Bright and Distant Shores by Dominic Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

learning the petulant ways of the old clipper from stem to stern, Adelaide had forgiven him. He was gone a little under a year and the exchange of letters—three on each side—took on a life of its own. Entreaties and dispatches from San Francisco, Hawaii, and Sydney, all by commissioned mail steamer, each of his letters blotted with sealing wax stolen from Bisky’s cabin. Whenever he got the chance, Owen fled the fusty nooks and fetid warrens below deck, the fishy brume in the cookroom, and climbed onto the foredeck to pen what he saw: the bruised green in the troughs between swells, the seabirds riding high on the trades without so much as a wing flap, the iron blue of the sky before a storm. He did not mention the debauchery that went on in the forecastle, the flagons of grog, the fist-fights in the spiritroom, the pornographic reminiscences in cabins and bunkrooms. Owen drank with the seamen, spoke of women as sport when required, but used his station as carpenter to live on the periphery. He reported directly to the captain and shared quarters with the other idlers—the bosun, the sailmaker, and thecook. Because he did not have to stand watch like the ordinary and able-bodied seamen, he found time to read, write letters, and try his hand at trade whenever they anchored.
    Adelaide began her letters a little stonily, describing the move to the new museum without much flair or affection. She kept to the facts—meals, weather, appointments, errands, books read in the buzzing light of the cable car. But by the time she responded to Owen’s second letter, in which he reiterated his sincerest apology and stated his desire to be with her upon his return, she was warmed through. Not only because of those simple declarations—underlined with Indian ink—but because his letter was full of exotica and anthropological sightings from island ports: baskets made from sedge, a jew’s harp made from bamboo, native boys surfing waves on rough-planked boards, women’s girdles stripped from bark, the sight of missionaries from the Society of the Divine Word playing cricket beside a volcanic beach. She was won over by such details and showed parts of his letters to colleagues at the Field Columbian Museum. They asked her to write and express the museum’s interest in buying certain objects upon his return. Owen kept this to himself and used his wages, such as they were, to buy calico and tobacco for trading in the islands. He made a deal with the cook and kept his tribal artifacts in flour sacks in the messroom larder.
    By the time he received her third letter he was a few months from being home. While the stationery smelled of jasmine, the letter spoke of hard times. Eighteen ninety-four saw striking mobs in the railroad yards, runs on wildcat banks, the homeless sleeping in City Hall and precinct police stations. Adelaide continued to volunteer at Hull House, prepared meals and taught immigrant children how to read, sat on the porch alongside Jane Addams, the great social reformer herself. After a long day of service they listened to street orphans singing Slavic hymns. With the distance and perspective that came from nearly a year at sea—so many nights in the brimming stomach of the brig—Owen suspectedthat at least part of Adelaide’s interest in him was sociological. On her father’s side she came from New England brahmins, men with high-bridged noses, honorary degrees, and a blue-blooded zeal for philanthropy. Adelaide had come west to strike out on her own, type memoranda and take dictation at the museum by day, improve the lot of the poor in her off hours, petition for women’s rights, but all the while receiving a monthly stipend from Boston that was wired to the downtown post office.
    Perhaps, Owen thought, he was one of her causes. The orphaned son of a housewrecker, partially raised and educated by South Side nuns, a little unrepentant and raw in his scuffed blucher