As Max Saw It Read Online Free PDF Page B

training them on the area between the steps leading from the terrace to the water, where the big launch was moored. On those steps, majestic, his pajamas gleaming like a marble arch, was Charlie, his bare feet on the moss-covered stone, his back taut, his arms pushing against the hull of the launch. The man whose screams I had heard was still in the water, eyes shut, grasping Charlie’s feet. Charlie was giving directions, and Rodney and one of the workmen took up positions on both sides of him. While he strained, they slowly lifted the man and then carried him to the terrace. There they laid him on a blanket and covered him with another. The screams stopped. He was only whimpering and twitching. Somebody said the ambulance was certainly taking its time. I asked Arthur what had happened. He explained that Charlie had heard the screams and ran to the lake, on his way waking up Rodney, who got the others. Apparently the boatman—that was the man pulled from thewater—had gone to the lake to see how the launch and the other boats were doing in the wind. He must have seen that the launch had dragged its mooring and was going to smash unprotected against the steps. Perhaps he tried to fend it off. That was probably when the accident happened. Whether he slipped on the moss or from the deck was unknown, but as we could see he found himself in the water, crushed between the boat and the stone each time the boat lurched. Charlie was there first and managed to hold the boat away until the man was lifted out, something no one else would have had the strength to accomplish.
    As we spoke, Charlie and Rodney finished various complicated arrangements concerning rubber tires, fenders, and the other boats. Charlie noticed me and waved jovially as he put on a robe of black and yellow brocade. It seemed that he had left it on the balustrade before undertaking to separate the elements. Taking a flask from the pocket, he drank a swig and passed it to me.
    Here, he said, it’s good whiskey. Now I hear the police and the ambulance. Too bad. They’ll get him to a hospital. If the son of a bitch lives, he will be a cripple. He would be better off dead.

II
    T HE R ITZ in Boston. A bank in King of Prussia.
    In the sitting room of a suite above the Public Garden, an old woman stares straight ahead, at nothing. Bony feet in newly shined black pumps crossed on a stool. Its petit point matches the wing chair. White nylon stockings. Calves crooked as though from a lifetime of hugging the saddle. It’s the monstrous weight of her body. The flab begins above the knees: there are rolls upon rolls of it under the gray flannel dress, and it has invaded her neck and cheeks. Only feet and hands have been spared. Three strands of pearls. Pale pink hair set in neat curls. Her lips are cracked, although when she leaves the hotel it is always in a closed car. She dabs at them with a stick of grease. My cousin, Emma Hafter Storrow. Thirty years earlier, after the end of the war, already long widowed, she closed the house on Commonwealth Avenue, her father-in-law’s astounding wedding gift, forever useless. Her sons had fallen, neither the lilies nor the tuberoses from the glass conservatory would frame a nuptial altar in the rich church in Copley Square. Along the Charles, cars speed on the drive built with Storrow money. That money too unneeded. In sprawlingKing of Prussia, from businesses that deface the landscape of her childhood, a nameless river of cash flows to the bank her own father, Judge Maximilian Hafter, founded. The shares are in her trust; she knows how rich she is to the last dime.
    No Storrows left; except for her, no Hafters. Because she is the last descendant of the judge’s father, after her death she may send the money where she wishes. By appointment. The Hafters were abolitionists. If she does nothing, a Negro orphanage in Alabama will inherit. That’s written into the trust. She tells me about the bank lawyer, who visits every quarter.