Sons from Afar Read Online Free PDF Page A

remembered the way their little house was hidden among sand dunes with long sparse beach grass to cut at your bare feet; he remembered the store where Momma had worked, and being given chunks of fried bread bythe owner’s wife, thick, hot, chewy chunks of sweet dough, dusted over with confectioner’s sugar. He remembered a map of the original thirteen colonies he’d done in third grade. His mother—with a terrible rush like a wind rising up suddenly across the night, he remembered the kind of worry he’d lived with that last year or so with Momma, not knowing what to say because you never knew what she’d answer, because her answers didn’t make any sense to him. He remembered pretending not to hear the other kids calling him names, especially bastard, even though he had no idea of what the word really meant then, he just knew it was a name they said to hurt him. He remembered sitting there at a blue desk, pretending he was deaf, and the way they got bolder because he didn’t dare get up and look at them. Dicey had always hit out at anyone trying to pick on her, like Sammy did, but James didn’t know how to fight. He’d seen the bloody noses and swollen faces, the cut knuckles, after fights; he could imagine how that felt, he could almost see how bad the flesh and bones looked, under the bruised skin. He remembered—he stopped remembering because it hurt him, the confusion of feelings toward his Momma, he’d felt so sorry for her and been so angry, and he didn’t know how to do anything more than be as smart as he could in school. What they would have done without Dicey, he didn’t know. She had herded them all down to Gram’s house that summer, when Momma left; no matter what got in their way she kept on going. And then James remembered—as if it was just happening—how it felt when Gram said they could stay, stay here, stay home with her. It had felt as if the sun was rising up inside of him, as if magic had happened, better than magic, a miracle. Sitting at his desk in his bedroom on the second story of the old farmhouse, with the wind whispering outside his open windows, remembering, James felt again the sudden joy when Gram said it was okay for them to stay. Like the whole schoolchorus singing out the “Hallelujah Chorus,” it was that kind of feeling.
    James looked out of the window at the night, where he couldn’t see anything. He’d used to think that Maybeth was the one who might, like Momma, slip away into depression and quiet lunacy. But now he thought, probably he was the one who might, because he was the one who was so different from the rest of them. Dicey and Sammy never seemed to be afraid. James was the one it was so easy to make afraid, who could make himself afraid by just thinking. Even Maybeth, who was the shy one, timid, could withdraw into herself, and not be afraid. James had thought about them: Maybeth was almost exactly like Momma, and not just in her looks; Sammy and Dicey, for all they looked so different, were a similar mix of Tillerman and whoever their father was. James figured, he was probably the exact opposite of Maybeth, so he was probably like his father. Whoever that was.
    Gram had said their father was the kind of man who sailed close to the wind, James remembered that, and she’d said he was the kind of man who’d gamble, and probably cheat, too. That was great, just great. Wasn’t that great? Another reason not to ask Gram about him. James pushed the typewriter to the back of the desk and opened his history book.
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    The next morning, James put his letter into the mailbox. He pulled up the flag, to let the postman know there was outgoing mail, and closed the little metal door. Maybeth either didn’t notice or assumed he’d written to Dicey. She didn’t ask him any questions; Maybeth wouldn’t ever ask, if she thought you didn’t want to say. Sammy