Authors: Paige Farmer
The energetic beat faded away and transitioned smoothly to light piano notes.
“Say welcome to our lady Ella,” the disc jockey introduced. “Okay guys, find your girl and be someone to watch over
her
tonight…”
Elsie guided CJ back to their table, leaving Charlie and Nan staring clumsily at each other before Charlie shrugged his shoulders and held out one hand to her. A million different excuses drifted through her mind, but not one of them kept her from taking his outstretched hand. Well this is one hell of a plan, she thought to herself.
She stepped toward Charlie and put her left hand near the back of his neck as he used his right to circle her waist. He pulled Nan toward him and she closed her eyes breathing in deep, feeling the crisp cotton uniform against her cheek. He laid her palm on his chest and covered it with his own, stroking lightly with his thumb. Their bodies began to move in unison and it was as if they’d disappeared from the dance floor, the world dropping slowly away from around them. The rise and fall of the music matched the tempo of their breath and they could hear nothing else. Nan thought that she’d never in her life felt so safe.
Well, maybe just one other time.
It rained the day of Sam’s funeral, as it had every day since the accident. The train that hit him had not been a fast moving new fangled express, but one of the lumbering old B&M specials hauling iron and scrap between Boston and Portland. The engineer said it looked as if Sam might have tried to run, but only at the last second as the train bore down on him. Before that Sam had been staggering unevenly and apparently oblivious to his impending fate. Later her father’s pals from the docks confessed that they’d spent most of that Friday afternoon sitting at the State Street Saloon, knocking back shot after shot of whiskey. Many of them were now at the funeral looking shamefaced and dazed.
The group of mourners huddled around Sam’s casket under a ceiling of umbrellas while thick gray clouds wrung themselves out overhead. Nan wondered morbidly if the hole dug for her father’s body would fill with water before they could lower the pine casket into it. Standing between her mother and brothers, Nan glanced at Elsie as the minister did his best to outshout the escalating wind and torrential downpour. Most of her mother’s face was hidden by the widow’s veil that hung from her pillbox hat, but it didn’t come down far enough to mask the ferocious scowl and rigid set of her chin. It was the same furious look that swept over Elsie’s face when the two officers came to fetch her and tell her that Sam was dead. While Nan had seen her mother angry many, many times, she couldn’t remember her expression ever looking so hate filled.
The fights between her parents had diminished to some degree over the preceding few years, but only because Sam eventually stayed away from home much of the time. He was often gone before Nan got up and didn’t return home until well after they’d all retired to bed. When Nan did see her father it was usually in passing, he with his eyes trained on the floor and mumbling some weak hello. It was a rare occasion to see her parents in the same room together, which was perfectly okay with Nan given the edgy undercurrent that was present when they were.
Despite the new normal for Nan’s family, she had her friends, did well enough in school to pass year after year and worked as hard as any other fifteen year old girl to be as average as possible. She tried to make herself believe that the fact they were poor, her father was a drunk and her mother had soured were no more noteworthy than the color of her hair or the size of her feet.
In the aftermath of her father’s accident though, the quiet resignation Nan had settled into was violently snapped and twisted. The shuffling ghost of the man who’d been her father was now gone and he’d left behind a swirl of pent up anger that bordered on rage. Not her own, but her mother’s. Nan had long forgiven her father for his shortcomings and in his death, felt nothing but grief. Elsie, however, seemed to see it as Sam’s final and most audacious slap in the face.
Because of the weather, the service was cut short and everyone scurried to their cars. Back at Nan’s house, an assembly of neighbor ladies were readying a small reception. They couldn’t afford to pay the funeral home for use of their vehicles so one of Sam’s friends, a beefy guy named Earl, picked them up for the service and was now driving them home. Nan had wanted to ride with Buddy, but a vague sense of loyalty kept her in close proximity to her mother.
They pulled up to the house and Nan saw her brothers solemnly standing side by side on the barren front lawn. As she and her mother got out of the car, the boys walked toward them.
“Ma, let me help you,” Buddy said, reaching for Elsie’s stuck umbrella.
“I’ve got it,” she snapped, yanking it away. Buddy stepped back and shook his head lightly.
Nan didn’t bother trying to protect herself and ignored the cold drops of water that pelted her.
“You okay?” Buddy asked her.
“Fine,” she replied before hurrying ahead of them.
The smell of casseroles was overwhelming as she stepped through the front door. The food that had been arriving for days was laid out around the living room in Elsie’s chipped serving dishes and on an eclectic arrangement of trays people brought. The scent and the sight of them turned Nan’s stomach.
“Here dear, sit here,” said Mrs. Glenn, the kindly woman who lived next door, ushering Elsie to her rocking chair in the corner. “Please, let me make you a plate.”
Elsie declined the food, but sat watching people slowly fill the small room. Light from several lamps created small pockets of illumination but couldn’t penetrate the grayness of the day that seeped through the windows. Nan was sort of glad it was dark. It made it harder to see the holes in the walls and the shabbiness of the furniture.
The guests, a mix of neighbors and Sam’s friends from the docks, spoke in hushed tones at first, but eventually the conversation grew louder and snippets of Sam’s life began taking shape. Nan’s mother seemed not to hear anything and stared blankly out the window. Nan though was intrigued by things being said.
She tiptoed around the room listening to stories shared about her father, some by people she’d never met. They painted a picture of Sam that she couldn’t quite reconcile with the man she knew. She heard about a raucous sense of humor and the keen ability to tell a story. They spoke of his generosity (a toast had gone up to that), and his work ethic. One man told of a time that Nan’s father risked his own life to save someone whose hand was cut off on the docks.
“Guy fell over the side…ya know, passed out from shock or somethin’ and Sammy boy, well he just jumps into the drink like there’s no tomorrow. Swims Jonesy over to the rocks and uses his own belt to slow up the bleedin’ til the ambulance came. Never thought twice about nuthin,” the teary man conveyed in a voice thick with admiration.
Who
was
this Sam Bower Nan was hearing about? Surely not the hung over drunk, that at one time broke furniture and stole money from his children. The one who scurried away from Nan and her brothers with shame in his eyes whenever he came upon them. Could this possibly be the same man? Instead, what she heard being described was a person who, despite how hung over he was, dragged his ass to the dock every day for twenty-five years whether it was snowing, raining or thirty-below. Sam’s hands might have smashed things in frustration at home, but Nan now heard with her own ears how those same hands grasped tight enough on a belt to staunch the flow of someone’s life bleeding away. And not so inconsequently, after jumping into the strong current to pull him out of the water in the first place. But the most surprising thing to Nan was the sadness in the voices of these salty, crusty men. It was evident that they loved her father like a brother. The revelation that Sam had been someone worthy of high regard, and that maybe his unhappiness had everything to do with how he felt at home, moved Nan deeply. It also awakened a trace of anger toward her mother that was new. Never did a kind word about Nan’s father come out of Elsie’s mouth that she could recall, and after awhile, Nan had come to tacitly agree with her mother’s assessments. Had she been wrong about him? If not wrong, had she at the very least failed to recognize that there were sometimes many sides to a person?
Nan was fifteen, her father was dead and here she stood with the dawning realization that she’d never really known him at all. Even Buddy, who’d started working the docks with Sam the year before, had gotten the chance to see her father in a way that she never would. Nan wanted to cry, but swallowed hard against it. She cast a look at Elsie sitting rigidly in her chair, barely acknowledging the guests stepping forward to offer their condolences. Nan tried to conceive of what her mother might be thinking, but couldn’t.
Mr. Howard, an older man who lived across the street, leaned down and kissed Nan’s mother on the cheek. He was tiny and spry, with just a wisp of hair left on the back of his head. Nan was touched by his apparent concern for them.
“Mrs. Bower, I want you to know that I am just across the way if you need any help around the house. I know it must be such a shock to lose Mr. Bower like this.”
“You know Mr. Howard,” Elsie began. “It’s really not so much of a shock. It was only a matter of time before his stupidity caught up with him, and to be honest, I’m surprised it took him this long to do something so dim-witted.”
Mr. Howard looked stricken.
“Uh, I’m not sure what to say,” he stuttered.
“Nothing to say at all Mr. Howard,” Elsie replied grimly. “But thank you for your offer. Sam did so little around here I’m not even sure where to begin, but when I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”
As the old man walked away looking mystified, Nan felt sick with fury. How could Elsie be so cold? It was bad enough that her mother couldn’t grieve an ounce for Nan’s father, but to outright disparage him at his own funeral? Nothing her father did warranted that, Nan thought. At least
he
saved a man’s life. Nan wondered if her mother would pause to pass judgment before doing any such thing. She trembled inside.
Unable to stay in the house any longer, Nan left. At first, she walked aimlessly from street to street with no particular destination in mind. She didn’t notice the rain had picked up once again, soaking her black dress and sticking it to her skin like tarpaper. Tears and raindrops streamed down her face as she eventually found herself at the ball field. Nan was past it and standing at the mouth of the woods before she fully registered where she was going. Although she’d gotten herself lost the first time she took the path alone, more than six years had passed and she’d traveled it hundreds of times since then.
The fort was bigger and a bit more run down than it had been when Nan was young. She and her girlfriends spent many afternoons lounging around on the old musty loveseat or playing cards at the dull chrome table. Over the past year or so she’d also begun spending time there smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey from a flask stolen from her father. At fifteen she felt she was plenty old enough to do these sorts of things. Buddy and Arthur rarely came down anymore now that they were older, but John still did from time to time, so he and Nan swore each other to secrecy about whatever went on in the hideaway.
Nan was relieved to find it empty this afternoon, plopping herself down hard on the familiar stained cushions. It was unusual for it to be vacant during the summer and Nan figured the monsoon-like rain must be keeping kids away. Despite that, the coffee table was a mess of Dixie cups, beer tabs and overflowing ashtrays, indicating that the fort had been occupied recently.
Nan got up and searched around, looking for even a drop of whiskey, to no avail. However, she did come across an unopened bottle of warm champagne. She wasn’t sure from whose liquor cabinet it had been filched, but as far as she was concerned, it was fair game. After some trying, she managed to pop the cork without spilling too much liquid on the rough wood floor. There were no clean Dixie cups but an empty jelly jar sat on the window sill, and after blowing the dust out of it, Nan filled it half full.
In her rushed flight from the house, she forgot to grab her cigarettes, but the Community Chest’s “take one-leave one” policy had held fast through the years, and the bowl was full to the brim. Nan dug through it and found a slightly crooked Winston Light. She chased her first drag with a long swig of champagne. It warmed her belly, though not nearly the way a shot of whiskey would have, and she let out a hearty burp. Tiny rivers of rain slid down the warped glass of the window as memories of her father flitted through her mind. How he carried her on his shoulders before his hands had become too unsteady to do so. How he taught her to ride a bike, which had been no small feat given she and her brothers shared a rusty old Schwinn that was far too big for her. But Nan had done it, relishing the whooping and hollering from her father behind her as she steadied the wheels and peddled fifty yards on her own. Lost in thought, Nan didn’t hear the door to the fort creak open and wasn’t sure how long Charlie Parker was standing there before he spoke.
“Nan? Hey, are you okay?”
Nan jumped a foot.
“Jesus Christ Charlie, you scared the hell out of me,” she snapped.
“I…I’m sorry. I was just worried about you. I saw you leave the house in a hurry and wanted to make sure you were alright.”
Nan strained to see Charlie in the gloom. Dressed in a dark shirt and pants, he looked like a long, lean shadow in the doorway. Nan thought she’d caught a glimpse of him at the funeral, but hadn’t paid him much mind. Up until the year before, she’d seen him almost every day, and it was no big thing. Now that he and Buddy were out of high school, he no longer spent weeks on end at the Bowers, but still, it wasn’t like his presence was a novelty or anything.