The Adventures of John Carson in Several Quarters of the World

by Brian Doyle

  Your dear and grateful

  and mannered friend,

  R.L.S.

  Poring over this account, in my room, at night, aptly on the Feast of Saint Cogitosus, I can see where an astute reader would ask, And where is the conflict? Where is the daily grinding and grating of one nature against another of a wholly different character? Where is dyspepsia and vulgarity and sneer and aggression and covetousness and theft and outright lie? Where is there assault and vengeance, plot and peeve? Where are the marital difficulties and the seething misunderstandings and misapprehensions inherent in any romance worthy of the name? Have we gotten all the way in this account, this report, this memoir, and somehow not encountered distemper, disgruntlement, dislike, disagreeableness, detestation? Could the author be gilding the lily, oiling the troubled waters, closing his eyes to the lewd and crude, the rough and tumble, the inarguable threads of greed and violence in the fabric of human nature?

  To which I would say, we have survived, in the previous pages, the kidnapping of a boy, a battlefield of immeasurable savagery, the gaunt aftermath of a terrible famine, the death of a great man at sea, and the ordeal of a young woman hiding in the dank hold of a ship for long and awful weeks, as it crossed thousands of miles of pitching and roaring ocean, and even the bitter silence of the two Irish girls Alice and Loretta who refused to speak to each other—has that not been enough for you? Do we require pain in a narrative, for it to be substantial? Do we need to dwell at length in mud, so that cleansing is more enjoyable? I would rather trust my reader to be astute, and gather from hints and intimations the depth and breadth of the story. All I can do is write the bones, and hope that you will enflesh them as you will, from your imagination and experience; all I can do is present Mr and Mrs Carson as I knew them, and ask you to imagine their tones of voice, the grace of their presence, the swirl of their stories far beyond the page, and far beyond my capacity to tell. In a real sense a story is a dream that I am asking you to share, but to dream in your own fashion, and not so much mine; a story is a willing partnership, which you join with a will, or decline; many a book has been flung across the room, as the reader decides to voyage elsewhere, and there is nothing the writer can do but forge ahead, hoping that other readers will join the journey, board the boat, take a room in the same house, and live there for a few days, a week perhaps, until you finish the story, and confront the finality of a blank page, on which any next adventure or tale may begin. More than once, in my own reading, I have wanted the next story to begin on the blank page that limned the conclusion of the one that just delighted me; but even after the best and most riveting and absorbing tales, you must take a breath, and go for a walk, and let it simmer and marinate in your soul, so that if you are lucky, and the story stands the test of years, it sinks deeply into your soul, and becomes thoroughly a part of you; so it is that I am composed in part of Walter Scott, and William Hazlitt, and the glories of the King James Bible; of Montaigne and Cicero, Shakespeare and the sad and glorious Charles Lamb; of Daniel Defoe and Rabbie Burns my headlong countryman, a man I might have been, all fire and song, foolishness and stuttered grace.

  But I will give you a little conflict, if it is the grit you need between your teeth today. Mr and Mrs Carson did disagree once a week, about this and that—a boarder’s fee, a kitchen girl’s beau; which particular oysters to feature for Saturday dinner; and once I saw her grim about the mouth, when he was asked to join a voyage into the Arctic ice, an expedition its organizers swore would be lucrative and remunerative beyond imagination; they came to the house, and laid out their plans by the fire with passion and eloquence, and Mr Carson listened intently, and I saw Mrs Carson grim and unhappy in the kitchen, though she said nothing whatsoever; but then Mr Carson most courteously saw his guests to the door, and said firmly and quietly that he would not be joining them, and it is my belief that he then went into the kitchen and took Mrs Carson in his arms and said that he would never again be parted from her for even a night, did God give him the grace of that wish; but I did not hear those words spoken, if indeed they were, for I had gone upstairs to my attic room, knowing that some scenes must play out without audience or chronicler.

  And there were occasional fistfights and brouhahas between and among boarders; and once a month a tart misunderstanding with a tradesman; and twice that I recall Mr Carson was brusque and terse with someone selling something that Mrs Carson had made quite clear she did not desire; and the kitchen girls squabbled and bickered; and a man was murdered on the steps of the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires nearby, slain by his best friend, who waited weeping by the body for the police to take him to prison; we had a death in the house while I was there, a quiet old man who did not wake up one morning, and who was carried tenderly out of the house by the two somber young men who roomed to either side of him; and a small boy on Powell Street was crushed by a wagon. This last tragedy I remember well, for I saw it from my window; by utter chance I glanced up just as the child dashed into the street and the wagon struck him so hard that his body flew clear across the street. I sprinted down the stairs as fast as I could go, but Mrs Carson was there before me, kneeling with his head in her hands, murmuring and crooning to him. It was a Sunday evening, and the police were long in responding to the accident, and it was dusk by the time the boy was taken away. The crowd that had formed almost immediately had gone, and I walked back into the house with Mrs Carson, who was silent; but I remember that her dress was soaked in blood from neck to toe. That night the house did not dine, as I remember, but each resident fended for himself or herself outside, in the matter of meals.

  * * *

  We had a birth in the house too, while I was there: a boy, delivered of Ailís, early in the morning of April 17, and christened Donan, after the saint of that day, for Ailís was a devout Catholic, and the saints and angels were quite real to her, and she was conversant with the cherubim and the seraphim—who perhaps knew more than we did about the boy’s father, of whom not one word was ever asked or answered, that I heard. Donan the saint I did know, however; while he was Irish, his missionary work was in Scotland, and his name is still spoken with reverence in the northern islands of my native land, particularly on the small island of Eigg. I had been there myself, with my father, when I was a boy, as he examined and charted lighthouses, which was his work as an engineer; that was the work I was to do, he hoped, but I had no interest in engineering, and a fervent interest in stories.

  It was on Eigg, I remember, that I had a conversation with my father that was prescient about our future divergence; he talked about how a small lighthouse might be built there, to aid in navigation among the little islands, while I talked about the many stories of Donan: that he had been saying Mass when pirates attacked, and he begged them to let him finish the Mass before he and his fellow monks were all slain, and that they had all been beheaded, or that they had all been locked in their chapel, and burnt to death together, not one of them crying aloud in pain, so as not to afflict his brothers with sadness. I remember being excited, as I told my father these stories, and that when I was done he stared at me with a look on his face I could never find words for, though I have made my way with words ever since. Disappointment, certainly; and a little confusion, that this was his only child? And something like dawning sadness, as he began to understand that I would not follow him in the craft that he and his grandfather and father and brothers and nephew loved, and that indeed we shared almost nothing, in the way of passions and convictions. I did not know then, and only can imagine now, the pain of realizing that the child you love with all your heart and soul is a stranger, and perhaps always will be, no matter how many years you both shall live.

  I held little Donan in my arms, a week after he was born, a week before I left the house myself, to begin a new life, and I found myself powerfully moved; not so much by the tiny creature in my arms, though he was a serene and handsome lad, as babies go, but by thoughts of fathers. Donan’s absent father, not even a myth, not even
a name to be cursed and vilified, probably not much more than a boy himself; perhaps he was still in the city, or far away at sea or desert or forest, fleeing what he might think a mistake or a miracle; or perhaps exiled by a bitter Ailís, never even to see his own son. My own father, Thomas Stevenson, proud and honest, stern and amused at once, genial and melancholy by turn, shrewd and boyish, as calm and tempestuous by turns as the sea that absorbed him, and which he fought his whole life; a man who reads only a few books, but those books are deep and wise and he abides in them like a man in a comfortable house; a man who loves all dogs, respects all women, but does not love himself, and holds himself to the most stringent measure, which perforce he cannot meet; so that for all his humor, and his generosity, and his integrity, he sets his face like flint, and I can find no road or path through or around his wall, and this grieves me deeply.

  And my own shadow fatherhood; a father in spirit but not in fact; more uncle than father; a father one or two or ten steps removed from the actual task and gift and labor and prayer of it. In a month I will have two children, but I will have no children at all; in a month I will read to a boy and tuck him into his bed, and dine with him, and pore over his schoolbooks, and explore the beach for bones and miracles, and climb trees just because, and draw heroes and saints, and make jokes and snowballs, and listen with ferocious attentiveness to the shiver of his heart and the glimmer of his mind, but I will not be his father, I will never be his father, and will that not always be silently between us, what I am not, rather than whatever it is I am?

  * * *

  On the first day of May, as a wedding present for Fanny and me, John Carson borrowed a boat from a friend—a small sloop he told me privately was almost certainly used for oyster piracy, as he could tell from its lines and rigging—and took us sailing in San Francisco Bay. Lloyd was thrilled to go a’sailing, as he said, as was Mary Carson, though she protested she could not, under any circumstances, spare the entire day; but her protest was a form of private theater, I thought—something like the steps of a dance they had invented for themselves, and much enjoyed practicing, as actors sing scales before they go on stage.

  John Carson, as you would imagine of an experienced seaman, handled the pretty little boat with a deft ease that was delightful to watch—any artisan at work is a pleasant experience, a lesson in motion and experience and absorption turned to good effect—and though I asked to be of service as crew, I was told politely but firmly that my berth was passenger only, and my duties were to watch over Fanny and Lloyd, and be sure they did not fall overboard, or get overly sick from the rollicking voyage—for rollick we did, from one end of the bay to the other, at terrific speed, sometimes clutching each other in trepidation and delight, and shouting at the tops of our voices.

  West from Black Rock Cove to the Golden Gate, into the wind, slipping across the bows of bigger ships like a falcon against a cliff face; a turn into Horseshoe Bay and through Raccoon Strait straight and fast as a dart; back south again through the shallows along the eastern shores, looking for crabs and fish, hoping to see a sturgeon; past Oakland, with Lloyd craning to see the cottage, and Fanny and I hanging on to his legs for dear life; and then down to the far south of the bay, poking into coves and inlets, raising flustered and aggrieved herons from their fishing, admiring the diligent osprey and the tireless cormorant.…

  I do not think I could ever find the proper song of sentences to portray that day, no matter how hard I searched for them, and me a man so desirous to be great at just such pursuit. The rattle of the rigging lines, the cheerful battering of the breezes, the sheer bodily vivacity of rushing through the open air at such a pace, with only the sound of water and wind and merriment as accompaniment; the extraordinary light, surely of a different cast here on the Pacific shore than anywhere else on earth; the quiet joy of being with those we love and those we esteem; and something deeply savory too because it was a gift, freely given, from a friend, indeed two friends, whom I had not known, mere months ago, and now counted among my close companions.

  We do not acknowledge enough, I think, the clan and tribe of our friends, who are not assigned to us by blood, or given to us to love by a merciful Creator, but come to us by grace and gift from the mass of men, stepping forth unannounced from the passing multitudes, and into our lives; and so very often stepping right into the inner chambers of our hearts. In so many ways we celebrate those we love as wife or husband, father and mother, brother and sister, daughter and son; but it is our friends whom we choose, and who choose us; it is our friends we turn to abashed, when we are bruised and broken by love and pain; it is our friends whose affection and kindness are food and drink to our spirits, and sustain and invigorate us when we are worn and weary.

  It was dusk when we landed again in Black Rock Cove, and John Carson handed the boat over to a smiling man who waved at us but did not speak; and we all five walked along the bayfront to the Oakland ferry, John Carson stopping here and there to speak quietly to men in the shadows. By the time we reached the ferry jetty, Lloyd was sound asleep, aboard the sturdy upper deck of John Carson’s shoulders; only when Fanny escorted him gently onto the ferry did he startle awake, and bow sleepily and thank the Carsons, before he instantly fell asleep again. Fanny made her farewells and I mine, and the Carsons and I walked peaceably back to Bush Street through a night of such stars like I had never seen. Since that night I have voyaged deep and wide, and have seen many a sky that made me gape in wonder; but to this day when I think of a starry sky, the memory to mind is that night in May, in rough and salty San Francisco, in those last days I lived on Bush Street.

  * * *

  It was clear both to Fanny and myself that we could not live in San Francisco, or Oakland, or in the great green hand of America itself, but that we should head home, first to Scotland and then perhaps to England, or France—somewhere where I could set about my writing seriously and assiduously, armed for the first time with enough money for us not to worry daily and hourly about the roof over our heads and the paucity of bread in the bowl. Fanny was of a mind to paint, and see if she could sell a work here and there, and augment the family finances; Lloyd, already experienced at his tender age in switching from one school to another and one country to another, would be adventurously fine with what would be painful tumult in another boy’s life; and Fanny’s gentle daughter Isobel was happy here in California with her husband Joe Strong, and was happy too, she said, to see us off and away on journeys, especially as her mother would, as she said, be happy and safe, for the first time, and also cared for and attended to and savored, none of which she had felt before from a husband.

  First we would pause in Napa Valley, and perhaps Sonoma, and enjoy a honeymoon on a hill, in a ranch house high above Calistoga, up above the mists, in God’s own sunlight, in which I planned to bask, mumbling happily and incoherently, for days at a time, with a cutlass for rattlesnakes, and not a care else in the world; but then away to Edinburgh, to present the new Mrs. Stevenson to her new in-laws, and to introduce my estimable father and mother to their new grandson; it tells you something deep of my parents’ characters that I knew they would gather both Fanny and Lloyd into their hearts, no matter how unusual the manner of their arrival into our clan. As flinty as my father could be, as stern and righteous and strict about moral matters, he understood very well that the essence of the faith he loved with all his heart was finally humility and tenderness; beyond even justice there is mercy, as so many staunch fathers of the church forget, in their rush to protect and define and expand the monument built upon the broken body of that poor young Judean, all those centuries ago. But it is His message, not His monument, that marks the true faith, and celebrates the trace of his strange genius.

  So it was that May was a flurry of packing and repacking, of closing up the cottage and closing up affairs, of arranging this and rearranging that. I finished all my loose manuscripts, and shipped them off to Sidney Colvin in London, to shepherd and sell as he saw fit, with the proceeds,
if any, to be held for my eventual arrival. My own scanty possessions were boxed up and ready in an hour, being mostly quills and notebooks, two pairs of boots, my Bible and my Plutarch, my Kilmarnock and my Rob Roy—no Scotsman leaves his native land without Walter Scott and Rabbie Burns for his close companions—and my inviolate memories of that tiny wooden room, that swaying mast of a house, that brawny bustling city, that vast California of dense fog and sharp light.