Chapter 3: John Silver; What Was Overheard in the Rain

The aforesaid torrents came down silently but in a copious downfall, that could be seen slanting against the gray houses, casting the illusion that the dilapidated dwellings rose up in the clouded gloom, and then fell back again continuously in themselves, like the rise and fall of a fountain, and slid away into their obscurity, to where it seemed that only John could discern the ghosts of their existences through the water.

The only noise heretofore was the desultory percussion of the rain tapping on the roof that hung above the boy in the otherwise quietude. John sat on his hands behind the house, because they were cold. The mud became terrible to sit in, for it burst from the ground in the rain, and grew slippery and increased in suction when stepped in, but he held himself in his place, adhered to the hole he had buried his sins in, convinced he should remain there—for he felt himself undeserving of shelter—until he decided whether he would keep or quit himself of his pillage.

Aside from his self-inflicted punishment, John's stomach churned with a passionate hunger, and presently he remembered the candy given to him by the doctor, which he had invested in his pocket for a later time. John searched for it first in the pocket he remembered relinquishing it to, then in his other when his prize was not found, until finally he noticed the handkerchief the candy had been wrapped in lying in the mud, from which nothing fell when picked up. John, despite his chagrin, conjectured this misfortune of losing the candy as an appropriate repercussion of his misdeeds, and pocketed the handkerchief to return to the doctor.

John then started at a new thought: Could he ever conjure up the courage to look at the doctor again? The doctor had been such a friend to him; surely there had been no ruination of their relationship, even if John was to eternally feel an unexplained guilt whenever he was to be with him again in the future. John, replacing his hands underneath him, huddled against the house, the rain almost growing to be insufferable, and now, discomforted by this new horror of not only losing the doctor's trust, but losing his friendship as well, John's morale sank low inside his empty stomach.

Against the house, however, the little Ursid boy could sense the strong and warm presence of his father within, who inevitably stood aside from their little black pot, cooking what John suspected was food remaining from previous meals, and talking with the doctor, which gave John a surge of warmth and fortification as he firmly maintained himself outside in his miserable locations.

With this surge of transitory alleviation, the rain itself seemed as though to commiserate with the boy, for, with a moment's permission, the rain abstained from falling, taking passage between sky and earth only in small amounts of rain. This abstained also the preexisting erratic tap of rain on the roof above John's head, which, ending the only noise produced from the rainfall, initiated and thrust a strenuous and sudden muteness that seemed to encompass John's whole planet. This carried with it a moment where noise ceased, until, from above, John perceived two voices, one being his father's, and the other belonging to the doctor's. Immediately, John strained his ears.

"…which I hoped I could avoid."

John tried to lift his eyes toward the direction of where the voices stole from—the last sentence being produced from his father—but, regardless of the rain's dreamlike refrain, drops of water still managed to dribble on his upturned face, which made his reflexes crash, and the endeavor was soon terminated. John closed his eyes, hoping to heighten his hearing by temporarily forsaking another sensory organ.

"Jonas, there is no sense in ignoring debt. All good men are debtors once in their lives…"

"But not all their lives, Isaiah. And I most certainly don't need it, now. Any other time—any other—I would greet debt at my door like I would greet the Queen if she visited me; but if now is the only time debt can stink up the threshold of my home, I wish its arrival as unlikely as the Queen's. I'd rather have John grow up in a home that was without want."

John let his little brow furrow in the rain. He speculated musingly over what his father had articulated; debts and the esoteric Queen and thresholds. John connected them oddly with one another, as only a child's mind could, for, even though he believed he perceived the information accurately, the only subject that registered in John's mind was the pleasurable reminder of the Queen's wealth.

"Of course you do," the doctor's voice now spoke, "Of course you do; even I want John in a home like that, but you must think more logically. What if you owed the Queen money? I would find it hard to believe that she would withhold herself, as you so put it, to stink up your threshold waiting for her payment. Therefore her presence is as likely as the debt's that is bothering you now. Even the Queen herself is not above asking for her money."

There was an impertinent chuckle from Jonas at this rebuttal, followed by Welling's more light laughter, but, although try as he might, John found no humor with which to join.

"Oh, Isaiah… my concern is that I might as well even owe her money, I am in such a crisis. Just last night, at Mrs. Bailiff's bakery, I—"

"—you did not have enough money to buy bread."

John's stomach lurched at the pause that infused between his father and the doctor.

"How," John heard his father ask, warily, "How did you know that?"

The answer came concisely: "John."

"He told you?"

"He did. And he also told me something else."

"What?"

"Something corresponding with Captain Flint… a story of some sort… he heard from you." This sorely smote John's stomach to where it no longer lurched, but flopped heavily about inside him.

"Oh, that. That was a story I told him several years ago. Something must have simply reminded him of it…"

"Oh yes; something simple. Like your dilemma with Mrs. Bailiff's bread."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean just that, Jonas. John is a smart boy, and observes you. He knew full well of your bread problem last night, and knows full well the very cause, and not with absurd incongruity, either. John is aware that there is an inconsistent flow of money in his household; whether he is aware of what magnitude the flow is drying at, I cannot say. But he's connected it back to the salary you earn at your workplace, and so has concluded that more money needs be obtained."

"John is a smart boy; that's exactly what needs to be done."

"Jonas. John has taken it upon himself to acquire that missing amount, and claims he'll make you both as 'rich as kings'."

John, during all of this, had remained seated in the mud, the rain continuing to lessen, with mouth and eyes shut, so as to heighten his sense of hearing. When this information was passed, however, John's eyes snapped open. Welling had betrayed his promise to him that his secret copperpieces would not be revealed to his father! John bolted up to his knees, dug his little hands into the mud, and tore two fistfuls of grass out from the earth with a great cry from Welling's unwanted divulgence.

He was quick to amend his anger, however, knowing that he could be heard if he made enough noise, so he threw aside the dredged up dirt and sat back down.

Jonas had lost himself in a silence, and only again spoke after John's tantrum.

"But," Jonas protested, more to himself than his converser, "John has never exhibited any kind of interest in working. And," he added, becoming notably firmer than before, "I don't want him to work. John needs to be educated rather than employed; education is employment—without it, he'll live just like I am now, in miserable debt! I won't have it—he will not work!"

"Think with your head instead of your heart, Jonas, for once. Think how you will see more profit come to you with two incomes driving the family instead of your one. You would not live so pathetically!"

"Ha! Listen to you. Pathetic! John does not live pathetically now, Isaiah! He will live pathetically when his life becomes enslaved by earning money, and scraping it together in order to survive! How can I teach my son anything when I show him that a man cannot live and own his own house unless he is supported by another? What will happen when he grows up and takes after me, and he is accustom to having two incomes to live on instead of one, but, when I can't be there to give him that luxury any longer, he will sink because I neglected to teach him independence! What I need to show him is that he must educate himself and learn a trade! He must leave this place and find a job elsewhere with his knowledge so he can earn money and gain wealth! What sort of father would I be if I did not give him that?"

"What sort of education do you think he's gaining, Jonas? What trade do you think he's learning? Your trade? Or mine, perhaps? Jonas, just before I came in here, John—like an expert, I'll not deny it—pick-pocketed two silverpieces from my very own coat! Is this the trade you're talking about? I see no other John has been practicing."

"Pick-pocketing?" Jonas repeated incredulously. "John is pick-pocketing?"

Pick-pocketing! John's heart now sank down at the level of his stomach, and both organs now flopped about; his stomach flopping hollowly against his ribs, his heart flopping with violent, rapid thumps. What a lowly recreant doctor Welling proved to be!

"Yes, Jonas," the doctor continued, steadily all of sudden, and quieter. "I don't know if this is an old practice of his, or if this was the first of that kind of events, but I do know he would have succeeded, had he not shortly admitted it thereafter."

John's breath was lost to him as he waited fervently for his father's response. The bowels of his stomach rocked with bitter anxiety. All had been revealed! What a torment it was for John, for another horror arose within him: what if his father could not conjure up his own courage to look at him again, after all Welling had disclosed?

Jonas's voice, however, was not heard for a long time. So, after a pause, Welling began to speak again.

"He's a good boy, Jonas. Don't despair—he's only trying to do what he feels is right by earning more money... and I believe it is the right thing to do, too."

Jonas suddenly spoke again, as if emerging from sleep. "…Where is John?"

"I left him on the porch. It is raining extraordinarily; I doubt he is not there now."

This was a new horror all its own! John was no longer sitting on the porch where the doctor had seen him previously, but sitting behind the house in the rain. Upon hearing this said, and hearing footsteps shuffle and cross to the door, John threw his weight forward and so heaved himself up on his feet and hands, but halted in this no less than animal position, and looked back at his hole.

Doctor Welling had betrayed him, as John had betrayed him before. This, then, was a debt in itself repaid; a sin for a sin; the betrayer betrayed, the victim avenged. John fell back into the mud and unearthed the seven coins, this time pouring them into his pocket void of guilt.

The rain, as if recognizing John's dispersal, began to intensify once again and adopted its tapping loudly on the roof, drowning out the sound of the doctor's and Jonas's voices.

With the precious metals chiming in his drenched clothes, and the weight of the guilt for taking Welling's four coins pacified, John flew on light, sprightly feet through the gloom to the porch of the house and returned to his place the moment Jonas stepped out of the door.

His father started upon observing his child, for John dripped with rain and mud, and stood, although slightly, shaking on his feet from cold. "John!" Jonas cried, reaching for the boy with both arms, "what have you done? Why did you go into the rain? Get inside!"

John was swung into his home and met with the breath of warmth he had sensed outside, and which had lent him such essential encouragement, but it now struck his heart with a throb of anguish, for the fear that his father would not forgive him of his—even though he abhorred Welling's treason—still guilty charge that remained inescapably with him.

Having been pushed through the door, his eyes met with the doctor's, and the glance was as though the two did not recognize one another. And yet Welling spoke, even though to John's father above him, substantially recognizable, amiably coming to John's defense as he so often had before.

"Ah, John's an ambitious little boy! 'Spare the rod and spoil the child', if you will, Jonas, and worry simply about getting him dry! Hello, again, John," Welling greeted the little Ursid cordially; "you had quite a bath, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir," John replied tiredly, although the affirmation must not have equalized the doctor's level of geniality, because Jonas narrowed his eyes warningly.

"Forgive him, Isaiah; John must be tired."

John, at this apology his father felt was owed to Welling, reevaluated the inflection he must have used to be so insulting, and determined that it must have been exceptionally curt indeed; however, with the unharmed countenance the doctor unfalteringly presented, John also determined that the curtness of his inflection had not been of a severe degree.

"No need! I'll take my leave now. It's fairly late, and Nathan will probably begin to wonder why I haven't returned. Good night, Jonas; good night, John."

Jonas, in turn, bid the same to Welling, in addition to bidding his son, the son's wife, and Welling's granddaughter the same, shook hands with the doctor, and opened the door for him.

Upon Welling's departure, Jonas turned to face his son with a pensive sigh. John looked at him with his eyebrows raised, and removed a blotch of mud from his cheek with the back of his hand. "John, I want to talk with you…"

"Okay."

Jonas, despite his initiation of a discussion, did not speak again until another preoccupied inspection of his son ensued and had done. He then gave another melancholy sigh and approached the other side of the room, producing a long piece of cloth, and he handed it to his son. "Here…first change and dry yourself."

John obeyed with celerity, accepting the cloth and adorning new clothes and a face rid of mud in such haste he only knew on rare, afflicted instances. The coins he placed inside the pillowcase on his bed.

When done, Jonas did nothing to pursue the discourse he had impetrated, but fed John his dinner, which, when John had been outside, he had correctly assumed to be cooking in their black pot and to be the remainders of previous meals.

Even after their dinner, Jonas spoke nothing of John's transgressions or gave implication of any impending punishment for them—he did not even conduct himself to be angry—but, rather, conversed with him freely, and had a smile for all John's comments. There was, however, always an underlying despondency in Jonas's demeanor, which the perceptible child did not allow go unnoticed.

After all of this, Jonas, while sitting in his wooden chair, finally bade John to go to bed.

"What time is it?" John steadily inquired.

Jonas only chuckled gently. "It's time for bed. Go!"

John, having been on the floor practicing his writing—since there was no other chair in the room—rose from his place with the purpose to yield to his father's request, but was only interrupted by him, his voice quite changed: "John."

The boy turned around to look at his father, his eyes big and attentive.

"John…you're… not sad here, are you?"

Slight confusion creased the boy's brow. "Sad?" John repeated, searching for the context in which the word had been placed.

"Sad, you know… unhappy."

"…No."

Jonas looked away, sinking into his thoughts, his chin placed heavily on his hand. "And, John… you want to learn how to read and write and understand math, don't you?"

"Yes."

"And you're not… afraid of anything, are you?"

John laughed, although it was such an awkward, strange little laugh, it surprised him somewhat, as though he had heard someone across the room laugh. "What do you mean, 'afraid'? Afraid of what?"

"Please, John; answer the question."

"No, I don't think so."

Jonas now looked at him again, his hand placed over his mouth, his index finger resting underneath his nose as he applied his head to his hand. He looked at him squarely, but John could not seem to acquire his eyes, for they were looking beyond his own eye contact, and even beyond his physical presence. Jonas's eyes then closed, and his father issued another sigh.

"Thank you, John. Go to sleep now."

"Okay… good night, Father."

"Good night."

John crawled into his bed and rested his head on the pillow where his coins were hidden, and thought with glee that the scolding for pick-pocketing the doctor he had so horribly dreaded was obviously to be repealed, and he had been thusly absolved for it.