Christian and I went back to the Westbridge library three more times before we decided we had found all we could, which was much more than we would possibly be able to use.
The last time we went, Christian was checking through the card catalog to be sure we hadn’t missed anything, while I was sitting at a nearby table looking at a copy of Greasy Luck—A Whaling Sketchbook by Gordon Grant, published in 1932. It had some great pictures in it and, like the Ashley book, some of the whalemen were definitely Negroes.
“Whoa!” I heard from the catalog area.
“What?”
“Come here. You’ve got to see this!”
I walked over to the catalog and looked at the card Christian had. She Blows! And Sperm at That! by William John Hopkins, 1922. I laughed aloud.
“What do you think Lincoln would say if he saw that in our bibliography?” Christian asked.
“Well, at least we’d know whether or not he actually read the bibliography. The problem is that it’s fiction, so we’d have to justify including it. I don’t think we’d better try it.”
“Neither do I, but it would be funny!”
On the way home that day we decided the next thing we needed to do was to go over all our notes and figure out how we were going to organize them, as well as what we would include and what we would cut. Christian suggested that I go to his house the next Saturday and we could spread out our materials on the dining table and get to work. Since the rough draft was due before Christmas and it was almost Thanksgiving, we didn’t have a great deal of time to spare. I agreed and he gave me directions to his house. Despite the fact that we had been meeting quite regularly for about five weeks, neither of us had been to the other’s house.
On Saturday about 9:00 o’clock I biked up the long circular driveway to Christian’s house, a huge white colonial. He met me at the back door and invited me into the kitchen. His mother was doing something at the sink.
“Mom, this is Peter Bradley.”
“Hello Peter and welcome.”
“Thank you Mrs. Walker.”
“So this is the boy who turned my son back into a human being? I think we owe you a great deal.”
“I’m pretty sure he was about ready to turn back anyway,” I replied. “All he needed was a little jump start.” (I had started to say, “Kick in the ass,” but thought better of it.)
“Well thank you. It’s so nice to have him back to normal. If you boys want to go into the dining room and get started, I’ll bring some snacks in a little while.”
We started out of the kitchen and down the hall. As we began to turn right into the dining room I looked into the room on the left.
“Oh, my God!’ I blurted out.
“What’s wrong?” Christian asked.
“Is that really a concert grand piano?”
“Sure.”
“And I suppose next you’re going to tell me it’s a Steinway?”
“No, actually it’s a Bösendorfer 290.”
“I’ve never heard of one. What’s this cover for at the left end of the keyboard?”
“Well, the Bösendorfer 290 has 97 keys instead of 88. If you lift the cover, you’ll see them. There’s actually almost no music written for those keys, but through sympathetic vibration the extra strings give a richer darker sound to the piano than a Steinway has.”
“Who plays it?” I asked.
“It’s my mother’s piano, but I play it too. Didn’t I tell you that she was a concert pianist and accompanist before I was born?”
“No, you never said a word about either her or you playing. Do you think she’d mind if I tried it for a few minutes?”
“Of course not, but you never told me that you could play either. I can see we’ve got to stop keeping secrets from each other.”
I sat down and began playing a G major chord very softly. I repeated the chord several times, increasing the volume each time until the room was filled with sound. Christian was right about the rich dark sound. I tried it in different registers. My God, I had never played such a responsive and beautiful instrument in my life. Finally I began one of the Chopin preludes, and when I finished it I played two more.
As I finished the third one I looked up to see Mrs. Walker in the doorway listening. “You have an unusually sensitive understanding of these preludes for someone so young,” she said.
I was overwhelmed. I was certain she was the first concert pianist who had ever heard me play. I thanked her, blushing a little, and asked Christian if he would play something.
He sat down, thought a moment, and then began the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor. It went from roaring through the room to being a very intimate, quiet sound and then back again. It was lovely. He had a wonderfully fluid technique, something one is born with, and I envied him. He was easily my equal and quite probably my better. When he finished I clapped enthusiastically and then asked if Mrs. Walker would play something. She sat and played the first three sections of the Bach Partita Number 5. She had a beautiful, clear, delicate touch, the perfect style for Bach. When she finished, both Christian and I clapped and she made a little mock bow.
“You know what would be fun for you boys? We should find some good duets that you could play together.”
Christian and I looked at each other and smiled happily. This had been a wonderful revelation for both of us and quickly cemented the growing bond between us.
I could have played that piano all day, but we knew that time was short and we had to get to work, so we went into the dining room and spread our books and papers on the table. First we worked on an outline, going from the physiology of the sperm and right whales to how the industry began on Nantucket with shore whaling, then moved out to day trips by small boat to longer trips in larger ships. We included how the whalers figured out how to put the try-works to boil the blubber on the deck without setting fire to the whole ship. From then on, they could whale anywhere in the world without stopping except occasionally for supplies. Finally we ended with something about the whaling ports on Nantucket, Cape Cod, and in New Bedford.
“Did you know,” asked Christian, “that it was a Negro blacksmith who invented the Temple toggle?”
“No,” I said a little hesitantly, trying to think if I had heard of a Temple toggle before. “What’s a Temple toggle?”
“Well, it was a new type of harpoon which had a point that was on a toggle so that when the harpoon went into the whale and the whale tried to pull it out, the toggle turned and stayed in the whale. Listen to what Ashley says about it.” He read:
The Temple iron, invented by Lewis Temple, a Negro whalecraft-maker of New Bedford, in 1848 was of such extremely simple construction, and at the same time was so practical, that it was at once adopted to the exclusion of all others….It is safe to say that the Temple toggle was the most important single invention in the whole history of whaling, since it resulted in the capture of a far greater proportion of the whales that were struck than had before been possible.
“Wow!” I said. “To think that one simple change like that would make such a difference.”
As we worked, Mrs. Walker brought in some milk and delicious oatmeal raisin cookies, my favorite!
We talked awhile longer about things we had found in the books. Christian also told me that there had actually been Negro captains, like Paul Cuffe who sailed out of Nantucket with an all Negro crew.
Our next step was to trade notes so that we could each write sections of the rough draft without waiting for each other. As we worked, I glanced at him several times, thinking, “My God he’s attractive!”
Before I left, Mrs. Walker said that she would try to find us some duets to play by the next Saturday, when we were going to get together again to see how far we had gotten and to read each other’s work.
I arrived home in time for lunch, and mother asked me if we had had a good morning. I told her that we had gotten a lot of work done and that we had discovered that we each played the piano. Then I told her about Mrs. Walker, and the Bösendorfer, how we all played for each other, and how Christian and I were going to try some duets together.
“That sounds wonderful. Are we ever going to get to meet these people?” she asked.
I suddenly had to stop and think. I had no idea how my parents would feel about me working with a Negro boy. Were they prejudiced? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t even sure whether I was or not.
I remembered a time when our next door neighbor was getting ready to sell his house. He came over to our house one day and said to my dad, “I just want to assure you that I will be careful to sell to the right kind of people.”
After he left, I asked my father what he meant by that. My dad replied, “He meant that he wouldn’t sell to Jews or Negroes.” I was astonished. So were my parents prejudiced or not?
I knew I had to answer my mother, so I said, “Sure,” with more confidence than I felt.
The day before Christmas vacation, Christian and I submitted our rough draft. It was about 80 pages, and I wondered if the others were as long. If so, Mr. Lincoln would certainly have a busy vacation and I felt rather sorry for him, although I suppose he planned it that way.
I saw Christian just once before Christmas, when I invited him and his family to the Christmas Eve Midnight Carol Service at the Cathedral. His mother said that, since their church, Calvary Baptist, in Westbridge, didn’t have an evening service, they would be very happy to come. She also offered to take me home afterwards, so that my parents didn’t have to drive in to the city twice on Christmas Eve.
The Christmas Eve service was my favorite of the year. I loved the candlelight, with much of the church in shadows, I loved the scent of the greens which hung in the sanctuary, and I loved the Christmas music, both the carols which everybody sang and the special carols which only the choir sang.
Before that night, I told my parents that Christian and I had presents for each other, and I wondered if he could come to our house for a little while in the afternoon of Christmas Day. Of course they agreed, thinking they would at last get a chance to meet Christian.
“There’s one thing you should know before he comes,” I said cautiously.
“What’s that dear?” asked my mother.
“He’s a Negro,” I blurted out.
There was silence in the room while my father and mother looked at each other. Finally, my father said, “I don’t see why that should make a difference. If he’s a friend of yours, he’s welcome here. After all, you’re not planning to marry him.”
“I’m curious,” my mother said. “How many Negro children are there at your school?”
“He’s the only one.”
“That must be very hard for him,” she continued. “Does he have a lot of friends?”
“No. Just me.”
“Well, then, I’m very glad you’re his friend. Do you think he’ll be nervous coming here?”
“I don’t think so if I tell him that you said he was welcome.”
I raced to the upstairs phone and called Christian. We agreed that he would come over about 2:00 PM. Since there was no snow yet and it wasn’t too cold, he planned to bike.
It was a tradition in our house that the presents didn’t get put under the tree until after I was asleep. Of course, this went back to when I believed in Santa Claus, but I suppose some traditions die hard. So I knew that at least one of my parents would wait up until I got home and then, after I had gone to bed, would get out the presents.
By then it was time for a quick supper and the trip to the Cathedral where the choir would practice until just before 11:00. I really hoped that the Walkers would enjoy the service.