Searching for Caleb

Then for several evenings in a row he sat alone in his bedroom studying the photograph, testing the new feeling of sorrow that drove straight through his ribcage. And when that was absorbed (not lessened, just adjusted to) he became, he admitted, a little crazy. He began wondering if this photo didn't have some secret message to it. It was impossible for such an object just to be, wasn't it? He studied the angle of Caleb's hat, the set of his cello, the shreds left on the stable wall by some old poster. What was the significance? Meanwhile his bachelor son and his two spinster daughters whispered downstairs, wondering what he could be doing. When Laura May knocked on his door, he jumped and shoved the photo into his pocket. All she found was her father in his easy chair with his arms folded unnaturally across his front.

Then he went to Lucy, who played a little piano still. He pulled her aside one day when she was counting Mason jars in the pantry. "Lucy," he said, "you know music."

"Oh, Father Peck, I-"

"Look here. What note is this man playing?"

He showed her the photo. Surprise set little sharp pleats across her forehead. "Why, who-" she said.

"What note is he playing?"

"Oh, well, I don't-actually, it doesn't look to me as if he's playing any note."

"What? Speak up."

"Not any note."

"Why, how is that possible? No note at all? I never heard of such a thing."

"It looks to me as if he's just resting his bow on the strings, Father Peck."

"But that would be ridiculous."

"Oh, no, it's really quite-"

"I never heard of such a thing," he said, and then he slammed out of the pantry.

Already he knew he had made a mistake. For Lucy, of course, had to go and tell Two, and Two out of all the family was the most certain to recognize a description of Caleb. Then everybody knew, and everybody asked him what he thought he was up to. Caleb was best forgotten. He was surely dead by now. What did it matter what note he had played on a summer's day in 1910?

When Justine visited home that August, she came to where he sat in his slat chair beneath an oak tree. She kissed his cheek and drew back and looked at him. He could tell she had heard something. They had all been discussing him behind his back. He snorted. "You know, of course, that I am non compos mentis," he told her.

She went on studying him, as if she took what he had said seriously. A literal-minded girl, Justine. Always had been.

"Could I see Caleb?" she asked finally.

"Pardon?"

He thought he had heard wrong.

"Your picture of Caleb."

"The others are asking not to see it."

"But I don't even know what he looks like," she said.

He frowned at her. Well, no, of course she wouldn't. Probably didn't know much of anything about him. Laura never let his name cross her lips; he seldom had himself; and to the others Caleb was nearly forgotten, a distant grownup uncle whom they had never found very interesting.

"Well," Daniel said.

He drew out the photograph, protected now by glass.

"My brother," he said.

"I see," said Justine.

"Generally he did not go about in his shirtsleeves, however."

Justine bent over the photograph. Her lowered eyelids reminded him of wings. "He looks like you," she said.

"But his eyes were brown."

"His face is the same."

"Yes, I know," said Daniel, and he sighed. He took back the picture. "The others, you see, they don't count him any more. To them he's a deserter."

Justine said something he couldn't catch.

"Eh? To me," he said, "he is still a member here. He goes back to nearly as long ago as I can recollect. I just like to think of him, is all.

What's wrong with that?"

"Not a thing," Justine said.

"I would give all the remaining years of my life if I could set eyes on him again."

She said something else. He took a swipe at the air, protesting the curtain of muffled sound that separated them.

"If I could just walk to church with him once more," he told her, "only this time, paying closer attention, don't you see. If I could pass by the Salter Academy and look in the window and see him wave, or hear him play that foolish messy music of his on the piano in the parlor-if they could just give me back one little scrap of time, that's all I ask!"

"Oh, well," said Justine. "Come around to the front. Grandfather, see how Meg's grown." And then she took him by the hand, so that he had to rise and follow. In a way, he was a little disappointed in Justine. He had thought she might understand his viewpoint, but if she did she didn't let on.

In November of that year, on a cold, waterlogged day, he received an envelope postmarked Honora, Maryland, where Justine was living at the time. There was no letter, only a clipping from the Honora Herald, a whole page devoted to education. He was puzzled. Education did not much interest him. But wait: at the bottom was a very old-fashioned photograph of rows and rows of young boys. The caption said:

THE GOOD OLD DAYS