Clinton Williams was fourteen years old. His
brother, Berry-Berry, was away "on his travels," begun shortly after his twenty-first
birthday. The Williams family had recently moved into a house in a different section of Cleveland. Clinton was afraid that Berry-Berry would not be able to find the new house if he should return, and as a gesture of quiet protest he stayed away from school for fifty-seven consecutive days. In the daytime, he loafed in the Aloha Sweet Shop, recording in his
notebooks everything he saw or overheard. At home he eavesdropped on his parents’ conversations, which he recorded into his journals as well, along with copies of letters he opened on the sly. During the time he was skipping school, he filled twenty-five notebooks. His entries were naïve, funny, boring, and revealing. His romantic view of Berry-Berry was the first interest of Clinton’s life. The second was his tremendous curiosity about people and the nature of experience; hence, his effort to put down everything he knew and learned in order that he might solve some of life’s mysteries.
In many ways, Clinton was his father’s son. Ralph Williams had been a politically active liberal before he was trapped by marriage and a family. Theoretically he was in business, but he spent most of his time in the cellar with a jigsaw puzzle in front of him and a bottle of bourbon within reach. He had simplified his life to two convictions: that Christ had founded the Socialist Party and that Berry-Berry would turn out all right in the end. His wife, Annabel, was nervous, querulous, and tearful, constantly wishing for Berry-Berry’s return without ever realizing that he hated her.
The memory of the absent son was all that held the strange family together. Ironically, Berry-Berry was unworthy of his family’s love or their hopes for his return. A bum, a pimp, and a sadist, he turned up first in one section of the country, then in another, in jail or out, either living off one of his women or else calling on his family for money to get him out of his latest escapade. Most of these facts were unknown to Clinton, however, during the time when he was working in an all-night eating place and saving his money for the day when he might join his
brother. The opportunity came when Berry-Berry wrote asking his father for two hundred dollars to invest in a shrimping venture in Key Bonita, Florida. Ready to offer the money, Clinton took a bus to Key Bonita, to find on his arrival that Berry-Berry had already skipped town after mauling one of his lady loves. This knowledge came to Clinton during the night he spent with a prostitute, and the realization of his brother’s true nature was almost more than he could stand. He returned home, fell sick, and even contemplated suicide. He was saved when he fell shyly in love with Echo O’Brien, older than he and the daughter of one of his mother’s friends, who came to visit in Cleveland.
Berry-Berry returned and all was forgotten, or at least forgiven, and the Williamses were reunited by love. Berry-Berry made a play for Echo O’Brien. His parents hoped that the affair would cause Berry-Berry to settle down at last. Clinton accepted the fact of Echo’s romance with his brother out of gratitude for the atmosphere of family happiness in which he shared. Berry-Berry, however, could not be reclaimed from the moral rot that infected him. Refusing to accept responsibility for Echo’s pregnancy, he callously discarded her, and Echo committed suicide. Clinton at first intended to kill his brother, but in the end, he decided that Berry-Berry’s knowledge of his own corruption was punishment enough. Berry-Berry took to the road again. Clinton began writing in his notebooks once more, with the difference that, he felt, he had grown up.