Graven Images
Authors: Paul Fleischman
THREE PREDICTIONS:
AN AFTERWORD
When the brig
Orion,
three weeks out from Havana, appeared off her home port of New Bethany, Maine, Miss Evangeline Frye was just parting her bed curtains, formally banishing night.
While those who’d chanced to spy the sails wondered why the ship hadn’t fired a salute, Miss Frye was combing her coarse gray hair. While the
Orion
drifted unexpectedly about, at last presenting her stern to the harbor, Miss Frye was blowing the hearth fire into being. And while the harbor pilot’s drowsy son rowed his father out to the ship, to return in a frenzy, eyes wide and hands trembling, Miss Frye was stationed at her parlor window, awaiting the sight of Sarah Peel.
She peered down the length of Bartholomew Street. Straight-spined as a mast and so tall that her gaze was aimed out through the top row of windowpanes, Miss Frye eyed the clock on the town hall next door. It was eight fifteen. The girl was late — and plenty of scrubbing and spinning to be done.
She pursed her lips, lowered her eyes, and looked out upon her flower garden. It was nearly Independence Day — tansy was thriving, pinks were in bloom, marigolds were budding on schedule. But the poppy seeds she’d bought from a rogue of a peddler still hadn’t sent up a single shoot. And probably never would, she reflected. In memory, she heard her mother’s voice: “Girls take after their mothers, Evangeline. Men take after the Devil.” She regarded the bare stretch of soil below, sneering at this latest confirmation.
The door knocker sounded. Miss Frye opened up and was surprised to find not Sarah Peel, but her ten-year-old younger sister, Tekoa.
“I’ve come to do chores, ma’am.”
Miss Frye cocked her head. “But where is Sarah?”
“In bed, ma’am. Taken ill.” The girl spoke softly, tucking a strand of straw-blond hair under her kerchief.
“Well then.” Miss Frye motioned her in and closed the door behind her. “I suppose you’ve had practice scouring pewter.”
Tekoa stood in the hallway, silent.
Miss Frye blinked. Was this some impertinence? Then at once she recalled what Sarah had told her — that the girl had been left deaf by a fever and was able to listen only with her eyes, by reading the words on others’ lips.
Miss Frye passed Tekoa, then turned to face her.
“You can begin with the pewter.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the girl.
Miss Frye led her down the hall to the kitchen. “And what manner of illness has seized poor Sarah?”
“Her jaws,” said Tekoa. “They won’t come open.”
Miss Frye appeared startled. “And when did this happen?”
“This morning, just after the news of the
Orion.
”
Miss Frye’s eyebrows jerked. “The
Orio
n
? What news?” Among the crew of New Bethany boys was Miss Frye’s adopted son, Ethan.
“She appeared offshore this morning, ma’am,” Tekoa calmly replied.
At once Miss Frye rushed to the window.
“All of the crew were found to be dead.”
Bells were tolled. Trunks were opened and mourning clothes solemnly exhumed. The crew of the brig
Orion
was buried. And yet the matter remained unfinished.
No evidence of attack had been found. There was no sign of scurvy, no shortage of food. When the ship was boarded, the crew was discovered to be lying about the decks as if hexed, with no witness to bear the tale to the living. None, that is, except the binnacle boy.
He alone remained standing, the life-size carving of a sailor boy holding the iron binnacle, the housing for the ship’s compass. Straight-backed, sober-lipped, in his jacket and cap, he stood resolutely before the helm, his lacquered eyes shining chicory blue. And after the ship’s sails had been furled and her cargo of molasses unloaded, the binnacle boy was laid in a wagon and, like the seventeen sailors before him, slowly borne up the road to the top of the cliff upon which New Bethany stood. And there, before the town hall, the pinewood statue was mounted, still bearing the ship’s compass, a memorial to the
Orion
’s crew.
Upon him the families of the dead gazed for hours, convinced he’d somehow reveal the nature of the catastrophe he’d witnessed. Mothers kept watch on his ruddy lips, expecting each moment to see them move. Fathers stared into his painted eyes, waiting to catch them in the act of blinking. Children cocked their ears to the wind as it moaned eerily over the boy, and believed they heard the sound of his voice.
Yet the binnacle boy clung to his secret. The mystery of the
Orion
remained, and gradually, as the summer progressed, those who stood and awaited the boy’s words were replaced by those who’d come instead to leave him with secrets of their own, knowing his steadfast lips to be sealed.
At first it was children who took up the practice. After whispering into his chiseled ear, they ran off, or studied his stouthearted features as if expecting a nod of acknowledgment. Soon their elders took after them, and before long the binnacle boy became the repository for all that couldn’t be safely spoken aloud in New Bethany.
Lovers opened their hearts to him. Hurrying figures sought him out in the night. Those who felt their lives running out entrusted him with their final confessions.
It was one of these last, a long-winded farmer, whom Miss Frye was observing from her parlor one morning when she noticed three women with parasols filing down the walk toward her door.
“Tekoa,” she addressed her helper. “I believe we have company.”
The brass door knocker sounded three times. Tekoa set down her feather duster, opened the door, and showed into the parlor Miss Bunch, Miss Mayhew, and Mrs. Stiggins.
“Good day to you, Miss Frye,” chirped Miss Bunch. Without asking, she plopped herself down on a chair, a trespass that drew a stare from her hostess. Affirming her sovereign powers, Miss Frye regally motioned the others to be seated.
“It’s some time since you’ve been seen about,” said Miss Bunch. “So we decided to come on our own.” She dabbed at the sweat on her brow with a handkerchief, adjusted her bonnet, and opened her fan. “To express our condolences, that is. About your son, Ethan.”