Trouble (6 page)

"She certainly is a friendly dog," said Henry's mother.

Black Dog nodded and grinned. She certainly was. She licked Henry's mother's face again.

"... even if she did eat our dinner."

Black Dog lowered her ears to show her sorrow.

Who could not like a dog like this? Which is what they told Henry's father when he came out from the library for supper.

"Hmm ..." he said, considering whether he could not like a dog like this. But when a dog is up on her toes and gamboling around your feet and doing her very best to show that she is good and loyal and true and blue—and fun, besides—you can't not like her.

"We'll see," he said.

They ate a salad for dinner that night.

"Don't you usually make this with grilled chicken?" Henry's father asked.

"It's much healthier as a vegetarian dish," said his mother.

And it all seemed so normal, so absolutely normal, so absolutely right. It was suddenly as if Trouble had never come, after all, and as if Franklin's missing Haviland plate and his empty chair meant nothing at all. And as if Louisa's unfilled Haviland plate and her empty chair meant nothing at all.

But in the fork-clinking-against-plate silence that followed, Henry remembered that Trouble
had
come. How could he have forgotten it, even for a moment? And then he thought, How sweet it is to have forgotten it for a moment. And then he was so mixed up that he just ate the crescents of yellow bell peppers and tried not to think at all.

That night, Black Dog went up with Henry and slept on his bed, since she was so used to the down quilt. Henry figured that this was all right; the wounds on Black Dog's snout were scabbing over again, so there wasn't any more blood to wash up. Still, it wasn't easy to sleep with Black Dog on the bed. She kicked and panted and breathed and sometimes even barked in her dreams. Four times she woke up to rearrange the quilt, which meant a lot of digging and pawing. Twice she fell off the bed, and both times she jumped up and licked Henry's face to let him know that he didn't have to worry. She was fine.

Fine.

Through all of this, Henry watched the dim suffusion of the moon illuminate the clouds from behind. He couldn't see a single star, but the pale spread of light caressed his window until the clouds thickened so deeply that they hid the moon completely.

In the morning, the sea was wild and rough and green. The clouds were still running fast, but the wind had slanted down and was snatching the froth from the whitecaps and throwing it up high onto the shore. Henry and Black Dog climbed down into the cove to tie the kayak farther up, and the wind was so strong that the salt spray spat into their faces.

Henry's father decided to stay home again that day, so Henry's mother drove Henry, again, to Whittier.

They stopped at the hospital before school. Franklin was very quiet. Henry's mother took his hand and held it, but it was limp. Indeterminate activity.

Everything is so white, thought Henry. The sheets. The bandage around Franklin's stump, folded in triangles like a linen napkin. Even Franklin's skin—white. It was as if he had never been out in the sun, as if he had never scrambled on a rugby field.

Henry's mother dropped him off at Whittier Academy.

American History, still studying the explorations of those True American Adventurers, Lewis and Clark.

Language Arts, reading the "Prologue" to
The Canterbury Tales,
trying to remember the distinguishing characteristics of every pilgrim—and there were a bunch.

Life Science, a black-and-white film on the migration patterns of sea turtles.

Sea turtles!

Government, on how congressional districts are drawn up within states.

"You know, Sanborn," Henry said at lunch, "do you ever have the feeling that nothing we do here really matters?"

Sanborn took a bite out of his sandwich. It was grilled chicken. Henry watched it hungrily. "You just figured this out?" said Sanborn.

"No, I mean really,
really
doesn't matter."

Sanborn took another bite of his grilled-chicken sandwich. Henry fingered his lettuce-and-bologna sandwich.

"Don't get all cosmic, Henry. That gets really weird really quick. Besides, it does matter. Did you know that grilled chicken tastes a whole lot better than bologna?"

"So you're a better person because you know about the migration patterns of sea turtles."

"If Lewis and Clark hadn't discovered whatever it was they discovered ... I don't know, we'd all be living on the East Coast or something. And if
The Canterbury Tales
hadn't been written, there would be one less good story in the world—and don't make that face. You know it was good—even if it is Delderfield reading it. And if sea turtles didn't migrate ..."

"Yeah, what if the sea turtles didn't migrate?"

"Then the world would be a less beautiful place, and that
would
matter. Especially to the sea turtles." Sanborn finished his grilled-chicken sandwich and licked the mayonnaise off his fingers.

"Especially to the sea turtles?"

Sanborn nodded. "Especially to the sea turtles."

"You are a piece of work, you know that, Sanborn?"

Sanborn stood and held his arms wide open. "The finest craftsmanship around," he said.

Henry chucked the rest of his bologna sandwich at him, and got hollered at first by Sanborn and then by cranky Coach Santori—who was the cafeteria monitor that day (which explained why he was cranky)—and then by Sanborn again.

When he got home that afternoon after crew practice—and after only one holler from perfect coxswain Brandon Sheringham, and after running the eight barefoot laps ordered by Coach Santori because he threw food in the cafeteria—the green sea was wild. Henry went down to tie up his kayak even higher—Black Dog took one look at the waves and wouldn't come down to the cove with him. Henry was amazed to see how greedy the sea was, pulling at the sand as if it would suck out the whole of Cape Ann.

All the late afternoon, the wind grew stronger, wailing around the cornices of the house, gusting so fiercely that the great oak beams shuddered, remembering what a storm could do. Black Dog, curled up tightly in her quilt, watched the casement window with wide eyes, whining when the wind shrieked high, and then raising her head when the first bands of rain blew down, so thick and solid that Henry could not tell if the darkening day was the coming night or the coming storm.

At supper—Black Dog huddled beneath the dining room table—Henry's mother decided not to go in to the hospital to visit Franklin. Instead, she and Henry went to watch the storm come in. But it was hailing now, and the ice beat at their faces, so it was hard to see. When Henry's mother shone a flashlight past the black boulders, it seemed as if the entire cove had collapsed and the waves were rolling across what had once been sand. But with the dark and the hail and the shrieking wind, it was hard to be sure.

They did not stay out long.

Black Dog was waiting for them in the kitchen, her tail below her belly and her ears looking as if someone had pulled them down and tied them beneath her chin. She yelped when the power flickered, and yelped again when it went off entirely.

Never before had Henry seen the house absolutely darkened.

He and his parents found candles and lit them. They called up to Louisa, who called back that she was fine and they could leave her alone. So they went and sat in the north parlor. The rain flooded the windows, falling like drapes. The wind was loud enough that they had to shout at each other, and the water dashed so hard against the house that Henry began to wonder if it was the waves, and not just the rain, that were reaching up the ledges.

They tried to play Scrabble, which is hard to do by candlelight, and which no one except Henry's mother and Franklin liked to play—his mother because she was so good at it, Franklin because he could be aggressive at anything.

"D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R," she spelled out for them, setting down each tile precisely. "And on a triple word score."

Henry's father sighed.

Black Dog whined.

Henry held one of his tiles up to the candlelight and stared at it.

A sudden silence; then the wind whipped around the eaves of the house and rushed down through the chimneys, moaning and howling as if it had lost its way.

"That's enough for tonight," said Henry's mother. She took the tile from Henry's hand.

Henry went upstairs with a candle to do his homework. Black Dog followed, flopping belly-up in front of him as they went down the hall—and even up the stairs—until finally Henry set the candle on the chinaware shelves and picked her up just so he could make some headway. He laid her down in her quilt—her legs got all scrambled in her eagerness to get covered—and he retrieved the candle. But when he sat down at his desk, Black Dog leaped from the bed and curled beside his feet—which he gladly snuggled beneath her warm body.

He started in. But all the new shadows that the flickering candle called out from the corners of his room began to spook him, and it is hard to do pre-algebraic equations when you are spooked, even just a little. It's especially hard to do pre-algebraic equations when you are pretty sure that they matter even less than the "Prologue" to
The Canterbury Tales
—which he was supposed to be prepared to translate up to the lines "Now have I toold you shortly, in a clause,/ Th'estaat, th'array, the nombre, and eek the cause/ Why that assembled was this compaignye"—which, Henry told Black Dog, took a lot of guts to write, since Chaucer had written seven hundred lines before this one and there was nothing "shortly" about it.

So Henry tried calling Sanborn—at least they could do the problems together—but the phones were out, too.

Lightning, flashing full and fast across the sky. Thunder over the sea, louder than all the waves on the stones.

Henry put his pencil down. He looked outside into the flooded darkness. "I guess we may as well get ready for bed," he said.

Black Dog leaped from beneath the desk and jumped back onto her quilt. She pawed at it, then sprawled down into a heap.

Henry changed into shorts and blew out the candle. But before he got into bed, he looked out the window again, and then went over to the glass doors and peered through. The rain was crashing onto the stone balcony, and past that there was nothing but rock and water for uncounted miles.

He reached out his hand for the doorknob.

Lightning again, turning all the glass white for a second. Black Dog whining in her quilt. Thunder, bellowing and licking its chops so loudly that Henry felt the vibrations in his bare feet.

He let his hand drop. He shivered, then got into bed and pulled as much of the quilt as Black Dog would let him have over himself. He shivered again.

Lying there, Henry wondered what would have happened to Chaucer's pilgrims heading to Canterbury in a storm like this one. And what would have happened to Lewis and Clark in the thunder and lightning? Would they have turned back and headed for shelter in St. Louis?

And where do sea turtles go in a storm, so that they can keep their beautiful selves safe and away from Trouble?

Lightning, and then thunder again. Very close.

Henry got up. Black Dog raised her head and perked her ears high. Henry crossed the room, and with a jerk he opened both glass doors and stepped out onto the stone balcony.

It was even wilder than he had imagined, but warmer, too. The hail had stopped, but the rain beat against him so that in less than a moment he was completely wet. He held out his arms—which was not easy, so strong was the wind—and felt the entire planetary atmosphere pushing against the house, against him. He staggered. But even so, he stepped to the edge of the balcony and looked down. The waves, freighted with crashing tops, threw themselves against the rocks like suicides.

And in the darkness and noise and space, Henry was all alone—until Black Dog came and gently stood beside him, leaning against his dripping legs.

She whined only a little bit.

Henry reached down and scratched her behind her immediately wet ears. Together, they watched the storm torment the night, and even when the hail came again with its piercing cold pricks, they watched, until finally Black Dog wasn't whining just a little bit. So they went back into Henry's room and closed the glass doors. Henry fetched a towel from his bathroom and dried off Black Dog—though not before she shook herself to spread most of the rain around the room—and then Henry dried himself off, too, even though he hadn't realized that he was down to his last towel and now it was sort of soggy and doggy.

Henry and Black Dog slept well that night, lying close together, while the storm ground its teeth, and threw its tantrums, and snatched at anything that could move—including Henry's kayak, which it grabbed from its tie-up by the high rocks and sucked away from shore, thrashing it along the tops of the waves until it sank into a silence deep and still.

By morning, the storm had passed and the sky had hued to an opal lavender. Black Dog, who had slept in a pretty damp quilt, was ready for the new day, and so was Henry—after he found a new towel and showered. He dried his hair out on the stone balcony, Black Dog sitting beside him. It seemed as if they were on a different planet. The sea was a spring blue, and the high rocks were drying in the morning sun. Seagulls flew everywhere, squawking and screeching over what the storm had dragged up from the ocean bed. The horizon curved with geometric purpose.

Henry's mother was not in the kitchen when Henry and Black Dog got down. In fact, she didn't seem to be anywhere in the house. Henry went outside and looked in the carriage house—the BMW and Fiat were still parked there.

He finally found her in the back gardens, on the path that led down to Salvage Cove. She stood, just looking, and when Henry and Black Dog came up, he could see why.

Most of the beach within the cove was gone. Close in, the black boulders had been torn down into a jumble. Between them and the far end of the cove, only a small strip of sand remained.

And at the far end lay uncovered the framing and decking of an old and ruined ship.