After You've Gone. Jeffrey Lent
and felt it slip like air from his fingers.
Then he leaned his head, his forehead, against the shut door of his dead son, slowly bringing his hands up to press with his forehead against the door. To keep him in place. To remain upright.
As he finally wept.
Four
His uncles George and Fred, known collectively as the Dorn Brothers owned the best wharf, a store for marine supplies and other sundries, a shipbuilding yard, an ice house, coal supply and salt yard, three coastal schooners and interests in half-a-dozen fishing boats, as well as a red Highland ox and cart. The summer Henry was ten he was hired to deliver coal to the homes in Freeport and galleys of the fishing boats. Despite lye soap and the hard hot water his fingernails always held black half moons—a brand of his work. When fall came it was dark by the time school was out but he worked an hour and a half, sometimes two but the deliveries were staggered at his mother’s demand so he was not out too late. And by November of that year he had earned fifteen dollars, enough for his mother Euphemia to take his measurements and send off mail order for his first suit with long pants. To this time he had only worn rough trousers to work in but short pants for school and church and the rare dress-up events. His excitement was tremendous, as the work had proclaimed him a man and now he would have the clothes to announce it. Light mail—letters—came down the Neck from Digby by stage which was ferried across Petite Passage onto Long Island but heavier objects—household furnishings, boat fittings, store goods, parcels—came up the coast from Yarmouth twice weekly and arrived between four and six o’clock in the evening depending on the weather. He met that boat seven times before a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with rough twine was handed down to him. The postmark was a Boston mail-order firm and this seemed doubly propitious since that city held a great mystery for him and he ran home and tried the suit on and it fit, he thought, most handsomely. He barely slept that night and next morning dressed again in the suit to wear to school, only to be sent back upstairs to change into his old school clothes. The suit would have to wait for Sunday service. His mother was firm as ever and while he changed he already saw the advantage— his step into manhood would be witnessed not simply by his classmates and teacher but by all the adults in the community in a solemn quiet way—the way it should be. He was a boy who long since had learned to read well past his mother’s terse commands and simple tales of example. So he hung the suit carefully to wait the four days.
Two nights later the stovepipe of contention between his mother and stepfather began to burn off an accumulation of creosote while all were sleeping, the thin tin soon a ragged lace of black stitching failing before the orange fire raging inside and so collapsed, leaving four feet of open space between the parlor stove and the chimney which had already also caught fire and the tatters of pipe brought the fire down onto the carpet and against the wall and the flames shot high from the stove and by the time the smoke had filled the downstairs and was seeping up and the chimney was roaring it was all that could be done to get everyone out, the children and their mother and stepfather. The big pump was hauled around the bay but the water was a gesture and nothing more. By dawn the house was smoking rubble, except for the chimney, which stood blackened and mighty.
And Henry stood with the rest in his nightclothes with a wild wailing crying and when his mother finally came and knelt and drew him close, her youngest son, and held him as he racked against her and held him until he was only snuffling and choking, stroking his hair until he blurted, “My suit. My beautiful suit.”
Euphemia, still kneeling, slapped his face. The only time he could remember her doing so, ever. Then she said, and this he would always remember, “We’ve lost two homes in six years. And you snuffle over nonsense. If I should ever see you in long pants it will be when you are out of my house and none of my doing.” Then she stood and left him. His sisters watched this but said nothing. He stood alone. After a time his stepfather, Charles Morrell, whom Henry and the rest of his siblings all called Mr. Morrell, came and stood by the boy, setting a hand on his shoulder but was wordless. Even at that age Henry knew this gesture was not simply about him—early that fall his stepfather had wanted to replace the pipe and Euphemia had thumped it twice and declared it sound enough for one more year. Even then when a new fire was laid you could see fire through the joints of the pipe. Until they sealed over with the creosote that would destroy it all. It was an argument badly won.
After a moment his Uncle George appeared from behind and wrapped his own wool coat around the boy and said, “Your feet are blue. Come. There’s nothing to be done here.”
They walked silently for a bit, Henry thinking. He needed clothes for school. Denim serge pants, canvas fishing pants—it did not matter to him. His Uncle George would want to outfit him without cost— kicking his feet against the lumped frozen sand of the road he knew this already, guessed that all the family would be offered such. But the humiliation of his mother’s blunt words and slap had been seen by far more than his sisters and Mr. Morrell. There would be no handouts taken, not by him. And much coal to deliver that winter and spring just to pay for those clothes. But he would be in school that day.
George gently said, “Gil’s a fishing?”
“With Captain Titus.”
“Simon Titus is a good man, a good captain.”
“Gilbert’s a good hand.”
Beside him George nodded. “He is.”
Henry said, “Gil’s the lucky one tonight.”
They went on silent.
The coat for a man fell around Henry like a dense robe and he wrapped himself tight against the wind coming up the bay from the wild hungry water of the Bay of Fundy. The meager winter sun was not up yet but it was mere light anyway, there was no warmth to it as if it had died or flared out to an ember, a shadow of a sun. They passed the field of salting racks and were out along the other arm of St. Mary’s Bay, away from the town. Here was the wharf with the schooners, and the boatyards and the store, the piers of fishing boats, the shacks built on stilts for lobster traps and sail-lofts and netting-works—the world of men. The store windows were lit. It opened at three in the morning for the fishermen and Henry, walking toward it, knew his Uncle had seen the house burning from there and helped haul the pump. And so the boy walked toward the dawn-quiet store and resolved to ask the question that his mother had refused the once he’d asked her. The question Gil had beaten him with a strange vigor in his only other attempt. But he would ask Uncle George. And George would tell him. Something at least. Not because of the fire. But because the boy knew it was time.
The interior was a sensory assault after the brittle salt air—the new rubber smell of fishing boots and vulcanized overalls and coats and gloves, the faint-straw odor of the great spools of hempen rope, the stringent ribbons of kerosene, raw plug tobacco and old cigar smoke and like everywhere else along this side of the bay the constant under-belly of fish. Rows of lanterns hung overhead alongside gaffs, long fish knives, scaling pliers, and high along one rafter an old whaling harpoon—not for sale. There were shelves of rough clothes and racks of wool coats, blankets, mittens. A crate of flares. A stack of new varnished oars for the dories. One small shelf of food—canned peaches and pears, sacks of onions and potatoes. On the counter glass crocks half the size of him filled with pickled eggs. A smaller jar of hard licorice drops.
Uncle George took his place up behind the counter in his plain suit with vest and his heavy white mustache and thick hair that rolled back from his high forehead as if his earlier days had blown it there forever. The man watched the boy and the boy watched the man.
Uncle George said, “Your mother—” and stopped.
Henry said, “Just because she argued the pipe was sound doesn’t mean Mr. Morrell had to leave it like that.”
His uncle studied him. He said, “Well. Charlie Morrell is a good man. And it was far more than Euphemia Moore he took on when she brought the lot of you back.”
Henry said, “She was a Dorn then.”
George Dorn nodded. “In a sense. A manner of speaking. But she was born a Moore and