In the Wake of the Boatman

By Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Puttnam Douglas Steward isn't having an identity crisis—he is one. To his father Carl, he's a disappointment, and has been since the day he came home from the hospital. To his mother, he's "Mama's Boy," and will forever be nothing less and nothing more.

The Army thinks he's a hero, having single-handedly saved his troops from an ambush when they stumble upon a major, unknown supply line in Vietnam, then exposing a major Soviet espionage ring in the U.S.

Only Milton, Putt's college friend and environmental activist, and Putt's sister Mary see that something is deeply confused about Puttnam Steward. Yet neither of them knows that the only time Putt ever truly feels happy is when he wears a woman's clothes and becomes, for a brief, fleeting moment, someone else. And they don't know how much that disgusts him.

In the Wake of the Boatman is a brilliant drama, stirringly and sensitively told, about the elusiveness of identity. Another important novel from one of America's most praised and accomplished novelists, it's a masterpiece that won't soon be forgotten.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bancroft Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781890862787

Jonathon Scott Fuqua

Jonathon Scott Fuqua is the award winning author of three much lauded, award-winning young adult novels, The Reappearance of Sam Webber (ALA Alex Award, School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Booklist Editor's Choice, and more) and DARBY (Oppenhiem Toy Portfolio Platinum Award, Book Sense Top 5, Mark Twain Award finalist, and more), and The Willoughby Spit Wonder (“It is the kind of novel, by turns comical, haunting, and thrilling, that comes only once in a blue moon” The Boston Globe). For teenagers and adults, he has written a "groundbreaking" graphic novel, In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe, which was nominated by YALSA as a Popular Paperback for Young Adults (2005). And for young children he has penned Catie & Josephine (a Washington Post Book of the Week) an innovative graphic/chapter book that might be the first of its kind. In the Wake of the Boatman, his latest novel, came out in December 2008. All of his published books are available nationally and internationally.

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chapter one

Carl Hatcher Steward sat up slowly, took a last sip of coffee, and crushed the paper cup. He stuffed the Daily Press under his arm and left Norfolk General Hospital, content that his wife, Helen, was sleeping quietly and his newborn son, Puttnum Douglas Steward, was healthy.

The following day, November 8, 1942, Carl read that the Allies had landed on the beaches of Africa, and that American and British troops had mounted the largest amphibious assault to date on the shores of Morocco and Algeria, attacking Hitler’s Afrikakorps from the west. Directed by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Operation Torch would be a critical test for green American troops, a baptism from which many of the survivors would never consciously return.

The world was in the throes of a massive conflict, and all Carl could do was read about it in the paper. The implications so stung that they left him feeling helpless.

In the days that followed, behind the pound of his rivet gun at the shipyard, or during a quiet lunch, Carl mulled over the military offensive he took no part in, and felt ashamed he had brought a child into the world. Another mouth to feed would not help the war effort.

Days later, Helen and the newborn finally arrived home, yet Carl’s anxieties did not abate. Alone in the gray living room of their clapboard rental, their four-year-old daughter asleep in bed, Carl’s thoughts crudely took him off guard. On this oppressive Norfolk evening, the notion came to him so calmly it almost made sense. He should crack his little boy’s neck as gently as possible. It would be like saving two lives.

He moved in his easy chair, cast a glance across the room towards Puttnum’s crib, then suddenly gasped and shook, filled with guilt for his deliberations. Time did not rid him of his thoughts. A week passed, and in his pained mind, his notion became a dark memorial, stubbornly overseeing its own construction. Surreptitiously, it added to his already monumental shame. It was all because of his knee. The joint had a tendency to lock up on him as tight as a bear trap. How could he fight if he couldn’t walk? How could he dodge bullets and bombs landing like hail in an open desert?

He wasn’t sleeping well at night. When he stared blankly into Puttnum’s crib, which he did for hours, his thick fingers would trace the scar around his bony joint, his mind drifting back to the ceramic dog dish that had tripped him up when he was twelve and living in Lynchburg, and how the injury seemed to express itself only at certain moments, like the time he thought a robber had entered the house, or whenever he was called to take another Army physical.

A month after Puttnum’s birth, Helen Steward placed a large spruce in their living room to celebrate the Yuletide. She loved the holidays, the ornamentation, and the hope. Carl had loved them, too, only a few years back, but not since the beginning of the war. He found the last two weeks of December a frivolous time of year. The boys in Europe didn’t celebrate. They worried. They worried that they would soon be shipped home like packaged goods on a slow boat from the Old Country. As torpidly as creeping ivy, Carl’s myriad new moods started to make Helen feel cheated. This was not the person she had married.

On Christmas day, after reading half the paper and sucking down numerous cups of steaming coffee, Carl went back to his tidy dresser and pulled out his Christmas present to the family. By himself in the bedroom, he studied the War Bonds he had been purchasing since the spring. They looked like fake money—board game cash, even. A confident smile sheared his face. He strode back into the living room and snuck up behind Helen as she fed Puttnum from a bottle. Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, Carl silently held the bonds in front of her face. After a few moments, he said, This is our future.

He would start a construction business from the savings, staving off immediate gratification for projected success, he told her. Success and happiness are interchangeable. But you can’t have one without the other. Remember that, he cooed to his wife. Then he forced Puttnum from her hands, unloading him roughly into a tattered easy chair and dropping the nippled bottle beside the baby. Carl pulled Helen out into the middle of the living room, let her go, and stood at attention in front of the Christmas tree. Ceremoniously, he began placing the bonds on a few green branches. When he was done, he walked away, leaving his wife to look at the pieces of paper that represented their future. He thought she would be mesmerized. Instead, she was confused and unhappy.

The thought that Carl wasn’t going to give them the smallest of real Christmas presents made her sick to her stomach. The new box of cards she had purchased for him weighed heavily in her apron pocket. She wondered how a descendant of British royalty could sink so low. Her life—the way she had envisioned living it—was as besieged as the homeland from which she was three generations removed.

Standing beside her mother, young Mary also scrutinized the flat pieces of paper tucked in the boughs of the tree. She wondered if Santa had brought some of them, or if he had skipped their family completely. If he had, she thought, turning to watch her father’s back as he carried the sports page into the bathroom, she was sure it was because two days before, she had squeezed Puttnum’s little wrists till he started to cry. No one had seen her, of course, except Santa. She figured that both her mother and her father now realized she hadn’t been good. She felt bad about that, but she hated not having them, or the house, to herself anymore.

Puttnum needs constant attention, Helen told Carl the following summer as they rode the trolley downtown.

Mary stood away from her parents, not listening, scrubbing at a discolored area on the bar she held. She wanted to bring the worn spot to the same sheen as the rest of the shiny brass tube. She couldn’t stand it when things weren’t perfect. She was five, considered that kind of old, and figured she had to start taking control of her surroundings if she were ever going to reach her full potential.

You’re going to spoil the boy, Carl told Helen.

She diligently stood, thin and rigid, rocking the small white carriage in front of her, her ten-karat bracelet clicking against the white metal handle. The trolley bumped over worn tracks.

You’ll turn him into a fairy before he has a chance to know what’s going on. I don’t want a mama’s boy. He winced at the thought. Quit rocking him. He’s fine.

Helen Steward shook her head in disagreement. Oh, Carl. Rocking him back and forth isn’t going to turn him into a mama’s boy. Anyway . . . she peered into the crib, ducking her head as if she were passing under a ceiling beam . . . he is his mama’s boy. She reached down and tickled under Puttnum’s little double chin, saying, Aren’t you, Putt? Aren’t you your mama’s boy?

The baby smiled.

Carl turned away, despairing for the young man he said he loved. Suddenly, he noticed that an old lady with light blue hair was staring at him. When he caught her eye, she glanced elsewhere. Carl, who was in a poor mood, attempted to make her uncomfortable by glaring at the back of her head. From behind, she looked like the nosey sort. Then he noticed Mary scrubbing on the brass tube, and, extending his rough hand for her to take, pulled his daughter gently to him. Girls are so much easier to raise than boys, he thought. Pamper them all you want, because it won’t hurt. Not so with boys. Pampering a boy was like laying a trap. It could snare the strong and make them weak.

Putt, a wild baby, was afraid of nothing. A few months old, he rose to challenges. His father’s disapproving voice was the spark, the gauntlet, always setting him off. He did crazy things, like putting the wrong end of a lit cigarette in his mouth as if it was a pacifier, or climbing the side of his crib skillfully, only to take a dangerous fall to the carpeted bedroom floor. Cats and dogs naturally shied away from the little baby, his tiny hands opening and closing like the claws of a lobster. Animals knew he would reach out for their tails. His mere presence frightened them. Even so, Carl had questions about the baby. He scrutinized him from the corners of his eyes. A single whimper and he interpreted it as a horrible sign his son lacked something inside.

Despite numerous Allied successes, Carl was getting accustomed to the idea that the war would drag on for years. Two decades down the road, he wanted Puttnum to make him proud in battle. Brave men embrace their fate, even if it is to be fodder on a beach or under the canopy of an old forest. Carl was nervous that his wife’s pampering would wash away what he was trying so hard to instill. Also, he believed in jinxes, and would tell people at the shipyard that his boy would be a tough son-of-a-bitch one day, and then dread saying so, thinking he had somehow cursed Puttnum forever. I’m sorry, he’d remark in the dark.

Carl went in for another physical the summer of ’43, and again, while standing in line, nervous about being nervous, his bewildering joint immediately tightened. When he was motioned to ascend a scale, he ignored the pain and hopped onto the low platform. But after examining his knee—the long thick scar—Army doctors sent Carl home with a pair of crutches and a shot of liquor to help him manage the frozen joint.

He was humiliated again. It was worse than before. On the bus, the leg simply unclamped and felt fine. Embittered at his lot, he got off at midtown, went into a bar, and saturated his brain with strong drinks. He arrived home stone drunk and three hours late for dinner.

After that, Helen noted, nothing Putt ever did was good enough for his father. Carl Steward’s expectations rose to a fevered pitch that never abated. God, he’s tiny. I don’t think his peepee’s grown at all . . . His hair’s a little too flaxen for a boy, wouldn’t you say, Helen?

Carl started hiding the small, hand-me-down stuffed animals his wife bestowed upon Putt, often commenting that the child must have gone off and buried the objects like a mutt. In their place, Carl left books, Gillette razors, footballs, and baseballs, hoping his son would absorb their masculinity through proximity.

In the mornings, on the way to work, Carl walked slowly up the street towards Hampton Boulevard, smoking a fat white Camel and swinging his trick knee so it clicked as he strode. Off in the distance, he could hear the trains on the docks where he worked. The walk took forever in the winter, the wind buffeting his sleepy features. But in the spring or the summer, Norfolk seemed as pretty in its tough way as any city he had ever seen. In the spring, dogwoods were in full bloom, and he would intentionally walk beneath them and their billowy white clusters of flowers. In the mornings, promise became a palpable substance to him.

On May 8, 1945, a synchronized cease-fire came to pass in Europe, and VE Day was declared. Carl heard about it at work on a cold, regular day. People had been expecting a cease-fire for some time, but when it finally occurred, no one was really prepared. Word spread quickly through the ranks of workers, welders, and riveters in and on the freighter. Each person shouted to the person beside him, and when Carl was told the news, he literally fell over backwards, his trick knee having again locked up tightly on him.

For a few minutes, he lay where he had fallen amidst unusual noise inside the freighter. All he could hear were people shouting, and none of the usual machines. A light swung above him, causing his vision to pass from light to dark, as if a blanket was being taken off his head, then tossed back on, again and again, in rapid succession. A great weight slithered from his broad shoulders, and slowly his knee unlocked.

Carl stood up. He took off his visored helmet and reached into his asbestos suit for a cigarette. He lit it casually, then turned to the people around him. Everyone was shouting in joy. The first person he could actually reach out and touch, he hugged as hard as he could, then raised his cigarette high into the air and smiled. After a moment, he pivoted and hugged someone else.

Arriving home that day, Carl carried with him a few pale sprigs from a dogwood tree. He presented them to Helen in the kitchen, and the two adults came together in a frightened embrace. The small green branches were crushed between their hard bodies, and two leaves floated to the floor. Carl lifted his wife off her feet.

Oh, baby, it’s all going to end soon. Japan’s next. Oh, baby, it’s going to end, and you won’t have to be nervous anymore, sweetheart, he said into her white collar.

Her head against the hard muscle of her husband’s shoulder, Helen smiled and bit at the seam of his grimy work clothes. Here, in her arms, was the man she had promised to be faithful to, the man who always assured her she would be safe. Change was in the air. Outside, the weather was becoming warmer, more seasonal.

Where’s Mary and Putt? said Carl, pulling away from her and jerking his head around as if he had overlooked the two children in the shadows of a counter.

In the living room, Helen said to Carl’s broad back as he turned lithely, just as he had before the war, and went to find them.

Come here, Mary, Helen heard Carl say sweetly to their daughter, whom she had left with a can of silver polish and a tea set. Helen heard the clink of metal being placed down as she put the sprigs of dogwood into a sad little jar. In her joy, she felt betrayed by a gnawing emptiness. Her husband, the war—everything was shifting back to the way it had been. It would happen so fast, and she couldn’t remember if she had been happy before the war. She feared she hadn’t been, that all she had in her life was the redundancy of wartime rationing and air raid sirens, and those things would be wrenched from her by the boats and planes carrying victorious soldiers home. Could she ever love Carl as she had when they were dating?

In the living room, Carl promised Mary everything—wealth, health, and happiness. Soon, he said, so soon. He gave her a firm hug, his body trembling, then stood. Silently, like a slug dragging itself across a sidewalk, he walked over to his son, stopped, and closed his eyes. He sensed a trail of slime behind him. Carl tried to smile, but couldn’t. His face slackened with fatigue.

Puttnum, an ornate toy pistol strapped to his waist, stood, looking expectantly at his father. He anticipated the same greeting he had seen his sister receive, but Carl only stared down at him, closed his eyes, opened them, and stared down some more.

Eventually, Carl turned away, a calf clamped tightly against a thigh. He hopped towards the bathroom, balancing precariously on one foot.

Slamming the door behind him, he bounced over to the toilet, put the lid down gently, and lowered himself onto it. Over and over, his mind fastened on the fact that he had no idea how to give his son a hug. It seemed a completely different act from hugging his wife or his daughter. He had gone over to his son with intentions of hugging him, but in the end, hadn’t been able to. Suddenly, he felt old, worn, and permanently immovable. He was in a groove too deep to change. Jesus, he cried softly to himself. He grasped his nose with his fingers and held his breath.

chapter two

To Putt, summers seemed to go far too slowly. Hanging out at the pool, where he often found himself waiting for his mother or his sister, made him feel impatient, and it was not so much that he wanted to leave as to get some experience under his belt, to do something. He felt he never did anything.

His mother enjoyed lying in a deck chair, sunglasses on, a magazine up next to her sweaty nose. But Putt, in the same situation, under the same sun, was sure he was going to explode if he didn’t do something. Biding his time watching his sister in her ugly pink bathing cap, swimming on her back by a bunch of guys, didn’t seem to be enough.

Every nice summer day, though, his mom would say to him with real exuberance, We’re going to the country club today. To the pool, Mama’s Boy, as if Puttnum didn’t know the routine.

Mom, Putt began one afternoon, can I toss a rock around in the water? Like a penny? Will I get in trouble if I toss one around and go diving in after it? It was a scorching day, and the rays of the sun were igniting the T.N.T. that smoldered in his gut from boredom. An explosion was imminent.

Helen Elizabeth Steward sat up slowly. Her eyes followed a tall, slim boy as he walked by, a large striped towel over his bare shoulder. She placed the magazine down against her beaded leg and thought to herself that the Goldstein’s oldest boy, Albert, could be mistaken for a man in his mid-twenties. He was slim-waisted and so taut—taut all up and down his body. And his nose, she thought, was one of the handsomest she had ever seen. When Albert looked at her, if he looked at her at all, the only thing he probably saw were her stretch marks. Worse yet, maybe he saw his own middle-aged mother. How could he, though? Helen Steward wondered to herself, snickering softly. Albert’s mother, unlike her, wasn’t wearing her age well at all.

Helen slowly focused on her little boy, a child of six, who was her proof to everyone she was a middle-aged woman. As if awakening from a fantastic dream, she was disoriented. What? she asked him.

Putt pulled his towel over his shoulder that the intense sun had turned red. The day was perfectly clear, like all the days since he had gotten out for summer break. He couldn’t remember one bad day, only a thousand years spent lounging at the pool. Would I get in trouble for throwing a small rock around the pool? You know, and chasing it? He cast his gray eyes across the basin, training them on the familiar sight of the older boys his sister swam around. Off at the other side of the concrete deck, at the entrance, a baby cried.

Sure, Helen Steward said, glancing back at Albert Goldstein, toying with her thoughts as she would a recipe. I mean no, Putt, she quickly corrected herself. No, that’s fine. It would be fun for you. Go ahead. Just stay near your sister. She lifted her magazine back up, satisfied that she would never act upon her thoughts, yet they made the day distinctive— seem somehow significant.

Putt stood up, shed the towel, and walked slowly to the entrance gate by the side of the clubhouse. He wasn’t supposed to leave the pool deck, and wasn’t sure if his mother realized he didn’t yet have a tossable stone. Before anything else, he’d have to search out a rock. He would find one for sure in the parking lot.

He slid around the threshold, walking with a slow, sore-footed gait. Every little pebble outside the pool area was as sharp as a piece of glass. The soles of his feet ached. He searched around quickly, scanning the larger rocks on the tarmac, overlooking straws and cigarette butts until he found the perfect stone, not too big to hide in his hand, but big enough to make a good-sized splash. It wasn’t sharp, but ovally and bumpy. He smiled to think of the annoyance he would cause his sister and her male suitors when he would first toss the rock a little away from them, then move closer, then closer, splashing all around. Their frustration would be his experience. Action was in the air.

Putt walked back through the chain-link fence, his small hand flat against the whitewashed wall of the clubhouse. He stood below a roaring fan that was black with grease. Gray smoke puffed from its grimy slats. He glanced over at his mother. She was reading again. He stepped through the gate and onto the tan concrete deck, then made his way straight to the side of the blue basin and slid in like a frogman.

Bobbing around for a few minutes, shamefully innocent, he tossed his rock out in front of him. It landed behind a lady his mother’s age. The stone made a quick sound and speared through the water. Putt smiled and swam over to retrieve it. He dove to the bottom, grabbed the rock, and came back to the surface, his brown hair plastered flat against his round head. He threw the rock again and went after it. Soon, he was enjoying himself, calculating how far he could go underwater, swimming around or between blotchy bloated thighs that looked like stockings stuffed with potatoes. Slowly, he made his way towards his sister. He could hear Mary talking.

Well, then I said to Ernie that I was getting too old to hang around him as just a friend. I mean, said Mary with a squeal of laughter, I am ten, and that’s a decade, and a decade means I’m not a little . . .

Putt tossed the rock across the pool towards his sister, dropping it short of her by about five feet. He dove after it, lurching by a tall man wearing a pair of glasses.

Mary turned with a jolt, and a low crest of water moved away from her body in small, rounded swells. When her brother surfaced, she carped, Putt, what are you doing? Get out of here. She splashed water in his face.

I’m swimming after a stone. That’s all, Putt answered, rubbing at his lids with his palms. He glanced at a curly-haired boy named Ira whose hands rested across the upturned lip of the pool wall. He’d seen Ira before, knew his name for some reason, and had never liked him. To Puttnum, Ira looked mean and nasty. Yet, somehow, all the girls liked the guy. Putt couldn’t figure it out.

That’s a big rock, Puttnum. You’ll hurt someone if you’re not careful, Mary cautioned her brother. Why don’t you go ask Mom for a penny or something? She tossed an understanding glance around.

Ira sneered unpleasantly. His lips pulled back, exposing teeth as straight as a picket fence.

I like my rock, Putt replied.

Mary was silent for a second. Fine then, she said curtly, her hands up, pulling on the edges of her pink bathing cap, go cause trouble. No one’s going to be sorry but you.

I’m not going to get into trouble, Putt shot back. Anyway, Mom said I have to stay near you. He tossed the stone forward, a couple feet in front of the older boy, then retrieved it.

Puttnum, please get out of here, Mary said, casting a glance towards where her mother sat in the sun. All she saw was the back of Helen Steward’s head, her dark brown hair tied up in a knot.

Ira slowly took his arms off the side of the pool and glanced at the guys around him. Get out of here, kid, he said angrily. Go play somewhere else.

A girl beside Mary smiled dreamily as she watched Ira take command of the situation.

No, Puttnum snapped, and tossed the rock straight into the air, scooted out of its way, and watched it sink to the bottom of the pool. He sucked in some air and went down after it. The water was cold and tight against his head, his vision soft and unfocused. Puttnum reached out for his stone, but a foot slammed down on top of it. Bubbles erupted from his mouth in surprise. He came up for some air, breathed in, then went back down.

Putt’s ragged, bitten fingernails sank into the fleshy area around Ira’s toes, turning, scratching, and digging. Ira’s foot shook, but Putt didn’t stop until he had excavated his stone from beneath the boy’s withered, water-soaked pads. He drifted to the surface like a shark, in broad circles.

Punk, Ira shouted at Putt.

Oh, Ira, he’s not a punk, said Mary. Then she turned to Puttnum, whose head now poked above the water. Stop, okay, she instructed him with newfound patience, or we’ll all get it.

Putt tossed the rock back into the air and caught it in his hands. I didn’t do anything, he said.

Ira lunged at the small boy. His twelve-year-old arms, bigger all around than Putt’s, blasted forward like snakes. But Puttnum saw them coming and found a thrill in moving away. Ira was slow, while Putt was just the opposite. He dove down through the boy’s legs, coming up behind him.

Ira spun around and furiously reached for him. He didn’t know what he would do with the little smart-ass kid once he got hold of him, but he entertained visions of silently drowning Putt under the clear water, or toting him to the men’s room and roughing him up.

Abruptly, Ira had Putt’s wrist, and like a rag, he dragged Mary Steward’s little brother face-down into the turbulent water.

As Putt’s head went under, he made sure to get a lung full of air. In his hand, he adjusted his stone. He could see the thin, fuzzy form of his sister move towards Ira, probably to tell him to let go. Time and motion slowed. Swimmers drifted by without looking, frozen barracudas with their minds elsewhere. Below the turbulent surface, Putt was confident he didn’t need Mary’s help at all. He was perfectly in control, sure that Ira wouldn’t drown him, sure that he would surface suddenly and get his chance. Silent moments slipped by. After maybe ten seconds, Ira yanked Putt upwards.

Puttnum surfaced like a beached whale. Chlorinated water shot up around his moving body, into the eyes of burned and oblivious sunbathers. His shoulders fell back and his chest tightened. He calculated where Ira’s nose would be, swept his slim arm forward, and hurled his stone at the older boy’s face.

Ira let him go.

Putt placed his calloused feet against the side of the pool, drew his legs in, and fired himself out of reach.

As he slid into the safe open water, a true event having suddenly spruced up his otherwise boring life, a grin of pride broke across his face. He wished his father had been there to see the incident, to view another Steward male laying down the law. It was the kind of thing—the only kind of thing—that seemed to make his father proud of him.

Suddenly, a man moved into Putt’s torpedo-like path, hooked him with a large arm, and brought him to the surface. Their eyes met. The man’s were separated by a stripe of white down his nose. Do you know what you’ve done? the man asked loudly, his stomach shaking, barely restrained by a bathing suit pulled up above his bellybutton. Do you know, child?

Putt glanced back at Ira and saw a crowd of people around the boy, in the water, helping him onto the concrete deck. Mary stood in shock, eyes on Ira. Her fingers were white, she held them so tightly to her mouth. When she turned to look at Putt, her face was white, too—as white as the sheets on Putt’s bed.

Putt thought his father was going to kill him, literally. He envisioned himself thrashed and battered in the dusty corner of his room.

There was a fuzzy line he didn’t understand, and always seemed to rocket right by it. Don’t be scared and don’t quit, his father always told him. Never back down. People who back down show fear, and that would be wrong. Putt hadn’t backed down, and he hadn’t meant to put the boy’s eye out.

As for fear, he hadn’t felt any. He had followed the rules thumped into him for the first six-and-a-half years of his life. Still, he was wrong. He was wrong if he did, and wrong if he didn’t. How could he be right? He had put a boy’s eye out—burst it like a car tire. He could feel his arm move forward, swing high, release. He wanted it to go away, to change like a dream. He wanted to keep the rock in his hand, keep it from Ira’s face, but he couldn’t. It was a terrible thing, but he couldn’t. Maybe he was stupid. Everyone called a kid in the neighborhood stupid, and it seemed a reasonable assumption that he, Puttnum, was also stupid, but his stupidity hadn’t been discovered yet.

He could remember a time when everything scared him. Just months before, he had huddled in his bed, flinching at every crack and snap he heard. He had peered out into the night from under his musty, suffocating blankets, his heart pumping hard into his tight throat, wincing from what he believed to be the soft steps of a prowler—a murderer in the house— seeking out its inhabitants, slowly and thoroughly. Puttnum had been sure his own bloody death was near. Yet, he hadn’t had the courage to call out his father’s name for fear he was wrong, though he was sure he wasn’t, and his mother seemed totally incapable of lending any real aid. So when his knowledge became too much for him, and he finally did yell, he called out for his sister Mary. That night, he had turned her name into a three syllable primal scream. Maa . . . air . . . eeee!

Within seconds, Mary was in his room, their father next, followed by their sleepy mother a moment or two behind.

What? his father had asked, standing powerfully over his son’s bed, trying to keep his trembling knee from popping upwards.

From his sister’s comforting arms, Putt let the words rush out of his mouth like air from a punctured tire. Someone’s in the house . . . I think, he said.

No one’s in the house, his father snapped back, as if shaking off a trance. Carl glanced over his broad shoulder twice, into the dark hallway.

No one’s in the house, honey, his mother agreed, her eyes almost shut.

I heard someone walking around, Putt assured them.

A disgusted look set on Carl’s face. A muscle bulged up and down under the flesh of his cheek. It’s a new house, Puttnum. How many times do I have to tell you that the boards need to settle? Besides, no one can get in. I put the locks on myself. Carl Steward pivoted and lurched out of his boy’s room and down the hall. His tall, unsteady figure cast a long shadow across the open bedroom door.

Oh, Mama’s Boy, his mother said, kissing his cheek and then departing.

He couldn’t sleep the rest of the night—not for a minute. Fear and humiliation conspired to form an extended bout of insomnia. Days would pass before he would finally rest well again.

For two weeks after his breakdown, during dinner or before kindergarten, as he tied his shoes or ate his eggs, and even during the weekends, Puttnum was aware that his father suffered for what he had done. Puttnum was sure that in his dad’s mind, he was stupid.

The incident had been months ago, and a good deal had changed. Puttnum had learned to accept the possibility that he might be gruesomely murdered during the night. He hadn’t cowered under his sheets since, but had lain exposed to death’s knife. Death had never come. But he was coming now, in the familiar form of his father. Downstairs, Puttnum could hear his mother shuffling pans in the kitchen, the grandfather clock on the wall ticking away the hollow minutes before his execution.

He heard the car pull into the driveway, a fan belt squealing as the heavy vehicle turned up the little concrete rise before crunching down the rocky section. Quiet and scared, Putt turned the magazine clipping he held onto its side and imagined speeding out of Norfolk to a safer place. He put a finger on a jet in the picture and recited the caption by heart, Fantom-X Fighters over Cuba.

He put the photograph down and peered out the window of his room as best he could, pushing his head against the screen to get a glimpse of his father, to get an indication of what kind of mood he was in. No one, he hoped, had dropped a bucket of nails down a chimney that day or dripped cement onto someone’s patio. Carl Steward was known to carry job dilemmas home with him. One night, he had returned in such a bad mood that while sitting after dinner, he had suddenly torn a padded brown arm clean off an easy chair. For that reason, Puttnum hoped his father’s workday had been smooth as silk, without a hitch or a single squabble. He was certain that a good day could be the determining factor in sparing his life.

He saw his dad get out of his car, a wraith in a blue shirt from Putt’s oblique angle. He had a white paper under his arm, and seemed to do a two-step around something on the sidewalk. Putt sighed, a glint of hope rising in the ashen sky of his future. He searched the close horizon for more promise. If his mother worded the explanation correctly, his status would improve even more dramatically. He thought of her going to his father and saying: Now Carl, she would say, talking the way she did when she was anxious or upset, I have something to tell you, see, and I want you to hear me out. He’s our little boy, but he has a lot of you in him. Nobody on my side of the family has ever done the kind of things that Puttnum does. He’s an explorer, a scientist. Like you, he searches out adventure. That is direct from your rugged family. My side, you know, has royal blood and simply doesn’t act that same way. Not that my family is aristocracy and yours commoners, but you know we’re related to the Queen of England; we do have an aristocratic line. Anyway, you see, he put a boy’s eye out today. Ira was the boy’s name, and Mama’s Boy did it while innocently swimming after a rock he was tossing. This brute of a child attacked him, and your side rose up in Puttnum just like David against Goliath. He put the badger’s eye out with the stone. He hit him right in the face. You would have been proud of our little Puttnum.

Putt was sitting on his bed imagining the whole scene, letting it soothe his jumbled insides like a shot of whiskey in an alcoholic, when there was a knock on his bedroom door. Before he could respond, the knob turned and his father entered, the white Daily Press still tucked under his arm.

Putt’s horizon quickly darkened again. Severe weather was in the forecast. His

Reviews for In the Wake of the Boatman

[jcmontgomery · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the wake of the boatman. The boatman being a father, husband, role model. Or is he? His son isn’t so sure.Neither is the father:"Over and over, his mind fastened on the fact that he had no idea how to give his son a hug. It seemed a completely different act from hugging his wife or daughter…Suddenly, he felt old, warn, and permanently immovable."There is a lot of angst in this book. Much of it related to relationships both personal and familial as well as toward gender and identity.Pretty powerful stuff. Let me tell you, this is not a light read.But I enjoyed it. Even though I struggled a bit to understand the depth of the father-son relationship, which is what this story is primarily about.Not to get too personal, but it’s a dynamic I am just now discovering through my marriage. I had never seen one in action, and it still remains somewhat of a mystery.Carl and his son Puttnam (the protagonist) are not characters that endeared themselves to me. There were a few times that I really disliked both, intensely.I believe this is because the characters dislike themselves a great deal, and this shines through and glares upon their fatal flaws. Imperfection is put on display in a harshness that is only tempered by the relationships each man has with the women in the family.The roles of women in this book are subtle, but important. Like the men, they are flawed. However they are the strength and the glue that keeps the family together and moving forward toward a resolution.The author doesn’t end the novel in a way that redeems Putt or his father. Not completely. This is not a bad thing. He does leave the reader with hope that Putt will become a likeable person, not only to us, but more importantly, to himself.As I said, this isn’t a light read, but by no means is it a challenging one. Just like Goldilocks, I’m gonna say it’s juuust right.

[writestuff_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Puttnam (“Putt”) Douglas Steward has grown up in the shadow of a father who emotionally abuses his son to accommodate his own identity crisis. Carl Steward wants to fight in a war, but can’t because of a trick knee; he repeatedly builds boats which sink when placed on the water; he loves Puttnam, but also has expectations of him which the boy can never meet. Carl feels disappointment in Putt from his infancy onward.[...] Carl had questions about the baby. He scrutinized him from the corners of his eyes. A single whimper and he interpreted it as a horrible sign his son lacked something inside. – from In the Wake of the Boatman, page 4 -So it is not surprising when Puttnam struggles with his own identity as he matures from a young boy into man. In the Wake of the Boatman is about that struggle. Putt attends college at the school from which his father never graduated (a slight which Carl believes is done on purpose to further embarrass him). Once in college (on an ROTC scholarship), Putt has a sexual encounter with another man which terrifies him. He compensates by plunging fully into his military role and volunteering to go to Vietnam. Putt’s search for his identity is often painful, but also tender. Putt begins finding joy in dressing as a woman – a secret fantasy which repulses him as much as it brings him sexual pleasure and leads him to consider suicide (if not by his own hand, then by placing himself in dangerous situations such as the war).Jonathon Fuqua fully develops Puttnam, a character who fears rejection not only from his demanding father, but from his sister Mary and best friend Milton. The tension and conflict in the novel are Putt’s internal struggles to accept himself and learn to trust those who love him. The novel explores the idea of nature vs. nurture in human sexuality, and opens the door for further discussions about alternative lifestyles. Puttnam is a character who readers will empathize with as he searches for a true understanding of himself.I found the writing to be a bit uneven at times in this thoughtful novel. Fuqua’s overuse of adverbs was something that at times distracted me from the story, while at other times I was swept up in the gorgeous descriptive paragraphs and pithy dialogue. Where Fuqua excels is in his understanding of the characters’ motivations, fears and dilemmas. Carl is a destructive father, one who consistently hurts his only son, and yet I found myself feeling sorrow for the character and wanting Putt to find forgiveness for him.In the Wake of the Boatman is literary fiction which may polarize readers due to its subject matter. But, it will also allow readers to gain a better understanding of those who are labeled “different” by society and perhaps foster acceptance of those differences.Jonathon Scott Fuqua is an award winning author of YA literature, as well as the Alex Award winning novel The Reappearance of Sam Webber.

[literaryfeline · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beginning during World War II and spanning the years through the Vietnam War and well into the seventies, In the Wake of the Boatman by Jonathon Scott Fuqua takes the reader into the life of Puttnam Steward and his family, from his childhood into his adulthood. He is the son of a self-made man, a father who worked hard and expected that others around him should too. Puttnam cannot seem to do anything right in his father’s eyes, try as he might. His mother gets through her days with the help of alcohol. Puttnam goes through life never quite feeling good enough. He is not sure what it is he wants in life. His self-doubts and guilt are compounded by his struggle with his gender-identity. The wrongs he did throughout his life, even as a small child, outweigh the positive in his mind. His accomplishments, such as graduating from the college his father was unable to finish and being a war hero, are lost on him. In the Wake of the Boatman surprised me. I knew from the description that it was a book I would likely enjoy. I hadn’t realized though how much it would resonant with me on a personal level. I could see myself in both Puttnam and Mary, Puttnam’s older sister. I most identified with Puttnam. I know what it is like to seek love and approval from someone who is not able to give it and that feeling of never being able to measure up. When it is a parent, it makes it all the more difficult. Puttnam tried for much of his life to make his father proud. Even when he tried to distance himself from his family, not to let his father in, it was impossible to break off completely. The parent/child bond is not easily dismissed. Puttnam’s sister Mary and his friend Milton are perhaps my two most favorite characters in the novel. Both care about Puttnam and reach out to him in their own ways to try and help him. I like them not just because of the support they offer Puttnam, but also for their own stories. Mary was not a victim to her father’s ill will. She saw what was happening to Puttnam, however, and, in her own way, sought to remedy the mistakes of the past with the choices she made in her own life. Like Puttnam, Milton struggled with the direction his life was meant to take. He joined the service right alongside Puttnam but soon discovered that military life was not for him. His love for nature and birds would eventually guide him to his new career. Even so, Milton had an uphill battle. Mary and Milton are both down to earth characters and anchor Puttnam, keeping him from losing himself completely.Helen, Puttnam’s mother, turned to alcohol to fill the emptiness in her life. Her life had not quite turned out the way she had hoped it might. Booze numbed her to not only what was going on in her household, but also her own failures and disappointments.I was not too fond of Carl Steward, father of Puttnam and Mary. I voiced a few choice words about him as I read the novel. He was cold and sometimes cruel to his son, never satisfied with Puttnam and making sure he knew it. I saw in Carl a familiar figure from my own past and that made it all the more personal. It made it harder for me to feel sorry for Carl, even knowing his own upbringing was much like the one he gave his son. Both Carl and his father were hard on their sons who never seemed to live up to their fathers’ expectations. I can’t help but wonder if Carl’s own father had had a similar childhood to the one he gave Carl. Carl was not a heartless man. Just misguided. He always had something to prove, never quite feeling good enough himself. He transferred those expectations and feelings onto his son, Puttnam. Instead of acknowledging his own insecurities, he put them off onto his son. Carl’s hobby of making boats and his struggle to make one that could float and carry his weight mirrored his own life and his struggles with his son. He did attempt to reach out to his son at times, but his efforts rarely carried the weight they needed and were weak at best. The characters are fully realized, making them all the more real. I felt Puttnam’s frustration and sadness, his guilt and shame. I could even feel Carl’s internal struggle as he warred with saving face and acknowledging he might be wrong. I have a feeling I will be wondering for awhile to come about where Puttnam would be today if he were a real person.In the Wake of the Boatman is a study into the human psyche, about how our lives are shaped by our life experiences. Jonathon Scott Fuqua’s novel moved me. In his acknowledgements, he mentioned that he hoped his story would inspire, and I definitely feel that it does, at least this reader.