The Whale by Mark Beauregard

jack-o’-lantern.
    â€œWell, I suppose I don’t understand the importance of a mentor to a writer such as yourself.”
    Tears continued to roll down Herman’s face. In spite of Robert’s bewilderment, he gave Herman a tremendous bear hug, and Herman leaned heavily into him. Robert said, “There, there. It will beall right,” and he patted his cousin on the back and made little circles between his shoulder blades.
    â€œOn a whaleship, I was beset by danger and made to suffer daily indignities, which I weathered like a stoic; now, on dry land, I brim constantly with tears.”
    Herman stood upright again on his own two feet. He wished he could extinguish the monotonous moon.
    â€œDo you remember when we used to go down to the pond behind old man Cooper’s farm and catch tadpoles?” Robert asked.
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œDo you want to walk there now?”
    â€œYes.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “But we should tell our wives first. I’ve been inconsiderate enough for one evening. For one lifetime, perhaps.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œThank you, Robert.” They walked back toward Broad Hall, their arms around each other’s shoulders. “Please don’t mention this to anyone. They would laugh at me.”
    â€œBecause you cried? Or because you need a mentor?”
    â€œBecause I am not made of sterner stuff.”
    â€œBut tell me, Herman, why must you take such drastic action, if it brings you such heartache? Why could you not mail your manuscripts back and forth to your new mentor from New York?”
    â€œThat is not the kind of help I need.”
    Herman could see his cousin mentally adjudicating their long history together, deciding how he would fit this episode into Herman’s many “outlandish” outbursts in the past. Will Robert ever admit to himself what he must always have known about me? Herman thought. He searched Robert’s eyes for a glimmer of true sympathy but found only a resigned capitulation to life as a Melville—a family of eccentrics, outcasts, and bankrupts.
    â€œTell no one,” said Herman. “I beg of you.”
    â€œVery well. I promise I won’t.”
    â€œI truly am sorry.”
    Herman continued to apologize for another minute until Robert finally insisted that he stop, and then Herman apologized for continuing to apologize. As they crested a little knoll and the yellow lamplight of Broad Hall’s wide porch appeared below them, Herman stopped. The whole family was still outside, enjoying the evening, his mother knitting and rocking and saying something just at the edge of hearing. He would apologize to Robert’s wife, and Lizzie, and his mother; he would apologize to everyone, as he always did eventually, but he longed for a time when he could stop being sorry—when he could be understood plainly. He stared past Broad Hall, into the dark night, toward Lenox.

Chapter 7
Arrowhead
    The sky thundered and billowed all morning, but its promised rain still had not fallen by nine thirty, so Lizzie, Herman, and Maria set off to meet Dr. Brewster. Herman had been telling Lizzie stories of his childhood adventures on Brewster’s farm all night and morning. As they walked, she pulled Herman aside, out of earshot of his mother, and reminded him that they had only three thousand dollars, and that Robert had said the farm might be worth two thousand. She further reminded him that it would be better if they spent something like one thousand or fifteen hundred on a house, so they would have a little extra money to live on, at least until his next book was published, and that the last house they had seen in town, a very modest home behind the dry goods store that needed only a few minor repairs, cost exactly fifteen hundred and might be better suited to their needs.
    â€œLet us keep our budget in the forefront of our minds and not be carried away by grand notions or