street.
There’s no reason to feel furtive walking in the early morning in New Baytown. Wee Willie makes little jokes about it but most people seeing me walking toward the bay at three in the morning would suppose I was going fishing and not give it another thought. Our people have all sorts of fishing theories, some of them secret like family recipes, and such things are respected and respectable.
The street lights made the hard white frost on the lawns and sidewalks glint like millions of tiny diamonds. Such a frost takes a footprint and there were none ahead. I have always from the time I was a child felt a curious excitement walking in new unmarked snow or frost. It is like being first in a new world, a deep, satisfying sense of discovery of something clean and new, unused, undirtied. The usual nightfolk, the cats, don’t like to walk on frost. I remember once, on a dare, I stepped out barefoot on a frosty path and it felt like a burn to my feet. But now in galoshes and thick socks I put the first scars on the glittering newness.
Where Porlock crosses Torquay, that’s where the bicycle factory is, just off Hicks Street, the clean frost was scarred with long foot-dragged tracks. Danny Taylor, a restless, unsteady ghost, wanting to be somewhere else and dragging there and wanting to be somewhere else. Danny, the town drunk. Every town has one, I guess. Danny Taylor—so many town heads shook slowly from side to side—good family, old family, last of the line, good education. Didn’t he have some trouble at the Academy? Why doesn’t he straighten up? He’s killing himself with booze and that’s wrong because Danny’s a gentleman. It’s a shame, begging money for booze. It’s a comfort that his parents aren’t alive to see it. It would kill them—but they’re dead already. But that’s New Baytown talking.
In me Danny is a raw sorrow and out of that a guilt. I should be able to help him. I’ve tried, but he won’t let me. Danny is as near to a brother as I ever had, same age and growing up, same weight and strength. Maybe my guilt comes because I am my brother’s keeper and I have not saved him. With a feeling that deep down, excuses—even valid ones—give no relief. Taylors— as old a family as Hawleys or Bakers or any of the others. In childhood I can remember no picnic, no circus, no competition, no Christmas without Danny beside me as close as my own right arm. Maybe if we had gone to college together this wouldn’t have happened. I went to Harvard—luxuriated in languages, bathed in the humanities, lodged in the old, the beautiful, the obscure, indulged myself with knowledge utterly useless in running a grocery store, as it developed. And always I wished Danny could be with me on that bright and excited pilgrimage. But Danny was bred for the sea. His appointment to the Naval Academy was planned and verified and certain even when we were kids. His father sewed up the appointment every time we got a new Congressman.
Three years with honors and then expelled. It killed his parents, they say, and it killed most of Danny. All that remained was this shuffling sorrow—this wandering night sorrow cadging dimes for a pint of skull-buster. I think the English would say, “He’s let the side down,” and that always wounds the let-downer more than the side. Danny’s a night wanderer now, an early-morning man, a lonely, dragging thing. When he asks for a quarter for skull-buster his eyes beg you to forgive him because he can’t forgive himself. He sleeps in a shack in back of the boat works where Wilburs used to be shipbuilders. I stooped over his track to see whether he was headed home or away. By the scuff of the frost he was going out and I might meet him any place. Wee Willie wouldn’t lock him up. What would be the good?
There was no question where I was going. I had seen and felt and smelled it before I got out of bed. The Old Harbor is pretty far gone now. After the new breakwater went in and
There’s no reason to feel furtive walking in the early morning in New Baytown. Wee Willie makes little jokes about it but most people seeing me walking toward the bay at three in the morning would suppose I was going fishing and not give it another thought. Our people have all sorts of fishing theories, some of them secret like family recipes, and such things are respected and respectable.
The street lights made the hard white frost on the lawns and sidewalks glint like millions of tiny diamonds. Such a frost takes a footprint and there were none ahead. I have always from the time I was a child felt a curious excitement walking in new unmarked snow or frost. It is like being first in a new world, a deep, satisfying sense of discovery of something clean and new, unused, undirtied. The usual nightfolk, the cats, don’t like to walk on frost. I remember once, on a dare, I stepped out barefoot on a frosty path and it felt like a burn to my feet. But now in galoshes and thick socks I put the first scars on the glittering newness.
Where Porlock crosses Torquay, that’s where the bicycle factory is, just off Hicks Street, the clean frost was scarred with long foot-dragged tracks. Danny Taylor, a restless, unsteady ghost, wanting to be somewhere else and dragging there and wanting to be somewhere else. Danny, the town drunk. Every town has one, I guess. Danny Taylor—so many town heads shook slowly from side to side—good family, old family, last of the line, good education. Didn’t he have some trouble at the Academy? Why doesn’t he straighten up? He’s killing himself with booze and that’s wrong because Danny’s a gentleman. It’s a shame, begging money for booze. It’s a comfort that his parents aren’t alive to see it. It would kill them—but they’re dead already. But that’s New Baytown talking.
In me Danny is a raw sorrow and out of that a guilt. I should be able to help him. I’ve tried, but he won’t let me. Danny is as near to a brother as I ever had, same age and growing up, same weight and strength. Maybe my guilt comes because I am my brother’s keeper and I have not saved him. With a feeling that deep down, excuses—even valid ones—give no relief. Taylors— as old a family as Hawleys or Bakers or any of the others. In childhood I can remember no picnic, no circus, no competition, no Christmas without Danny beside me as close as my own right arm. Maybe if we had gone to college together this wouldn’t have happened. I went to Harvard—luxuriated in languages, bathed in the humanities, lodged in the old, the beautiful, the obscure, indulged myself with knowledge utterly useless in running a grocery store, as it developed. And always I wished Danny could be with me on that bright and excited pilgrimage. But Danny was bred for the sea. His appointment to the Naval Academy was planned and verified and certain even when we were kids. His father sewed up the appointment every time we got a new Congressman.
Three years with honors and then expelled. It killed his parents, they say, and it killed most of Danny. All that remained was this shuffling sorrow—this wandering night sorrow cadging dimes for a pint of skull-buster. I think the English would say, “He’s let the side down,” and that always wounds the let-downer more than the side. Danny’s a night wanderer now, an early-morning man, a lonely, dragging thing. When he asks for a quarter for skull-buster his eyes beg you to forgive him because he can’t forgive himself. He sleeps in a shack in back of the boat works where Wilburs used to be shipbuilders. I stooped over his track to see whether he was headed home or away. By the scuff of the frost he was going out and I might meet him any place. Wee Willie wouldn’t lock him up. What would be the good?
There was no question where I was going. I had seen and felt and smelled it before I got out of bed. The Old Harbor is pretty far gone now. After the new breakwater went in and
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