'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll
Of Ships and Kings
Odd. The old sailing ship had somehow weighed anchor and left its rather perilous harbor in the Great Room for safer voyages into Murdoch's study. It was now berthed in a protective corner, beneath an old painting of the San Joaquin Valley. No doubt, Scott thought, it was after the vicious game of cribbage the other night, when he'd backed into it trying to avoid Johnny's victory shuffle. He had caught a fleeting glimpse of what could only be described as surprised horror on Murdoch's face.
Yes, the game must have decided the move.
He stepped closer, drawn to the largest mast, now damaged. Intricately made, it had snapped in two, fragile as a twig. His fingertip found a second crack in the wood, but he hadn't caused this one—it had been done much earlier in the model ship's life. Had Maria taken too vigorous a swipe with her duster? Or had it met an untimely fate from Murdoch's errant elbow?
Voices came from the hallway and he jerked his hand away from the broken mast like a schoolboy caught with a passed note.
#~#~#~#~#
Thad Lawson was in a pickle: his son was coming home. Meggie had suggested a welcoming party at the new dance hall in Green River, but he, echoing Will, had said it was silly to go to unnecessary expense, especially with the poor harvest last year. Then Meggie had smiled at him, and she was eighteen years old again, and he was smitten.
After all, it wasn't every day that a son of his went back east and off to college.
He had so much to do before Will came home and the fancy shin-dig in town. Thinking of his boy's accomplishments, Thad's eyes began to smart. He paused for a while and allowed his gaze to roam the faces of the patrons in the mercantile, to fix a moment on Scott Lancer, who was smiling and talking with his brother. A beat of hope thumped in his chest, but was Scott a betting man, like his father?
He caught the barest of conversations around the jars of green beans and packs of buttons.
"It's been a week already and the old man hasn't got the boat fixed. What's he waitin' on?"
"It's not a boat, Johnny, it's a ship. Maybe you were a little too celebratory."
"Maybe you were a little clumsy, fallin' into it like that."
"To paraphrase, 'it is one of the blessings of brothers that you can afford to be stupid with them.'"
"I like that one. Emerson?"
"Who else?"
"Uh-huh. But I did win. Best three out of five."
"So you've said, several times. I was there, remember? One thing is certain, he won't let us near the thing now."
"I wouldn't even wanna try."
"That makes two of us. So…cribbage, best five out of seven?"
Thad stepped around the corner and the conversation stopped.
Scott nodded to him. "Mr. Lawson."
"Hello, boys. Nice to see you in town. How's Murdoch?"
"Doing well, or as well as one can be trying to figure out the maneuverings of the spring round-up."
He chuckled at Scott's words, knew something of what it took to make a spread run right. Being the king wasn't all gravy and he expected Murdoch still bore the brunt of it despite having his two sons back with him. The thought gave him pause. Maybe he shouldn't ask, but he had deadlines of his own. It wasn't an easy question in any sense of the word, but the worst thing that could happen was the boy would turn him down.
"Say, Scott, can I speak with you for a moment?" He tipped in to whisper, "Outside?"
Scott's eyebrows quirked upward and he threw a puzzled glance to Johnny. "All right."
Once on the boardwalk, Thad motioned to his livery, they could talk in private there. Scott had other ideas, and he stopped midway.
"Whatever you need to say can be done here." He swung his head towards the store. "Or in the mercantile, actually."
The thumping in his chest beat faster. If he wasn't careful, he'd overplay his hand before he even started.
"When Murdoch found you, he said you'd finished college—Harvard, isn't that right?"
"I was always in Boston, so never really lost, but yes, I graduated from there."
He'd hit some sort of nerve, but Murdoch was always close-lipped when it came to his family, especially after those dark years when Haney was raiding the countryside. "Then, please. There's something I need to ask. At the livery."
Scott took a breath and in doing so made a noise: a query. But he nodded.
Thad waved Scott to a chair when they reached his small office to the side of the stalls, and looked him long and hard in the eye before he began. "My son will graduate from college this spring."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Gripping Thad's hand, he shook it firmly. "Congratulations! But you could have told me and Johnny back at the store."
"I couldn't. You see I have a favor to ask. All that time at school, surely you're up to date on your reading and letters, right?"
"Well yes." The boy's eyes wondered from the bridles hung on the wall to the small toy rocking horse sitting in the corner to the collection of painted wood tiles on his desk. It was a system Thad had worked out for the livery. If a man wanted to take out a certain horse, he took the colored tile from the nail by the stall and dropped it into the basket on the desk.
Scott's face dipped to the slats of the flooring, then up again, light from the window catching his eyes at an angle so they shone like seaglass. Shone with understanding. "You can't read, can you?" he murmured.
Thad let the question sit, feeling bites of shame wash over him. "Or write, well enough to satisfy me."
"And you run your livery with those bits of wood and the like."
"Them and handshakes. I find most men are still honest when they take my horses. The payment is easy enough, I can recognize the coins and paper money, it's the reading and writing that I can't do." He stared at some vague point across the room. "My parents never set much stock in proper schooling and then my Pa died and I took to farming and horses like a duck to water. Oh, my Meggie knows, but no one else does. As a father, I wanted more for my son than I had, so I put him off to college. But it makes things different, his learning. He shouldn't have to suffer for my lack of it."
Thad sighed and sagged back in his chair. "So will you do it? Will you teach me how? I'll pay for your time."
"I'm no teacher, Mr. Lawson. And besides Lancer has the spring round-up in another month. The ranch is busy and I'm needed to work. Surely someone else in Green River can help you."
He sat up so straight he could hear his spine click into place. A refusal was coming, knew it would be a killing blow to his plans.
Speaking softly because Scott seemed to need it, he prodded. "Meggie doesn't hold with betting, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her. I'll wager one hundred dollars that I could learn to read and write over the next month. Before the round-up."
"If I was to do this—if—what are your terms?"
The boy was canny, willing to listen, and he liked that—a lot. "Five nights a week, here at the livery."
"Two nights."
"Three, plus two Sunday mornings. Unless you need time for church."
Those eyebrows shot upward again. It was time to play his trump card. "Did I happen to mention that college my boy's graduating from is Harvard?"
A slow grin started across Scott's face, one that made him look a little like Murdoch, from back in the day. "No. No, you never mentioned that. How does he like it?"
"Just fine."
Thad saw a glimmer of defeat and it made his heart swell. "He's studying to be an engineer."
"Is he now?" Scott wagged his head back and forth. "Three nights a week, plus the Sundays." He held up one finger. "And don't forget about the hundred dollars."
Yep, canny. He liked that a lot.
#~#~#~#~#
Lawson was a cagey man who knew exactly what he doing. Scott groaned. Harvard. He'd already decided to try and help when the man dropped that little bit of information. Of course, it was all over then—anything for a fellow alumnus. It was going to be a bit stickier with Murdoch as he'd given his word he wouldn't tell anyone.
Scott's smile dropped when he turned around the corner and saw Johnny in a slouch against the mercantile wall, looking bored.
Bored was a dangerous look, for however few people understood that about his brother. Squaring his shoulders, he approached.
"Glad you waited. How about a beer? I'll buy."
"So what'd the old man want?"
He shrugged. "Nothing much."
"You were in there long enough to make it something."
Scott feigned confusion. "It didn't seem that long."
"It was."
A modicum of truth was always helpful. "He told me his son is going to graduate from Harvard this spring."
"He could have told you back at the mercantile."
"That's what I said. Are you ready to go home?"
Johnny looked thoughtful of all things. "What about the beer you're buying?"
Leave it to his brother to remember the minutest detail. And who's paying.
Scott saw the bounce in Johnny's step as he entered the deep darkness of the saloon. Happy enough for now, but would be itching for the whole truth later. Funny how his brother seemed to have so much patience for waiting things out sometimes. He would have to stay out of Johnny's trajectory for the next few days if he was going to keep Lawson's secret...well, secret.
#~#~#~#~#
When Scott returned to Green River a few days later and it wasn't lost on him that Murdoch had yet to fix the ship in his office. Like Johnny, he wondered why his father hesitated. The first crack had been fixed, why not this one?
The livery smelled of hay and horse, of manure, of compost and leather. Mr. Lawson was ready and waiting in his office.
He had one book, two dime novels and a newspaper. It turned out he had learned all his reading from the Sacramento Bee. A particularly argumentative paper whose views were slanted against cattle practices, it resonated with farmers from the San Joaquin to Truckee. If Mr. Lawson saw the irony in having a Lancer, thereby a cattleman, instruct him using the Bee, he didn't let it be known.
Scott flipped through the dog-eared pages of a lurid novel about Red Roman, The Prince of the Gold Hunters. According to the author, Mr. Roman was the man who discovered gold in California. While on horseback holding a beautiful, scandalously-clad woman in one arm.
Scott squinted at the man on the cover with the armful of woman. Hm. He looked like George Armstrong Custer with the sharp nose and yellow hair flowing out from under his hat. Unfortuntely, the nubile young lady didn't bring forth any such recollections.
"You can borrow that if you want," said Mr. Lawson. "Makes for some good reading during a long night. My favorite though is that second book where Red corners the outlaw trying to kill his best friend. His 'hold on, pard' gets me every time."
Scott let the pages flutter to a close. "Perhaps we can get around to them later. Much later."
"Say this word for me, Scott."
He leaned over the man's shoulder. "The word is country. Like 'taking a ride in the country' or 'America is a country'.
"Then what's this one?"
The Bee was running an article about a society social held a week ago. "That's 'youth', as in someone young."
"I've been saying it wrong in my head all this time. Why isn't said like country?"
"Well, that's a good question. I don't know why, it just is and there are more words like that, too. Tell you what, let's go over the letters first, then we'll get to them."
They put the books to the side and spread out paper and pencils, drank weak coffee from chipped ceramic mugs from a pot on the banked forge outside the barn. Scott kept trying to push the worry—ergo he irreparably damaged the ship that had been in Murdoch's care for a lengthy amount of time—to the back of his mind, which was relatively difficult. More coffee. And Mr. Lawson face down in the alphabet, taking an interest in the letter 'K'. Was 'corral' spelled with it, or a 'c'?
Several hours later, he was yawning. But Mr. Lawson was lit from within. Once he seemingly got the letters and sounds down, the few words he was familiar with came easier. And every new one he came across went into a little book to study. Writing was the hard part, though.
"Farmer's hands" he said by way of apology, "good for using a plow and steering horses, not much else."
Scott had to concede that the letters were sloppy, some unreadable. But there was still time to get them right.
Finally, Lawson sighed and pushed back from the desk. "I think that'll be all for tonight, Scott. My eyes are wore out. I didn't know it would be such hard work."
As Scott gathered their equipment together, the man got up to pace, eventually settling by the nearest stall, one hand tucked under the other elbow. Afraid, he thought reading the posture.
"I'll be here tomorrow evening and we can keep going."
Almost a flinch, a skittish horse shying from his shadow. "It's not one of our agreed to days."
He grinned widely. "With a hundred dollars in the mix, I don't want you to say I didn't give you my best."
Lawson broke a smile and nodded.
#~#~#~#~#
Murdoch's chuckles petered out into silence, just the thump of horses in the corral providing night noise. The old model ship had weathered a number of years before coming in contact with the two forces of nature that were his sons. At least one anyway.
It had reminded him of the first time the ship had been damaged. But that crack, done so many years ago—
We shall keep together what share of trouble and sorrow our lives may lay upon us. That's what she'd said. All blonde hair and shimmering eyes and silk. He'd always wanted her in silk. And she'd been so mad at him for scaring her that he thought he was going to break a rib laughing.
He wondered sometimes, more so before Scott arrived, but it still haunted him. His fingers were up to his mouth, tapping.
Scott's—never Scotty's—voice was so full of childish excitement about the wonder of his birthday party that Murdoch actually smiled for the first time in he didn't know how long. There was nothing forced about it, nothing feigned. It felt good, and wrong, and guilty. It felt like betrayal. But it was a smile, and Scott looked up at him like meeting a giant stranger might just be about the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.
By God, he should have forced Harlan's hand right there and then. But the boy looked so happy. Safe. He couldn't live with losing him again. Confused, contradictory words. Truth, or close to it.
He stared out the window, heard distant hoof beats. It must be Scott since he was the only one not accounted for yet.
His son was in the habit of keeping late hours this past week or so, burning the candle at both ends. He understood the ramblings of young men, although he had to squint to remember his own. But he wished the boy would slow down, spend more time at home.
tbc