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  “The seniors graduated a couple of months later. The rest of the guy’s planned to play again.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jimmy shot George an irritated look. “You have a better explanation?”

  “Easy son. I ain’t sayin’ what Bucinski did was right. It just don’t sound like the whole story.”

  Jimmy fought the urge to get up and leave. “I told you exactly what happened.”

  “So you had a reason to quit. What about football a year later? You had promise, but you quit on Coach Antonelli, too.”

  “I told you I got interested in music.”

  “Now, you’re workin’ in a soup kitchen cause you quit on that.”

  “What are you trying to say? I didn’t quit. The singing fell apart because I drank too much. I’m here to get it under control.”

  “Then you’ll go back to singin’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s up in Vermont?”

  “George, can we move on? You have your skeletons, too. Why didn’t you try to find your wife?”

  The high tensile steel Centurion bike Jimmy ordered from its small California manufacturer arrived three weeks before he planned to leave for Vermont. Its sleek design, optimized for wind resistance, was light and flexible, making his old ten-speed feel like it was from the turn of the century. When he took a test run he lost track of time, not returning for hours until the sun was setting.

  By now, his legs were strong. The hours on the exercise bike strengthened his thighs and calves and he was confident that he could maintain his momentum up the steepest hills. He had studied maps of the fifty-six mile roundtrip route from Malletts Bay to North Hero although he already knew the area well. He looked forward to seeing the magnificent vistas of the Champlain islands again, but he expected most of his concentration would be focused on keeping up with the other triathletes. He was determined to make it all the way through.

  “Tell me again, why you’re doin’ this?” George asked, when they met again at the shelter. “Goin’ up to Vermont to kill yourself?”

  “Something to focus on instead of scotch.”

  “And after? What then?”

  “I told you I don’t know.”

  The two men fell silent for a few minutes, drifting off to private thoughts. Then George spoke again.

  “You remember the Wykoff kid?”

  “Sure. Little guy who wanted to make the football team.”

  “I saw you with him once on the field.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It was before you quit playin’. You was wearin’ your tie, but you laid your jacket on the grass, took the football and held it with your finger so’s he could practice kickin’.”

  “He was never going to make the football team.”

  “No. That’s for sure. Too small.”

  “He had other problems.”

  “Homosexual?”

  “That’s what everybody thought. Some guys gave him a rough time.”

  “Why’d you do that for him?”

  “I probably felt sorry for him. Like I said, I don’t remember.”

  “Joe Rogers told me he thought you’d be all-state.”

  Jimmy looked off at the windows toward the sidewalk outside the shelter. “He told me the same thing once during practice after he’d leveled me.”

  “Nice kid. He made all-conference as a sophomore. Blew out his knee, but came back as a senior.”

  “That’s when I played with him. I didn’t know him when he was at his best.”

  “Him comin’ back was good for the team. Made captain, played hurt, encouraged everybody else.”

  “Yep.”

  “You shoulda stuck it out. Problems with Antonelli, too?”

  “You mean like Bucinski? No, he was okay. I just lost interest.”

  “A recurrin’ theme don’t you think?”

  Jimmy lifted angry eyes. “Are we going to do this again?”

  “I’m just sayin’.”

  “What exactly?”

  “Basketball, football, Kendall, maybe your singin’ too, it’s all like a bunch of unfinished business. It just seems like you’re leavin’ all this stuff out there. Ya know, kinda incomplete.”

  ***

  The Wykoff kid, Jimmy thought about him while driving home to Chillingham, a portly little innocent who dreamed of playing football.

  Sammy Wykoff was shunned at Kendall. He had a whiney personality and never knew when to shut-up. He endured his share of verbal abuse from both students and faculty. Some called him a mama’s boy because he often cited his mother when he talked about what he was going to do. “Mama thinks I have the aptitude to be a doctor. She says I have fine hands like a surgeon.” Others labeled him a homo and laughed uproariously when he naively acknowledged that he didn’t know what the term meant. He came to school everyday with a football tucked in his book bag. He tried out for the freshman team, but was too small and uncoordinated to play. After being cut, he spent the next day crying in the boy’s room.

  During tryouts sophomore year, Jimmy watched him get run over day after day until he realized that Sammy would never give up. In a way, he admired his resolve. So, after seeing the diminutive boy endure a particularly vicious hit, he trotted over and helped him up, removing a thick tuft of sod from where it had lodged in the crease of his faceguard. Sammy was surprised by the gesture. No one ever came to his aid before.

  The next week Antonelli cancelled practice for a day. Most of the players were thrilled, but not Sammy who took his ball and wandered onto the field alone. Jimmy spotted him as he came out at the end of classes. He wondered what the lonely boy could gain from just lightly tossing the ball to himself. From the sidelines he shouted.

  “No practice today, little guy. Take it easy.”

  Sammy looked up and smiled. “Here catch!” It was an awkward pass that fell ten feet short. They both walked toward the caroming ball. When they met, Sammy stooped to pick it up, resting on one knee at Jimmy’s feet.

  “Do you think I’ll make the team?”

  Jimmy knew Sammy wanted a word of encouragement. “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe I should try kicking. I might have a better chance.”

  Jimmy had seen Sammy kick. It wasn’t likely. “Maybe you should talk to coach.”

  “I think I will. Hey, you got some time?”

  “Just going home.”

  “Would you stay and hold for me so I can practice?”

  Jimmy hesitated. An afternoon away from Kendall was a gift, but he felt sorry for Sammy. Jimmy had few friends at the school. Sammy had no friends at all.

  The hopeful football player put only two kicks through the uprights. The rest, more than forty attempts, fell short. He didn’t make the team and failed once more as a junior. After that his personality changed. He volunteered little in class and traversed the hallways alone and silent. The naïve smile was gone. He began to spend time with Brother Justice who taught religion. Brother Justice had his own reputation among the students.

  Fifteen

  Two years later, the whaler returned after another successful hunt. The townspeople, once again, stood at the dock to watch the barque settle into its mooring and greet the sailors as they disembarked. When Nathan stepped from the launch he searched the crowd for only one face. He was quickly rewarded when Melba emerged from behind the throng with a giddy shriek and ran into his arms. Some onlookers raised their eyes in surprise, but not the captain who had been the first to step onto the dock, nor his beautiful wife who greeted him with longing warmth. Each had known from the very start that Nathan and Melba must be together forever. They did not object.

  It was late fall and the weather turned darkly cold. The captain and his family settled in for the winter with Nathan fully accepted as one of their own. This time, however, the captain signaled that the stay on Nantucket would be a year. The ship needed a complete overhaul. He kept his other reason private, sharing it only with his wife. To her, h
e admitted he was weary of the long absences. He needed but one more successful voyage, and then he intended to leave the sea behind.

  In the months that followed, the young lovers merged as if the two intervening years had changed nothing. Nathan returned with a store of more than one hundred new songs composed in his head. He and Melba set about compiling them on paper, he at the piano and she at a nearby desk, recording the symbols that would preserve each one. He also returned with an assortment of musical instruments, some emitting sounds that Melba found delightfully unusual. A few of Nathan’s new tunes were composed on these instruments. When played for her on the piano, she found them to be unappealing, but when he replayed them on his new instruments they came alive to her ears. She realized that the big man she loved was gifted beyond any other.

  Their relationship turned truly romantic immediately. Melba, now fifteen, rivaled her mother’s beauty. She had grown into womanhood with all the attributes of figure that a woman’s maturing body presented. Never shy and fond of affection, she clutched at Nathan’s hand whenever others could not see.

  Nathan had also grown into manhood. At just short of twenty he reached his full height of six foot eight inches. Like his father, he towered above other men, evincing a noble quality that engendered deference. He was honest and fair, never seeking nor finding difficulty with others. On the long hunt through the seas he had become an expert navigator and whaler. He was the captain’s right hand man and the best first mate he had ever employed. He was also the captain’s friend, though more often seeking in him a father figure to emulate. Their mutual trust made leadership of the ship efficient and productive. All aboard were contented, knowing they could withstand any storm and find whales where other ships failed.

  In their collaboration, Nathan and Melba found unique joy. Over time she discerned patterns that enabled her to catalogue his songs by similarity. She prevailed upon him to consider titles for all of them, even as he continued to produce new ones on her piano and his fiddle. She suggested, more than once, that he buy a new violin at the shop on Main Street, but he would not consider it. He was too devoted to the original instrument that had opened his life to its true calling.

  When the ship set sail once again, the young couple promised themselves to each other. It was their secret although everyone knew it was inevitable and, upon the ship’s return, as it neared the shoals on the outskirts of Nantucket harbor with Nathan at the helm and the captain watching carefully at his side, the young man, now twenty-two, gathered his courage and solemnly asked his mentor for Melba’s hand.

  The wedding was one of the most joyous occasions the tiny island had witnessed in years. Melba was the image of her mother, wearing the same white dress the beautiful woman had worn at her marriage to the captain. Well-known and respected, the family refused to limit the number of islanders invited to the ceremony in the white Presbyterian Church at the top of Main Street. The celebration that followed saw more than five hundred people gathered inside the majestic house, outside in the garden and on the cobblestones of the adjacent street. Fittingly, the late fall day was sunlit and unusually warm. Few could remember such a lovely day so close to the start of winter.

  Melba and her mother planned the celebration carefully. Much of the food was brought in from Boston. The flowers, hard to find once summer passed, had been gently preserved since spring, but most important to Melba was the music she had chosen. It was comprised entirely of Nathan’s creations.

  Apart from the captain and his family, along with the sailors who had shipped with Nathan over the years, no one had ever heard his music. True, there were whispers among the islanders about the beautiful sounds coming from the parlor in the house, but few linked the music to this tall man from far off Australia who spent occasional winters with them, waiting for the next voyage. As the day passed, his enchanting songs dominated the festivity.

  To the young composer, so happy to be married to the only woman he could ever love, hearing his songs played by others was a humbling experience. He found himself bewildered as he was paraded onto the parlor floor to dance with his new bride. Even as they moved gracefully among the other dancers, he was engrossed in his music. It seemed to him that these could not be his songs. Until then they had only been heard on a single instrument, his fiddle or her piano, or sometimes, just on his flutes. Now, they were arranged among ten different instruments, blended together. It was not an orchestra, yet the room filled with a sound so breathtaking to his ears that he almost lost his composure. Melba looked into his eyes as they glided through the room, suddenly afraid that she had made a mistake. She sensed his emotion and feared that he was angry with her for the first time. He quickly saw the uncertainty on her face and summoned a smile.

  That evening the captain took his wife’s hand and gathered everyone together, encircling the bride and groom at the center of the room. In halting words filled with emotion, he described how Nathan had come onto his ship, an unskilled boy that he never expected would one day become a part of his home and family. He explained that Nathan had learned more about whaling in a few short years than even he, the captain, had learned in the same time. He carefully avoided mentioning that day in Amsterdam when the boy’s strength and courage won the respect of his fellows, but he alluded to it in a glowing tribute to Nathan’s skilled leadership as first mate. He looked upon his daughter with a hint of tears and talked about her stunning beauty. He catalogued all of the attributes that made his little girl the joy of his life, her smile and laughter, her enthusiasm, fair mindedness and devotion to all that was good. Then he announced that he was retiring from the sea, his wedding gift to Nathan and his daughter to be his ship. Nathan would take his place as captain on the next voyage and many more to come as he sought his fortune so that one day he could build his own great house on Nantucket Island.

  Four months later, as spring approached, Nathan Whitehurst took the helm as the youngest whaling captain ever to set sail out of Nantucket. Unable to bear the thought of separation, Melba packed two trunks with her most cherished possessions. They were delivered to the ship by carriage and carefully hauled upon deck. For weeks she had argued with her mother and father who staunchly fought her intention to join her new husband on the perilous sea. In all his years as a whaler, the captain had never taken a woman aboard ship. It was no place for the fairer sex. The work was dirty, odorous and grueling. The oceans did strange things to people, not just physical ailments like the sickness, but mental tortures, driven by long days of empty boredom and loneliness.

  Nathan had his misgivings as well, but in his heart he felt the same desire to be with her as she with him. A few short months of married bliss was not enough to keep his passion in check. In the absence of strong opposition from her husband, Melba would not be dissuaded.

  As the ship moved out of the harbor, the newlyweds stood at the stern and watched the town gradually fade. The night before Melba had stayed alone in the parlor for hours. For as long as she could remember her piano had been her dearest possession, her consolation and her joy. She caressed its keys, knowing that she faced many months before she would make music from it again. Nathan stayed apart from this ritual. He understood her thoughts, and he vowed to bring her back to that room and her most cherished pursuit, safely. The captain stood at the dock, hand in hand with his wife, motionless as the ship rounded Brant Point. Both couples felt a strange uncertainty about this farewell, so unlike any that had come before.

  By mid-voyage, eight months later and somewhere south of the equator, Melba confided in Nathan that she was pregnant. She had not adjusted well to the sea. Accustomed to good food and steady legs on shore, she was immediately taken with seasickness that reduced her weight and brought a gray hue to her formerly immaculate complexion. Nathan worried over her day and night, even hugging coastlines where the water was calmer and putting into shore more often than was common when hunting whales.

  Her pregnancy brought terror to his emotions. After two more months o
f watching Melba grow weaker and weaker, even losing interest in the music her husband brought forth from his flutes and fiddle, Nathan gathered his crew and announced his intent to bring her to a safe harbor. He told the men that he would pay them what they were owed and he promised to find other ships for them to join. Then he set course for the closest destination where there were two people he trusted to care for his wife, Apollo Bay.

  The ship arrived six weeks later, laden with the spoils of a good hunt. Nathan was an able negotiator and quickly found buyers eager to take the oils and bones that had accumulated. Most was simply hauled aboard other ships bound for Japan where the Far East market was best. He didn’t care. His prime concern was Melba who had become so weak that she could barely walk. He dispatched one of his crew to his stepfather’s farm with instructions to return with a carriage. When it arrived Nathan carefully carried his wife from her berth and, with the aid of his stepfather, gently placed her on the carriage seat where his stepmother took her into her arms and held the pregnant woman’s feverish head to her breasts. All three feared for Melba’s life.

  A doctor was brought in from Geelong, a larger nearby town, to examine her condition and make certain that all was well with the baby. He left instructions for fresh fruits and vegetables to be consumed as often as possible. Rest, better food and the soft air of Australia worked wonders and four months from giving birth, Melba rallied. Color returned to her face and she regained the vivaciousness that so many found captivating. Nathan’s stepparents were enthralled with the girl from Massachusetts. His stepmother doted on her every whim, even demanding that Nathan purchase a piano from Melbourne. Three weeks later, it was transported to the cottage so she could play again. Nathan finally relaxed, knowing he had done right to halt his hunt. Soon, they were back at work on his music, happy again as they awaited the baby’s arrival. From her trunk, Melba took out the packet of songs. There were many others in her husband’s mind. She set a goal to put each one to paper by the time the baby was born. She intended to play them for their child.