The Drifters by James A. Michener Read Free Book Online

some minutes. Other patrons in the bar paid no attention; they were discussing the collapse of the Dallas football team and arguing loudly that the commissioner ought to launch an investigation to see if the professional gamblers had organized a fix, but one contentious fellow reasoned: ‘How can you fix the whole team. You fix one man … Don Meredith,’ whereupon the bar in general agreed that Don Meredith could not be fixed, to which the first man said, ‘Well, he sure looked it against Cleveland.’
    Gretchen was now playing very softly, approaching a series of haunting chords in a minor key. Above them she announced the title of her song, ‘Child 113,’ and the students, knowing what this signified, applauded. In the ensuing silence she struck a commanding sequence ofnotes, then began a totally strange song, an ancient ballad about a seal swimming in the ocean, with the capacity to turn himself into a man when he comes ashore. With a human nursemaid the seal has had a child and now wants to take his son into the sea, for it is time he learned how to be a seal.
    It was a silly ballad, Joe thought, until just at the end when Gretchen dropped her voice and to music of heartbreaking loveliness, sang of the seal’s prediction: the woman would forget him, forget her son. She would marry a gunner, who for no logical reason would destroy everything:
    ‘ “An thu sall marry a proud gunner,
    An a proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
    An the very first schot that ere he schoots,
    He’ll schoot baith my young son and me.” ’
    On this apprehensive note, with the guitar sounding a series of bitter chords, the strange song ended. The students did not applaud, for the ballad struck much too closely to their own experiences: there was an irrational element in life, something that no man could defend against; some damn-fool gunner always waited in the shadows, eager to take inexplicable pot shots at whatever seals swam in the ocean.
    Gretchen would sing no more. This ballad had been her total statement, and the students who knew her appreciated the fact that even this had been difficult for her. They complimented her, asked how things were going at Radcliffe, and drifted away, taking the guitar with them. When they were gone, Joe said, ‘How are things at Radcliffe?’
    ‘Wretched,’ she said, dropping that subject.
    He took her home, and at the door, tried to kiss her goodnight, but this she resisted vigorously. However, she did grasp his hand, asking him to wait while she ran upstairs. When she returned she gave him two hundred dollars … insisted that he take it … insisted that her committee collected funds for this purpose.
    ‘Where shall you be going?’ she asked.
    ‘The gang at Yale told me of a place that sounded just about right.’
    “Where?’
    ‘Torremolinos.’
    On a gray wintry day in Madrid, Joe caught a ride with a group of rollicking German students heading south, and as they crossed the barren plains of La Mancha they spoke of Cervantes and Goya. They were knowledgeable young men, proficient in both English and Spanish, and were headed for the large German colony in Marbella, not far from the Strait of Gibraltar. From their conversation Joe concluded that their families had been enthusiastic supporters of Adolf Hitler and that the relatives they were about to visit in southern Spain were political fugitives. One of the students told Joe, ‘If you see a very thin, straight old man who ought to walk with a cane but won’t, and if he clicks his heels when you speak to him, that’s Uncle Gustav.’ From what the boys had to say of Uncle Gustav, he had been one of Hitler’s major supporters, but one sardonic fellow added, ‘He lives in Spain because he loves the way American tourists call him Baron and curtsy to the Baroness.’
    By the time they reached Córdoba, the chill of Madrid had changed to a welcome sunshine. They stopped to see the mosque, and when they stood in the midst of its