7
DURING THE NEXT WEEK, I spent all of my spare time and much of the time that I should have spent on homework working on the manual. The source of our problems had become clear during the first meeting. Mr. Summers had many ideas about things that he wanted a Tar to do and be, and he had many ideas about things that he wanted to have happen during a Tars meeting, but his thinking on most of these topics other than the hitting-the-deck and lining-up procedures had ended with the initial idea. The manual stated that a Tar should salute a superior Tar, but didn’t specify how or when. It said that the assembled Tars should recite the Tars Oath to begin each meeting, but there was no oath. Tars were supposed to practice “skills useful in a seafaring way of life,” and “learn salty expressions and gestures,” but these were not described.
Because the manual had so many gaps, Mr. Summers spent most of the meeting nonplussed and spluttering. Whenever he wasn’t certain how to do what the manual said should be done, he would turn smartly on his heel to face me and ask crisply, “Commodore Leroy, what do we do next?” and I would say, “Well, we’ll have those procedures worked out for next week’s meeting.”
Going by the manual, we used only thirteen minutes to get through the meeting. After that, we hung around in the bleachers, ran up and down the stairs, and slid back and forth on the gym floor in our socks until our parents arrived to pick us up.
I was embarrassed for myself, for Mr. Summers, and for the Tars, and I was determined not to let this happen again. Every evening, I spent hours rewriting the manual to fill the gaps and make the necessary repairs. I couldn’t just add things at the end as Mr. Summers had told me to, but I knew it wasn’t right to disobey him, so I included as part of a description of the duties of the Scribe “to retype the manual as often as necessary so that it looks neat and finished.” Mr. Summers never noticed.
I began to see and admire in myself some of the stick-to-itiveness that I saw and admired in my grandfather, but my parents became concerned about my spending so much time alone in my room.
“Peter,” my father called up the stairs one night, “what are you doing up there?”
The suspicion in his voice was unmistakable. I almost gave him the answer that was becoming my automatic response to his calling up the stairs to ask me what I was doing: “Nothing.” More and more of my pursuits in the time after dinner were becoming private. My room had become a sanctum, where privacy was defended by secrecy. This was my island. My parents already resented the isolation I was establishing for myself, already suspected me of spending my solitary time in unhealthy, illegal, or useless pursuits. “Nothing,” as an answer wasn’t enough to satisfy my father, although he wouldn’t have been satisfied by most of the truthful answers either. He didn’t want me to write Larry Peters stories or even to think about writing Larry Peters stories. He wouldn’t have wanted me to lie on my bed daydreaming. He wouldn’t have wanted me to sit in my room with the lights out, watching the neighbors across the street, and I spent quite a bit of time doing that. Often, when I said that I was doing nothing, he would call up to me, “Well, if you’re doing nothing, then come on downstairs and watch television with your mother and me.”
“I’m working on the Tars Manual,” I called back, truthfully.
“Oh,” he said.
Was that disappointment in his voice? Perhaps. He may have been telling my mother that I was becoming a stranger in my own home, that I treated the place as a hotel, that there was no telling what sort of mischief I was getting into up there in my room for hours, that sometimes I sat there with the lights off, that he was tired of hearing that I was doing “nothing,” that he was going to get a straight answer from me or know the reason why.
“How’s it going?” he asked. There was no suggestion of disappointment now. Approval, even pride, came through clearly.
“It’s getting there,” I said, “but it’s a lot of work.”
“Well, don’t keep at it too long. You’ve got to learn when to quit.”
“Aye, sir,” I muttered.
“What did you say?” asked my father.
“I said, ‘I sure will,’” I said.
(I’ve never crawled into bed, but the verb crawled brings to mind such a good image of the utterly exhausted person, too tired to get into bed in the normal manner, too tired even to walk across the room to the bed, dragging himself across the floor like a weary lizard, that I’ve often been tempted to use it even though I don’t know from experience what crawling into bed is like. Now, I think, is the time.)
I crawled into bed. Too tired to sleep, I lay awake in the dark for a long while, my thoughts crawling through the fog of my tired mind, bumping now and then into a figment of my imagination. Just before I fell asleep I came upon an idea, another important lesson from the Tars, the idea that I could get my father to permit me to do almost anything if it was done for, or in the name of, a cause of which he approved. I could even write Larry Peters stories—if they went into the manual.
In Topical Guide 218, Mark Dorset considers Author as God or Magician or Puppeteer or, well, Author and Life of the Mind, The from this episode.
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🎧 218: During the next week ...