Sons from Afar (32 page)

She knew he was joking. “Right you are. Anything they want. For good or ill—and it's been both, in my experience.”

“Not me,” Sammy said. His face was only slightly swollen but the bruises were still discoloring his flesh; he still looked pretty bad. “I can't.”

Sammy just didn't know much about himself yet, James thought. “Don't be stupid,” he advised.

“You ought to make up your mind what you think of me.”

But James knew what he thought of his brother. How could Sammy not know that?

“And you can't stop me from singing in chorus either. You can't keep me from doing what I want. I'm a Tillerman too.”

Sammy didn't even hear the contradictions in what he was saying, James thought. He wondered if the trouble was that Sammy didn't know what he thought of himself. James could sympathize with that.

S
ammy felt okay about things as long as the marks were on his face—the tender swellings, the big splotchy yellowed bruises—and on his body, too, with that arm that didn't hurt at all but looked pretty bad. He liked the excitement. Not at home, where they didn't pay much attention once they knew he was all right, but at school. The teachers and girls were sympathetic; the boys were envious. It made Sammy feel good about things: He was the kind of guy who got involved in a brawl, and didn't mind the danger or the getting hurt. He told Custer all about the fight. “You should have heard my brother. It was this real ruckus, and everybody in there was afraid of this guy, Chief they called him, who was lambasting me, and somebody had James pinned against the bar, and James just talked like . . .” Sammy couldn't think of anyone else who ever had talked like that. “He was just so cool-headed, and smart, and—he saved my skin.”

“Wow,” Custer said, as he had throughout the story. “I don't believe you really did that.”

“I did,” Sammy answered him. Feeling good.

But when, all too quickly, the hematoma subsided and his bruises faded away, Sammy didn't feel so terrific. He knew he could have gotten himself really hurt. He knew he'd been pretty stupid.

Sammy didn't know what to think: He knew he'd been stupid
and he knew he'd been brave and he didn't know where the one ended and the other began. He envied James, because broken bones were more real than bruises, even if they didn't show; and James always knew what to think because he was practically a genius, or something.

Sammy knew what the trouble was—he needed something to do. Crabbing, gardening, they were jobs he did but they didn't—they weren't
doing
something, not like tennis was. Tennis, you tried, you pushed yourself as hard as you could, you worked up a sweat. The other things, you worked and you sweated, but you didn't keep getting better at them. But Sammy didn't see how he was going to get any tennis in, not until practically the end of the summer. Mina was off on a European tour with the chorus from her college. She'd be back, but by that time Sammy would be so rusty he wouldn't be able to play against her. He could take tennis for his sport next year. But that was a whole summer away. He was tired of always having to wait for things. Always having not to have what he wanted. Even as he was thinking that, he knew it wasn't true—it wasn't even half true, and Sammy didn't know what he was doing having thoughts like that anyway. Sammy didn't know what the trouble was with him.

Rather than think about himself, Sammy concentrated on getting the summer organized. A couple of weekends before school got out, he invited Robin over after school on Friday, to introduce the kid to what the work would be like. They rode out on the bus together, then walked up the driveway to have a snack before taking the boat out. Robin didn't say anything much, just the polite things like the gingerbread was good and yes, please, he would like more milk. They didn't stay long in the kitchen. The sky was hanging low, as if it might rain, so they hustled on down to the dock.

Robin fastened himself into a life preserver and kept quiet
while Sammy got the boat ready. Sammy rocked the heavy motor forward, freed the catch, then lowered it gently into place. He pumped up gas from the five-gallon container. He cast off the bowline, and then, with the stern line loose in his hand, pulled on the starter until the motor caught. He threw the stern line over the dock, where they could pick it up easily when they returned, shifted into forward, and they chugged on off into the bay. Heading out.

Robin sat up in the bow, in the little triangular seat with orange life jackets jammed under it, on top of the anchor. He had his feet neatly side by side. After a few minutes in the open, he put on the sweater Sammy had made him borrow. Sammy didn't say a word. The boat cut through the tops of the little waves.

Sammy headed south. He had baited three traps that morning, and the metal cages were lined across the floor at his feet, with their plastic-bottle floats inside. He thought they'd just set three traps, just to give Robin the idea. He didn't plan to keep anything they might catch. Gram was making fried chicken for dinner, with her special gravy to go over the rice, the green beans they'd canned last year mixed in with tomatoes they'd put up, and chocolate cake for dessert. It was the meal Sammy had asked her to cook. It was Sammy's favorite meal.

For a while, Sammy just drove the boat along. It didn't matter where they set the traps—he didn't expect to catch any crabs, not this early in the season. Then he waved Robin back to the stern and put the tiller into the boy's hands. He sat in the center seat, to be handy in case Robin got into trouble. Robin kept them going straight for a while. Then he tried to make turns. It took him a few tries to get used to the backward way the steering worked. While he was making mistakes, the boat swooped sideways under Sammy, pushing him this way and that on the seat as Robin saw that he was going in the opposite direction to that which he'd intended,
and overcorrected. They moved gradually toward the shore, and the details of the shoreline came into focus.

Sammy watched Robin making the usual mistakes, and watched the rim of growth that went right up to the low shelf of land, scrubs, and trees. He saw the way the water ate away under the trees at the very edge. It was a process that took only a few years once it got started. First the water would find a place to eat away at the bank, then it would gradually uncover the root system of the tree, as if the water were some kind of archaeologist, gently uncovering treasure buried within the earth. After a while, when the water had undermined enough, a little overhanging ledge of dirt was formed, which crumbled downward, and the process of erosion began again. The sides of the bay were filled with trees that had been felled in this gentle fashion. Snags, they were called.

All along the shoreline, snags lay half in, half out of the water. Some of them had lost all their branches and were beginning the final steps of decomposition. All had that bleached gray-brown color of dead wood soaked in salty water. They could be dangerous to boats, so when Robin came too close to the shore Sammy just pointed toward open water. He was pulled sideways by Robin's sudden response. When he'd regained his balance, he indicated with a gesture of his hand that Robin should speed up, and he was pushed forward onto the crab traps by the sudden burst of speed. He was laughing as he regained his seat, but Robin's face was serious, concentrating.

Sammy leaned forward. He had to yell to be heard over the motor. “Slow down, really a lot. I'll show you how to drop a trap.”

Robin obeyed, handling the accelerator much too delicately now, overcorrecting again. Sammy took one of the traps, pulled out the float, and freed the feet of lightweight line that connected
the float to the trap. When the boat was finally moving slowly enough, he caught Robin's eye and showed him how to stand up against the side of the boat, with the float in your right hand and the trap hanging closed from your left. As Robin watched, he dropped the trap into the water and immediately hurled the float out over the little gray waves. The line drifted out behind the float, to be pulled down by the descending trap.

The motor choked, sputtered, and died. The silence that fell over them was filled with water sounds, waves and wind. “I'm sorry,” Robin said. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. You just cut the speed too low. It happens. It's not serious. We'll just start the engine again. It works like a lawn-mower.”

“What if it won't start?”

“Then we'll row.” The oars lay under the seats, out of the way but accessible.

“I don't know how to row.”

“It's not hard.” It sounded like Robin was trying to avoid being at the tiller. “How about if you drop the next two traps?”

They shifted seats. Robin's hands were clumsy, as Sammy had thought they would be, this first time handling the equipment. He didn't start the motor until Robin had unsnarled the line and stood in the right position.

“You have to be careful to toss the float out, to keep the line away from the propeller blades,” Sammy warned Robin.

Robin nodded. “Because it could cut them,” he explained.

“Not so much that as because the line could get tangled up in the blades and then the motor wouldn't work. It takes a while to free the prop when it's snarled.”

“What about the boat, how would you keep it from drifting out to sea or something?”

The kid didn't know anything about the bay if he thought it
would be easy to get swept away to sea from Crisfield. It was possible, but it wouldn't happen easily. Robin was more anxious about this than Sammy had realized.

“We'd drop anchor,” he explained. “The anchor's under the life preservers,” he said, answering Robin's next question before the boy even thought to ask.

When Sammy looked up to check Robin's position, he saw the brown eyes looking at him with something he had to name admiration. He turned a wide circle to head back to where the float bobbled on waves that flowed by, up and down, under it. Sammy didn't mind being admired.

“Now,” he called. The trap dropped, sinking rapidly into invisibility. Robin tossed the float well out and away. He bent down without being told, to get the third trap ready, and Sammy thought to himself that it might take a day or two to show him how to do things, but Robin was going to work out all right.

With all three traps set, Sammy cut the motor and let the boat drift along parallel to the distant shore. Robin watched the floats, which seemed to grow gradually smaller and smaller. “Don't you lose them?” he asked.

“Nope.” Sammy looked at the gray water, then let his eyes go up to the gray sky. On the earth side, white wisps blew loose from the massed gray clouds. If you could cut through those clouds, the sun would be shining, on the sky side.

Sammy thought the wind was rising, just a little. But they only had time for a couple of runs along the line of traps anyway; he just wanted to give Robin the feel of pulling up the traps and hanging around in the boat, a feeling for the way the work went. Sammy leaned back against the bulwarks, letting his feet rest against the opposite side of the boat. The boat floated under him. The muggy air blanketed him. At the moment, he couldn't think of anything he'd change about the whole world.

“My mom says,” Robin remarked, “that even considering your family you're still unusually self-reliant. She really likes you.”

Sammy smiled: He'd thought so; he hoped so. He lay back, lazy. His body was tuned to the movements of the boat; his eyes automatically watched the sky he knew almost exactly how far they were from shore and where he'd head in case of a squall or any trouble—he guessed you could say he was self-sufficient.

“Dad says you've got a crush on her,” Robin talked on.

Sammy made his face a mask. He didn't want his face giving anything away, even though he wasn't sure what there was for his face to keep secret. He kept his eyes on the water's surface.

“He says,” Robin laughed, “he doesn't blame you, he has a crush on her himself.”

Sammy wasn't interested in any of that. He sat up, bringing his feet down with a thud. “Mothers, parents—sometimes it looks like they like their kids' friends when the friends are the way they want their kids to be. The way they wish their kids were.”

Hearing himself, he didn't think he'd made much sense, but Robin followed his thought. “Did yours?” Robin asked.

“What?”

“Is that what your mother did too?”

“No,” Sammy said. He'd never thought about comparing his mother to other mothers. He wondered if that was because he knew how bad she'd look, compared to other mothers. “She didn't do the usual things. She wasn't like most people.”

“What was she like?”

Sammy never talked about Momma; he almost never really thought about her; he just remembered. But floating along in the boat, he wanted to say something. “She played with me, she was fun. Her hair was long and soft—it kind of shone.” He remembered that. Remembering that hurt, but it was a good kind of
pain. “I was pretty little when she died, but I think now,” he thought aloud, “she was the kind of person who might be too gentle. You know?” The kind of person who needed taking care of—he couldn't stop himself from thinking—and his father was the kind of man who didn't take care of things. And Sammy—he'd made Momma take care of him. Which couldn't have helped her out any. “She played with me,” he insisted. “We had fun. She liked me.”

“We play Scrabble a lot and she always beats me,” Robin said. “But I don't mind, and I'm getting better, too.”

“She liked me exactly the way I am,” Sammy said. “Or was.” He guessed, thinking back, Momma had done that, liked people just the way they were instead of wishing they were someone else. Including his father. “But she really wasn't like other people.”

“Because she was sick?” Robin guessed.