There were days when Con couldn’t talk much, days when his face hurt and the burns on his body seemed to tighten. For those times he had bought Connie Junior a model airplane and they had built it together, silently pinning and gluing wood, stretching the light cloth. Now he was teaching Connie about engines, tiny engines that they could fix and modify on the kitchen table. Each had different qualities, different needs.
Con smiled, the strain going out of his patchwork face. “Go—um, get your coat on, son. We’ll go downtown.”
* * *
—
Con O’Brien walked a little straighter when he walked with his son. Listening to the boy’s rapid-fire talk about school and sports, he kept glancing down at him, a sturdy little fellow who seemed to have the best of both his parents in him. Maybe that was why he was so wholesome and freehearted. There certainly wasn’t much that was wholesome about Clara anymore. All she did was eat candy, read confessions, and let the house get dirty.
Con ran his hand over the back of his head. It was bothering him a little today. That meant a change in the weather. Odd thing, that a man should go through life with a silver plate as part of his skull, yet it had done the job for twenty years now.
“When you goin’ to take me down to see the ship, Dad? Gee, I’d like to go down in that engine room! Do you have many men working for you, Dad? Many sailors?”
“A few, son. We don’t call them—sailors. The engine crew is called the black gang. There’s an oiler, a fireman, and a wiper working with me.”
“I’ll bet they sure like you, Dad. All those fellows. I’ll bet they think you’re swell!”
Con’s face stiffened. “I don’t know, son. Maybe.”
Why don’t you tell him? a dark part of his brain suggested. Why don’t you tell your boy the men think you’re nuts? That sometimes a whole voyage passes and they never speak to you outside of work? Tell him that you look at them and want to communicate, to say something good-natured and not about work, but you can’t.
Maybe all the good stuff in you, all the friendship, drained out back there on that racetrack. Maybe it can’t generate around that silver plate, maybe the broken ribs stuck it and it died, died right inside of you so all you can do now is look at them and wish they’d take you in, wish someone else would accept you like this boy who, because you’re his dad, simply doesn’t know any better.
* * *
—
The sign read “Mile High Cones 10 Cents!” and the brightly lit interior was crowded with adults and children. They placed their order and then found seats. Con felt tired, but it was good to see Junior there, a clean-cut lad, the sort any man would be proud to call his son. How he’d like to take him back to the ship, to show him the engine room.
But he wouldn’t dare. He’d never dare let Junior see that his dad wasn’t a regular guy, that he didn’t fit in. It would hurt the kid, and remembering the untidy house and the cracker crumbs, the coarse, uncaring woman he’d given this boy for a mother, he knew that Junior was going to get hurt enough, more than enough, before it was all over.
He thought of Jane. His fears were hard to have, hard to face about one’s own daughter, but Con had the harsh, worldly wisdom of a man who had seen a hundred ports. If he’d been with his daughter every day he might not have noticed or it might not have happened. Con knew enough to realize that orders and restrictions would be little help now. He’d tried, but it was a job for two, and he’d been too long away.
All he could do now was feed them, see they had clothes, try to give them what he could. And the most important thing to give Junior was a man to be proud of, a man to pattern himself after, a regular guy whom everyone liked. The boy needn’t know it was all a lie, that his father was an oddball who walked alone, ate alone, and lived a solitary life, cut off from the men he lived with every hour of the day.
How long since he had lain in the arms of a woman? Given himself with all there was in him, and taken as much? It had been years, so long now it was only the memory. Clara had been different before, and he had been a rising star.
What happened in that crash? What happened in those roaring moments when his car had gone screaming into a skid and rolled over and over to have Perroni’s powerful racer rip through and over him? What had allowed his body to recover but torn his heart out by the roots, left him helpless and tongue-tied?
Someday it would happen again. Every time he went down the ladder to the floor plates, he felt it coming. There would be a time when a ship would sink in a sea of flaming oil, when he would die with the screams of burning men mingling with his own. It would come; the flames would get him in the end. The only thing that remained was his son; the only thing that mattered was giving his son a memory to cling to, an example of a respected and competent man.
It was hard. Too damned hard. Kids saw things so clearly; they realized so much even when you thought you were fooling them. He looked at the boy again, listened to him talking about football, about boxing, about the racing cars his father had driven, telling him how the coach had read them accounts of “Speeder” O’Brien’s races, and told all the boys at school how much nerve that took, and what a fine sportsman Speeder O’Brien had been.
But Speeder O’Brien had died back there on that track. And here he was, a pitiful shell of a man, putting up a front for his son, trying to give him an illusion to cling to.
He knew all Clara wanted now was a meal ticket, a place to live and enough to eat. She was young and pretty when they married, she had come to the races and had gotten what all her friends had wanted: a brave, and possibly reckless, young driver. The center of attention. Then there was the wreck and all that excitement turned to horror…but she had stuck with him and borne children. He owed her. He owed her the money he made, if nothing else.
If she’d sunk into a way of living that was without effort, it was partly his fault. The kids came and went much as they wished, and Con O’Brien kept on because it was all he could do, it was all he had left.
Sometimes he found himself wishing for another mother for his children, for some girl who would be to him all that a woman could have been. Vaguely, he felt that he might shake off his sense of tension and isolation if there was only someone who cared, someone who understood and could help him just a little.
“Look, Dad!” Junior said suddenly. “There’s Miss Lane!”
“Who?”
“Miss Lane. She’s my teacher. She sure is swell, too.”
Con O’Brien looked up to see a slender young woman coming toward them. She was pretty—very pretty, in fact. She had the sort of bright, laughing brown eyes that never seem to change as the years pass, and a simple way of dressing and doing her hair. She came up to the table, holding out her hand to Junior.
“Why, Connie! I thought you’d be home studying your history lessons and here I find you eating ice cream!”
Junior grinned. “I got that history, Miss Lane.” He made an expressive gesture with his hand. “It’s right in the groove! And this is my father.”
“Oh!” He felt the quick warmth of her glance and he stood for the introduction.
“How do you do? Connie has been telling us so much about you, about your trips to China and Japan, about the ship when it was in the storm that time off the coast of Chile. So many interesting stories! He keeps a map to show where you are.”
“I’m afraid he’s been talking too much,” Con said, his face flushing as he realized that wasn’t quite what he wanted to say or how he wanted to say it. “Um, sit—sit down?”
Another boy had come in and was making motions to Junior. “Dad,” Connie said eagerly. “There’s Dave. I’ll be back in a minute.” And then he was gone.
“Well!” Miss Lane said, laughing. “It looks like we’ve been deserted!” Her quick eyes saw his uncertainty. “But we can wait, can’t we?”
They sat down,
and Con groped for something to say, but there was nothing. He took his glass and swallowed a mouthful of water, then put it down and stared desperately after Junior. He could talk to his family, but those were subjects…subjects already raised. He could give orders to his crew; he knew what they had to do. He could feel every stitch, the pathways of mended flesh in his face. He heard her saying, “Connie tells me you are an engineer, Mr. O’Brien. Have you been going to sea long?”
“Um—twenty years,” he said, looking at her. The look wasn’t his usual glare; he could feel the difference. It was more like when he talked to Junior about engines. He took a breath. “I don’t talk to people very well. I don’t—I guess I don’t know the trouble—what the trouble is. Ever since the accident—there was a car crash. I don’t care to, um—I can’t talk much.”
“You seem to be doing all right now,” Miss Lane said. “Connie is always telling me about how you are such a wonderful engineer and a good officer to your men.”
He flushed. Then he looked up, his mouth tight. “I guess…I like machines. They—well, you don’t have to—they know what they have to do.
“M-Most of that about me being, um—that was lies.” He groped painfully, wanting her to understand. “On the ship—I guess they think I’m off my course. I can’t talk—so well. The equipment, it has to be—has to be right. Connie, I—I want him to think…”
His face was red from effort, and he stopped, glaring down at the table and twisting his glass in his fingers, turning it round and round, wishing it was a ratchet driver. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. “You see, things aren’t—um, at home. You know, well his mother’s pretty busy, and—an’ well…” There were so many things he wanted to express to his wife and daughter, but the words had deserted him long ago. But now…well, it wasn’t easy, but he was talking.
“Yes, I know.” Marcella Lane was remembering the one time she had called on Clara O’Brien: the stuffy, untidy room, and the woman she couldn’t quite believe was actually the one she was seeking. “But Connie’s a fine boy. He learns so fast; his mind is so quick and eager. It’s nice to work with him.”
Con O’Brien looked up gratefully. “I wish I could be with him a lot. But—well, I have to work, and it isn’t—isn’t easy for me to get work.”
He stopped. There was something warm and friendly about this girl, something that made it easier to talk. Suddenly, he found himself wishing his suit was pressed, and he was glad he had shaved.
Abruptly, he looked up. “I can’t be keeping you like this. Connie will be back in a minute, and…”
“That’s all right, Mr. O’Brien. I like talking to you. Connie’s a lot like you.”
He found himself suddenly choked up—he so wanted to be like his happy carefree son. From some strange distance he felt that ecstatic freedom he had once found behind the wheel of a car: throttle wide, heat pouring off the exposed pipes, engine howling. In some poor but effective way, this woman had given him a few words and opened his heart a fraction.
* * *
—
It was over an hour later when he and Connie walked back up the steps to the house. Con O’Brien entered slowly, hating to return, wishing there was somewhere else to go. Jane was there, sitting in a big chair with her legs over the arm. She looked up, and Con tried to talk to her a minute. But it was different than with Junior. He embarrassed her; he could feel it, feel her pull back. These days she was more of a stranger than Clara.
In the morning he would return to the ship, prepare it for the next few weeks. He’d come ashore fearing the time he’d have to spend at home, but even with Jane’s distance, even with his problems with Clara, he was happy. Just why, he couldn’t say, but somehow it felt different. Was it only because of Junior? Or was it also because of Marcella Lane? But what difference could she make to him? Would he even see her again?
Long after he went to bed, he lay there staring up into the dark. Maybe, after all, there could be something left for him. When he fell asleep at last, it was with the picture of Marcella Lane, and with the sound of her voice, talking to him as if she enjoyed it.
THE PRIVATE LOG OF JOHN HARLAN, SECOND MATE
March 25th: There is a vague uneasiness about this trip that will not leave. Queer, that such a feeling can affect one so much. It is as though something has been left undone, something we are all forgetting. Is it merely the act of leaving, that sense I have mentioned before about one never returning the same? Well, I will not be returning. Perhaps that is it—this time there are many things left undone…a life that is being left behind.
O’Brien, surprisingly enough, seems singularly cheerful this trip. Several times he has talked to me, first about the Samuel Butler novel, and then very rationally about his boy and how he was starting to play basketball. Funny, I’d never imagined him to have a son. Wonder what kind of kid he is.
Some of our restlessness may come from the sea. After all, we cannot help but realize the tremendous power that lies beneath us, that at best we only steam across it by pure good fortune. As for the seas, Man has conquered them, but men have not. That isn’t paradoxical, for while men have drowned and their ships sunk, Man continues to follow the ways of the sea. However, I can imagine a time when Man will be no more. To my way of thinking, Man’s tenure upon the Earth is coupled with too much uncertainty for one ever to be sure of anything.
For instance, a very slight change in atmospheric conditions or a difference of a few degrees of temperature, and we might no longer exist. A plague resulting from those new conditions, or any one of a multitude of other things, might severely alter our development. Man tries to learn all the rules, tries to build walls about himself to withstand the elements and the forces of his own civilization, and to protect himself from all danger, yet there is so little that can be done.
In the grand scheme of things Man is transitory, but that vast power that is the sea will remain, and from it will spring new life.
Sometimes at night I walk out on the wing of the bridge and stare down as the ship slips through the starlit sea. Here and there down below will be the white eye of a porthole. And always the mutter of the engines. I see the shadow of the man on lookout pacing back and forth across the bow, hear him sound the bells. I look within and see the solemn figure standing at the wheel, his face lighted by the faint halo from the binnacle of the compass. Always the man at the wheel impresses me as a priest officiating at some sacred rite. Why, I wonder, do men always speak softly in the wheelhouse at night? Is it merely the power and eternal nature of the sea?
When the moon is bright one can look back along the wake and see the water boiling from the ship’s passing. Yet it is a short trail. What remains to tell of our passing? What remains to tell of the passing of anyone? Our children, perhaps?
Sometimes I think that all that is wrong in the world stems from a belief that this life is only a beginning. I believe Man is wrong to ascribe his nobleness to gods, for in knowledge of his own nobility lies his greatest strength and goodness. Man is only so much as he believes himself to be, and all these things he has created, written, painted, or sung—are they not fine? I believe that when Man comes to believe and trust in himself instead of looking beyond the stars for salvation, when he accepts that his world is no better than he makes it, then I believe Man can at last glimpse strength, greatness, and something of beauty.
Bah! I am serious tonight. Wouldn’t it be better to pick up my Voltaire and chuckle with him? We need a new Voltaire now, and I’d like to read what he would say of war, of the gold standard, and American politics. But, in a way, we have our Voltaires—only now they are cartoonists. They will, before this era has passed, have copied the absurdities of our civilization on paper, copied them in almost wordless caricatures that betray all the shameful ridiculousness of our modern world. What will future generations make of our United States, where the two parties viciously attack any i
dea advanced by their opposite, no matter how good it might be for the nation?
None of it makes much sense. Even our lives on this ship don’t make much sense. I am leaving my marriage behind, and Mr. Wesley is planning for his. Pete Brouwer wants to go home to Amsterdam, Davy Jones has left his home behind. Mahoney growls and gets drunk; Carter, another oiler, is a religious fanatic and attacks Mahoney for drunkenness when his own intolerance is just another form of intoxication. O’Brien rarely wants to leave his beloved engine room, but Augie Donato dresses in over-loud clothes and every minute he can he goes ashore—to what?
I think too often of the crew as a unit. I struggle to set down my thoughts about them to keep each separate, to fight the tendency of those of us on the upper decks to see them simply as bodies that arrive and sign the articles, become part of our company, and then pay off or jump ship. Nameless men each moving on their own course.
This morning at four, coming off watch, I remembered a message for Pete Brouwer, and went aft to the seaman’s fo’c’stle. I walked down the passageway and stood in the door for a moment, staring inside. A dim light was burning overhead, and the two tiers of bunks, one along each bulkhead, were hung with curtains. There were benches before the bunks, someone had left a locker door open, and it moved slightly with the roll of the ship.
As it moved, the men’s bodies rolled slightly, each one a gray-blanketed duplicate of the others, each movement alike, each bunk framed in dull gray pipe. It was dark, and silent. I stepped into the room and could see that Pete was already asleep. Yet, once I was inside the fo’c’stle the similarity in the men vanished, for the expression of each was different. Men are not so alike when they sleep, and there was each man, alone now, and unsuspecting. I felt that I had intruded, and so slipped quietly back up to the deck and the stars, then went forward to give myself to the same helplessness.
No Traveller Returns (Lost Treasures) Page 11