Harbor (9781101565681) by Patrick (INT) Ernest; Chura Poole Read Free Book Online Page A

take that five-mile flight, right through the window and over the trees to the distant track, to be there just ahead of the on-puffing engine. My voice quivered excitedly as I spoke.
    â€œI see—I see,” she said soothingly. “And when you are riding on top of a car—aren’t you ever frightened?”
    â€œNo—because all the time I know that I am back there at home in my bed. I can see myself back there behind me.”
    â€œDo you fall asleep in bed—or are you still on the top of the car the last thing you can remember?”
    â€œMost always on the top of the car.”
    â€œAnd when you sleep—do you always dream?”
    â€œYes—that’s the finest part of it.”
    â€œDo you ever dream of Sam?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œAnd all those things you did on the harbor?”
    â€œYes—all.”
    For some moments she sat by my bedside quietly stroking one of my hands.
    â€œBilly.”
    â€œYes, mother.” I was growing impatient, I wished she would go, for now it was nearly time for the train.
    â€œHave you ever played other games like that? I mean where you leave yourself and look back—and see your own body behind you.”
    â€œYes—in bed in Brooklyn when I was quite little.”
    â€œWhere did you go from your bed?”
    â€œI went to the end of the garden. I heard drunken sailors and dockers shouting in that vile saloon below.” This was not true. What I had really done was to lie in bed and whisper, “ Suppose I were out there”—which is very different. I was too young then to have learned the real trick. But now I was so proud of it that I honestly thought I had always known how. “It was a game I had with the harbor,” I said.
    â€œWith the harbor.” I felt her hand slowly tighten on mine. Then all at once as we heard the first low grumble of the freight train coming, my mother’s hold grew tighter and tighter. “Open your eyes.” I opened them quickly, for her voice was sharp and stern. She held me until the sound was gone.
    â€œDo you hear it any longer?” she asked quietly at last.
    â€œNo,” I whispered. My breath still came fast.
    â€œNeither do I.” There was another silence. “Let’s go and sit by the window,” she said.
    And there she talked to me of the stars. How great they were and how very quiet. She said that the greatest men in the world were almost always quiet like that. They never let their hands get cold.
    Often after that in the evenings just before I went to bed we had these talks about the stars. And not only in the mountains. On sparkling frosty winter nights we watched them over the harbor. And the things she said about them were so utterly absorbing that I would never think to look down, would barely hear the toots and the puffings and grinding of wheels from that infernal region below. For always when she spoke of the stars my mother spoke of great men too, the men who had done the “finest” things—a few in the clash and jar of life like Washington and Lincoln, but most of them more quietly, by preaching, writing, painting, composing, sermons, books, pictures and music so “fine” that all the best people on earth had known about them and loved them.
    As I grew older she read to me more and more about these men. And sometimes I would feel deeply content as though I had found what I wanted. But more often I would feel myself swell up big inside of me, restless, worrying, groping for something. I didn’t know what I wanted then, but I do know now as I look back, and I think there are thousands of children like me, the kind who are called “queer kids” by their playmates, who are all groping for much the same thing.
    â€œWhere is the Golden Age to-day?” they are asking. “We hear of all this from our mothers. We hear of brave knights and warriors, of God and Christ as they walked around