No. 50

The Elders in 1851 & Mr. Finch

Dear Stewart,

When Charles was seven years old there was great ruckus coming from Val and Henry’s bedroom. Something about a wet blanket that someone had left on someone’s bed, but Charles could not tell which one had made the mistake.

Val used the pointy words that Charles had only heard the servants use when fixing the carriage, but even they apologized when they came to learn that the boy had wedged myself under and was now beside them and on his back having inched in his way to see what they were doing.

In their bedroom, with Henry not taking any of it, he flung a book towards Val. With great agitation more material and books began to fly across the room.

Charles kept counting and noticed size and color which books were going which way and when, which one flew with more speed after which insult was hurled.

As he logged the battle win count in his head like your father used those grid sheets at the horserace, Charles soon enough became satisfied and left and tell the story to Uncle John first, then Old Man Whiting, and finally Mrs. Metcalf, who was the only one to do right by Charles.

It was Mrs. Metcalf that sat Charles down. She told him what it was all about, why Val collapsed on his bed in such an outpouring of tears like a girl, and why Henry walked out and refused to talk to anyone.

Earlier that day a bunch of the men were at the dam trying to break the ice to stop the flooding. Mr. Finch, their teacher - the one who told those perfectly, long tales about perfectly blue sea voyages – well, Mr. Finch had fallen in and got trapped and swept away underneath.

The men and boys flung their picks against the ice to let him out and were able to grab hold of him three times, but each grip failed and Finch traveled further down. Of course, they frantically ran after him, many slipping on the mud and ice, watching his body under the ice flowing, yelling out his direction, reaching and grabbing but unable to move their now ice-for-hands. If it had been summer, they could have done something about his falling.

This wonderful man, who had taught them military drills in the park, and how to memorize Shakespeare, the Stoics, and dream of the tropics, here Finch was now trapped in the ice. They pulled him out. He was white.

"It was a mistake," Mrs. Metcalf said, "Tinkering with the river."

But Charles knew for a fact that the men had to return to their work to bust up the dam. They had to stay there and finish, despite the carrying off of their friend. It was a terrible winter. After that Val became moody and didn’t want Charles around much but finally let Charles stay with him during lightning storms since Henry, as if making good on a promise, left his kin and kind for the sea.

— Miss Minnie

2025 Copyright Christine Friesel