Fading Shadows

There was very little conversation about who he was, where he came from, or how and why he ended up living with my grandparents. He, along with every single person who had firsthand knowledge of his backstory, has passed away. Yet, for all of my young life, while he and they were still living, this person – the incomplete John Harris – was like a fleeting shadow.

On those extremely rare occasions when Dad would recount some childhood memory, John Harris was not mentioned. What I’m about to share is a combination of historical crumbs not yet turned to dust as I lose my grip on memory, and the historical fiction I’ve written of him over the years. I suppose the truth would be vastly more interesting, but in its absence the following will have to do.

My paternal grandmother, Annette Wilson, nicknamed Nettie, and her people hailed from New Jersey. It was said her father was a doctor. It was said that she had been educated, could read, write, and do sums. It was said she became a teacher. I know for a fact she played the piano because I saw her do so once six decades ago.

Nettie was married twice. Her first married name was Harris. That marriage had presumably been childless. Upon the death of Mr. Harris, she came into a little property, a small house, and a tiny general store on Route 6A in Barnstable.

But then there is this question. Who was John Harris? If her marriage to Mr. Harris was childless, then where did John Harris come from?

Nettie met and married my grandfather, Nehemiah Newell. She had two sons by him, my father, Brayton, and my uncle, Nehemiah (whose nickname was the rather odd sounding Pungo).

An elder paternal cousin told me a story. She said that when Nettie returned from visiting a friend in Connecticut, she came back with a toddler. That toddler was John. I recall asking her how the toddler had come into her life. I mean, a human being just doesn’t fabricate itself, now does it? The cousin said that a friend of Nettie’s had too many children and the family couldn’t support another. Being childless and, presumably with the financial means to take care of a child, Nettie ‘did her friend a favor’ and had taken the child to raise and care for as if her own flesh and blood. If that story is true, then John was not a relative by birth but a sort of adopted son.

My Father referred to ‘Johnny’ not so much as a half-brother, but as a person in the household who was simply there. He never called him brother as he did his beloved Pungo. Dad would say that Johnny was ‘smart,’ which equated to very high praise from him. Dad’s third-grade education was always a source of shame for him. Though he could read and do sums, he could not write more than his name, and he seemed to believe Johnny of superior intelligence.

In the very thin narrative of my father’s childhood days, this Johnny never factored in. Dad spoke glowingly of his grandmother, a woman I believe to have been his mother’s mother, another educated woman. It was she who taught him how to read. It was she who spent long lamp-lit hours in little more than a hovel heated by a wood burning stove; whose love and kindness he would reflect upon later in life. Not a word of an older brother named John.

Yet it was this person who bore my grandmother’s first married name – Harris.

I know that my father had rather frequent contact with John when they were adults. John became a banker. At what level in the banking world is not known; but suffice it to say, it was a position that my father would leverage.

Dad spent the lion’s share of his life self-employed. His limited education and total inability to accept the confines of reporting to another person made it necessary that he call his own shots. His talents lent themselves to fixing things, and as such, he became well known as the TV-man. But his ability to actually become a solvent businessman was frail at best. There were lean times.

The ebb and flow of his shop meant that, on occasion, money had to be borrowed if it was to be had at all. Before things got too desperate, Dad would take out personal loans from banks or lending institutions using whatever collateral he had cobbled together, oftentimes the house we lived in. A public records search of the homes he owned show numerous loans granted and paid, many from the bank where John Harris was employed.

One can assume that such dealings required Dad and John to speak to one another. One can also assume there was nothing resembling familial sentiments, but rather a business transaction shadowed by some vague shared history.

I never met John. At least I don’t think so. Shortly before the death of my Uncle Pungo, with whom I established a warm long-distance relationship, we discussed many things; but he never, ever mentioned John. Maybe I didn’t ask.

Pungo told me that the best we can ever hope for in terms of immortality is two generations; three, if we are lucky. After that, there is the nothingness. If that’s the case, I hope John has lots of family somewhere. I’m likely to be the only person in my family thinking about him at all in spite of having virtually nothing to share. That thought gets me to wondering … Perhaps when the Harris family thinks about John, they speculate about my family, my father, and my uncle – or maybe not. All shadows fade.

By Marilou Newell