The Sea is My Brother

by Jack Kerouac

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

In the spring of 1943, during a stint in the merchant marine, twenty-one-year-old Jack Kerouac set out to write his first novel. Working diligently day and night to complete it by hand, he titled it The Sea Is My Brother. Nearly seventy years later, its long-awaited publication provides fascinating details and insight into the early life and development of an American literary icon.

Written seven years before The Town and the City officially launched his writing career, The Sea Is My Brother marks the pivotal point at which Kerouac began laying the foundations for his pioneering method and signature style. The novel chronicles the misadventures of two seamen who at first seem different but are really two sides of the same coin: twenty-seven-year-old Wesley Martin, who “loved the sea with a strange, lonely love,” and William Everhart, an assistant professor of English at Columbia College who, at thirty-two, impulsively ships out, hoping to “escape society for the sea, but finds the sea a place of terrible loneliness.”

A clear precursor to such landmark novels as On the Road, The Dharma Bums, and Visions of Cody, it is an important formative work that bears all the hallmarks of classic Kerouac: the search for spiritual meaning in a materialistic world, spontaneous travel as the true road to freedom, late nights of intense conversation in bars and apartments, the desperate urge to escape from society, and the strange, terrible beauty of loneliness.

Release date: March 26, 2013

Publisher: Hachette Books

Print pages: 432

Sample

The first major work by Jack Kerouac, The Sea is My Brother was written in the spring of 1943 and until now has never been published in its entirety. Its importance to this early period of Jack’s life is indisputable, and it is the pivotal point in his writing career where he works diligently night and day writing by hand this first novel. The Sea is My Brother is the highlight of this collection and as the best introduction to Jack as a young writer it has been presented in its own section. A short novel of 158 pages it is the most serious of the works that Jack wrote during this period of his life. Along with other unpublished writings found in Part II of this collection, one can see readily the power of his speech and the development of his visualization. Shortly after he wrote The Sea is My Brother, Jack began The Town and the City, published in 1950, which launched his career as a writer. These two novels, both based on his real-life experiences, are part of the writing method he started to develop in 1943 that he dubbed “Supreme Reality.” He describes The Sea is My Brother in letters to Sebastian Sampas and mails him excerpts to read (see Part III) as well as sharing it with other friends from Lowell, Massachusetts.

Jack began this work not long after his first tour as a Merchant Marine on the SS Dorchester in the late summer–October 1942, during which he kept a journal detailing the gritty daily routine of life at sea. Inspired by the trip, which was an example of Jack’s love for adventure, and the character traits of his fellow shipmates, the journals were spontaneous sketches of those experiences that were later woven into his novel.

The journal titled “Voyage to Greenland” is dated 1942 and subtitled “GROWING PAINS or A MONUMENT TO ADOLESCENCE” and begins with a poem dated April 17, 1949, several years after The Sea is My Brother was written.



Jack’s passport, issued August 20, 1942



Jack’s passport picture



Jack’s discharge certificate from the SS Dorchester, October 5, 1942

All life is but a skull-bone andA rack of ribs through whichwe keep passing food & fuel –just so’s we can burn sofurious beautiful.

The first entry, dated Saturday July 18, 1942, describes his first night on deck of the Dorchester, the meal he ate (five lamb chops), and contains this passage written early the next morning:

I sat in a deck chair, awhile after and bethought me about several things. How should I write this journal? Where is this ship bound for, and when? What is the destiny of this great grey tub? I signed on Friday, or yesterday, and do not begin work till Monday morning. . . . I could have gone home to say goodbye – but goodbyes are so difficult, so heart-rending. I haven’t the courage, or perhaps the hardness, to withstand the tremendous pathos of this life. I love life’s casual beauty – I fear its awful strength.

Early on in the “Voyage to Greenland” journal there is evidence of Jack’s plans for the observations he was making. On page 12 he notes that “Up to now, I’ve refrained from introducing any characters in this journal, for fear I should be mistaken due to a brief acquaintance with those in question, and should be forced to rescind previous opinions and judgments.” Jack continues that although the journal would create an “acceptable log” he felt it should “tell the story within the story.” He says that he shall “perhaps one day want to write a novel about the voyage,” and he would be able to find all the details: “a true writer never forgets character studies, and never will.” He does, however, note these character studies later that day.

August 2

CHARACTER STUDIES

Here is some data on my scullion mates, and others: Eatherton is just a good-hearted kid from the “tough” section of Charleston, Mass, who tries to live up to his environment, but fails, for his smile is too boyish, too puckish. He is a veteran seaman already, and berates me for being a despicable “college man” who “reads books all the time and knows nothing about life itself.” Don Graves is an older boy, quite handsome, with a remarkable sense of wit and tomfoolery that often befuddles me. He is able to toy with people’s emotions, for he undeniably possesses a strong, moving personality. He’s 27 years old, and I believe he looks upon me with some mixed pity and head-shaking – but no compassion. He has little of that, and no learning; but considerable earthy judgment and native ability, and a sort of appeal that is quiet and sure. Eddie Moutrie is a cussing little bastard, full of venom and dark, haggard beauty, often tenderness. I envision him now, smoking with his contemptuous scowl, turned away, yelling derision at me in a rough, harsh voice, returning his gaze with blank and tender eyes.

August 2

MORE

They are good kids, but cannot understand me, and are thus enraged, bitter, and full of hidden wonder. Then there is the chef, a fat colored man with prominent buttoxes [sic] who loves to play democratic and often peels potatoes with us. His face is fat and sinuous, touched with childish propriety. His face seems to say: “Now, we are here, and things are in all due harmony and order.” He has grown fat on his own foods. He sits at our mess table, wearing a fantastic cook’s cap, and picks delicately with fat greasy hands at his food. All things are in order with the chef. He is the antithesis of Voltaire, the child of Leibniz.

Then there’s Glory, the giant negro cook, whose deep voice can always be heard in its moaning softness above the din of the galley. He is a man among men – gentle, impenetrable, yet a leader. The glory that is Glory . . .

“Shorty” is a withered, skinny little man without teeth and a little witch jaw. He weighs about 90 pounds, and when he’s mad, he threatens to throw us all through the portholes.

“Hazy” is a powerfully built, ruddy

August 2

LES MISERABLES

Youth who works, eats, and sleeps, and rarely speaks. He’s always in his bunk, sleeping, smiling when Eatherton farts toward his face: then turns over back to his solitary, sleepy world.

“Duke” Ford is a haggard youth who has been torpedoed off Cape Hatteras, and who carries the shrapnel marks of the blast in his neck. He is a congenial sort but the frenzied mark of tragedy still lingers in his eyes; and I doubt whether he’ll ever forget the 72 hours on the life raft, and the fellow with bloody stumps at his shoulders who jumped off the raft in a fit of madness and committed suicide in the Carolinian sea . . .

Then there’s the rather stupid Paul, an awkward, almost idiotic youth, the butt of all the leg-pullers in the crew. They are making a mess of the tenderness his mother must have taught him. His voice is a strange mixture of kindness, despair, and futile attempts at snarling pseudo-virility. It is pathetic to see this poor lad in the midst of callous fools and stupid bums . . . for most of the crew is just that, and I shall not write of them except

August 2

VAL, THE LADIES’ CHOICE

as a man body in this narrative. They have no manners, no scruples, and spend their leisure time gambling in the dining room, their dull countenances glowing with ancient cruelty under the golden lights. O Satan! Mephisto! Judas! O Benaiah! O evil eyes that glint beneath the lights! O clink of silver! O darkness, O death, O hell! Sheathed knives and chained wallets: lustful, grabbing, cheating, killing, hating, laughing in the lights . . .

Jack’s journal ends on August 19, 1942 shortly after reaching Greenland. The last entries are a short story entitled “ ‘WHAT PRICE SEDUCTION?’ OR A 5 CENT ROMANCE IN ONE REEL A SHORT SHORT STORY – ‘THE COMMUNIST,’ ” two poems, a descriptive character piece called “PAT,” and a set of notes called “JACK KEROUAC FREE VERSE, FOUR PARTS.” This poem written when out to sea encompasses many of the daily frustrations expressed in the journal about being different from the rest of the crew.

WHEN I WAS OUT TO SEA

Once, when I was out to sea,

I knew a lad who’s famous now.

His name is sung in America,

And carried far to other lands.

But when I knew him, far back now,

He was a lad with lonely eyes.

The bos’un laughed when Laddie wrote:

“Truth Brothers!” in his diary.

“You daggone little pansy!”

Roared the heavyset rough bos’un.

“You don’t know what life be,

You with all your sissy books!

Look at me! I’m rough and I’m tough,

And I got lots to teach ye!”

So the bos’un jeered, and the bos’un snarled,

And he set him down to drudgery.

And the boy, he and his poetry,

He wanted to stand bow-watch

And brood into the sea,

But the bos’un laughed, and snarled,

And set him down to drudgery.

Down in the hold, ‘mid fetidity . . .

Then one night, a wild dark night,

The lad stood by the heaving bow

And the storm beat all about him.

The bos’un he laughed and set right out

To put him down to drudgery,

That sissy lad of poetry . . .

With wind and sky all scattered wide,

A grim, dreary night for fratricide!

-JK

Jack disembarks the Dorchester but continues to think of the sea as a symbol for the integration of his friends and the promise of brotherhood. After a brief return to Columbia University he moves back to Lowell with his parents and gets a job at a garage on Middlesex Street and begins to laboriously hand write this novel.

The Sea is My Brother is an intricate character study which repeatedly reflects Jack’s correspondence with Sebastian over the years 1940–43 (see Part III). Jack’s own conflict between his intellectual and his blue-collar friends is embodied in the two main characters, Bill Everhart and Wesley Martin, for example in Chapter One, where at their first meeting: “Everhart studied the stranger; once, when Wesley glanced at Everhart and found him ogling from behind the fantastic spectacles, their eyes locked in combat, Wesley’s cool and non-committal, Everhart’s a searching challenge, the look of the brazen skeptic.”

Jack made several attempts at the first chapter,1 and in one working versions are some enlightening notes concerning the development of the characters around what he felt was his own dual personality.

Soon, I knew I was too old to persist in my boyhood ways. Reluctantly, I gave it up. (Someday, I’ll explain to you the details of this world – they are enormous in number and complex to a point of maturity.)

Thus on the one side, the solitary boy brooding over his “rich inner life”; and on the other, the neighborhood champ shooting pool down at the club. I’m convinced I shouldn’t have picked up both these personalities had I not been an immense success in the two divergent personality-worlds. It is a rare enough occurrence . . . and none of the Prometheans seem to have these two temperaments, save, perhaps, Constantinides.

Naturally enough, my worldly side will wink at the wenches, blow foam off a tankard, and fight at the drop of a chip. My schzoid self, on another occasion, will sneer, slink away, and brood in some dark place.

I’ve gone to all this trouble, outlining my dual personality, for a purpose besides egocentricity. In my novel, you see, Everhart is my schzoid self, Martin the other; the two combined run the parallel gamut of my experience. And in both cases, the schzoid will recommend Prometheanisms (if I may coin the phrase), and the other self (Wesley Martin) will act as the agent of stimulus –

And as in all my other works, “The Sea is My Brother” will assert the presence of beauty in life, beauty, drama, and meaning. . . .

There is a little of Jack in both of these characters, but one can find elements of Sebastian’s personality as well. Everhart, an English professor at Columbia University, often pontificates endlessly to the group of friends much like Sebastian was known to do with the Prometheans. Sebastian’s search for the meaning and the humanity of life is also Everhart’s primary intellectual pursuit, and both are seeking adventure to expand their scholarly lives. Sebastian writes to Jack in February 1941 after meeting a Merchant Marine: “I want to see Paris – He told me of Paris and the palpitating (that word is used correctly) paramours of Paris. The Grandeurs of Versailles – Southern France – The Riviera – of South America, of Cuba, Hawaii – the soft South Seas.” Everhart, in a similar way, sees the opportunity to ship out with Wesley: “Port Said! Alexandria! The Red Sea! There’s your East . . . I’m going to see it!”

However, the majority of Everhart’s character is derived from Jack’s own experiences. Everhart’s intellectual pursuits, for example, can be achieved with very little risk; for he lives with his father, brother, and sister much like Jack. Everhart’s desire to experience something more real and stimulating echoes Jack’s recent rebellious voyage on the Dorchester and his dropping out of Columbia. Therefore, Everhart’s decision to take a leap-of-faith symbolizes in many ways Jack’s desire to turn away momentarily from his intellectual self and use his perceptive nature to inspire his work. Jack notes this need for real experiences in his journal: “My mother is very worried over my having joined the Merchant Marine, but I need money for college, I need adventure, of a sort (the real adventure of rotting wharves and seagulls, winey waters and ships, ports, cities, and faces & voices); and I want to study more of the earth, not out of books, but from direct experience” (Voyage to Greenland journal note, dated July 20, 1942).

The character Martin on the other hand is already free of any intellectual burdens. Jack refers to him as his “worldly side,” that is free to come and go with no strings attached. A wanderer of the world, Martin goes from port to port taking in the experiences without fear or commitment. In Jack’s letter to Sebastian in November of 1942 (p. 318), he tries to convince him to ship out with him, explaining that he wanted to go back to sea in the Merchant Marines, and his words reflect Martin’s character: “But I believe that I want to go back to sea . . . for the money, for the leisure and study, for the heart-rending romance, and for the pith of the moment.” Jack’s notes on one working copy of the novel reinforce his intention to include every aspect of his worldly experiences: “Into this book, ‘The Sea is My Brother’ I shall weave all the passion and glory of living, its restlessness and peace, its fever and ennui, its mornings, noons and nights of desire, frustration, fear, triumph, and death. . . .”

In the same letter to Sebastian, Jack lays out the internal soul-searching dilemma that The Sea is My Brother is attempting to resolve:

I am wasting my money and my health here at Columbia . . . it’s been one huge debauchery. I hear of American and Russian victories, and I insist on celebrating. In other words, I am more interested in the pith of our great times than in dissecting “Romeo and Juliet” . . . . at the present, understand. . . . Don’t you want to travel to the Mediterranean ports, perhaps Algiers, to Morocco, Fez, the Persian Gulf, Calcutta, Alexandria, perhaps the old ports of Spain; and Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester, Sidney, New Zealand; and Rio and Trinidad and Barbados and the Cape; and Panama and Honolulu and the far-flung Polynesians . . . I don’t want to go alone this time. I want my friend with me . . . my mad poet brother.

The references to wasting his money at Columbia parallel Everhart’s own internal questioning: “What was he doing with his life?” and become his impetus for shipping out with Martin. Talk of comrades and brotherhood, topics which had been deeply considered in Jack and Sebastian’s correspondence, are an integral part of this novel and help to resolve Jack’s battle with his changing political views. His infatuation when he was younger with the idea of the Prometheans and the Progressive Movements gives way to his more critical nature which began to develop after his induction into the Navy. He writes from the Navy barracks: “Though I am skeptical about the administration of the Progressive movement, I shall withhold all judgments until I come in direct contact with these people – other Communists, Russians, politicians, etc., leftists artists, leaders, workers, and so forth” (letter to Sebastian, mid-March, 1943).

The Sea is My Brother represents Jack’s transition as a writer, as he tells Sebastian in a letter, dated March 15, 1943: “I am writing 14 hours a day, 7 days a week . . . I know you will like it, Sam; it has compassion, it has a certain something that will appeal to you (brotherhood, perhaps).”

My editorial comments are presented in italics, with details in the notes (not in italics) to help clarify and explain references. The placement of hyphens, dashes, ellipses, apostrophes, etc., have only been standardized for readability. I have corrected spelling errors unless these seem to be intentional (e.g. “lead” for “led”; most are marked with “[sic]”) and have included some editorial elements and additional punctuation brackets, and where material is missing, illegible, or otherwise obscured, I have shown this with empty brackets [ ]. Spacing and line breaks have been preserved where the emphasis of the words would be affected; otherwise the margins, indents, and line spacing have been standardized. Where Jack Kerouac and Sebastian Sampas have edited their own material by crossing out and rewriting, I have only included their final version unless the context is unclear or words appear to be missing. Dating has been approximated on many of the letters and some of the short stories and is based on references within the text and other materials from the archive. All source material is noted in the bibliography. Kerouac’s archive can be found in the Berg Collection, New York Public Library, and Sampas’s works are in a private family archive in Lowell, Massachusetts.

D.M.W.



Weird Self-Portrait at Sea, from Jack’s journals at sea



Merchant Mariner title-page

A young man, cigarette in mouth and hands in trousers’ pockets, descended a short flight of brick steps leading to the foyer of an uptown Broadway hotel and turned in the direction of Riverside Drive, sauntering in a curious, slow shuffle.

It was dusk. The warm July streets, veiled in a mist of sultriness which obscured the sharp outlines of Broadway, swarmed with a pageant of strollers, colorful fruit stands, buses, taxis, shiny automobiles, Kosher shops, movie marquees, and all the innumerable phenomena that make up the brilliant carnival spirit of a midsummer thoroughfare in New York City.

The young man, clad casually in a white shirt without tie, a worn gabardine green coat, black trousers, and moccasin shoes, paused in front of a fruit stand and made a survey of the wares. In his thin hand he beheld what was left of his money – two quarters, a dime, and a nickel. He purchased an apple and moved along, munching meditatively. He had spent it all in two weeks; when would he ever learn to be more prudent! Eight hundred dollars in fifteen days – how? where? and why?

When he threw the apple core away, he still felt the need to satisfy his senses with some [ ] dawdle or other, so he entered a cigar store and bought himself a cigar. He did not light it until he had seated himself on a bench on the Drive facing the Hudson River.

It was cool along the river. Behind him, the energetic thrum of New York City sighed and pulsed as though Manhattan Island itself were an unharmonious wire plucked by the hand of some brazen and busy demon. The young man turned and swept his dark, curious eyes along the high rooftops of the city, and down toward the harbor where the island’s chain of lights curved in a mighty arc, sultry beads in the midsummer mist strung in confused succession.

His cigar held the bitter taste he had wanted in his mouth; it felt full and ample between his teeth. On the river, he could distinguish faintly the hulls of the anchored merchant ships. A small launch, invisible except for its lights, glided a weaving path alongside the dark freighters and tankers. With quiet astonishment he leaned forward and watched the floating points of light move slowly downriver in liquid grace, his almost morbid curiosity fascinated by what might have seemed commonplace to another.

This young man, however, was no ordinary person. He presented a fairly normal appearance, just above average height, thin, with a hollow countenance notable for its prominence of chin and upper lip muscles, and expressive mouth lined delicately yet abundantly from its corners to the thin nose, and a pair of level, sympathetic eyes. But his demeanor was a strange one. He was accustomed to hold his head high, so that whatever he observed received a downward scrutiny, an averted mien that possessed a lofty and inscrutable curiosity.

In this manner, he smoked his cigar and watched the Drive saunterers pass by, for all outward purposes at peace with the world. But he was broke and he knew it; by tomorrow he would be penniless. With a shade of a smile, which he accomplished by raising a corner of his mouth, he tried to recall how he had spent his eight hundred dollars.

The night before, he knew, had cost him his last hundred and fifty dollars. Drunk for two consecutive weeks, he had finally achieved sobriety in a cheap hotel in Harlem; from there, he recalled, he had taken a cab to a small restaurant on Lenox Avenue where they served nothing but spare ribs. It was there he’d met that cute little colored girl who belonged to the Young Communists League. He remembered they’d taken a taxi down to Greenwich Village where she wanted to see a certain movie. . . . wasn’t it “Citizen Kane”? And then, in a bar on MacDougall Street, he lost track of her when he met up with six sailors who were broke; they were from a destroyer in dry-dock. From then on, he could remember riding in a taxi with them and singing all kinds of songs and getting off at Kelly’s Stables on 52nd Street and going in to hear Roy Eldridge and Billie Holliday. One of the sailors, a husky dark-haired pharmacist’s mate, talked all the time about Roy Eldridge’s trumpet and why he was ten years ahead of any other jazz musician except perhaps two others who jammed Mondays at Minton’s in Harlem, Lester somebody1 and Ben Webster; and how Roy Eldridge was really a phenomenal thinker with infinite musical ideas. Then they had all rode to the Stork Club, where another sailor had always wanted to go, but they were all too plastered to be admitted in, so they went to a dime-a-dance joint where he had bought up a roll of tickets for the gang. From there they had gone to a place in the East Side where the Madame sold them three quarts of Scotch, but when they were finished, the Madame refused to let them all sleep there and kicked them out. They were sick of the place and the girls anyway, so they rode uptown and west to a Broadway hotel where he paid for a double suite of rooms and they finished the Scotch and flopped off in chairs, on the floor, and on the beds. And then, late the next afternoon he woke up and found three of the sailors sprawled about in a litter of empty bottles, sailor caps, glasses, shoes, and clothing. The other three had wandered off somewhere, perhaps in search of a bromo seltzer or tomato juice.

Then he had dressed up slowly, after taking a leisurely shower, and strolled off, leaving the key at the desk and making a request to the hotelkeeper not to disturb his slumbering buddies.

So here he sat, broke except for fifty cents. Last night had cost $150 or so, what with taxis, drinks around, hotel bills, women, cover charges, and everything else; his good time was over for this time. He smiled as he remembered how funny it was when he woke up a few hours previous, on the floor between a sailor and an empty quart bottle, and with one of his moccasins on his left foot and the other on the bathroom floor.

Casting away his cigar butt, he rose and moved on across the Drive. Back on Broadway he walked slowly uptown taking in the small shoe stores, radio repair shops, drugstores, newsstands, and dimly lit bookstores with a calm and curious eye.

In front of a fruit stand he stopped in his tracks; at his feet, a small cat mewed up at him in a plaintive little cry, its pink bud of a mouth opened in a heart shape. The young man stooped down and picked up the cat. It was a cute little kitten with grey-striped fur and a remarkably bushy tail for its age.

“Hello, Tiger,” he greeted, cupping the little face in his hand. “Where do you live, huh?”

The kitten mewed a reply, its fragile little frame purring in his hand like a delicate instrument. He caressed the tiny head with his forefinger. It was a minute shell of a skull, one that could be crushed between thumb and forefinger. He placed the tip of his nose against the little mouth until the kitty playfully bit it.

“Ha ha! A little tiger!” he smiled.

The proprietor of the fruit stand stood in front rearranging his display.

“This is your cat?” inquired the young man, walking over with the kitten.

The fruit man turned a swarthy face.

“Yes, that is my wife’s cat.”

“He was on the sidewalk,” said the young stranger. “The street’s no place for a kitty, he’ll get run over.”

The fruit man smiled: “You are right; he must have wandered away from the house.” The man glanced up above the fruit store and shouted: “Bella!”

A woman presently came to the window and thrust her head out: “Hah?”

“Here’s your cat. He almost got lost,” shouted the man.

“Poom-poom!” cooed the woman, espying the kitten in the young man’s hands. “Bring it up Charley; he’ll get hurt in the street.”

The man smiled and took the cat from the stranger’s hands; its weak little claws were reluctant to change hands.

“Thank you!” sang the woman from above.

The young man waved his hand.

“You know women,” confided the fruitseller, “they love little cats . . . they always love the helpless things. But when it comes to men, you know, they’ll want them cruel.”

The young stranger smiled thinly.

“Am I right?” laughed the man, slapping the youth on the back and reentering his store with the kitten, chuckling to himself.

“Maybe so,” mumbled the youth to himself. “How the hell should I know?”

He walked five more blocks uptown, more or less aimlessly, until he reached a combination bar and cafeteria, just off the Columbia University campus. He walked in through the revolving doors and occupied an empty stool at the bar.

The room was crowded with drinkers, its murky atmosphere feverish with smoke, music, voices, and general restlessness known to frequenters of bars on summer nights. The young man almost decided to leave, until he caught sight of a cold glass of beer the bartender was just then setting before another patron. So he ordered himself a glass. The youth exchanges stares with a girl named Polly, who sits in a booth with her own friends.

They stared at each other for several seconds in the manner just described; then, with a casual familiarity, the young man spoke to Polly: “Where you going?”

“Where am I going?” laughed Polly, “I’m not going anywhere!”

But while she laughed at the stranger’s unusual query, she could not help but wonder at his instant possessiveness: for a second, he seemed to be an old friend she had forgotten many years ago, and who had now chanced upon her and resumed his intimacy with her as though time were no factor in his mind. But she was certain she had never met him. Thus, she stared at him with some astonishment and waited for his next move.

He did nothing; he merely turned back to his beer and drank a meditative draught. Polly, bewildered by this illogical behavior, sat for a few minutes watching him. He apparently was satisfied with just one thing, asking here where she was going. Who did he think he was? . . . it was certainly none of his business. And yet, why had he treated her as though he had always known her, and as though he had always possessed her?

With an annoyed frown, Polly left the booth and went to the young stranger’s side. She did not reply to the inquiries shouted after her by her friends; instead, she spoke to the young man with the curiosity of a child.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Wesley.”

“Wesley what?”

“Wesley Martin.”

“Did I ever know you?”

“Not that I know of,” he answered calmly.

“Then,” began Polly, “why did you? . . . why? . . . how do you . . . ?”

“How do I do what?” smiled Wesley Martin, raising a corner of his mouth.

“Oh hell!” cried Polly, stamping an impatient foot. “Who are you?”

Wesley maintained his amused shadow of a smile: “I told you who I was.”

“That’s not what I mean! Look, why did you ask me where I was going? That’s what I want to know.”

“Well?”

“Well for God’s sake don’t be so exasperating – I’m asking you, you’re not asking me!” By this time Polly was fairly shouting in his face; this amused Wesley, for he was now staring at her wide-eyed, with his mouth open, in a fixed, sustained glee which was all at once as mirthless as it was tremendously delighted. It seemed as though he were about to burst into guffaws of laughter, but he never did; he only stared at her with roguish stupefaction.

At a point where Polly was ready to be hurt by this uncomplimentary attitude, Wesley squeezed her arm warmly and returned to his beer.

“Where are you from?” pressed Pol