Chapters (38)
At four, Joseph appeared and said Mr. Carrington could see them now, but briefly—he had an appointment in a quarter of an hour.
The consul, his collar open and necktie pulled down, pondered the telegram for a full minute, scowling.
“Boys, don’t know what to tell you. This sure beats me,” he grumbled, and the three brothers felt ashamed, ashamed to be their father’s sons, ashamed of what Carrington must think of a man who would abandon his children in a foreign land, and ashamed because they were now reduced to begging. Beg they did, telling Carrington of their earlier efforts to find a berth on a ship, more or less to assure him that they did not want to be charity cases.
He blew out his cheeks, then drew a form from one of his desk drawers and signed it, with an impatient movement.
“Present this to Joseph,” he said, in an exasperated tone. “It authorizes him to draw from an emergency fund we keep for American citizens who get stranded without any means to get back to the U.S. There’ll be enough to buy you tickets on the Havana to Key West ferry and for reasonable travel expenses from there to most places on the East Coast. There’s a ferry leaves at midnight tonight, gets in at eight in the morning. All right?”
“That would be grand, sir. We can’t thank you enough.”
“Thank your government.” Carrington picked up the telegram. “Want this or shall I throw it away?”
Nathaniel hesitated for a moment before taking it, his heart, within the fist’s clasp, crushed down to the size, and the hardness, of a walnut.
“Sure does beat me,” Carrington repeated. “And you have no idea what your father means by it?”
Nathaniel scanned the words, LOOK NOT TO ISAIAH BUT TO CORINTHIANS FOR PASSAGE HOME. STOP. C.R.B., as if, on fourth reading, they might yield some glimmer of sense. Didn’t even sign Father, he thought. Just his initials.
“No, sir, we don’t,” he stated to Carrington. “But we sure mean to find out.”