Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (11 page)

"Should I have left her bleeding on the shore?"

"You shouldn't have been on the shore. You should be up doing whatever the other boys of the town are doing. You should be playing baseball with them, or swimming, or whatever they're up to. But instead, you're down on the shore with a Negro girl and then swept out with the tide."

"I wonder," said Turner slowly, "if it's only the folks on Malaga Island who can make you think what they want you to think."

"So now you're impertinent, too."

Turner stood, and it suddenly seemed to him that his father was much smaller than he had been before. There simply wasn't as much of him as he remembered.

The only awkwardness the moment lacked was the omnipotent presence of Mr. Stonecrop, who soon remedied the absence. He knocked and opened the parsonage door at the same time, understanding that his importance in the town, his importance in the church, and the importance of his mission gave him the right to step in on the minister whom he paid every Sunday morning from his tithes and offerings.

"Buckminster!" he hollered. "Buckminster!" Mrs. Buckminster did not come out from the kitchen, but the iron skillet for the late dinner clanged sharply twice.

Immediately, Mr. Stonecrop's presence filled the parlor, and before either Reverend Buckminster or Turner had said a single word—before they had even thought a single thought—Mr. Stonecrop was announcing that all of the boats were back in, that the Negro girl had been taken to Dr. Pelham and there would be five or six stitches but that was all, that his bill would be sent on to the town, and that it was likely not to be inexpensive. "That's always the way of it," declared Mr. Stonecrop. "God sees fit to let something happen to a Malaga pauper, and Phippsburg pays the bill. It's a scandal."

"I will pay the bill," said Reverend Buckminster.

"Only appropriate," said Mr. Stonecrop. "All of First Congregational is wondering what on earth a minister's son is doing out in a dory with a Negro girl."

"She was hurt, and he was taking her back to the island. He didn't know the tide would carry him out."

Mr. Stonecrop raised a craggy eyebrow. "The congregation will wonder what he was doing on the shore with her in the first place," Mr. Stonecrop pointed out.

"Well," said Reverend Buckminster, "the congregation must think what it will think."

"The congregation, Minister, will tell you what it thinks, and what it wants you to think," said Mr. Stonecrop, and the words wound like barbed wire around the Buckminsters.

The door to the kitchen opened. "Pie, anyone?" Mrs. Buckminster asked, her voice quavery. They sat down to the blueberry pie, and Mr. Stonecrop thanked them for it by offering suggestions on household discipline: the ship to be more tightly run, the loose cannon to be tethered, the runaway colt to be penned in. "A minister's house in order, a church in order. A minister's house in disorder, a church in disorder." Mr. Stonecrop intoned his creed and smiled as if pleased with himself.

When Mr. Stonecrop finally left, promising to send Dr. Pelham's bill the next morning, the house breathed slowly and quietly.

"The whole pie is gone," said Mrs. Buckminster. "He ate half of it himself."

'"The congregation, Minister, will tell you what it thinks, and what it wants you to think,'" Reverend Buckminster repeated quietly. Turner's mother held him by the elbow.'"The congregation, Minister, will tell you what it
wants
you to think.'"

He looked at his son for a long time. He put a hand out to his shoulder. "Good Lord, Turner," he said finally, "you're getting so much bigger these days."

By the time Turner went to bed that night—having had his supper after his blueberry pie—the silver moon had set, and the racing stars had puffed out their fiery white chests. Turner looked at them through his window; he could almost see them puffing. In the dark, the cranked horn of a doryman sounded, and then another, higher pitched. Back and forth they talked to each other, braving the immense presence of the dark.

On that very same night, Turner had almost touched a whale.

T
URNER
was not surprised the next morning when Malaga Island was declared a forbidden place, once again.

He was not surprised when his father—and his mother—repeated the word
forbidden
four times during breakfast.

He was not surprised that his father watched him carefully during the "Community Notices" section of the Sunday-morning service at First Congregational, as he announced the formation of a group in Phippsburg to explore "new ventures" that might "improve the economic prospects of our town."

But he was surprised by his father's sermon topic—the fall of Jericho—which seemed to Turner strange to set among a new minister's first sermons.

Turner was sitting in a front pew as hard as Jacob's pillow, and he shifted now and again to let another part of him take his weight. The sanctuary had trapped the sticky heat of the past several days, which came close to stifling anyone wearing a starched white shirt with a starched white collar.

He felt the eyes of every member of First Congregational staring at the back of his starched neck. He felt Mrs. Cobb's outrage. He felt Mr. Stonecrop's disdain. He wished he could feel Mrs. Hurd's pale eyes, but she didn't come to church. Deacon Hurd's family was there, though, sitting across the aisle in the other front pew. From this angle, Turner could not tell whether Willis's nose was straight.

He hoped it wasn't.

The sermon slouched along as sermons will when every single soul in the building is wishing that the ushers would start passing around cool glasses of lemonade. Turner watched a small yellow hornet buzz listlessly around the pulpit as the priests of the Hebrew host organized their march. It meandered a bit, then settled down into one of the rosettes and went to sleep. Turner wondered what might happen if it woke up and decided to sting his father at some prominent moment—say, when the trumpets of Jericho sounded. He imagined the hornet turning on Deacon Hurd, and the general melee as he ran down the aisle, chased by the eager insect, hollering and swatting at the thin air.

He thought of swatting at thin air, of swatting at rocks on the shore, of Lizzie Bright Griffin, of tossing a ball back and forth, digging clams, sitting on the beach watching the tide heave in and out like the vast breathing of a whale.

Could it all have been a lie?

He had almost touched a whale.

By now his father had gotten onto the woes of Jericho, and he was finding his stride. Jericho, his father announced, was a place that needed to be rooted out so that God's good and perfect purposes might be fulfilled. So God had brought to its walls the Hebrew host to be His hands to carry out His righteous work. Reverend Buckminster paused and cleared his throat. He paused some more and cleared his throat again. He looked down at Mrs. Buckminster. He looked away.

"In this same way, good people of Phippsburg, God calls us to be His hands, and to do His will, to blot out spoil and contagion from among us, to bring His people to the place where He would have them be. Just as Jericho was wiped out and is gone to human history, and just as the Promised Land was taken up by the faithful, so also should we blot out what is not wholesome, what is not good, what is not pleasing, and take up our own promised future."

Turner felt his mother stiffen beside him. She reached out and took his hand.

"Amen," said the Reverend Buckminster.

"And amen," said Mr. Stonecrop behind them.

The organ turned to a melancholy last hymn, playing too slowly; after four verses, it sighed to silence a phrase or two behind the congregation. Reverend Buckminster descended from his pulpit and processed down the aisle. Mrs. Buckminster and Turner went behind him and stood with him at the back of the church to endure the handshakes and knowing looks. ("Did he really go out into the bay with a Negro?") Willis passed without looking at him, as, in fact, did most of the congregation, until he stopped holding out his hand. And when it was all over, he ran through the gossiping crowd and sprinted back to the parsonage, where the blue sea breeze laughed and swirled and invited him down to the water, down to the shore.

Oh Lord, if only Malaga Island hadn't all been a lie.

But no minister's son in Phippsburg, Maine, can follow a sea breeze to the shore on the Sabbath. Especially not to a forbidden shore. So Turner settled in for a quiet and still dinner, and a quieter and more still afternoon.

If he had been in Boston, where baseball was as it should be, he would be standing at home plate on the Common, the smell of grass and leather in his nose, his hands sticky with the pitch on the bat, waiting, waiting, waiting for the streak of white he would slash past the first baseman.

Instead, the quiet and still afternoon wore on like a too-slow hymn while Turner read some, stalked about the house some, looked out the window some, and wondered a great deal about why God had settled on Sunday afternoons to be dreary and miserable.

When his mother could stand the stalking no more, she sent Turner out—she used the word
forbidden
only once—and he strolled off, hands in his pockets—until he remembered that ministers' sons do not keep their hands in their pockets—down Parker Head, heading to Malaga but knowing he could not go there. He thought for a moment of trying to see if, by any chance, there was a ball game down in Thayer's haymeadow. He would risk breaking the Sabbath for one good hit. Even if it was only a hit to left field. But the thought of the greeting he would receive from Willis and his crew stopped him. And when the sea breeze sprang up again, it pulled him toward Malaga.

If it had not been for Mrs. Cobb standing by the gate of her grandfather's picket fence, as though waiting for him to try to sneak by, who knows how many
forbiddens
would have flitted away like yesterday's gypsy moths.

"So your mother got those bloodstains out."

"Yes, ma am.

"It's too bad that she ends up with the work when you're the one out in the street brawling. And a minister's son at that."

Turner thought back on the day so far. He added one to the number of things in it that were almost more than God had any right to expect of him.

"Well, your father said you play the organ. You may as well come in and play for me."

"Mrs. Cobb, I wasn't coming to—"

"You weren't coming to what? To bring some peace to an old woman whose household you've thrown upside down? Is that what you weren't coming to do?"

Turner sighed. He ran his finger around his collar and followed her into the imprisonment of her house. He wondered why his father couldn't have chosen a decent career. A conductor, maybe. A conductor who rode trains with his family and lit out for the Territories.

Mrs. Cobb sat in her horsehair chair and pointed to her organ impatiently. Turner sat on the stool, and he heard her settle back, bones creaking and snapping. He started to pump, and the stale air of the organ dusted around him.

"You remember," said Mrs. Cobb, "that if I have to say my last words, you'll write them down."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll write them down just as you say them."

"There is paper there on the organ. And pen and ink beside it. And you won't need to pretty them up any, because they'll be pretty enough."

Turner nodded and decided he wouldn't play "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," choosing instead "Shall We Gather at the River?" and realizing too late that Mrs. Cobb might figure that was an invitation. But when he heard her humming to it, he played the second verse, and then the third, and while his fingers took on the chorus, he turned to look at her. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth, too, with her humming, and she was smiling. She looked, Turner thought, as though there was a day once upon a time when she might have been happy.

Mrs. Cobb did not have to say her last words that afternoon. Turner played hymn after hymn, repeating a few verses when she hummed to the chorus, taking care to avoid the ones that suggested the pleasures of leaving this weary world. When he heard her tapping her foot, he sped up, and she always kept up the pace. And when he closed with a rousing "As Flows the Rapid River"—and it wasn't easy to be rousing with four sharps—she actually, really, honestly, truly clapped.

Turner supposed that if the Apocalypse had come, he could hardly have been more surprised.

When Turner left Mrs. Cobb, the sun was still high, his shadow was still small, and the mischief of a sea breeze was still hovering by the gate, waiting for him. And Mrs. Cobb was no longer there to stop him. He followed it down Parker Head, along the street as it dwindled toward the shore, down past the pines and through the scrub, all the while the salt in his nose and a hope singing in his ears that Malaga wasn't a lie, that there was some one person in all of Maine who wasn't playing him for a fool.

And when he came down to the beach, the tide was up and the gulls were circling, and the New Meadows flowed so high and strong that there was almost no beach to stand on. And across the water, Malaga's pines waved their boughs at him.

But no one stood on the shore.

And the island had never seemed so far away.

He waited to see if Lizzie might come around the point. He counted waves and told himself he would leave after twenty-five had tumbled in. After that, he skipped rocks and told himself he would leave after he skipped one seven times. (He did it with the eleventh stone.) After that, he counted fifty gulls—except they came almost all at once. And then, with nothing left to count, Turner climbed back up the ledges, with a pile of loneliness on his back as heavy as nightfall.

The sea breeze had scooted the heat of the day out in front of it, and Turner found himself shivering by the time he came back up to Parker Head. Mrs. Hurd was out on her porch now, and she waved to him. He wondered suddenly if this would be his life from now on: walking down Parker Head to see Mrs. Cobb, walking down to the shore to an empty Malaga Island, and walking back up to see Mrs. Hurd. The days stretched awfully long.