stood shoulder to shoulder, where tall buildings reared themselves to form steep stone canyons, where humanity swarmed like ants on an anthill, the lungs tightened in a fight for air. Though I had never liked San Francisco, I could see now where I might have appreciated it more in the past.
As Christmas drew near I began to feel restless. I had written Mother, telling her not to worry, that I was in good health. In her reply she castigated me for failing to return to Wildoak, a reprimand that I ignored. She did not mention Sabrina. But I thought of her. I couldn’t stop myself. She slipped in and out of my mind like a ghostly shadow. Twice, waking on a frosty morn, I would cling to a dream of the night past, a dream in which she and I walked hand in hand across a grassy, flower-strewn meadow. Sometimes in the street I would see her face, the smooth, flushed cheeks under a stranger’s hat brim, a passing image reflected in a shop window, the half-turned figure of a woman alighting from a horse-drawn carriage. The approaching holiday season only served to increase the frequency of these visions and sharpen my memory of her. The conviviality, the festive blooming of door wreaths, the snatches of carol singing from lighted churches all conspired to depress me, to urge me to move on.
One dusk as I emerged from a secondhand shop where I had bought a warmer coat to replace the threadbare one I’d worn since Scotland, I noticed a dray standing at the curb. There was nothing in particular about the dray or its two occupants to hold my attention, and yet for some obscure reason it did. The man and the boy on the wooden seat were obviously father and son, the resemblance apparent from the high-cheekboned faces and light blond hair escaping from their peaked hats. They were waiting for someone, perhaps the mother, perhaps a friend. As I stood there the father put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, a proprietary yet affectionate grip. That paternal gesture made me aware of a sudden void under my heart. I felt my loneliness and rootlessness more keenly than ever before. Without kith or kin, marooned in a friendless city, I envied that boy. It was then that I thought of Harry Page.
I too had a father. I too had someone I resembled, someone who could clasp my shoulder, call me son. Somewhere a blood tie was waiting to be claimed by me; somewhere there lived a man who would look at me with fondness and warm paternal concern. Perhaps, as Mother supposed, he was dead; and even if he was alive, he might not be anything like the fatherly figure I pictured. He might be a miserable disappointment, might be indifferent to me, might even deny our relationship.
Nevertheless, the urge to find him grew stronger as the days passed. One morning I arose with my decision made. I quit my job, gave the landlady a week’s rent in lieu of notice, said good-bye to my Irish friends, and by Friday afternoon was on the train going south. My only clue to Harry Page’s whereabouts was that he had come from a farm “around Fayetteville,’’ in Georgia. It wasn’t much to go on. However, as I recalled, country folk usually knew their neighbors well, and people around Fayetteville might still remember Harry even if he had moved away.
Once I changed trains in Washington, D.C., the journey seemed interminable, the countryside endlessly gray in the December gloom. I spent New Year’s Eve in a chill hostelry in Atlanta, the drunken high jinks in the bar keeping me awake until dawn. But I was too keyed up to care about sleeping, and the closer I got to my destination the more excited I became. The last few miles seemed the longest.
We drew into Fayetteville just as a timid late-aftemoon sun was disappearing behind a bank of clouds. Toting my bag, I went into a café, empty at this early supper hour, and sat down at one of the three wooden tables. A girl with buck teeth and wearing a long, not too clean apron over a calico dress came out to take my order. Since nothing was ready but “freshly baked corn pone and okry soup,” I told her that would do fine.
When she put my meal before me I said, “Is there a Harry Page living close by?”
“Harry Page,” she repeated. “No, ain’t never heard of him.”
“Perhaps your cook has.” I could hear noises in the kitchen and
assumed it was the cook. “I’d appreciate if you asked.” The bread and soup were excellent. The waitress came back in a few minutes, followed by a plump woman with carroty hair piled on top of her head.
“Ain’t no Harry Page. There’s a Paine now, just three miles out—grows cotton and pecans.”
Of course, it had been eighteen years since the end of the war. I had to expect change, people uprooted, newcomers moving to town.
“Is there anyone else I can ask, an old-timer who’s been here all his life?”
“Your talkin’ to one now. I been here for fifty years and never heard of a Harry Page.”
Had my mother been mistaken? Or had Harry Page misled her?
I was at a loss. All this distance and I had come to the wrong place. I did not know what to do.
“Whatcha want him for?” the woman asked suspiciously. “He’s a relative,” I said. “I’m not the police or anything like that. Are you sure ...'?”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
I found a place to stay for the night with a family that took in boarders. They, too, knew nothing of Harry Page—or the Page family. The next morning, over a breakfast of coffee, bacon, and fresh eggs (I hadn’t had a real egg since leaving Invernean), I asked the man of the house if he had a map of Georgia. Perhaps, I reasoned, Mother had been mistaken or gotten the name of the town twisted.
The only thing that came close was a village called Bayetville some thirty-five miles distant. It was a long shot, but I had little to lose. Since no trains ran in that direction I tried to hire a horse at the local stable, but the man refused me. “Could never see you again,” he said.
So I set out on foot. It was a gray lowering day, and I hadn’t gone far before it began to pour. In a matter of minutes the red Georgia clay had turned to a sucking mire. I plodded on, water dripping from my hat brim, my head lowered against the slanting, needle-sharp rain. No one coming from either direction passed me. I trudged by pecan and peach orchards, their black, forked limbs bared to the dreary elements. Beyond the trees in the distance, a stand of dark pines frowned across empty cotton fields, a desolate scene. Torrents from washed-out gullies ran across the road, and I found myself sloshing through muddied pools, soaking my feet and the legs of my trousers to the knees. The bag I carried grew heavier and heavier, and the thirty-five miles seemed like a thousand. Around noon I began to feel hungry and decided to stop at the next farmhouse.
When I reached the gate, two ugly watchdogs rushed out, roaring at me with ferocious vehemence. I stood there waiting, thinking that someone inside would call the dogs off. And for a brief moment a face did appear at the window. But no one emerged. The dogs continued to bark, hurling themselves at the fence, wild to get out and sink their fangs into my flesh.
I turned back, tired, hungry, and seething with resentment. I was no beggar; I had the money to pay for my food. What ailed those people? Were they afraid? At Wildoak we never turned a stranger away, though he be a penniless, bedraggled wanderer who had come to the back stoop.
At the next cottage a woman repulsed me through a crack in the door. “We don’t feed tramps,’’ she snapped. And I heard the turn of a key in the lock.
For the first time in my life I understood how it must feel to be poor and homeless and filled with a sour envy toward those sitting with full bellies by their warm fires.
Late in the afternoon I saw a man in a field, mending a fence. Crossing over, sinking ankle-deep into mud, I lurched on, while the man, who by this time had also seen me, watched. A middle-aged farmer in thigh boots, with a dead pipe in one corner of his mouth, he surveyed me with naked suspicion.
“Howdy,” I said in my best Virginia drawl. “I’m on the way to Bayetville and would like to buy myself a meal and a bed.”
“Where you from?” he asked sharply.
“Prince William County, Virginia. Look,” I added, “I’m not a beggar. I have the money—”
“Where you bound for, did you say?”
“Bayetville. I’m looking for a relative. Harry Page.”
“Harry!” The hostile look fled from his eyes. “Whyn’t you say so?” He took my hand and shook it heartily.
“Harry’s a good friend. What’re you doin’ footin’ it on a day like this? C’mon up to the house.”
On the way he apologized for his behavior. “We had a terrible murder last Tuesday a week. Man like you come to the door of the Hollisters—they live up the road a piece. Nice-lookin’ man, dressed in good city clothes. Decent-like. Said he could pay, wanted dinner and a bed. Well, soon as he’s eaten, he pulls a gun, ties the old couple up, ransacks their house, and puts a bullet through them both. The mister died, but old Kate lived to tell us about it.”
“So that’s why everyone’s been so unsociable,” I said.
“Can’t blame ’em. Georgians are the most open-handed folk in the world. But right now they’re a bit scared.”
When his wife opened the door and saw me she blanched. “It’s all right, Liz,” the farmer explained. “He’s kin to Harry Page.”
They were kindness itself. I was allowed to change my trousers, and a place was made for me before the stove to warm my cold feet. As the wife bustled about, getting a meal, the pungent, cozy odor of stewed onions came to me. Never had a roof seemed more welcome, a farm cottage such a lucky refuge.
At the table the farmer asked, “What’s the world comin’ to. Them thieving murderers ought to stick to the cities.”
I agreed.
He went on to complain about the wet winter, the wettest in years, how it was washing his fields away and how the overflowing creek had drowned a litter of his pigs the week before.
His wife said, “Why d’you go on so. Tommy? Let the man eat in piece.”
I dug into yams and fried chicken and corn bread, smearing it with sweet clover honey and new churned butter. Tommy’s fields may have been washing away, but his table did not reflect it.
“How long’s it been since you seen Harry?” the farmer asked.
“It’s been years,” I answered. “He—he was a cousin to my mother.”
I couldn’t tell these good honest folk (pious, from the appearance of a well-worn Bible with gilt-tasseled marker resting on a deal table by the wall) that I was a briarpatch child—Harry’s bastard.
“Whereabouts is his farm?” I asked.
“Farm? He ain’t been farmin’ now, I’d say, for at least fifteen years. After his Daddy died, the boys sold it and scattered. Harry moved into town and bought hisself a store.”
“A storekeeper?” Somehow I had pictured Harry Page in a distinctly rural setting, behind the plow handles, hoeing rows of corn, or in the barn, milking cows.
“Don’t think he does too well, do you, Liz? He’s a good sort, bit of a practical joker, but we like him. Gives us credit during hard times.”
After breakfast the next morning I shook hands with the farmer, thanked the wife, and discreetly left five dollars under the salt shaker when her back was turned.
When I came out, the sun was peeping over the horizon, staining the sky a pink rose. The sight of it cheered me and must have done the same for the farmer, for I was halfway down the lane when he came running after me.
“I clean forgot,” he said, “but I have business with my neighbor—he’s ten miles down the road—and I can give you a lift.”
I thought he had made the “business” up for my benefit, but I did not refuse the ride.
Bayetville was no bigger than a crossroads hamlet, two or three houses, a smithy, and Page’s General Store and P.O.
I knew him at once. He was leaning on the counter, talking to a man in a slouch hat. He had my nose, my hair—a little unkempt and with the same unruly cowlick—and when he looked up, the same blue eyes.
“Howdy,” he said, slowly drawing the word out.
“Howdy.” I smiled at him. His eyes crinkled at the corners. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” I said, turning away to examine a row of harness gear.
The
man in the slouch hat murmured a few more words and then I heard him stomp across the room and out the door. “Can I help you?” Harry Page asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, coming up to him, removing my hat.
He stared at me. “Ain’t I seen you somewhere afore?”
“No. You see, I was born after you left Wildoak.”
His mouth fell open. “Well, I’ll be damned! You—but why . . .? I’ll be . . . Your Maw . . . ?”
“She’s fine. She’s married to a Scotsman. Lives in the Highlands.”
“But I’ll be damned! She never . . . when . . . ?”
“I didn’t know either until recently. Mother named me after you.”
“Did she?” He came around the counter, took my hand and pumped it. “It come like a shock. But I’ll be damned! And such a fine-looking lad. She done a good job, I can see.” He grinned. “Son!” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Good God—I’m thinkin’ . . . Well, never you mind. You come just to find me?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly, impulsively, he hugged me. Then he stepped back. “So I got a son I know’d nothin’ about!”
I knew my eyes were perilously moist. “Yes.”
“I’m gonna close up right now! Ain’t no customers who’ll miss me. I’m takin’ you home to meet the wife and kids.”
“But won’t they . . .?”
“Mind? Hell, no! And if they do, won’t matter.”
My grandmother had been right. Harry Page was not of “our class.” He was rough, uneducated, his speech ungrammatical and sprinkled with oaths, his dress rustic. Also, as I later discovered, he was not only bigoted in the same way as Grandmama and most southerners, but crassly outspoken about it. Yet he had a cheerful charm that went right to the heart. His eyes reflected laughter, a good humor that seemed undaunted despite the near squalor in which he and his family lived.
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