Maine. It was the opinion of Wilbur Larch's father that the two best wharves in Portland Harbor had been built specifically for the Great Eastern, that the new and huge hotel in Portland had been built expressly to house the Great Eastern's passengers, and that someone evil or at least corrupt or just plain foolish was responsible for keeping the Great Eastern from returning to her home port in Maine.
Wilbur Larch's father had worked as a lathe operator during the building of the Great Eastern, and perhaps the complaining noise of that machinery and the constant buzz he felt from all the beer he consumed had deceived him. The Great Eastern had not been built for voyages to and from Portland; she was originally intended for the route to Australia, but the many delays in getting her to sea drove her owners to bankruptcy and she was purchased for use on the North Atlantic route for which she proved unsuitable. She was, in fact, a failure.
So Wilbur Larch's father had an addled memory of his days as a lathe operator, and he had considerable loathing for temperance reform, his wife's beliefs and his wife's employer, Mayor Neal Dow himself. In the opinion of Wilbur Larch's father, the Great Eastern didn't return to Portland because of Prohibition—that curse which had limited him to a bilious dependency on Scotch ale and bitter beer. Since Wilbur knew his father only in the man's later years, when the Great Eastern was gone and his father was a porter in the Portland station of the Grand Trunk Railway, he could only imagine why working a wood-turning machine had been the high point of his father's life.
As a boy, it never occurred to Wilbur Larch that his father's missing fingers were the result of too many Scotch ales and bitter beers while operating the lathe—'just accidents,' his father said—or that his mother's zeal for temperance reform might be the result of a lathe operator's demotion to porter. Of course, {57} Wilbur realized later, his parents were servants; their disappointment made Wilbur become what his teachers called a whale of a student.
Although he grew up in the mayor's mansion, Wilbur Larch always used the kitchen entrance and ate his meals with the great prohibitionist's hired help; his father drank his meals, down at the docks. Wilbur Larch was a good student because he preferred the company of books to overhearing his mother's talk of temperance with Mayor Dow's servants.
He went to Bowdoin College, and to Harvard Medical School—where a fascination with bacteria almost deterred him from practicing medicine, almost turned him into a laboratory animal, or at least a bacteriologist. He had a gift for the field, his professor told him, and he enjoyed the careful atmosphere of the laboratory; also, he had a burning desire to learn about bacteria. For nearly a year of medical school young Wilbur carried a bacterium that so offended and pained him that: he was driven by more than scientific curiosity to discover its cure. He had gonorrhea: a gift, indirectly, from his father. The old man, in his beer buzz, had been so proud of Wilbur that he sent him to medicine school in 188-with a present. He bought the boy a Portland whore, setting up his son with a night of supposed pleasure in one of the wharf side boardinghouses. It was a present the boy had been too embarrassed to refuse. His father's selfish nostalgia allowed him so few gestures toward his son; his mother's bitter righteousness was selfish in her own way; young Wilbur was touched that his father had offered to give him anything.
In the boardinghouse—the wood dry with salt and a sea-damp clinging to the curtains and to the bedspread —the whore reminded Wilbur of one of his mother's more attractive servant-colleagues; he shut his eyes and tried to imagine that he was embarking on a forbidden romance in a back room of the mayor's mansion. When he opened his eyes, he saw the candlelight deepening the {58} stretch marks across the whore's abdomen;
Wilbur Larch's father had worked as a lathe operator during the building of the Great Eastern, and perhaps the complaining noise of that machinery and the constant buzz he felt from all the beer he consumed had deceived him. The Great Eastern had not been built for voyages to and from Portland; she was originally intended for the route to Australia, but the many delays in getting her to sea drove her owners to bankruptcy and she was purchased for use on the North Atlantic route for which she proved unsuitable. She was, in fact, a failure.
So Wilbur Larch's father had an addled memory of his days as a lathe operator, and he had considerable loathing for temperance reform, his wife's beliefs and his wife's employer, Mayor Neal Dow himself. In the opinion of Wilbur Larch's father, the Great Eastern didn't return to Portland because of Prohibition—that curse which had limited him to a bilious dependency on Scotch ale and bitter beer. Since Wilbur knew his father only in the man's later years, when the Great Eastern was gone and his father was a porter in the Portland station of the Grand Trunk Railway, he could only imagine why working a wood-turning machine had been the high point of his father's life.
As a boy, it never occurred to Wilbur Larch that his father's missing fingers were the result of too many Scotch ales and bitter beers while operating the lathe—'just accidents,' his father said—or that his mother's zeal for temperance reform might be the result of a lathe operator's demotion to porter. Of course, {57} Wilbur realized later, his parents were servants; their disappointment made Wilbur become what his teachers called a whale of a student.
Although he grew up in the mayor's mansion, Wilbur Larch always used the kitchen entrance and ate his meals with the great prohibitionist's hired help; his father drank his meals, down at the docks. Wilbur Larch was a good student because he preferred the company of books to overhearing his mother's talk of temperance with Mayor Dow's servants.
He went to Bowdoin College, and to Harvard Medical School—where a fascination with bacteria almost deterred him from practicing medicine, almost turned him into a laboratory animal, or at least a bacteriologist. He had a gift for the field, his professor told him, and he enjoyed the careful atmosphere of the laboratory; also, he had a burning desire to learn about bacteria. For nearly a year of medical school young Wilbur carried a bacterium that so offended and pained him that: he was driven by more than scientific curiosity to discover its cure. He had gonorrhea: a gift, indirectly, from his father. The old man, in his beer buzz, had been so proud of Wilbur that he sent him to medicine school in 188-with a present. He bought the boy a Portland whore, setting up his son with a night of supposed pleasure in one of the wharf side boardinghouses. It was a present the boy had been too embarrassed to refuse. His father's selfish nostalgia allowed him so few gestures toward his son; his mother's bitter righteousness was selfish in her own way; young Wilbur was touched that his father had offered to give him anything.
In the boardinghouse—the wood dry with salt and a sea-damp clinging to the curtains and to the bedspread —the whore reminded Wilbur of one of his mother's more attractive servant-colleagues; he shut his eyes and tried to imagine that he was embarking on a forbidden romance in a back room of the mayor's mansion. When he opened his eyes, he saw the candlelight deepening the {58} stretch marks across the whore's abdomen;
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