Voyage of Midnight Read Free Page B

some proper schooling—”
    I gasped. My eyes flew open. My knees went a bit shaky. “School!”
    He mistook my reaction, saying quickly, “It won’t be so bad, really, and you’ll still get to work in the shop after school, and I’mcertain you’ll make friends. You’ll learn sums and multiplication, and, well, a sharp lad like yourself really should have a proper education so he can move up in the world—”
    But he could say no more, for I’d flung my arms about him. “Oh yes!” I cried, jumping up and down, knocking his spectacles loose. “Yes, yes, yes!” And presently we were both laughing so hard that it took us a few moments to realize the bells had jangled and we’d another customer in the shop.
    It was a deliciously happy moment. The kind which one remembers sorrowfully once life has returned to misery. Like a bright light one sees above as one lies below, mired in a horrible, blood-soaked pit.

M r. and Mrs. Gallagher enrolled me in Catholic school. They gave me a crisp new catechism as well. Mrs. Gallagher kissed me each morning before sending me off, saying I must tell her all about my day the moment I returned. When I wasn’t working in the shop, I did my schoolwork. I learned French, Greek, and Latin. I learned my arithmetic tables, geometry, grammar, and geography. I became known as a keen scholar. Mr. and Mrs. Gallagher were quite proud.
    During all this time, Mr. Gallagher and I continued searching for my uncle. I even spent six months’ allowance on an advertisement in the
Orleans Gazette
. For weeks afterward, every time the shop bells jangledI rushed to see who it was, crestfallen when it was not my uncle. Eventually Mr. Gallagher took me aside.
    “Philip, you’d rather not hear this, I suppose, but it’s time you faced the possibility that something has happened to your relative.” I must’ve looked as woebegone as I felt, for he murmured sympathetically and wrapped an arm about my shoulder. He smelled of sulfur and aloe. “You must look to your future, lad. Leave the past where it belongs.”
    For a while I said nothing, hardly able to realize that all my dreams of Uncle, of having a family to call my own, were simply that. Dreams. Nothing more. I picked a thread off my apron. “Do—do you think he was lost at sea? Drowned? And maybe that’s why he can’t find me?”
    Mr. Gallagher squeezed my shoulder, and I knew he hesitated to answer. “Perhaps” was all he said.
    A pain wrenched my heart, as horrible as the day my mother had died and left me an orphan. “But Uncle was
family. My
family. He was all I had.”
    Mr. Gallagher looked sympathetic. “Yes, lad. I know.”
    After that, the days, weeks, and months were a blur. I threw myself into my studies and my work at the chemist’s shop, trying to fill the empty hole inside me.
    Then, one day, everything changed. Nearly two years had passed from the time I’d first arrived in New Orleans. I was fourteen and a half years of age and still, as Mr. Gallagher liked to say, “hardly bigger than a turnip.”
    I was on my way to make a delivery of pills to a patron at a hotel located on the city side of the wharf. Walking along the banquette, I happened to glance through the doorway of a tavern. A man was sitting at a table, smoking a cigar and reading anewspaper, a rattan cane by his side. He was dressed in a black silk frock coat, with a tall black beaver hat resting jauntily upon his curly head. A gold watch hung from the fob on his waistcoat. He was a fine, handsome man, wealthy-looking, swarthy, with small gold earrings.
    I knew him immediately.
    He was my uncle.
    For a moment, I stood rooted.
    Then I cried “Uncle!” and rushed inside.
    His face registered surprise. He scowled and drew back, saying, “What the devil is the matter with you? Get away from me.”
    “It’s me, Uncle. It’s me—Philip Arthur Higgins. Only I’ve grown up now.”
    “The deuce you are. I’d know my own nephew should I run across