Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (24 page)

In February, Mr. Newton called on Turner and his mother. They were missed at First Congregational, he said. He wondered if the time wasn't right for them to come back.

They waited two more weeks.

When Turner and his mother did appear at church, silence followed in a spreading wake as they walked up the center aisle. They passed into an empty pew about halfway up the sanctuary, feeling the wake of the silence pass over their heads and carry forward, so that folks in front looked back and then turned away quickly. Turner picked up a hymnbook and thought he might fling it at the next set of peering eyes. He imagined it circling end over end, its pages fluttering like wings, until it struck, oh, say, Deacon Hurd, just on the side of his nose.

The church filled silently. The ushers tried not to look their way No one sat in their pew. The prelude began, Lillian Woodward playing too slowly. The candles were lit. The ushers brought up the latecomers and searched for a place to insert them.

But no one sat in their pew.

"I think we should go," whispered Turner to his mother.

"So do I," she said.

They might have gone then and there if Mr. Newton and Mrs. Newton and all the little Newtons had not suddenly stood up from a pew toward the front and flocked down to Turner and his mother. "Oh, Mrs. Buckminster," said Mrs. Newton, "would you mind terribly if we came to sit with you?"

So they did, all the little Newtons bustling past them, the two boys putting up their fists as they passed Turner and grinning like loons when he put his fists up, too; the four prim and pink girls putting their fists up and hitting him full in the belly as they passed, one by one. Mr. Newton tousled his hair, and Mrs. Newton sat next to his mother and took her hand.

Turner put the hymnbook back.

Each of the little Newtons took a turn sitting on his lap to get through the sermon. And Turner couldn't help tickling each of them in the stomach—especially Ben and Meg Newton, who laughed like Abbie and Perlie.

When he didn't have a Newton on his lap, he looked out the window to watch the snow falling.

***

With all the snow, Turner could hardly keep the walks clear in front of the church, the parsonage, and Mrs. Cobb's house, where they were living now. There were still boxes and one trunk to cart over, but the books from his father's study had already been set on the shelves in front of Mrs. Cobb's books until they could be sorted out. Turner had cleared away the round study table in the library and left only his father's Bible, the
Aeneid,
and
The Origin of Species
on it, along with the lamp.

When his mother saw the table, she put her hands to her cheeks and nodded, her eyes brimming.

Willis helped Turner move the heaviest things, and it took them most of a week. Afterward, Willis had supper with them, and he told stories about teachers in the Phippsburg school, and for the first time in a long time there was laughter over a meal—so that even the apple crisp Turner's mother forgot to take out, which baked to a hardness no spoon could ever breach, meant only more laughter.

On a gray, low day at the end of February, they closed the door to the parsonage for the last time. Mrs. Cobb hadn't believed in electric lighting, so Turner settled into the tasks of trimming wicks and cleaning lamp chimneys, of banking fires at night and starting them come morning, of doing the hundred things that must be done each day to keep a house older than the country tight and warm. In between, he was in the library, surrounded by his father's and Mrs. Cobb's books, sitting at the study table in the morning to translate the
Georgics—
which he thought had nothing on the
Aeneid.
The afternoon was all Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Coleridge—Turner figured Coleridge would do—and last of all, Mr. Darwin's
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle.
Just knowing that the
Beagle
was ahead made it easier to plow through the
Georgics,
and he figured he'd best read it now, since in the fall he'd be going to school in Phippsburg, and Darwin was probably not in the curriculum.

He did not read Mr. Barclay.

Turner did not go back to the granite ledges. And he did not go back to Malaga Island. Even when March came in on an unexpectedly warm sea breeze and the snow began to melt and it was no longer so very hard to keep the rooms in Mrs. Cobb's house warm, he did not go back. When the seas softened and were more blue than green, when he and Willis rowed up and down the coast in the Hurds' tender until Turner felt the muscles in his arms toughen into cords, even then Turner kept the New Meadows at his back.

It was after a Sunday-afternoon row down to Cox's Head and back—Willis had had to sneak off with the tender, Deacon Hurd being a strict Sabbatarian—that Turner came back to find Mr. Stonecrop standing on the porch of the house, his mother holding the door open to speak to him.

"Here he is now," he heard her say. "You'll have to discuss it with him."

"Mrs. Buckminster, really, the two of us..."

"Circumstances being what they are, you'll have to discuss it with him. Turner," she said, "Mr. Stonecrop has something to propose. Won't you come in, Mr. Stonecrop? Perhaps the library will do."

Turner followed them into the library, Mr. Stonecrop seeming too large for the house. She motioned him to a chair—which he did not take—and then, without saying anything more, left the room.

Turner felt an assault about to begin.

"So," said Mr. Stonecrop, "you are the man of the house."

Turner didn't think Mr. Stonecrop expected a reply, so he didn't give him any. Mr. Stonecrop walked around the study table, picked up the
Aeneid,
and put it down after he flipped through some pages. "I don't know what good this will do you," he said. "I built a whole shipyard, and I don't know a word of Latin past
e pluribus unum.
No employer will hire you merely because you know Latin, young Buckminster."

Turner almost said that the whole state of Maine would have to pull up its skirts and dance a reel before he would hire on with Mr. Stonecrop. But he didn't think that needed saying aloud, either.

"And you're still reading this tripe," observed Mr. Stonecrop, holding up
The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle."You
won't learn much from a fellow who thinks we came from monkeys." He looked at a couple of pages, closed the book, and tossed it onto the chair. Then he rounded his hands into fists, set them on the table, and leaned down, his arms pillars supporting his top half. "Son, I came here this afternoon to discuss a business proposal with your mother. She tells me I need to discuss it with you—I suppose since Mrs. Cobb left you the house."

"I'm not your son, Mr. Stonecrop,"Turner said simply.

"No, you're not. If you were, you'd be in the boatyards, learning a trade, instead of translating a language not a single soul speaks anymore, and then this monkey foolishness to boot. It's a practical world out there. And people who aren't practical get—

"I know what happens to people who aren't practical, Mr. Stonecrop. I've seen what happens to people who aren't practical."

"Blunt. You're blunt, aren't you? That's good. Men of business should be blunt. They don't have to like each other to do business, but they do have to be blunt."

Yet another comment that Turner didn't think needed a reply.

"So here is your business proposal, Mr. Buckminster. I propose to purchase Mrs. Cobb's house from you outright. I'm prepared to offer you better than the market price."

"Why, Mr. Stonecrop?"

"This is a business matter."

"If this were a business matter, Mr. Stonecrop, would you be giving us an offer above the market price?"

Mr. Stonecrop smiled. "Well, young Mr. Turner Buckminster, all grown up. Handles his business affairs better than his father might have, and him only thirteen—no, probably fourteen years old now. Maybe there's more to Latin than I thought. Maybe I should be hiring you down to the shipyard after all."

"Did you know that Lizzie Griffin is dead?"

"Malaga Island is in the past. What matters is the future. I'll put it simply: you're not wanted here. Neither you nor your mother. A boy as sharp as you, a boy who reads Darwin, should be able to tell that. I'm giving you the opportunity to go back to Boston. This is a business proposal you can't turn down."

"You see things only one way, Mr. Stonecrop. We're not selling the house."

"Today is your best offer, young Buckminster."

Turner nodded.

"Boy, are you stubborn just to be stubborn? Or is there something else to it? You think some other Negro will come live with you? Will you be sweet on her, too?"

"Mr. Stonecrop, you're a rich man. And you'll be a whole lot richer once you build your hotel. But I don't think Mrs. Cobb would have wanted to help you. And I don't think I want to help you."

"Blunt again. Very good. But you're missing your chance, boy, just as your father missed his. You won't hear me make this offer again."

"I won't expect it."

"You'll regret living in a town where no one wants you."

"I'm getting used to it."

"I was the one who brought you here," shouted Mr. Stonecrop. "I was the one who insisted upon your father. I thought he was an up-and-coming preacher. A man with his wealth, with his connections—I thought he would rise like a star in Maine."

"I was the one who saw him fall over the cliff."

"And what do you imagine he was thinking then? He must have realized what was about to happen. He must have hoped that you would make good decisions and take care of your mother."

What had his father been thinking when he went over the cliff? What had been in his eyes? And it came to Turner, no matter how much he tried to hold it back, no matter how hard he tried to make the night darker so that he couldn't see it: his father tottering, arms reaching forward to nothing, leaning back. And his eyes.

And then he remembered. He had already seen what was in his father's eyes.

He had seen it in the eye of the whale.

Turner hardly noticed when Mr. Stonecrop left, snorting. He let the moment at the cliff's edge come to him again, wincing with the hurt of it but watching his father's face closely. He let it come again and again, until he was absolutely sure he could see his father's face.

What had been in their eyes? What was it that the whale knew? What was it that his father knew?

***

In May, Mr. Stonecrop's shipyard failed. He abandoned the house on Quality Ridge and lit out for parts unknown, taking with him what remained of the investments of half the town. All of Phippsburg raged. Quality indeed! What hope was there for a hotel on the New Meadows now? Here were all the workers in the shipyard unpaid for the last month. And the Hurds! All their investments were gone! They'd been left penniless!

The sea breeze carried the news up and down Parker Head—"Did you see?"

"Did you hear?"—until most souls in town were swearing they had known long ago that Mr. Stonecrop was a scoundrel, and wasn't it too bad about the Hurds?

Most souls in town except Turner and his mother, that is. They had stayed to themselves pretty much through the spring, settling into Mrs. Cobb's house. The rooms upstairs felt as if they hadn't been lived in for a very long time, and so Mrs. Buckminster set about bringing them alive again. She had Turner cleaning and painting, dragging rugs outside and beating them, opening windows for new air, and bringing light to rooms that hadn't seen any since the century began.

They had not gone back to First Congregational since February, but soon after Mr. Stonecrop's absconding, the Ladies' Sewing Circle, led by Mrs. Newton, called on Turner and Mrs. Buckminster to invite them back to services. It was, to be charitable, a little awkward, and Turner kept sensing that Mrs. Newton was about to stick the steel point of her umbrella into any of the ladies who didn't behave. But they all did, and Turner and his mother returned to First Congregational.

Deacon Hurd, beset with financial woe, was no longer preaching. The Bath minister was rushing over after his own service, and he preached well enough, though he was always a little out of breath.

The Hurds had sold their sloop but kept the tender, and one day, late in May, Turner borrowed it to row his mother over to Malaga Island, carrying with them a pot of violets. He walked with her along the shore to the point of the island where Lizzie's house had stood, and there, at what would have been the doorway, they troweled up the earth and planted the violets, turning their hardy blossoms toward the sea. Afterward, Turner rowed all around the island, and his mother was surprised by how sure he was on the water.

"Goodness," she said, "I hope you don't ever go too far."

"I've seen whales," he told her.

"I never realized they came this close to shore."

Turner concentrated on his rowing.

The Hurds, unable to meet the loans upon loans the deacon had taken out to grow wealthy with the town's coming prosperity, sold the tender, too—or more properly, the bank sold it, along with their home, and Willis's grandmother's house, and everything else they owned. Speculators from Philadelphia bought up most everything, but not for what Mr. Hurd or the bank had hoped for.

The Buckminsters bought the tender.

The Sunday after the auction, the Hurds sat in the last pew of First Congregational, stone-faced, haggard, bent over. Since everyone knows that trouble can be contagious, they were alone until Turner and his mother sat down next to them. Turner's mother took Mrs. Hurd's hand.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"How could we ever have known Mr. Stonecrop was such a scoundrel?" Mrs. Hurd replied quietly.

They sat through the service and listened to the Bath minister's breathy sermon from Galatians, and when the last chords of Lillian Woodward's postlude finished, they stood up. Mrs. Hurd fell into Mrs. Buckminsters arms and held back tears as the congregation walked past them, trying not to watch.