"Puttnam Douglas Steward isn't having an identity crisis—he is one. To his father Carl, he’s a disappointment, and has been since the day he came home from the hospital. To his mother, he’s ""Mama’s Boy,"" and will forever be nothing less and nothing more.The Army thinks he’s a hero, having single-handedly saved his troops from an ambush when they stumble upon a major, unknown supply line in Vietnam, then exposing a major Soviet espionage ring in the U.S.Only Milton, Putt’s college friend and environmental activist, and Putt’s sister Mary see that something is deeply confused about Puttnam Steward. Yet neither of them knows that the only time Putt ever truly feels happy is when he wears a woman’s clothes and becomes, for a brief, fleeting moment, someone else. And they don't know how much that disgusts him.In the Wake of the Boatman is a brilliant drama, stirringly and sensitively told, about the elusiveness of identity. Another important novel from one of America’s most praised and accomplished novelists, it’s a masterpiece that won't soon be forgotten."

in the wake of the boatman

By Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Bancroft Press

Copyright © 2008 Jonathon Scott Fuqua
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-890862-42-8

Chapter One

Carl Hatcher Steward sat up slowly, took a last sip of coffee, and crushed the paper cup. He stuffed the Daily Press under his arm and left Norfolk General Hospital, content that his wife, Helen, was sleeping quietly and his newborn son, Puttnum Douglas Steward, was healthy.

The following day, November 8, 1942, Carl read that the Allies had landed on the beaches of Africa, and that American and British troops had mounted the largest amphibious assault to date on the shores of Morocco and Algeria, attacking Hitler's Afrikakorps from the west. Directed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Operation Torch would be a critical test for green American troops, a baptism from which many of the survivors would never consciously return.

The world was in the throes of a massive conflict, and all Carl could do was read about it in the paper. The implications so stung that they left him feeling helpless.

In the days that followed, behind the pound of his rivet gun at the shipyard, or during a quiet lunch, Carl mulled over the military offensive he took no part in, and felt ashamed he had brought a child into the world. Another mouth to feed would not help the war effort.

Days later, Helen and the newborn finally arrived home, yet Carl's anxieties did not abate. Alone in the gray living room of their clapboard rental, their four-year-old daughter asleep in bed, Carl's thoughts crudely took him off guard. On this oppressive Norfolk evening, the notion came to him so calmly it almost made sense. He should crack his little boy's neck as gently as possible. It would be like saving two lives.

He moved in his easy chair, cast a glance across the room towards Puttnum's crib, then suddenly gasped and shook, filled with guilt for his deliberations. Time did not rid him of his thoughts. A week passed, and in his pained mind, his notion became a dark memorial, stubbornly overseeing its own construction. Surreptitiously, it added to his already monumental shame. It was all because of his knee. The joint had a tendency to lock up on him as tight as a bear trap. How could he fight if he couldn't walk? How could he dodge bullets and bombs landing like hail in an open desert?

He wasn't sleeping well at night. When he stared blankly into Puttnum's crib, which he did for hours, his thick fingers would trace the scar around his bony joint, his mind drifting back to the ceramic dog dish that had tripped him up when he was twelve and living in Lynchburg, and how the injury seemed to express itself only at certain moments, like the time he thought a robber had entered the house, or whenever he was called to take another Army physical.

* * *

A month after Puttnum's birth, Helen Steward placed a large spruce in their living room to celebrate the Yuletide. She loved the holidays, the ornamentation, and the hope. Carl had loved them, too, only a few years back, but not since the beginning of the war. He found the last two weeks of December a frivolous time of year. The boys in Europe didn't celebrate. They worried. They worried that they would soon be shipped home like packaged goods on a slow boat from the Old Country. As torpidly as creeping ivy, Carl's myriad new moods started to make Helen feel cheated. This was not the person she had married.

On Christmas day, after reading half the paper and sucking down numerous cups of steaming coffee, Carl went back to his tidy dresser and pulled out his Christmas present to the family. By himself in the bedroom, he studied the War Bonds he had been purchasing since the spring. They looked like fake money—board game cash, even. A confident smile sheared his face. He strode back into the living room and snuck up behind Helen as she fed Puttnum from a bottle. Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, Carl silently held the bonds in front of her face. After a few moments, he said, "This is our future."

He would start a construction business from the savings, staving off immediate gratification for projected success, he told her. "Success and happiness are interchangeable. But you can't have one without the other. Remember that," he cooed to his wife. Then he forced Puttnum from her hands, unloading him roughly into a tattered easy chair and dropping the nippled bottle beside the baby. Carl pulled Helen out into the middle of the living room, let her go, and stood at attention in front of the Christmas tree. Ceremoniously, he began placing the bonds on a few green branches. When he was done, he walked away, leaving his wife to look at the pieces of paper that represented their future. He thought she would be mesmerized. Instead, she was confused and unhappy.

The thought that Carl wasn't going to give them the smallest of real Christmas presents made her sick to her stomach. The new box of cards she had purchased for him weighed heavily in her apron pocket. She wondered how a descendant of British royalty could sink so low. Her life—the way she had envisioned living it—was as besieged as the homeland from which she was three generations removed.

Standing beside her mother, young Mary also scrutinized the flat pieces of paper tucked in the boughs of the tree. She wondered if Santa had brought some of them, or if he had skipped their family completely. If he had, she thought, turning to watch her father's back as he carried the sports page into the bathroom, she was sure it was because two days before, she had squeezed Puttnum's little wrists till he started to cry. No one had seen her, of course, except Santa. She figured that both her mother and her father now realized she hadn't been good. She felt bad about that, but she hated not having them, or the house, to herself anymore.

* * *

"Puttnum needs constant attention," Helen told Carl the following summer as they rode the trolley downtown.

Mary stood away from her parents, not listening, scrubbing at a discolored area on the bar she held. She wanted to bring the worn spot to the same sheen as the rest of the shiny brass tube. She couldn't stand it when things weren't perfect. She was five, considered that kind of old, and figured she had to start taking control of her surroundings if she were ever going to reach her full potential.

"You're going to spoil the boy," Carl told Helen.

She diligently stood, thin and rigid, rocking the small white carriage in front of her, her ten-karat bracelet clicking against the white metal handle. The trolley bumped over worn tracks.

"You'll turn him into a fairy before he has a chance to know what's going on. I don't want a mama's boy." He winced at the thought. "Quit rocking him. He's fine."

Helen Steward shook her head in disagreement. "Oh, Carl. Rocking him back and forth isn't going to turn him into a mama's boy. Anyway ..." she peered into the crib, ducking her head as if she were passing under a ceiling beam ... "he is his mama's boy." She reached down and tickled under Puttnum's little double chin, saying, "Aren't you, Putt? Aren't you your mama's boy?"

The baby smiled.

Carl turned away, despairing for the young man he said he loved. Suddenly, he noticed that an old lady with light blue hair was staring at him. When he caught her eye, she glanced elsewhere. Carl, who was in a poor mood, attempted to make her uncomfortable by glaring at the back of her head. From behind, she looked like the nosey sort. Then he noticed Mary scrubbing on the brass tube, and,...