Mermaid
Copyright© 2025 by Grant M. Overton
Chapter 7
In September Mermaid and Cap’n Smiley and Ho Ha went beach-plumming. As they wandered over the dunes picking the blue-red-purple berries there was much conversation, sometimes conducted in shouts, when the three were spread a little apart.
“D’ you know the Latin name of these plums, Hosea?” demanded the keeper. Ho Ha looked very serious.
“My bad mark in school was always in Latin!”
The keeper winked at Mermaid. Ho Ha had gone to a little red schoolhouse, winters, until he was thirteen.
“It’s prunus maritima,” he reminded the scholar. “That’s almost calling ‘em maritime prunes.”
“They’re commoner than prunes with us. Do they get the name from being served in sailors’ boarding-houses?”
“You were shanghaied to sea, once, weren’t you, Hosea?”
“Sixteen when it happened. On South Street, New York. Froze my feet standing a trick at the wheel off Cape Horn. Mate came into the fo’c’s’le and grabbed one foot and twisted it until I howled; then he pulled me out on deck,” said the Coast Guard, reminiscently. “I’d always been sort of crazy about the sea from a kid.” He emptied his pickings into a big basket, straightened up a moment, resumed his picking, and said:
“I worshipped, just about, an uncle, my mother’s brother, who’d been to sea all his life. And when I was a shaver on our farm up in the hills in the middle of the Island I slept in the attic. Every night, Cap’n, as I got in bed I could see through a little attic window, right over the tree tops Fire Island light. ‘Twas maybe twenty miles away. ‘Twould show, just a faint spark, then kindle, then glow bright, then flame like—like a beacon. Just for a few seconds; then ‘twould die out. Occulting. It seemed to beckon to me. I was only a kid and there was something wonderful and friendly about that light! And secret, too. It seemed to be signalling just to me, a little chap in an ice-cold attic on a lonely hill farm. Seemed as if that light said: ‘Come on, Hosea Hand! I’m set here to tell you that there’s a great world out here waiting for you! I’m an outpost! There’s lands and peoples and adventures and ten thousand leagues of ocean—and there’s life, the greatest adventure of all! Hurry up and grow up, Hosea Hand!’ And then all shivering and excited, I’d crouch under the big, pieced quilt and watch that light come and glow, shine and dim, flame and go out—until I’d fall asleep and dream I was out there where it called me!”
The little girl listened, fascinated. She had stopped picking, and her childish breast rose and fell with quick breathing. Cap’n Smiley picked perfunctorily and once his hand closed so tightly about the coloured plums that they crushed them. Ho Ha worked steadily and after a few moments he went on:
“I was fourteen when my father died. The year before I’d quit school to help work the farm. In those days there wasn’t any science called agriculture. We just tilled the soil. My father was always trying to get more land; I used to wonder what for, when it was such slavery to work it! Maybe he suspicioned the day would come when we’d understand the soil and know how to make it yield without back-breaking and heart-break.”
“Your brother is pretty comfortably off, Hosea.”
“Yes,” said Ho Ha, with a curious inflection. “Yes, Richard’s comfortable. But he’s getting along. You know he’s ten years older than me.”
Cap’n Smiley gave an ejaculation of surprise. There had been some unfairness of dealing by Richard Hand with Hosea Hand after their father’s death, but the keeper did not know exactly what it was. The Blue Port story had it that Richard Hand had wanted his brother to stay and help work the farm, and Ho Ha had run off to sea instead. Back of this lay a tale of the father’s will. This had left the dead man’s estate to be divided equally between the sons. Richard, however, was to have the farm intact; and he was to effect such a settlement as would assure Hosea of his share in cash for whatever use he wanted to make of it. The father’s idea had been simple: the younger boy hated the farm and wanted an education; this money would help him get it; after that he must fend for himself.
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