Charles Wright


Fiction / Saturday, February 7th, 2009

May the Angels lead thee into Paradise; may the Martyrs receive thee at thy coming and take thee to Jerusalem, the holy city. May the choirs of the Angels receive thee, and mayest thou with once poor Lazarus, have rest everlasting. Amen.

The grass still had dew upon it, the sun hadn’t risen enough to lift it away. Instead, the sun turned the green hills of the Polish countryside golden on top and dark on the bottom. The hills and the countryside, these are the things that I will miss the most.

I told Mother that I wished I could stay but she recited the reasons why I must come with the rest of the family. She recited just as she had every time I suggested that I stay. The whole family was going. Our small farm was sold already. The animals were either put down so we would have food to travel with or they were sold to Jozef Gryziak, the butcher. Father’s small shop, where he bent metal and people brought their horses to get shoes, was also sold for a small sum to his apprentice. Mother had many more reasons, but I never cared to hear them all. ‘Don’t you walk off while I am talking to you, Mieczyslaw,’ she would call to me and then continue her list why I couldn’t stay.

It was true, our family was leaving. Not all of the family, just my parents and my brother. My uncles and their families weren’t coming, but I don’t think there was much hope of staying with them. Plus, I was hardly old enough to get along on my own. Nine is not an age where even the toughest and most industrious of boys had a good chance of surviving.

We were leaving tomorrow at dawn, which meant I had just less than a day to say goodbye to the place and anyone I hadn’t already said my farewells to. Without the animals to look after or the blacksmith shop to run, there was little for my parents to tell me to do. We had spent the past month packing what we needed for the trip and selling the rest. Our small pile of things was crammed into the corner of the house, closest to the door. There were three trunks packed with clothes, blankets, photographs and small odds and ends that we thought necessary to bring across the ocean. Other than an old ball and clothes, I didn’t have much. I hadn’t had much to begin with. Mr. Gryziak’s daughter, Doloreta, had given me a photograph of herself. She was a few months older than me and Mother said she fancied me. Truth be told, I fancied her too, but I never spoken that aloud. While I was glad to have the photograph, I doubted I would need it to remember the twinkle in her eyes or the way her smile forced its way into her round cheeks. If only Mr. Gryziak would have decided to follow our family to America. I would write Doloreta when we settled in America and tell her where we were living so she could find us, if ever she left Poland.

“Mieczyslaw, what are you doing?” said Bruno as he pushed me from behind. He was always trying to prove that he was stronger than me, even though he was younger than me.

“Nothing, Bruno.” I told him I was standing there in our yard and I was doing nothing. I wanted my last memories of this life to be of the morning when everything was at peace and the air was fresh and clean. I wanted to remember how anything more than a whisper in the morning seemed to be a shout. And I told him I wanted to remember the hills and how they glow as the sun rose in the East; how their shadows would slowly shrink away as the day grew.

“They say in America there are rolling hills as far as the eye can see; great patches of land that haven’t ever been touched by anyone,” Bruno said.

“Yes, I know,” I said but I had also heard about the great buildings all over the American cities. There were so many buildings and they were so close together that they blotted out any chance of seeing the hills.

I stood next to my brother taking in the morning, waiting for the sun to rise above the hilltops. Around us, birds sang their morning songs while their chicks chirped, demanding to be fed. From where we stood, we could hear the faint morning noises of the town (PICK TOWN NAME). There was the soft clang of the hammer on the anvil coming from Father’s old blacksmith shop. The railroad men were shouting to one another, preparing the freight before the train left the station. I could even pick out one boy shouting the morning’s headlines, though I could not tell what they were, to attract the town to buy his papers.

“Where are you going, Mieczyslaw?”

“I’m going to wander downtown. You are welcome to join me.”

“I can’t. Father asked me to help him check over the barrels of meat before we leave. I am surprised he hasn’t asked you too.”

“I haven’t seen him this morning,” I said.

“Why don’t you come help us anyway? Then we can be done sooner? We can go to town after we finish.”

But I didn’t want to help. I knew that if I was there when they were done checking the barrels of meat, I would never get to town because Father would have something for us to do after we were done, and then something after that and then after that. There would be work all day, even though there was really little left to do.

I had nowhere in particular to go, but I went anyway. There wasn’t much open at this time in the morning so I ended up at the train station. The men who worked the rails were strong, throwing barrels of goods from the beds of the cars down to the men on the ground, unloading and loading the train before it left the station.

I remember when the train first came to town; it wasn’t very long ago. I was three or four, I don’t remember, and Mother and Father were excited to see it. The whole town was excited and came out to see the big steam engine stop at the station. Most of them had remembered when they laid the tracks so many years ago; some had even helped put them down. But the tracks came from Krakow and wanted to connect to Kielce and we were just in the middle, so the train didn’t come our way until the tracks stretched all the way to Kielce. Maybe when we got to America, I would work on the railroad. I heard they were still building across the country to connect the big cities.

There was a bench across the street from the train station and I sat on it for a long time, long enough for the sun to start getting warm and the streets become filled with people running errands about town. I just sat there, watching the railroad men work and eventually the train leave the station but my mind was elsewhere. This was when Doloreta managed to sneak up and sit beside me without my noticing.

“You are leaving tomorrow, aren’t you Mieczyslaw?” she asked.

I wondered why she asked me this; she knew that it was tomorrow. “Yes,” I said. I told her that tomorrow at dawn we were taking the train south to Genova, Italy. Father wanted to take a ship from the Mediterranean because he was worried about the cold from the North. He also wanted more of our travel to be over land than on the sea.

I looked at Doloreta sitting next to me. She stared off at the train station like I had for the better part of the morning. Her light blue dress was pressed and clean; a simple design that her mother had sewn for her. Her brown curls were pulled back away from her face and they sat upon her shoulders. Her eyes that always held a twinkle and brought a light to her pale skin, the same eyes that were captured in the photograph of her now placed in my trunk, seemed distant and cloudy. As if prompted by what I saw in her eyes, tears began to stream down her face.

“Why are you crying, Doloreta?”

“You know that I don’t want you to go, you are my closest of friends. I asked my mother if we ever will leave Poland and go to America and she told me no. She said that Father’s business is good and it always has been good. I don’t believe I will ever get to see you again, Mieczyslaw.”

She hadn’t expressed any of this to me when she handed me the photograph. And truth be told, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might never see her again. I had assumed that I would send her letters telling her of the wondrous things in America and that would be enough to convince her entire family to come to America. At the very least I thought I would return to Poland and sweep her away to America with me.

“Oh, Doloreta, don’t speak like that. Some day you will make it to America. You don’t have to wait for your parents to leave this country.”

“How would I get there without them? They do not give me any money.”

“You could run away from home, find yourself work in a grand household in Krakow. Then you can save what you need to come. We’re still young.”

“Oh Mieczyslaw, I just don’t know.”

I didn’t know either. It would be hard for her to come on her own. She needed money for the voyage and to get along when she came to America, or otherwise she would need someone to bring her. If her parents didn’t come then she would have had to have found a man to bring her. I didn’t want to suggest that, in case she got the wrong impression.

We continued our conversation in silence. I didn’t want to say that I might never see her again. I stared off at the train station across the street and wondered if this was the train that would take my family south tomorrow. I watched the glimmer of the glass on the door move as passengers entered and emerged. Every time the door opened, and again while it closed, there was an instant when the sun reflected into my eyes. It hurt, but I knew that it would soon be gone.

“Mieczyslaw, there you are. I have been looking all over town for you. I figured you’d be at the candy shop but here you are on the bench. Father wants you to come help him. I think he is checking all of our luggage to make sure it’s secure. Mother went through it in a panic last night making sure she had all her knitting needles,” said Bruno. “Oh, hello Doloreta,” he added, taking off his hat.

Bruno was born in 1907, less than three years after me. He was six now and already I could tell the man he would be. Always energetic, always talking and moving. Every other day he had a new plan for life and not once did I ever see him stick to the plan for more than a few hours. He would get discouraged and give up because he didn’t have this or couldn’t go there. Mother and Father saw this too, they laughed at his ways. I thought it wrong for them to encourage him, he needed some sense of what he actually had to do in life and not what he wanted to do on a whim. Where would that get him?

“Alright, Bruno,” I said. I was done with the train, the next one wouldn’t come in for another hour.

“Doloreta, I suppose this is goodbye. If I go home now, Father will have me working all afternoon and we leave in the morning.”

“Yes, I suppose,” she said.

“I will write you as soon as I know where we are.”

“You better,” she said as she grabbed me about the chest and squeezed as though she was holding on for her dear life. Then she let go so she could turn away and head off towards her father’s shop. I watched her for a few moments, her head was low and I saw her raise a hand to wipe her eyes.

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Shut up, Bruno.”


We were aboard the first train out of the station the next morning. I was tired, I had gotten to my bed late and I didn’t sleep well. After Father and I checked to make sure all of our trunks were secure and nothing would come out of them, Mother showed up with another pot that she wanted to bring with. She said she just could not be able to cook in America without it. Father tried to talk her out of bringing it, she already had five packed away but she still insisted. He had a soft spot in his heart of iron for Mother. So Father made me go through the luggage and repack as much as I could to make room for the sixth pot. I didn’t need to make much room, but it was still more than I wanted to make and it kept me up well past dark.

I had been on a train before so it didn’t excite me much. I liked the feeling of going fast, Father reckoned that this train was moving somewhere around ninety-five kilometers an hour. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I could tell that it was fast because the Polish country side would slowly start to fade to a green blur as we picked up speed between stations.

People got on and off the trains at the stations. Some people had big trunks like ours and some people had nothing. I could tell the other people who were going to America like we were. There usually was a large family, five men and their wives and a handful of children to each couple. They would usually take up more than one compartment. The mothers would sit and try to calm the children while the men sat together to discuss how they would live when they made it to America. These conversations weren’t anything new to any of the men because doubtless they had had the conversation a dozen times or more before leaving. Father had the conversation with his brothers. They didn’t want to hear it. They had told him that their life was quiet and good, working only when they had to work. Father told them that they were foolish to want to stay in Poland when there was so much opportunity in America. He told them all of this a handful of times, much of it I think Father regretted saying years later. After that, Father didn’t talk to his brothers any more.

The train ride took the better part of the day and we didn’t arrive into the station at Genova until dusk. Father had set up the trip so we would have a day in between the train ride and when the boat left. He wanted to make sure that we didn’t miss the boat for any reason. I had never asked Father why he wanted to go to America. He had work and a life in Poland. None of our neighbors had left and his brothers didn’t want to go. Father was born in 1881 and his parents were born in the forties. His father had been a blacksmith before him. I assumed that one day I would start learning to be one too. That day hadn’t come and it was safe to say that it would never come because in a few weeks, father would be as far as he could be away from blacksmithing.

They say that it’s the land of opportunity; that a man can grow and work to be any sort of man that he desires. It makes me wonder if Father ever wanted to be a blacksmith, or if it was something that he did because it was expected of him. Maybe in America Father would start in a new line of work. I wondered if he had anything in particular in mind. The only thing that I wanted to do was work on the railroad. I had nothing against being a blacksmith like Father, but if I didn’t have to be one then why would I want to be one? Maybe I will join the railroad in New York when I am old enough and lay tracks for them. I wouldn’t stop until I had worked my way to the other coast.


Genoa was a large port city. The buildings were built of stone and they were far larger than anything we had back home. I didn’t get time to go out and explore the city. I really wanted to but father said that we needed to spend the day getting ourselves ready. I don’t know what he thought we needed to do, all our stuff had been packed since before we took the train. All we had to do was go to the port and buy tickets to get across the ocean. Our hotel was located just a block from the docks and it wasn’t too difficult to find where we needed to go and who we needed to talk to so we could get a room on the ship. I remember quite well how easy it was to find. There was a line that stretched away from a small shack.

In the water next to the shack was a big steamer. ‘Maestosa Viaggio’ was painted on its hull. I did not know what it meant but it sounded beautiful. The ship looked as though it had just been dropped into the water. It glistened in the morning Italian sun as we took our place in line. Men were aboard it, moving all about the deck. They were cleaning and hauling trunks and crates aboard and presumably taking them below deck. These men looked weathered and hardened, it made me feel better knowing that they would be the crew taking care of our ship while we sailed.

“Miecyzslaw, do you see those men? I want to be one of them,” said Bruno.

“Yes, I see them.”

“Wouldn’t that be the life? Sailing from port to port and not having to worry about anything. When we get to America, I am going to learn to sail.”

I just nodded at Bruno. I had a good feeling that this was another thing in life that he will forget in a few hours.

“Oh Bruno, if you run off and be a sailor who will take care of me,” asked Mother.

“Father will,” he said.

Why did Mother and Father always encourage him? How would he grow into a man if he didn’t know how the world worked?

We stood in that line all morning. I could tell that Father started to get worried whether or not there would be space on the boat by the time we got to the shack. The other men around us talked about it too, nervously. Father shifted from foot to foot and stood on his toes to look ahead at the line anytime we moved, just to make sure no man came out to tell us there was no room left.

I thought I heard a man say that the next passenger boat wouldn’t leave port for another two weeks. That’s why Father worried. We didn’t have the money to stay for two weeks in a hotel and eat. We would need the food we packed for the voyage on the ocean.

After standing in line all morning, it was finally our turn to purchase our tickets for the boat. As Father stepped into the shack, I caught a glimpse of his face and he looked calm. We weren’t the last ones to get our tickets, but there weren’t much space left by the time we got there. The four of us had a cabin to ourselves. It had one cot in it that Mother and Father would share. Bruno and I had the floor.

The rest of the day we spent hauling out trunks to the ship. The man selling tickets in the shack said it was better to get them on today because tomorrow the boat was to leave at nine in the morning and if our things weren’t aboard, then they wouldn’t come with us. So we hauled our trunks down the stairs of the hotel and down the block to the Maestosa Viaggio where we had to wait again until someone came along to load our trunks into our cabin. Father had asked the man in the shack if we could stay aboard the boat over night. I didn’t hear the man’s answer or his reasoning but we ended up staying in the hotel again; I assumed the answer was ‘no’.


Ever since we left the port, I have wished that I could tell people that the boat to America was boring and uneventful. But I can’t. The moment our boat left port, I could tell that mother wasn’t happy to see the old country shrink in the distance. I had never asked Mother if she wanted to leave. I don’t think anyone had. She went with Father because she was his wife and he wanted to go to America.

I stood next to Mother as the boat left port. I remember looking up at her and seeing her dark frizzy hair blowing in the wind, desperately trying to escape the pins that held it to her head. Everyone else around us seemed cheerful, smiling and waving goodbye to the people the left on shore. Mother did not smile and there was no one for her to wave to. There wasn’t any emotion on mother’s face, but slowly tears seeped out of her eyes.

Father, who stood on the opposite side of Mother from me, looked down and put his arm around her. He pulled her in tight and whispered into her ear. I couldn’t make out all he said, but I think I heard him tell her that it was ‘going to be better in America.’

The voyage to America was supposed to take two and a half weeks. We were supposed to arrive in America in late June. I expected the trip to be boring; I wouldn’t get to wander about a town or the countryside. In fact, I had seen every part of the ship that I could by the end of the second day. Bruno took to following me around. We tried to find other kids to play with us, but there were only a few who spoke Polish and their parents didn’t want them running about the ship.

Mother continued to weep long after we had left port. She would move about the cabin or talk walks on the deck and the tears continued to stream down her face. She was in constant pain of homesickness. At meals she hardly ate. At night I heard her toss and turn on the cot. And she was alway wrapped in an extra layer of clothing, but that didn’t seem to help because she still was always shivering.

On the sixth day, Mother couldn’t get out of bed. She said she felt more sick than she had and her face was green with seasickness. And then she started throwing up. It was a foul business. She couldn’t eat because it made her sick, but then she complained that the hunger made her nauseous. All the while, it made our cabin smell. Father had Bruno and me take turns running the buckets of vomit up to the deck to dump overboard. It didn’t do our room any good, the smell lingered even when we dumped the buckets and washed them before coming back. Our room smelled sour and Mother looked worse each day.

On the tenth day Mother seemed to be feeling better. She even ate some solid food; before she had just been a broth made by soaking some meat from the barrels in water.

When we woke up the next day, Father motioned for us to be quiet and to leave to room. I did as I was told and caught a glimpse of Mother before I left. It looked like she was catching up on all the rest that she had lost over the past few days. Bruno and I headed to the deck to get some fresh air.

I had taken a liking to the sea air. At first, the smell bothered me, it smelled strongly of fish. But slowly, as we made our way out to the open sea, I learned to smell the sea as something exhilarating and cold, clean and fresh. It was a good way to start each day, to move lean over the side of the boat and to fill your lungs with the air.

“Do you think Mother is going to get better before we get to America, Mieczyslaw?” asked Bruno.

“I hope so,” I said. We still had a week or so to go. She had plenty of time to rest up. I hoped that she would be on her feet and with the rest of the passengers of the boat when we would first see the shores of New York. I hoped that she would look at them without tears. I hoped that she would welcome the new country with nothing but smiles.

Bruno and I wandered about the deck for the better part of the morning. We assumed that Father didn’t want us coming back to the cabin and waking Mother up. Around lunchtime Father came to find us. He told us to follow him. We went back to the cabin. Our door was open. There was a man outside the door and another one inside standing over mother. They were silent.

Father told us to say our goodbyes. Mother had died.

Later, he told us what happened that morning while Bruno and I sat on the deck. Father woke up and felt Mother sleeping beside him. He had noticed she was breathing slowly, but paid it no attention because he was glad she was resting. After an hour or so, he noticed that her chest wasn’t rising any more. He tried to wake her up, but he couldn’t. He ran through the cabins looking for the Italian doctor who had been checking up on her the past few days. The doctor tried to wake her, but he couldn’t.

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