I’ve recently enjoyed conversations—actual and virtual—with folks who spent their childhoods in the same places as I had. I almost wrote “grew up where I did.” But, as there is considerable disagreement (among those who know me) concerning the question of whether I have, or have not, “grown up,” I thought better of it.
Coincidentally, it’s now trout season—and old fishermen are always ready to talk (or write) about their affliction. And yes—before you ask—writers and anglers are well-known prevaricators. So take anything you find here with the proverbial grain (or more) of Sodium Chloride.
Anyhow… I shared this story, based on locations and events from our common childhood locales, with them. Now I’m sharing it with you. Fortunately, in reviewing the tale, I was able to make several edits to the original story—and upload the corrections to the print-on-demand paperback and Kindle editions of Prophet Amidst Losses.
That should spare me at least one form of embarrassment…
Something in the Water
“Before we begin today’s class, please take out your textbooks and read chapter 15, on the post-World War II era.” Five minutes of rustling noise and voices erupt, while 27 students rifle through their book bags and the litter of old papers in their desks.
The 28th student, a skinny somewhat disheveled boy named Kent, does not move. Or rather, only his eyes move. He looks down and from side to side—in almost every direction other than the front of the room where his history teacher stands. The ploy, of course, fools no one.
“Mister Corsell.”
A reluctant Kent is forced to raise his head and face his teacher.
“Will you be joining the rest of the class today? I don’t see your book.”
“Sorry. I seem to have forgotten it.”
His response is only partially true. If he was being absolutely honest, he’d admit that he never remembers to bring his book to class. That he had “forgotten” it isn’t entirely untrue, however, since he barely remembers that it exists. Possessing neither desire nor incentive to be honest with his teacher, he is sufficiently prudent not to say, “I have never taken that book out of my locker, since the day, last September, when you issued it.”
“Perhaps you can go to your locker and rejoin the class…”
“I would, but I think I left it at home.”
Another deviation from the truth. He never brings his history book—or, indeed, any of his assigned textbooks—home. It’s not that he is averse to reading. He reads constantly, but never the stultifying books that The Bored of Education believes to be essential to his becoming a useful citizen and/or productive employee after graduation. As he has no intention of becoming either useful or productive, he reasons that it serves no real purpose to schlep all that weight home every afternoon, only to schlep it back the next morning, unread. He is pragmatic and—much like his personal idol, Bertrand Russell—skeptical and justifiably suspicious of the intentions of the powers that be.
“In that case, Mister Corsell, perhaps you might read chapter 12 of this other book.” The teacher bends down and lifts an unfamiliar book from her own briefcase. She slides it across her big, gray, steel desk, motioning him to take it. Aware that everyone in the class is looking at him, he carries the book to his seat at the back of the room and opens it, making eye contact with no one.
Fifteen minutes later, the rest of the class begins discussing their assigned chapter. Kent is only half listening, because he is fascinated by the alternate text before him. An occasional spoken word interrupts the quiet of his reading mind.
The first thing he notices is that there’s a big difference between what they’ve been studying and what was before him in the pages of his teacher’s book. His classmates answer questions based on their assignment, and their discussions focus on post-war prosperity and the rise of the middle class. The subject of Kent’s book is something else entirely. It’s about HUAC—the House Unamerican Activity Committee—and the profound, if unofficial, role of Wisconsin’s red-baiting demagogue, Senator Joseph McCarthy.
The incongruence of these two views within the same time period puzzles him… as does the fact that his teacher has given him such a different text to read in class. Still, it is a great relief not to be called upon to answer any of the questions that occupy his classmates.
When the bell rings, he lays the book lightly on the teacher’s desk. Saying nothing, he searches her face for some reason for the book’s substitution. She gives up nothing but a nod, ’though Kent thinks he detects something combining curiosity, satisfaction, and maybe a hint of a smile.
If Kent has lingering questions, he does not let them trouble him for long.
American History II is the last class of the day, and he makes a beeline to his locker. The pile of unread textbooks is stacked at the bottom, as always, but a small bag sits atop them. He grabs it, slams the locker shut, spins the dial on the combination lock, and pushes his way through the chattering mob to reach the front door. Once outside, he walks right past his usual bus without boarding it.
Instead, he slips around the end of the building and dives into the woods.
As much as he loathes school, he loves the woods. They are his real school, an educational paradise. He never fails to see, hear, or smell, something new there… or learn something new to him. After brushing aside a few bushes, he comes to a long-unused logging road that descends in switchbacks to the bottom of the valley.
After walking a quarter mile or so, in silence, a sudden rush of sound bursts from his left. A wild turkey shoots across the path, only ten yards ahead of his nose, before disappearing into the trees to his right. For a second afterward, he isn’t sure he’s seen it… it happened so fast, and he never dreamed that something as heavy as a turkey could fly, let alone so fast that it was no more than a brown blur.
He sits on a stump beside the trail, gathering his thoughts, and listening for any sign of the vanished turkey. There is no sound other than the soft swish of leaves in the wind. There isn’t even birdsong, but he doesn’t expect to hear any. Birds sing the loudest in the early morning, starting an hour before dawn. They’re always subdued in the bright hours of the afternoon. He also knows that, when the sun begins to set, the beautiful song of the wood thrush will float through the forest, a haunting reminder of the paradise they shared. But that is hours away, and he has an important appointment to keep. He slips off the stump and heads downhill, a little faster than he had before his encounter with the turkey.
At the bottom of the hill, the old logging road opens onto a narrow strip of pavement. On the other side, a path leads through an overgrown meadow, spotted with small bushes and wildflowers, to his destination among the trees at the far side. The Hollowbrook is his nearest trout stream, and he has followed the path many times.
He wonders if he, alone, has worn the path, or if others know about his secret spot. He forgets his question as soon as he reaches the side of the sparkling, bouncing waters. He watches the surface from behind a tree, looking for signs of feeding trout.
He sees no insect activity and no trout are rising. It pleases him. With no hatch in progress, the trout will be more opportunistic. They might go for anything he tosses their way.
He opens the little bag he’s carrying, taking out a loop of black, braided nylon line, maybe ten feet long, with small hook and split-shot attached to a foot and a half of monofilament at one end. He ties the blackline to the thick end of the stick—one that is slender, and neither too stiff nor too soft for his needs. He wraps some of the line in a spiral toward the thin end, to spread the expected stress along the length of his improvised rod. He then peers under rocks, poking through wet leaves and prying up an old board, searching for bait. A worm, or cricket, or grasshopper should do nicely.
He grins, remembering that The Peekskill Evening Star had reported that, on Opening Day, a little girl had caught a fifteen-inch rainbow from another section of this stream, on—of all things—an orange jellybean. He knows that trout can be incredibly selective feeders but finds it hard to accept that anything—in their experience or evolution—could have prepared them for the sight of an orange jellybean bouncing over the pebbles, at the edge of their feeding lane.
Kent finds a good worm, and threads it onto his hook. He clambers across the boulders dotting the Hollowbrook’s icy waters, careful not to allow his shadow to cross a possible trout lie. He swings his makeshift gear, letting the bait drop into the swift current beside his boulder, where it can swing around into the deep eddy just downstream.
A bright flash in the water, a swift tug, and then nothing.
He pulls in his line, hand over hand, and sees that the bait is gone. It doesn’t bother him. He has given a trout a quick snack and, in exchange, learned that at least one of them was ready and willing to take his offerings.
Even if they don’t include orange jellybeans.
He fishes for a few hours, landing a few small trout. Each time, he carefully wets his hands before unhooking them and slipping them back into the cold water.
Lunchtime in the school cafeteria had been over many hours earlier, and his adolescent stomach begins to growl. He unties the line from the stick, rolls it around his palm, then returns it to the bag. He leans the stick against a tree, not too close to the stream, walks back across the meadow, and starts up the log road, homeward.
The haunting flutelike notes of a wood thrush float across the log road. It reminds him how late it has gotten. It will soon be dark in the woods. He picks up the pace.
Forty-five minutes later, he’s home, gorging on leftovers from the dinner he’d missed. His mother knows what he’s like when he’s fishing and—considering his exceptional appetite—always sets aside the lion’s share of the family meal for him. He is nearly finished when his mother says, “I forgot to tell you, Kent—you got some mail today.”
That surprises him. Usually, the only mail that arrives—addressed to him—is the L.L. Bean catalog. He likes getting it and has read its description of Art Flick’s New Streamside Guide many times. He suspects that he will someday order the book, unless one of his parents takes one of his many hints, and buys it for him. He is not yet a fly fisherman, but has had enough experience with trout streams to know that it was only a matter of time before he would become one.
But today’s mail is not from Freeport, Maine. It’s a postcard from England. It had been mailed, months before, by a former teacher who mentored him. His old English teacher had introduced him to types of culture he’d never found at home. He’d given Kent the opportunity to visit art galleries and museums; attend concerts of folk, jazz, and classical music; and borrow books that were never even mentioned in school—all through the good graces of the teacher he’d had back in the eighth grade. He knew his benefactor had traveled to Europe over Christmas break, but never expected to get a postcard from across the ocean.
When Kent’s mother hands him the card, he thinks he detects disapproval on her face. He notices the same expression on his father’s face when he turns that way. He examines the postcard, to see if it might explain their unfamiliar looks.
It doesn’t.
The image appears to be an engraving—or at least an illustration in the style of an engraving. It shows a man in Medieval military attire, a large black man he doesn’t recognize. He flips the card over.
His address, a stamp featuring Queen Elizabeth II in profile, and a short personal note from his mentor, add nothing by way of explanation. The card bears only four printed words: “Paul Robeson as Othello.”
Those words don’t help much, either, because—while he is aware that there is a play of that name, by Shakespeare—he hasn’t read it. The name Paul Robeson means nothing to him, either. Still puzzled, he looks back to his parents. At first, they say nothing. After seeming to stew over something for a long moment, they answer his unasked question in unison, “He’s a communist!”
Kent knows what communists are. These days, everyone is afraid that the Russians might, any minute, begin slinging H-bombs our way, and some neighbors have even started digging fallout shelters in their backyards. Nothing about the card looks Russian—or Cuban, for that matter. He’s never heard anyone say that Shakespeare was a communist, either. It certainly wasn’t mentioned in the HUAC chapter he’d read in class that afternoon.
He looks to his stern-faced parents for a more complete explanation, but none is forthcoming.
The next day, at school, he continues puzzling over their bizarre reaction to a simple postcard. When an empty period comes up—one that he would normally spend in study hall, marveling at a ceiling where a generation of former students has hurled pencils in the air, lodging them in soft acoustic tiles—he heads to the school’s library. Surely, he would be able to find some kind of answer there.
He is mistaken.
A search of the card catalog finds no mention of any Robesons. Lots of references to Othello, but nothing that suits Kent’s purpose. Before giving up, he takes one last crack at the problem. He asks the kindly old librarian seated behind the reference desk.
Instead of receiving an answer, he watches a quickly-changing series of expressions flash across her wrinkled face. First, a little confusion as she tries to understand what the student is trying to find. Almost instantly, her face flickers with fear. Then, just as quickly, morphs into questionable certitude. “No. I’m sure we don’t have anything like that in our collection.” She sees his eyebrows rise and squeeze together. Fearing that her recalcitrance might be interpreted as a form of censorship—which it, in fact, is—she adds, “You might want to check the Field Library, in town. It’s across the street from The Marathon, that ice cream parlor where so many teenagers like to congregate.”
Then she looks away from Kent, feeling an urgent need to commit her entire attention to serious professional duties involving a rubberstamp, several index cards, and the possible threat of an errant paperclip.
Kent slumps out of the library, less informed than when he entered it. He has two new questions: about the librarian’s reticence, and her strange emphasis on the word that. This might require more effort than he had supposed.
Once again, he does not board his bus at the end of the day. Instead, he hitches a ride down Route 6 into Peekskill. He hesitates before The Marathon, but not even adolescent appetites can lure him away from his quest. He walks through the front door of The Field Library and heads straight to the reference desk.
“Do you have any books about Paul Robeson?” At first, there is no response. Then the librarian raises her head and answers with another question, “Books?”
“This is a library, isn’t it?”
“There’s no need to take that tone with me, young man. I was merely wondering if a book was what you really need. We do have other resources that might be more helpful.”
“Sorry. I might have gotten off on the wrong foot. I’ve been unsuccessful, so far, in getting the answers I need.”
“Apology accepted. Have you considered looking into back issues of the local newspaper?”
“The Evening Star? Why? And how could I do that?”
“We have them on microfilm. You might try looking through some of the rolls for 1949.”
“That,” he thinks, “was pretty cryptic.” She had avoided one part of his question, but she was offering the closest thing to a clue that he’d managed to get out of anyone, so he took it. Besides, he was only three years old, back in ’49, and had probably not been paying much attention to the news.
She leads him down a staircase to a room in the basement, where golden oak cabinets hold The Star’s microfilms. Darkened brass frames, at the front of each drawer, enclosed small cards, each bearing a single type-written year’s number. Each drawer, in turn, held twelve little boxes, one for each month of the year. She points out the big boxy film readers and explains how to use them.
“When you’re done, put the rolls back in their appropriate cardboard boxes and leave them on the cart in the corner. We’ll take care of returning them to their proper places.” He thanks her, leaves his jacket and notebook on a nearby worktable, and kneels in front of the cabinet. Pulling out the drawer marked “1949,” he looks inside.
The drawer holds only eight boxes: January through August. Nothing from September through the end of the year.
One after another, he loads the available rolls into a reader and scrolls through them. He finds only one mention of Robeson, announcing an outdoor concert that was to be held in September. That was something. Robeson was a singer as well as an actor.
He begins to suspect that the missing rolls hold something else altogether.
Upstairs, he asks the librarian about them. She looks—at first—surprised to learn of their absence. Before she can reply, he catches a hint of curiosity, or maybe suspicion, in her eyes. “You know, The Evening Star’s offices probably maintain a more complete morgue of back issues in their office. You might try asking them about those months.”
“Is there some reason those particular months might have gone missing? You looked like you were thinking something about them.”
“Yes—I was wondering—you know, it might have something to do with the riots.”
“RIOTS? What riots?” He couldn’t miss the almost palpable shutting down in her manner.
“I think you’ll need to ask someone else about them—maybe someone at the newspaper.” She stops talking, and it’s obvious that she isn’t going to offer anything else. Their conversation is over.
He suspects that for some reason, she has said more than she intended. Since what it was is a mystery, he collects his things and leaves the library.
He walks over to the newspaper’s office, but only after stopping at The Marathon for a pensive vanilla malted—giving him time to think things through, while keeping up his strength. Unfortunately, The Star is an evening paper, so the office is already closed for the night by the time he gets there.
There is nothing for him to do but hitchhike home.
Kent is a teenager, and his life is filled with the sorts of things that occupy the minds of all teenagers. He has far more interesting things to occupy his attention than questions that no one is willing to answer. Gradually, he forgets that any of this has ever happened.
Until over half a century had passed.
While walking through the Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, he comes across a narrow glass case. Inside, he sees a passport in the name of Paul Robeson. Rubberstamped across it, in big blue capital letters, is the word “CANCELLED.” For some reason, the United States government had decided that Robeson’s traveling days were over.
Kent’s old questions come back, but, unlike his experience in the sixties, he now has ways to get the answers denied to him back then. Ways that didn’t depend on unwilling and uncooperative witnesses. A quick Google search brings up a virtual ton of pages describing Robeson and The Peekskill Riots.
Twenty-thousand people had come to a field outside of town to hear a concert by Robeson, who had been one of the best-known singers of the day… a singer who was renowned for his outspoken support for several leftist causes.
Some of Kent’s favorite causes.
Hundreds of “patriotic” citizens had gathered to protest the event and afterward attacked performers and concert-goers as they left. Some victims tried to find shelter from the mob in nearby houses, but most were turned away. The car that carried Robeson—and two of Kent’s musical heroes, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger—was pelted with stones.
The police did nothing to stop the violence.
One photo shows a smiling cop standing in a long line of jeering yahoos beside the road leading away from the concert site. The road looks familiar to Kent. Looking closer, he notices an opening in the woods, in the background, behind the cop. It was the old logging road from his childhood.
The over-grown meadow beside his beloved Hollowbrook had been the very spot where the concert—and subsequent violence against believers in all the causes he still supports—had happened. Before receiving a postcard from England, Kent hadn’t even heard of Robeson. Suddenly a host of local connections to his own life click into place.
That recognition leads to several unexpected insights. He now understands why he had been unable to learn much about Robeson when he was a teenager. No Peekskill adults wanted to revisit the city’s day of infamy. They were happy for their neighborhood to return to sleepy anonymity. For them, the riots were only fourteen years in the past, and they might even have known—or been—some of the rock-wielding rioters. Collective guilt sealed their lips.
It also explained the hints he’d received: the book his history teacher had given him to read, the postcard, and the half-helpful hints from the librarians. None of them dared to break the community’s silence. Each of them had, in their own way, subtly tried to guide him to a place where he could find the truth on his own. He felt a rush of gratitude for their gifts, gifts he hadn’t recognized at the time.
Almost immediately afterward, he felt that something had been taken from him, but he couldn’t quite figure out what it was.
When a house burns down or is burglarized, it sometimes takes years for the victims to account for all the things that were lost. Things they didn’t even know were important to them. In time, Kent understood what he’d lost when he learned of the riots.
The memory of his secret spot, and the innocent joy of his hours spent in his private paradise, had been overwritten with scenes of ugliness and hatred. It would never be possible to fish, again, the sparkling waters of the Hollowbrook—not even in memory. The stream was permanently polluted by the knowledge of evil.
Paid subscribers to these substack pages get access to a complete edition of my novella: Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. They can also read the first part of Unbelievable, a kind of rom-com that forms around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful. Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get them for free!
Also, substack pages (older than eight months) automatically slip behind a paywall—so only paid subscribers can read them. If you’re interested in reading any of them, you can subscribe, or wait until they are re-released in book form (something I’m in the process of considering).
Meanwhile, it is easy to become a paying subscriber (just like supporting your favorite NPR station). It’s entirely optional, and—even if you choose not to do so—you’ll continue to get my regular substack posts—and I’ll still be happy to have you as a reader.