Thomas Tabor is a Quaker. There were once Quakers in my family and this was our bond. An unlikely meeting; but maybe not. New Bedford in the Whaling days was a center of Quaker activity. These streets, so near the long whalves, held the counting houses and the shops of Quaker merchants. Barrels and sails and salted meat and hardtac, harpoons and ships log books. Ships "out", whale oil "in" the ledger columns. The money mounted in plain Quaker pockets.
Now in this latter day the Quaker Thomas was tending bar and drinking as well. All our Yankee Ouaker families had watered down, thinned out, run out; through intermarriage with Canadians and Catholics and Portuguese; until the last vestiges of the Friends lifestyle were ghostly memory. Such memories haunted some- like Thomas.
He remembered his family, his Grandparents, his ancestors and the way they lived. He knew their stern hand and their disapproval of his life.
In the town still stands the meetinghouse. It's double curving stairways and separate doors for male and female give the plain brick building it's grace.
Inside, the white boxed pews with hard board benches are Quaker austerity made manifest. Any noise is hollow for no cushion or curtain soften the sound. Plain but graceful wrought iron chandeliers hang to hold the oil lamps once fueled by the behemoth. And that is all here, but the silence of worship.
Off to the side is the parish hall. Now, so few faithful gather, this is where they meet. More comfortable; kitchen chairs and rockers, some with a thin pad in the seat, covered in faded calico. An old wooden playpen for babies and a few hand me down toys to occupy the little ones. A new generation of Quakers yet. I had gone to this house of worship on a few occasions; looking not so much for God as for some sort of tie to my familial past. What had my ancestors been like? I have only faded photos of pinched Yankee faces.
I don't remember how it ever came up in conversation with Thomas about being decended from Quakers. My name was no longer a Quaker name, by way of generations of marriages. But Tabor is. Males hang on to their names and Thomas also hung on to a shred of his family identity; even tho he had been cast out as a black sheep. Strayed from the fold by way of drugs and alcohol. Out to sea on a scalloper and washed back up on shore. Cast up at the door of the National Club. Like so much flotsam- there we found ourselves- one on each side of the bar.
"Would you go to Meeting with me sometime?" I could tell it took all his courage to ask. Thomas is one of those men who is by nature so soft spoken you can barely catch their words. He wears his hair long and it waves around his face. Wire rim glasses complete the look,along with the ever present peacoat. To see him standing at the foot of Union St. at dusk would cause you to look twice, for he looked like his own ancestor just disembarked from a whaler.
And so we went to church. If you've never been, Quaker Meeting is formed of silent reflection. A reading, some hymns, the rest silent meditation. Each is still in their own seat. The collective silence gathers in the room in a kind of tension if you aren't accustomed to it. Sometimes someone will be moved to speak and it is received like a sacrament and the silence continues.
And so we sat, Thomas and I. I must confess I watched him. It was as if he went away off. Lost in his private thoughts. Were they tormented self reprisals for his shortcomings, or happy remembrances of going to meeting as a little boy? His face did not tell me.
BANG! A thunderous loud noise returned us to the present. Somewhere a book had dropped to the floor. We both about came out of our skins and the spell was broken.
We never went to Meeting together again. Nor did he ever mention it. I don't know if he ever went again by himself or not I doubt it. Perhaps once was enough.
