Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (15 page)

Reverend Buckminster stood and turned to his shelves. He looked them up and down, one finger at his lip, as Turner's heart stood still, and as the sea breeze paused and quivered.

He pulled out one of the volumes, thumbed through it, put it back, pulled out another. Its leather binding and marbled edges proclaimed to all the world that it was about as dull a book as could ever have been written by any one human being. "Robert Barclay's
An Apology for the True Christian Divinity: Being an Explanation and Vindication of the Principles and Doctrines of the People Called Quakers," he
said."Read the first two propositions, and then summarize them after dinner."

Outside the window, the sea breeze dropped and slunk away.

It was a dreary afternoon that followed a dreary and silent dinner. The
Aeneid
was one thing—at least there were storms and ships being tossed and people being washed overboard. But a proposition on "The True Foundation of Knowledge" was as awful as Mrs. Cobb's seeing him in his underwear in her kitchen. Well, almost as awful.

He wondered if he would be reading propositions by Robert Barclay if he were sitting at a desk in the Phippsburg schoolhouse. Probably not—but Willis Hurd would be there. So he sat in his father's study as the sea breeze frolicked somewhere else, and as Lizzie Bright was probably flying with the Tripps, and read propositions. Long propositions. Long propositions that didn't seem to want to go much of anywhere and that were taking their time not wanting to go there. He sighed, glanced at his father to see if he had heard above the ticking of the clock, and settled in to write about seeking divinity.

It looked to be a long school year.

It was, at least, a mighty long school week. A hundred lines of the
Aeneid
with their summaries for each morning, followed by two propositions by Robert Barclay for the afternoon. Virgil was passable, with the storm breaking up the fleet, and Aeneas finally coming to land, and the gods bothering and fussing at each other. But reading Robert Barclay while the sea breeze waited outside—that was something not even a minister's son should have to do. Aeneas—or Aenaeus, however he spelled his dang name—would never have put up with it.

Maybe even Reverend Buckminster understood that. On Friday, after the Trojans had come upon Queen Dido and all the exciting parts were getting ready to die down, a miracle greater than the parting of the Red Sea descended upon the town of Phippsburg, Maine: Turner's father gave him the afternoon free. Turner supposed something more amazing could happen in his life, but if so, he couldn't imagine what it might be. So he let Robert Barclay drone on by himself and ran outside and jumped off the porch and caught the sea breeze when it raced past him, and he followed it down Parker Head and thought how fine it was to be free, free, free for an afternoon.

He didn't mean, at least at first, to head on down to the shore, since Malaga was still
forbidden.
But the sea breeze did race on ahead of him just that way, and he did think of Aeneaus (or however he spelled his dang name) with his two great spears exploring the coast, and it might be that he would find Lizzie clamming on this side of the New Meadows so that he wouldn't actually be going across to the island.
Forbidden.
So he followed the breeze out of town and through the pines and across the granite ledges to the shore. And when he looked down to see if Lizzie might be clamming, he came upon the second most amazing thing of his day.

Just off the shore of the island, a house was set on a raft, bobbing up and down in the gentleness of the surf. Even Aeneas would have been surprised.

It was about as forlorn a thing as he ever wanted to see. The house perched on its raft as though it were trying not to be sick. Its roof beams sagged in the middle, its shingles clung loosely, and the chimney pipe swayed with each wave, trying to be jaunty but not very good at it. Lashed to its sides were two barrels, a few lobster pots, and an old, battered trunk complaining at being dragged out onto the water.

Faces looked out the windows. Abbie's face. Perlie's face. Tripps' faces.

On the shore stood what looked to be just about everybody who lived on Malaga Island, Lizzie and her granddaddy hand in hand. No one was saying much, just watching as Mr. Tripp circled the raft, tightening a rope, checking the barrel tops, and trying to make it about as shipshape as Aeneas would have made a warship. Then he went back onshore, and there were handshakes and nods, all quiet, until he went back aboard and cast off. A wave kicked up, but he hung on, and soon the house was drifting down the New Meadows, heading out to the coast. Mr. Tripp held on to the door frame with one hand, and the other he held high, his fingers spread out as if he were blessing them all.

In that moment, Lizzie's granddaddy lifted up his voice, quavery but loud, and soon every soul on the shore was singing.

Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river,
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.

And the raft floated away, the sounds of the singing faded, and the gulls swooped and screeched as if they were announcing a death in the town.

One by one, those on the shore headed back up into the island. By the time Turner had climbed down the ledges and stood just across the New Meadows, only Lizzie and her granddaddy were standing there, still looking at the raft before it crossed behind the island and so out of sight. "Lizzie," Turner called. "Lizzie Bright."

But she did not answer. Instead, she put her hands to her face and ran up the beach. And her grandfather, after peering at Turner for a moment, followed her.

Turner didn't feel like Aeneas anymore. Suddenly, he felt a whole lot like Mrs. Hurd, alone, with her friends before her gone.

I
N
late September, the sea breeze stole the gold from the maples, the silver from the aspens. The oaks browned; the beeches paled. And in a general disheartening, the leaves let go, twirled and somersaulted, and finally settled down to sleep.

The sea breeze cooled the sun, too, which shone whiter and feebler against aging clouds. Some mornings, it seemed to want to sleep with the leaves.

On such a morning, not long after the day had finished rubbing its eyes and yawning, Turner rubbed his eyes and yawned to a pounding on the parsonage door. He heard his father's slippered feet hurrying down the stairs. Figuring that only a calamity would fetch the minister out this early in the morning and that a minister's son should stand by his father at such a moment, he jumped out of bed, gathered his robe around him, and went downstairs, too. But he could have stayed in bed and still have heard the news Mr. Stonecrop brought, since he was hollering it loudly enough to let folks on the other side of the New Meadows hear it.

"Have you read the Portland newspaper, Buckminster? Have you read it?" He waved it in front of Reverend Buckminsters face.

The reverend admitted that he hadn't read a single word yet today.

"Then let me read this for you!" Mr. Stonecrop held the paper out with both hands, mumbled a moment until he found the right place, and then began to sputter as though great Lucifer himself had provoked him. "Here, the wretch says that he's been forced off the island that has been his home—as though he had any right to call it his home. Forced to put his house on a raft. And here, that Phippsburg has never given a fig about him, never even tried to help him or his family—as though we'd never built a school or hired a teacher. And here, he claims that now that he's floated all the way down to Portland, he has nowhere left to go. And that's not all, Buckminster. The moving saga of the Tripp family continues: how they had to tie up at Bush Island after being prevented from coming into Phippsburg, how he had to row back and forth three miles to find a doctor to tend his wife, and how all of this is the fault of the good people of Phippsburg." He stopped and took a breath.

"The fault of the people of Phippsburg!" declared Reverend Buckminster.

"The insolence of it all!" declared Mr. Stonecrop.

"The Tripps!" declared Turner.

Silence in the parsonage as Reverend Buckminster and Mr. Stonecrop looked at Turner for a long moment.

"You know these people?" asked Mr. Stonecrop.

"You know these people?" asked Reverend Buckminster.

Turner suddenly wished he hadn't come downstairs. He thought of the house floating down the New Meadows with all the Tripps inside, and Mr. Tripp holding the house together and steady against the waves. Did he know these people? Hadn't he flown with them around the island? Hadn't he made Perlie laugh?

But he said, "Not much."

"Well," said Mr. Stonecrop, "had he set out to deliberately humiliate the town, he could hardly have done much worse. Good Lord, Reverend, if this town is going to survive, we need not only hotels to house tourists, we need goodwill to bring them in. And this kind of thing does not bring goodwill."

"Perhaps, Mr. Stonecrop, you are depending too much on—

"Perhaps, Reverend, if you want a town to preach to, you should begin to use some of that influence we understood you had. We need to be done with this business, and done quickly. Write to Governor Plaistead. This very day. Tell him the situation. I know things move slowly up to Augusta, but good Lord, the state declared six years ago that it would adjudicate Malaga Island. Six years! It's time to get things moving. Tell him that."

"I could write to him."

"Today, Reverend."

"Mr. Stonecrop, tourism is at best a chancy business."

"It is the only business left to us. The only business once the shipyards fail—as they will within a year. Write the letter."

Mr. Stonecrop blustered out of the house, and Turner and his father watched him take the street by right of possession. There wasn't a sea breeze anywhere near him, and if there had been one, it would have been trampled into the dust of Parker Head until it wasn't anything but a puff or two.

Reverend Buckminster stood still, watching the striding Mr. Stonecrop, who had paused by Mrs. Hurd's house and was gazing up at it as if to appreciate its value. A long sigh. "Go get your breakfast," he said finally. "I've a letter to write this morning, and you've got a hundred lines of Virgil to translate."

The lines turned out to be a hundred dull ones, as Aeneas—Turner thought he finally had the spelling down—moped about and looked for a place to live. With Robert Barclay in front of him, it promised to be an even duller afternoon. Turner figured he had had enough of Robert Barclay's tormenting propositions, more than enough to satisfy any human being, and he said so.

And as if to prove that miracles can still happen on a dull day, Reverend Buckminster agreed. When they came back to the study after dinner, his father closed the door—something he hardly ever did—and reached for a volume in the glassed case behind his desk. He weighed it in his hand. He looked at his son, as if trying to make up his mind.

Finally he did.

"Turner," he said, "books can be fire, you know."

"Fire?"

"Fire. Books can ignite fires in your mind, because they carry ideas for kindling, and art for matches." He handed the book to Turner.

"
The Origin of Species,
" he read aloud. "Is this fire?"

His father laughed, and Turner suddenly realized that this was the first time he had heard him laugh since they had come to Maine. The very first time. "It is a conflagration," he said.

Turner looked steadily at him. "Should a minister's son be reading this?"

"Who better?" said his father."Besides, your mother says that maybe First Congregational doesn't need to know everything we're thinking." He laughed again. "Whatever would Deacon Hurd say if he knew you were reading Charles Darwin?"

Turner felt as if the world was suddenly a more mysterious place. He had never before thought that there were things he ought to be doing that might cause, well, fire. When he opened the book and began to read, he was Jim Hawkins at the captain's chest, Sinbad opening his eyes in the Valley of Rubies, Huck himself waking up to a brand-new bend in the Mississippi.

And it wasn't long before he knew that what he was reading was fire, all right.

It was almost like lighting out for the Territories.

He read with fire in his brain through the afternoon; the next day, he rushed through Virgil so that he could read again. Day after day through the week he read, the fire heating him, while outside the sea breeze grew colder and colder, and soon there wasn't a single maple it hadn't nipped or a single oak whose leaves it hadn't curled to a crispness. When Saturday came around, Turner spent the morning with Darwin. He finished in a breathless run just before the three ringing bells and ran down Parker Head carrying the fire in his hands.

He would not warm anyone at First Congregational with it. He had promised his father.

But he could warm Lizzie.

He was at Mrs. Cobb's by the last toll of the Congregational bells, but Lizzie was not there. Still, the fire burned red in him, and when Turner played for Mrs. Cobb, he marched briskly through the "Battle Hymn," then drove through "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" until it was swinging mighty low and mighty fast. He kept listening for the knock on the back door. It did not come, and after playing long enough for even Mrs. Cobb to shush him out, he waited on the back porch.

But Lizzie never came.

When she did not come on Sunday afternoon, either, the fire in him weakened to a smolder. He played the organ slowly, so that Mrs. Cobb said she had never heard "Shall We Gather at the River" played so mournfully. "I'm not about to say my last words this afternoon, Turner Buckminster."

"No, ma'am."

"So play something a little cheerier."

He played a blood-and-thunder hymn, and Mrs. Cobb clapped to it. "Yes," she said, "those hymns about eternal lakes of fire are always so jaunty, aren't they? Play another." And he tried to find one equally hearty in its pleasures of damnation, but he was smoldering so low that he could not keep the tempo up.