The Americans by John Jakes Page B

Tomorrow was time enough to look into the job at the processing plant; tonight he was glad to be going home. He knew Gideon and Julia would be gone by six o'clock; some civic banquet or other. He spent his last few cents for a large tin pail of beer, entered the house by the rear entrance and took the back stairs up to Will's room. His relationskip with his stepbrother was the one bright spot left in his life. The younger boy continued to take Carter just as he was, faults and all. He never mentioned the recent troubles which were common knowledge even among the servants. "Greetings, little brother," Carter said as he entered Will's room. "Look what I brought." He displayed the compail. Grinning, Will jumped up from his desk. "Beer?" "Right you are. Lock the door. Some of the servants are too blasted nosey to suit me." Carter had given Will his first taste of beer only a couple of months earlier. The younger boy didn't care for the stuff, but he was anxious to make Carter think he was grown up and worldly. And he was more than happy to put his geometry text aside. He liked his courses at the Boston Lathi School about as much as he liked beer. Still, good marks were necessary for admission to Harvard. Carter continually encouraged him to go there, even after his own dismissal. So Will studied hard. Without being fully aware of it, he was already trying to disprove what the voice from the past said about him. He bolted the door. Carter propped a couple of cushions against the black haircloth sofa and sat down with his back against them. He swigged from the pail, then handed it to the younger boy. . "Where have you been all day?" Will asked. "Still hunting for a job?" Carter nodded. Then, sounding almost irritable, he said, "Go on. Drink up or let me have it back." Will frowned. He lifted the pail to his lips. Carter watched his stepbrother drink, wince, and stifle a cough. But he didn't laugh. He wouldn't have embarrassed Will for the world. "That's good," Will declared without conviction. Carter reclaimed the pail and gulped as the younger boy went on, "I'm sorry you're having a hard time finding work. I'm sorry you decided to quit the publishing house." "It was either that or be fired." He'd told Will that the decision had been his. Gideon had never said anything to the contrary in Will's presence. "I hate to say anything against your father, but he acts pretty high and mighty around that place. I got tired of him ordering me around." "Don't apologize. I'm starting to feel the same way myself." "Well, don't let me influence you." Carter took another long drink. Will observed the older boy's every move, admiration in his eyes. "Gideon and Mother still have confidence in you," Carter went on. "They've given up on me. Mother thinks I'm too much like my real father to amount to anything." Will looked shocked. "She doesn't say that, does she?" Carter's answer was a truthful one: "No, never in so many words." "They why do you feel it?" Carter's dark eyes seemed to search past the younger boy into some lost time or place. "I don't really know. But I'm positive she and Gideon believe I'm a good-for- nothing-exactly like the late Mr. Louis Kent." "Maybe you feel that way because too many people have told you how bad your father was." A shrug. "Like father, like son. There must be something to an old saying like that. Else why is it a saying in the first place?" He gulped from the pail again. Carter's dour mood upset the younger boy. Will sat down beside his stepbrother and changed the subject: "What are you going to do now that you don't have to go to Harvard?" "I hear there's a fish processing plant looking for men. I'm going to inquire there tomorrow. What a comedown for a member of the Kent family-smelling like hake or market cod twenty-four hours a day." "I didn't mean what are you going to do about working," Will said. "I mean what are you going to do for the rest of your life?" "It's easy to answer that." He smiled in a humorless