THE MATTER OF EDWARD’S age began to absorb me greatly as February wore on, and one clear night on the roof, as we were looking for the constellations Auriga (the charioteer) and Columba (the dove), Mr Pawlowsky pointed out Canis, the great dog, with a smile, and then talked at some length about Edward.
“It is conceivable that he may have been Abraham Lincoln’s companion,” said Mr Pawlowsky, leaning back in his lawn chair. “It is faintly possible. Edward has some serious mileage on his odometer, but he eats healthy, except when he gorges on alewives, and he gets his exercise, and he has moderate habits, and he handles things without undue stress. Lincoln loved dogs and if you read his journals carefully he was usually accompanied by a dog like Edward, of uncertain heritage. And Springfield, you know, is just downstate a little from Chicago—a dog with a sure sense of direction, like Edward, could easily make his way northward after Mr Lincoln took the train to Washington to become president. There would be no good reason for Edward to stay in Springfield after that and it would be only natural for him to migrate to the city as so many others have done, greatly to our civic benefit.”
I told Mr Pawlowsky that I had many times asked Edward directly about his age and previous adventures but had never gotten more than hints and intimations in reply, and Mr Pawlowsky said, “Well, that is Edward’s way, of course; he is not much for boast or braggadocio, which is admirable, though it can also be a bit frustrating when you are genuinely curious and there are no answers in sight. However I believe there is much to be discerned about his past in his present, so to speak, and that is why I suggest he may be far older than we would think. He is awfully familiar with Lincoln’s letters and speeches, for example. Now, I read the speeches fairly often, sometimes aloud, as an act of citizenship, and also for the clear thinking and dry humor and wry cadence of the man while speaking, but I cannot say that I know whole snatches of them by heart, or can distinguish one from another within a line or two of quotation from anywhere within the text, but Edward can, and I have seen him do it many times. He is the same way with the letters, although they are not such ringing things as the speeches, and many of them are workmanlike missives, of course, having to do with policy or persuasion. Still—it’s interesting to note that Edward is most versed and most interested in the speeches and letters from Illinois, rather than from the presidential years, with the exception, of course, of the inaugural addresses and the Emancipation Proclamation. You wonder if Edward is more familiar with the Illinois work because perhaps he was present when those speeches were delivered and letters written. Improbable, perhaps, but not impossible. But I am afraid we will always be reduced to speculation in this matter, given Edward’s character.”
* * *
I should say a bit more about my job at the Catholic magazine downtown, because of course in a real sense it was what allowed me to live in Chicago, and paid for my food and train tickets and basketball sneakers and small glowing whiskeys in small dark blues bars.
The editor-in-chief was a round beaming ebullient Irishman with the most glowing Irish face I had ever seen. He wore only beautiful glowing gray suits of the finest cut and cloth, an infinitesimally different shimmer and gleam of gray every day. He called me into his office at ten in the morning of my first day on the job and informed me tersely but cheerfully that we did not use the words hopefully or unique in the magazine, nor did we say such silly things as it remains to be seen or on the other hand, nor did we respect ostensible religious authority overmuch without cause to do so, nor did we take an unnecessarily confrontational attitude toward the hierarchy and its agents and minions, but rather we tried to walk a road in which clarity and humility were our recurring signposts. Also the office was not a drinking club, a fraternity, a lunch group, a refuge for the sleepy, a sinecure, a stepping-stone, a competition, a love-nest, a dating service, a source of free office supplies, a meeting-place for those with soaring literary aspirations, a coffee shop, a revolutionary cell, a nest of religious anarchy, a coven of apologists, a café for free telephone calls, or a place where such things as dungarees and shirts sporting the names and logos of colleges or athletic teams or musical ensembles were welcome. I was expected to bring my intelligence, diligence, honesty, creativity, and curiosity to work every morning by eight and wield those admirable and God-given tools until four. I could come in earlier and leave later if there was sufficient reason to do so but no undue credit would be given for extra hours when the coin of esteem was creative and trustworthy production. “You get two weeks for vacation and you must stagger your vacations around the vacations of the rest of the staff. See Mr Mahoney about vacation schedules. You get ten paid sick days a year. If you honestly require more than ten days to deal with illness or grief we can negotiate something depending on your trustworthiness and the nature of the affliction. See Mr Mahoney about that. We do not play radios or musical instruments in this office. We do not drink alcohol in this office. We try to maintain a professional appearance within reason. We often have visitors of every sort and stripe from cardinals to members of many other faith traditions in this office and we treat them all with respect and we do not make scurrilous remarks disguised as jokes. We once had a man who did exactly that and he did not last. As regards paychecks, monies withheld for tax and insurance purposes, pension funds if any, advice on commuting in and out of the city by train or bus, and any other matters of that sort, see Mr Mahoney. As regards ideas for the magazine, see me. As regards possible writers and photographers for the magazine, see me. We do not publish poets and we generally steer clear of artists. We do not publish fiction, knowingly. As regards complaints and diatribes about what you write, see Mr Mahoney about our form letters in response. If a personal response is required above and beyond our form response, I will handle that. We once had a woman who liked to write her own responses to complaints and diatribes about her work and you would be shocked at the language she used, and her a woman of the cloth, too. A Dominican sister. The Dominican sisters are a tough bunch, with skins like tree bark and a capacity for brawling, in my experience. We do not make jokes in print about the various charisms and characters of the Catholic religious orders, even the Jesuits. That Dominican, by the way, once punched out a cop who was beating a helpless drunk with his truncheon. This was right on the corner of Wells and Madison. He was a burly fellow, too, and she dropped him with a flurry of jabs that would have done a middleweight proud. Knocked him right out cold. He went down like rocks thundering from a truck. Remarkable woman. Do you have any questions?”
“About the nun?”
“About the magazine and your duties.”
“No, sir.”
“Better get to work, then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“God bless.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Remarkable woman.”
“Yes, sir.”
* * *
Mr Pawlowsky had often told me that he had only once in his whole life been outside the city of Chicago, to the Iowa border to the west, from which vantage point he gazed out over fields of corn and soybeans, and admired tractors and silos and church steeples and railroad towers, and delighted at small stands and copses of trees around which the fields flowed like dark corduroy rivers, and smelled the rich dense redolence of it all; but then one day when we were on the roof talking about how farmland was gently lovely even though some people (“mostly automobile drivers and young people trying to convince themselves, not to mention others, of their own sophistication,” he said) sneered and called it flat and boring though it wasn’t at all, he suddenly said, “But I was often on the lake in ships and boats, of course, so I suppose I was outside the city much more than I thought,” and off he went on a long peroration about his life on the vast inland sea we could just see, roiling and gray, from our chairs on the roof.
“We went out on rafts, in the beginning, just like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,” he said. “My friends and I built rafts of varied quality out of anything we could. The prospect of being afloat was irresistible. I think I was perhaps six years old when I first went out on the lake. I had a friend named Raymond. His father drove a truck delivering goods on wooden pallets, and he built us a sturdy little raft, perhaps six by six feet, with three paddles also of wood, and he waded into the lake with us on the raft and then gave us a shove and we were away. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling the rest of my life. It was a calm summer day and the lake murmured as we edged away from the shore. I remember the look on Raymond’s father’s face—worried and pleased and concerned and proud and worried. Raymond was nervous but I was delighted. I kept looking for fish. Raymond kept looking for tankers. He was afraid we would be run over and there would be nothing left of us but splinters. I remember I saw three enormous fish pass below us in a sort of arrow formation, going south toward Indiana. To this day I can see them if I close my eyes. Perhaps that was the moment I joined the Navy, in a sense. I think that they were sturgeon, although there are also very large salmon in the lake. After that I was on the lake as often as I could possibly be. I went out in canoes and rowboats and skiffs and ketches and catboats and sloops and motorboats and old historical schooners and brigs and steamboats and scows. I got summer jobs as a crewman on barges and freighters. When I was in my teens I was on the lake every single day I was not in school, I bet. My parents did not mind as long as I had a job. My father said as long as I was earning money for the family from honest work I could be on the lake or the moon or on a dirigible for all he cared. Finally when I was eighteen years old I went down to Navy Pier and joined the United States Navy. I don’t think I was ever so proud and happy as I was that day. Although it is ironic to note that I never once went out on the water in my official capacity; never was there a more landlocked Navy man than me. But I was out on the lake every other moment I could spare. Even during the war I owned a catboat with Raymond and we were out on the lake at every chance we got, until Raymond went overseas. He left a letter under the thwart of the boat for me, giving me his half of the boat if he didn’t come back. He didn’t come back. I found the letter a few weeks after his father told me about Raymond being killed in New Guinea. His father came down to the Pier to tell me. I’ll never forget his face. It was like a mask whereas it used to be a face. He asked me if he could see the catboat and I took him down to the end of the pier where Raymond and I kept the boat in a little secret slip we had built in the shadows. He stared at the boat for a long time and then he said Raymond left you a letter somewhere in the boat. He said Raymond was the love of his life and he would never see him again and he could not stand even thinking about never seeing him again. He said he remembered the day he waded us out into the lake when we were little and handed us each a paddle and gave the raft a good shove and watched us paddle away and he was scared and happy and proud and worried. He said now that there were some nights that he could not sleep at all and all night long he waded with us out into the lake and in the morning it was all he could do to get out of bed and shower and have coffee and pretend that life meant anything at all anymore. He said that he wished me the best with the boat and he asked that if ever I needed to sell it that I come to him and he would buy it for whatever price I asked. For a while after the war I kept the boat, and took it out a good deal, ostensibly fishing but not really, but it wasn’t the same boat without Raymond in it, and eventually I sold it to Raymond’s father. I wanted to just give it to him in memory of Raymond but he insisted on buying it. It had something to do with pride and pain. I was uncomfortable taking money but eventually we agreed that I would give him the boat and he would give me the collected speeches and writings of Abraham Lincoln, which is the lovely set of books you see in our apartment. I would treasure them anyway for the humor and genius of the author but I treasure them the more because in my view Raymond owns half of them. In my estimation I own the ones up to the presidential years and Raymond owns the presidential years. Edward is of the opinion that it is the other way round, as Raymond was older than me by a few weeks, and has the right of primogeniture.”