Sons from Afar (6 page)

“For pete's sake, James,” Dicey said. “What kind of a flea have you got up your nose now? How am I supposed to remember something that wasn't even important then?”

Defeated, James went past Sammy and back to his own room, where he turned out the light and got into bed. He lay there in the darkness, with his eyes open. He couldn't see anything.

S
ammy watched James leave the room. He listened to the way James's feet scuffed along the hall floor and the careful way he closed his bedroom door. Poor old James. Sammy leaned his naked shoulder against the doorframe. Dicey was ignoring him. He folded his arms and waited. James just didn't know how to deal with Dicey.

She was leaning back in her chair, with her legs stretched out on the desk. Her bare feet were crossed at the ankles. She didn't look at Sammy.

Sammy grinned. She'd get the message pretty soon.

He watched her face get the message, until she couldn't stop herself from smiling and turned to look at him. “Okay. What do you want?”

“Why didn't you tell him? He only wanted to know.”

“Because I don't feel like talking about it. I don't feel like talking. I've got these two stupid papers to write.”

“So what,” Sammy said, “But—”

“But what?”

Sammy didn't want to say what he was thinking. He was thinking,
But what about poor old James?
He didn't know why James was suddenly so interested in this father of theirs, but there was no way for him to find out anything. If Dicey did know something, Sammy didn't think she ought to just brush James off like
that. If she stopped to think about it, she wouldn't think she ought to either. Sammy went across the room and sat on the bed. Dicey pulled her feet down and turned around in her chair. She sat backward in it, with her arms resting along the top, her chin resting on her arms. “I've got papers to write, Sammy.”

“I don't care,” Sammy said. “Just telling me won't take long, and then I'll go away. That would be the quickest way.”

She chewed on her lower lip, deciding whether to be angry with him. He didn't let any expression onto his face. He figured she'd see the sense of it and tell him. He knew she'd rather talk than work on her papers anyway, which was why she was trying to get out of talking. That was the way Dicey treated herself. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Give me a minute to remember.”

Sammy gave her all the time she wanted. She was looking at him but not seeing him, remembering. He looked at his sister, at Dicey: He knew she wasn't perfect, but there wasn't anything he'd change about her. Most people wouldn't agree, but he thought she was fine looking; he liked the way her eyes saw things and reacted, he liked the way she held her chin high, he liked the way her body looked, lots of angles. Her desk was set right below a window that faced east, so that in daylight she could look over to the pines, beyond which the water lay. He liked the way Dicey liked the water.

On one wall, she had a big bulletin board. Before she went away to college, that bulletin board had been filled, with notes and reminders from Dicey to herself—about what hours she was supposed to work at Millie Tydings's grocery store, what school-work was due, things she wanted to be sure not to forget. There were also pictures on it: a photograph Jeff had taken of her moored sailboat; a couple of magazine pictures of big ocean-racing yachts, their sails trimmed against an ocean wind; and an old cartoon Jeff had given to her, years ago, its paper turning
brown with age, as if it had coffee stains on it. In the cartoon, there was a maze built in a box, but the mouse that was supposed to run around the maze to find food, or something, had chewed a hole in the floor and was busy tunneling its way to freedom. Sammy liked that cartoon. There were no pictures of people on Dicey's bulletin board. Sammy knew why, whatever other people might think. He knew that Dicey carried her people close in her heart, and didn't need any photographs to remind her. He looked back at her face. It was good to have Dicey home again.

“And what's so funny?” she asked him.

“Nothing, I'm just feeling good,” he said.

“Yeah. It's so good to be here—” and her quick smile washed over her face. “I think, it feels so good I'm trying to make it feel bad with these papers. You know?”

“That's really stupid,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” she said, and he laughed. “Okay, here's what I know. It isn't much. His name was Francis Verricker. He was a sailor, a merchant seaman.”

“We knew that. They probably called him Frank, don't you think?”

“The policeman in Bridgeport—you never met him, did you?”

“You kept sneaking around,” Sammy reminded her. “You kept putting me to bed, and things.”

“Cripes, Sammy, you were only six years old. The policeman said, when they were trying to trace him, that he was wanted. By the police. I don't know what for, but I remember once, in Provincetown, when you were maybe not even born yet or just a baby, some policeman came and asked Momma questions.”

“What do you think he did?”

“I never thought about it,” Dicey said. “I never thought about him much, if you want the truth. I never wanted to because—well,
it wouldn't do any good, would it? And if I did . . . it made me angry.”

“What he did to Momma?” Sammy knew that feeling.

“He must have been pretty rotten to just—leave her.”

Sammy agreed. It didn't bother him, it didn't have anything to do with him, but he asked, “So you think it's something James doesn't really want to know about?”

“Is there anything James doesn't want to know? What's got into him, anyway?”

Sammy had no idea. “It just came up one night. He brought it up. Maybe it's been bothering him. Something's bothering him.”

“And baseball,” Dicey said. “Who'd ever have thought of James playing baseball. Or going out for any sport.”

“Sometimes, I think he's just weird,” Sammy said.

“With all his life mapped out that way?”

“No, it's not that, so much. It's—” As he spoke, Sammy heard what he was saying, and realized what he had been thinking without really admitting it to himself. “It's as if he was embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed? What about?”

“I dunno. Embarrassed at himself.”

Now he had Dicey's full attention. Her dark hazel eyes were fixed on his face. Dicey's full attention was pretty fierce, but he didn't mind; he gave her his own full attention back.

“By embarrassed, do you mean ashamed?” she asked.

“I don't know. Maybe. I hope not. I dunno, Dicey. I don't understand him at all, much.”

“Me neither, after a point. What does Gram think?”

“She hasn't said. She doesn't trust book learning, she always says that, but—”

“I should
be
here. I shouldn't be away at school.”

Sammy knew what she meant. But Gram was right, he thought. “No, you should go to college.”

“Why?”

“Because you're smart.”

Dicey shook her head; that wasn't reason enough.

“And because Gram wants you to,” Sammy said.

“Yeah,” Dicey admitted. “Look, will you keep an eye on James? I shouldn't have just dismissed him like that, should I have?”

“No,” Sammy said.

“I'll tell him in the morning,” Dicey said. “He'll be asleep now. Eating and sleeping, James can always do those.”

“Me too,” Sammy said.

“Then why don't you do that,” his sister said. “And I'll knock off one of these horrible papers. In peace and quiet. Without being interrupted. Without any little brother here asking me questions.”

Sammy was giggling as he got up from the bed. “I can take a hint. But Dicey—”

She was turning herself around again and didn't want to be interrupted. “What is it now?”

“Is Mina going to be home?”

“In a week. Why, what is it, are you looking for some tennis?”

“She'll be so much better than I am.”

“You know that doesn't matter. She likes playing with you.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said. “She taught me how, didn't she. Good night.”

“Good
night
.”

He turned at the doorway, to say “See you” because he would, for almost two weeks, and that felt good.

Dicey would tell James. Like Sammy, she did what she said she'd do. So Sammy forgot about it. He got on with his own life,
which he liked just fine. Mina did come home, and after a couple of days Sammy could give her a good game. He went to school, which he didn't mind. The classes were easy, and never gave him any trouble. During recesses, he played soccer, a pickup game run by his friend Custer. Custer played center forward on one team, and Sammy played center half on the other. As seventh graders, the biggest kids in the school, they claimed the wide center section of the playground. Sammy liked the running in soccer, because he was fast. He liked having the ball at his foot, under control, trapping it, moving it around the opposition, shooting off a pass. Every now and then, when he felt like it, he'd take it on down the field himself and score the goal. Ernie, whom he'd known as long as Custer, since second grade, played goalie. Ernie wasn't a friend. He'd been a big second grader, a sneak and a bully too; he'd gotten away with that in second grade. But they'd caught up with him in size, most of them, anyway Sammy had, and now Ernie was just an overweight sneak. He pretended to like Sammy, and they hadn't had any fights since fourth grade. The last time, Sammy had rolled Ernie around in the dirt, had sat on his back and pounded on his shoulders until he quit, almost crying. Ernie never came close to an argument with him after that. Sammy couldn't even remember what that last fight had been about.

One Friday noon, a couple of days before Dicey had to go back to school, Sammy drifted out to the playground after lunch. Sunlight washed over the scene—the little kids digging in the sandbox or riding on the swings or just running around after each other, some older girls walking and talking, as if they were already ladies going shopping, the soccer game at the center. Off against the cyclone fence, behind the tall swings, a few kids worked with lacrosse sticks. Sammy didn't feel like soccer, so he drifted over to watch the lacrosse. The sun felt warm on the top
of his head, and the fence was hung with bright sweaters kids had peeled off in the warm noon air. With the sweaters hung over it, or tied through it, the fence looked like some kind of cartoon clothesline.

“Hi, Sammy, how are you,” some girl's voice called behind him, but he ignored that. There were maybe ten seventh graders playing with the long-handled lacrosse sticks, scooping up the ball and then cradling it before making a pass. Sammy moved up beside another kid who stood watching, holding a stick. Sammy didn't even look at the kid, because he was interested in the game. There didn't seem to be any positions. People ran around, crashed into one another, caught and cradled, and swung their sticks almost like broadswords to knock the ball out of the shallow net of an opponent's stick. “Where are the goals?” Sammy asked, his eyes on the moving figures.

“That bush,” the kid waved a hand to the right, then to the left, “and they've got a sweatshirt on the ground.”

Sammy turned to look at the boy. He was a skinny kid, with brown hair flat on his head, and brown eyes that kept looking at Sammy and then away, as if he was nervous. “Are you using that stick?” Sammy asked.

“Not right now,” the boy said. He'd come new to school in February, Sammy remembered, but he wasn't in any of Sammy's classes so Sammy had no idea what his name was.

“Could I try it for a minute?” Sammy asked.

The kid didn't want to give it to him but didn't know how to say no. He handed it over without a word.

Sammy held the stick in his hands for a minute, getting the feel of it, getting the balance of it. He wrapped his hands around the long octagonal handle, imitating the way the players held theirs. He practiced cradling the empty pocket, elbows in, shoulders moving. “Looks easier than it is,” he remarked to the kid.

“Umnnh,” the boy answered, the way you do when you know you have to say something but don't know what the right thing to say is.

There was a lull in the scrimmage. “Hey!” Sammy called over. He picked out Tom Childress to ask. “Can I come in?”

Tom was breathing hard, and sweat ran down his chocolate-colored skin. “Yeah, sure. Make it fast.”

“I never played before,” Sammy told them.

They didn't mind. Tom said he should play defense, told him what team he was on, and the game started up again. Sammy missed a couple of catches before he figured out how to handle the stick, how to hold it out and scoop up a rolling ball, how to swoop it sideways to pick up a pass and be already cradling when the ball came into the pocket. He played back, at first, and then—the ball safely held—he charged up the center, watching for someone to break free to receive a pass. “Move up!” he called to Tom. Tom started moving, while Sammy twisted around an attacker. He brought his stick around to his right, to toss the ball to Tom, but there was a cracking sound before he could throw it. The stick was jerked out of his hands at the same time that he careened into somebody. Sammy fell pretty hard, fell over sideways, scraping his face into the ground. As soon as he hit, he rolled over and jumped up, bending down to pick up the stick. The play had gone on back toward the sweatshirt, which was their goal. While he ran back to try and stop the attack, Sammy wiped dirt off his cheek with his left hand. His right hand held the stick up, and ready. The goal was scored before he got there.

As play started again, Sammy watched the way the sticks could be used to check an opponent's progress, crashing down from behind to dislodge the ball, as had happened to him, or swinging straight across someone's chest. Three of the opponents charged toward him, passing the ball back and forth,
making another run down the field. They didn't run in a straight line, but wavered back and forth. Tom Childress moved in to stop their progress, using his body and his stick.