“What can I do for you, Captain Wapshot?” the doctor asked.
“I was playing backgammon with Perley Sturgis at the fire-house,” Leander said, “and I had an idea. I wondered if you could give me a job.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not,” the doctor said pleasantly enough. “I don’t even have a nurse.”
“That wasn’t the kind of work I had in mind,” Leander said. “Can anyone hear us?”
“I don’t believe so,” the doctor said.
“Take me for an experiment,” Leander said. “Please take me. I’ve decided that’s what I want to do. I’ll sign anything. I won’t tell anyone. Operate on me. Do anything you want. Just give me a little money.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Captain Wapshot.”
“Take me,” Leander said. “I’m a very interesting specimen. Pure Yankee stock. Think of the blood in my veins. State senators. Scholars. Sea captains. Heroes. Schoolmasters. You can make medical history. You can make a name for yourself. You’ll be famous. I’ll give you the family history. I’ll give you a regular pedigree. I don’t care what you do with me. Just give me a little money.”
“Please get out of here, Captain Wapshot.”
“It would help humanity some, wouldn’t it?” Leander asked. “It would help humanity. Nobody has to know. I won’t tell anybody. I promise I won’t tell anybody. I’ll promise on the Bible. You can have a laboratory nobody knows about. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll go there whenever you say. I’ll go there nights if you want me. I’ll tell Mrs. Wapshot I’m traveling.”
“Please get out of here, Captain Wapshot.”
Leander picked up his hat and left. In the square a woman, from the other side of the river, was calling in Italian to her son. “Speak English,” Leander told her. “Speak English. This is the United States.” He drove back to the farm in the old Buick.
He was tired, and happy to see the lights of the farm. He was hungry and thirsty and his appetite seemed to embrace the landscape and the house. Lulu had burned something. There was a smell of burned food in the hall. Sarah was in the back parlor.
“Did you see the sign?” she asked.
“Yes,” Leander said. “Was she here today?”
“Yes. She was here this afternoon.”
“She hung it on the wheelhouse,” Leander said. “I guess she hung it there herself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The sign.”
“But it’s on the gatepost.”
“What do you mean?”
“The sign’s on the gatepost. She put it there this afternoon.”
“She wants to sell the farm?”
“Oh, no.”
“What is it, what is it then? What in hell is it?”
“Leander. Please.”
“I can’t talk with anyone.”
“You don’t have to talk like that.”
“Well, what is it? Tell me, Sarah, what is it?”
“She thinks that we ought to take in tourists. She’s spoken to the Pattersons and they make enough money taking in tourists to go to Daytona every year.”
“I don’t want to go to Daytona.”
“We have three extra bedrooms,” Sarah said. “She thinks we ought to let them.”
“That old woman has not got a scrap of the sense of the fitness of things left in her head,” Leander shouted. “She’ll sell my boat to foreigners and fill my house with strangers. She has no sense of fitness.”
“She only wants…”
“She only wants to drive me out of my head. I can’t make head nor tail of what she’s doing. I don’t want to go to Daytona. What makes her think I want to go to Daytona?”
“Leander. Please. Shhh…” In the dusk she saw the headlights of a car come up the drive. She went down the hall to the side door and onto the stoop.
“Can you put us up?” a man called cheerfully.
“Well, I believe so,” Sarah said. Leander followed her down the hall but when he heard the stranger, veiled by the dark, close the door of his car, he stepped back from the door.
“What do you charge?” the man asked.
“Whatever’s customary,” Sarah said. “Perhaps you’d like to look at the rooms?” A man and a woman came up the stairs.
“All we want are comfortable beds and a bathroom,” the man said.
“Well, the bed has a nice hair mattress,” Sarah said thoughtfully, “but there’s some rust in the hot-water tank and we’ve had an awful time with the water pump this month, but I’d like you to see the rooms.”
She opened the screen door and stepped into the hall to be followed by the strangers and Leander, standing there and trapped, opened the hall closet and crashed into the dark with its collection of old coats and athletic equipment. He heard the strangers enter his house and follow Sarah up the stairs. Just then the old water closet sounded the opening notes of a performance of unusual vehemence. As this noise abated Leander heard the stranger ask, “Then you don’t have a room with a private bath?”
“Oh no,” Sarah said, “I’m sorry,” and there was sorrow in her voice. “You see this is one of the oldest houses in St. Botolphs and our bathroom is the oldest in the county.”
“Well, what we were looking for was a place with a private bathroom,” the stranger said, “and…”
“We always like to have a private bathroom,” his wife said gently. “Even when we travel on trains we like to have one of those compartments.”
“De gustibus non est disputandum,” Sarah said sweetly, but her sweetness was forced.
“Thank you for showing us the rooms.”
“You’re quite welcome.”
The screen door slammed and when the car had gone down the drive Leander came out of the closet. He strode down the drive to where a sign, TOURIST HOME, was hung on his gatepost. It was about the size and quality of the sign on the Topaze and raising it in the air with all his might he brought it down on the stones, splitting the sign in two and jarring his own bones. Later that night he walked over to Boat Street.
Honora’s house was dark but Leander stood squarely in front of it and called her name. He gave her a chance to put on a wrapper and then shouted her name again.
“What is it, Leander?” she asked. He couldn’t see her, but her voice was clear enough and he knew she had come to the window. “What do you want?”
“Oh you’re so high and mighty these last days, Honora. Don’t forget that I know who you are. I can remember you feeding swill to the pigs and coming back from Waylands’ with the milk pails. I have something to tell you, Honora. I have something important to tell you. It was a long time ago. It was right after you came back from Spain. I was standing in front of Moodys’ with Mitch Emerson. When you walked through the square Mitch said something about you. I couldn’t repeat what he said. Well, I took him out behind the lumberyard, Honora, and I walloped him until he cried. He weighed fifty pounds more than me and all the Emersons were hardy, but I made him cry. I never told you that.”
“Thank you, Leander.”
“And other things, too. I’ve always been dutiful towards you. I would have gone to Spain and killed Sastago if you’d asked me. There’s not a hair on my body that has not turned white in your service. So why do you devil me?”
“Moses has to go,” Honora said.
“What?”
“Moses has to go out in the world and prove himself. Oh, it’s hard for me to say this, Leander, but I think it’s right. He hasn’t raised a finger all summer except to indulge himself, and all the men of our family went out into the world when they were young; all the Wapshots. I’ve thought it over and I think he’ll want to go but I’m afraid he’ll be homesick. Oh, I was so homesick in Spain, Leander. I’ll never forget it.”