Skippy got the first meal aboard the Minnie M. Baxter. His heart and soul were certainly not in the task for he burned four of the flapjacks that he was cooking. The coffee had twice boiled over and the narrow little cabin was filled with a blue, acrid smoke and though the sight of his father’s lugubrious face, as he paced up and down outside the little windows, disturbed him, he was not particularly unhappy.
His mind, during the preparation of that meal, was not on his father’s misfortunes nor on the threatened and ominous visit to the Flint yacht that very evening. Instead he was visualizing what benefits were to be derived from residing in the Basin, chief among these being an uninterrupted summer season of fishing and swimming. That to the heart of a boy of his age compensated fully for the loss of the garbage and ashes contract, yes, even for the loss of the barge’s promise of a remunerative future.
29
It is not to be thought that Skippy did not deeply feel his father’s grief, for indeed he had brooded over it for hours. But after they had settled and arranged their few belongings in the meagerly furnished cabin of the barge, he had achieved that blessed miracle of youth and accepted the inevitable without a question. Life stretched out ahead of him as the inlet lay spread under this starlit night, broken now and then by a quiet ripple until it reached the river. What would happen beyond that point he knew he could find out when he came to it.
And so, more contented than his brooding and troubled parent, Skippy piled up the flapjacks until they resembled the leaning tower of Pisa, and he whistled to the accompaniment of the sputtering coffee pot. All the world seemed delightful and generous with these savory dishes ready to be eaten, and he asked himself if his father wasn’t making much of little. After all, they had the Minnie M. Baxter for a home, didn’t they? And wasn’t living on a barge just the kind of life that he and his pals had often wished for when they had lain about their dusty dooryards on hot summer nights?
30
The boy ran to the door, his tanned face flushed and expectant. He would tell his father how much better he was going to feel out on the river all summer than back in dusty, hot Riverboro where he had spent all his life. He would fish and swim and take lots of deep, lung-developing breaths. He’d probably never have another bad throat....
He inhaled deeply on the strength of this thought and though his lungs filled with a queerly mixed odor of mud, decayed fish and salt, he noticed it not at all. Moreover, the inlet might have been a clear, wind-swept ocean waste, so far above the Basin had his imagination carried him.
A figure stirred in the shadows forward and then he heard the familiar tread of his father. Suddenly on the damp salt breeze they heard the distant sound of chimes and waited silently while the faint notes struck off the hour of ten.
“Pretty late to eat, huh Pop? Everythin’s ready, so you better come while it’s hot.”
31
“Yer know where them chimes come from?” Toby asked in a tone of voice that was strange to his son. “They come from River Heights on that swell Town Hall what Ol’ Flint give to the borough. Now I s’pose he’ll give the three hunderd dollars he cheated me outa, fer somethin’ else what’ll give him a big name, hey? That’s what some uv them scoundrels like Ol’ Flint do—give their dirty money ter things what’ll give ’em a fine big name. Well, he won’t git the chanct ter give my three hunderd—not while I live!”
Josiah Flint again! Skippy’s heart lost all its merry hopes in a fleeting second. He turned back into the cabin and his father followed him in gloomy silence. Mechanically, he carried the steaming plate from the oil stove to the rickety little oil-cloth covered table and without a word they pulled up their chairs and sat down.
“I never tole yer before,” said Toby after a few moments, “but if it wasn’t fer Ol’ Flint there wouldn’ never ’a’ been no squatter colony like this in Brown’s Basin. It’s him what’s made it, that’s what. They’re all blackballed men, Sonny; men what’s got in Ol’ Flint’s clutches an’ ain’t never got the chance nor the brains ter git out. Not like me that had a little more brains ter earn bigger money so’s I could save fer the Minnie M. Baxter. Save!” He brought his fist down upon the table with such force that a flapjack bounced from his plate to the floor. “Ha, ha—what for did I save, hey?”
He laughed so sardonically that Skippy hurried for the coffee to hide his concern.
32
“Aw, please don’t take on so, Pop!” His eyes were directed at Toby’s back. “Gee, that old miser, he ain’t worth you actin’ so queer an’ all. It ain’t so bad here. It’s a nice little house we got in this cabin; chairs an’ the stove an’ a table an’ our trunk.” His glance wandered to the tiny windows opened to the damp salt breeze. “Even I bet I could put up some cretonne stuff as good as a girl an’ then won’t this be one nice-lookin’ little place!”
Toby’s chair scraped over the rough, clean boards and he stood up, straight and powerful and ominous.
“Never mind the coffee now,” he said hoarsely. “We kin heat it up an’ drink it when we come back.” He laughed. “We’ll drink it as a toast ter Ol’ Flint’s health!”
Skippy put down the coffee pot and wiped his grimy hands on his khaki knickers. Then with a swift movement he shook back his straight, rebellious hair and glanced up at his father.
“You—you mean you want me with you, Pop?” he asked tremulously.
33
“Jest what I mean, Skippy. I want yer along so’s I kin remember Ol’ Flint ain’t worth ... well, what I mean is, if I have yer to talk ter on the way I ain’t so like ter lose my head when I git there an’ talk ter him. If he gits sneerin’ at me like his habit is mostly, it’ll be good fer me ter know my Sonny’s right outside a-waitin’ in the kicker. Waitin’ fer his Pop, hey?”
“Sure, sure,” Skippy gulped. “Sure, I’ll go with you if it’s gonna make you feel that way, Pop. Gee, I’ll go anywheres with you if you only promise not to lose your head.”
“Jest the sight uv that man’ll make me lose my head, Skippy—I know it. But so long as yer make me promise—I won’t give him the worst uv it, if I kin help it.”
Skippy knew his father well enough to accept just that much and hope for the best. He went to the old battered trunk, took out a worn sweater and while still drawing it on followed Toby outside.
They descended the rope ladder in silence and got into the shabby boat. Toby turned over the motor and Skippy took his place at the bow to watch for drifting logs for the little kicker had not a light. Toby’s former nocturnal occupations had made it necessary for him to dispense with this appurtenance and now, as he explained to his inquiring son, it had become a habit to roam the river without illumination, knowing as he did every square foot of it. Besides, he had come to love the solitude of darkness.
34
Skippy looked all about him, not exactly at his ease. The inlet was black and at times the starlit sky seemed so far away as to be but a mirage. Perhaps there wasn’t a star in all the heavens, he would try to tell himself. All was black night and the muffled motor purred with a hushed monotony that affected him strangely. He fervently hoped that they would not be long in reaching the river where he could breathe without feeling that he was going to choke.
He knew he was afraid and he knew it really had nothing to do with the inlet or the black, silent night. It was a nameless dread that had seized him and, try as he would, he could not shake it off.
Instinctively, he felt that they shouldn’t go on to Josiah Flint’s yacht that night.