Irwin Shaw - Bread Upon the Waters

To Irving Paul Lazar

Bought by Maraya21

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Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.

Ecclesiastes 11:1

HE WAS IN A STRANGE bed. There was murmuring around him. An impression of white. Machinery. The sound of the distant breaking of the sea against the shore. Or perhaps the liquid surf of his blood, pulsing against interior walls. He was floatingsomewhere. It was difficult for him to open his eyes, the lids were heavy. There was a man walking in spring sunshine. He had the impression he had met the man before. Finally, he realized, it was himself.

Attired in mismatched flapping clothes, Allen Strand strode into the fragrant green hush of Central Park, the rumble of Fifth Avenue diminishing behind him. He walked slowly, his weekend pace. On work days he loped, his tall, lean figure crowned by a long narrow head, his nose, a sharp, inherited bowsprit, leaning into a private oceanic wind. His wing of straight, iron-gray hair flashed in the up and down sea motion of his stride. His daughter Eleanor, after meeting him once by accident on the street, had said she almost expected to see a bow wave curling around his prow as he sailed through the currents of city traffic.

The thought that he was going to see Eleanor that evening pleased him. She had a sharp eye and sharp tongue, and her observations were not always benign, but the glint of weapons she brought to the family dinner table made him look forward, as he strolled along the bench-bordered path, to what otherwise might have been a dutiful weekly ritual.

It had been gray and windy that morning, and he had thought it would be a good afternoon to get on a bus and go down to the Museum of Modern Art, of which he was a memberone of his few extravagancesand see a movie before dinner. That afternoon they were showing Fort Apache. It was a delicious retelling of a naive and heroic American myth, an antidote to doubt. He had seen it several times before, but he was attached to it, like a child who insists upon hearing the same story read to him each night before sleep. But the wind had died down by noon and the sky had cleared and he had decided to forgo the film for one of his favorite walks, several miles west toward home from the high school in which he taught.

This Friday it was warm and summery, the gift of May, the grass redolent of simpler country, the leaves of the trees a pale lime in the late afternoon sunshine. He dawdled, stopped to chuckle at a poodle running bravely after a pigeon, watched boys play an inning of softball, admired a handsome young man and his pretty girl, smiling dreamily, conspiratorially, their faces glowing with the promise of the weekends sensuality as they approached along the path, oblivious of him.

The flesh of May, he thought. Praise God for spring and Friday. He was an indifferent Christian but the afternoon called for gratitude and belief.

He was unencumbered. He had corrected the weeks test papers, the aftermath of the Civil War, and left Appomattox and the Reconstruction in his desk. For two days the children he had taught and graded were not his responsibility; at the moment they were hooting at games in playgrounds or experimenting with sex on tenement rooftops or hidden in hallways smoking marijuana or filling syringes with heroin bought, it was said, from the fat man in a baseball cap who stationed himself regularly at a street corner near the school. His hands free, Strand bent and picked up a small round stone and carried it with him for a while, linked to glaciers, enjoying the feel of the smooth ungiving curved surface, warmed by the days sun.

Dinner would be late tonight, with the whole family assembled, and he went out of his way a bit to pass by the park tennis courts, where he knew his younger daughter, Caroline, would be playing. She was a dedicated athlete. No marijuana or heroin for her, he thought complacently, generously pitying less fortunate parents. The holiday weather invited generosity and complacency.

Even at a distance from the court he recognized Caroline from the way she moved. She had a bouncy determined style of running for the ball and an almost boyish mannerism of running her fingers through her short blond hair between points.

The young man she was playing with seemed frail in comparison to Caroline, who, although slender, was tall for her age, full-bosomed and broad-shouldered, with long, well-shaped legs, legs that were admirably public under the brief tennis shorts and which Strand could see were being appreciated by the male passersby.

No marijuana or heroin, Strand thought, but what about sex? These days, a girl seventeen years oldHe shook his head. What had he been doing when he was seventeenearlier evenand how old had the girls been with whom he had done it? Better not to remember. Anyway, sex was Carolines mothers department and he was sure it had been satisfactorily taken care of, if something like that ever could be satisfactorily taken care of. He, himself, had done the necessary with his son and he had detected no later signs of revulsion or fear or undue fascination with the subject in the boy.

Although the young man on the other side of the court seemed stringy and undernourished to Strand, he hit the ball hard and the exchanges were sharp and equal. Strand waited for Caroline to hit a hard overhead smash and then called out Bravo. She turned and waved her racquet at him and came over to the fence behind which he was standing and blew him a kiss. Her face was red and her hair was wet with perspiration, but Strand thought she looked delightful, even though the exercise had drawn the lines of her face tight, which made her nose, unfortunately shaped like a smaller model of his own, stand out more than it did when her plumpish face was at rest.

Hi, Daddy, she said. Hes killing meStevie. Hey, Stevie, she called, come and say hello to my father.

I dont want to interrupt your game, Strand said.

It gives me a chance to breathe, Caroline said. I can use it.

Stevie came along the fence, brushing at the hair at the back of his head.

Im glad to meet you, sir, Stevie said politely. Caroline tells me you were her first tennis teacher.

She started to beat me when she was nine. Now I just watch, Strand said.

She beats me, too, Stevie said, with a sad little smile.

Only on days when youre in the depths of depression, Caroline said.

I wish you wouldnt say things like that, Caroline, Stevie said crossly. I sometimes find it difficult to concentrate, thats all. That isnt depression.

Come on, now, Caroline said, with a comradely push of her hand against the boys shoulder, I wasnt suggesting anything extremelike you going home and crying yourself to sleep when you lose a set or anything like that. I was joking.

I just dont want people to get the wrong idea, the boy repeated stubbornly.

Dont be so sensitive. Or be sensitive on your own time, Caroline said. Hes not usually like this, Daddy. He doesnt like people watching him play.

I can understand that, Strand said diplomatically. Id still be playing tennis if I could figure out a way to do it in utter darkness. Ill be getting along, anyway.

Very glad to have met you, sir, the boy said and went back to the other side of the net, pushing at the hair at the back of his neck.

Forgive him, Daddy, Caroline said. He had a ghastly childhood.

It doesnt seem to have affected his tennis game, Strand said. How has your ghastly childhood affected yours?