THE DEMON LOVER

My name is Robert Chambers, and I grew up in the small Delta town of Clarksdale, Mississippi, and it was there that I knew Sutcliffe Stewart.  We were high school buddies.

My father was dead, and my brother and I were supported by our mother, who worked as a ticket taker at the Paramount Theatre.  We had a rough time financially (though I learned to play the piano), and my senior year the war was on and I decided to join the services.  My high school principal, Mr. Givers, made arrangements for me to enter the Merchant Marine Academy at Pass Christian, Mississippi, and so I summarily left Clarksdale.  And I left without saying good-bye to my friend Sutcliffe.

And so that summer in 1942 I left home and began my studies at the U. S. Maritime Academy near New Orleans.  After three years on the gulf coast I received my commission as an officer, and was sent to Seattle where I commanded a cargo ship between there and the Far East.  I heard that Sutcliffe was studying to be a psychiatrist and I wished that I too was – for that had been our mutual ambition while we were friends in high school.

Well, after Japan surrendered I moved from Pass Christian to New Orleans and took a job with the United Fruit Company as first mate on banana ships between New Orleans, Havana, and Central America.  I rented an apartment in the French Quarter, on Ursuline Street.  It was a walk-up on the third floor, and ancient – but it was private and isolated and suited me.

About this time I obtained Sut’s address from my mother – and I wrote him telling him how fed up I was with the sea, and that I envied his being a medical student at Johns Hopkins, that he was really going to amount to something, whereas I had accomplished nothing.  He replied that I was wrong – that I had become something worthwhile, whereas he was starving and miserable and having a very difficult time.  And I wrote him again – but I received no answer at all.

Shortly thereafter I moved to New York, and I shipped out back and forth between there and Glasgow.  However I was restless, and I didn’t like the British, and I eventually moved back to New Orleans.  In 1949 I heard that Sutcliffe had returned to Clarksdale, and that he was a writer; so I wrote him again – inviting him to come down to New Orleans and visit me.  I told him that I was at sea three weeks each month and in the apartment only a few days between cruises, so that he could have plenty of solitude and time to work on his book.  I heard nothing from him.