Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (16 page)

Turner felt about as low as a raft set loose on the New Meadows River.

"Where's that Negro girl been?" asked Mrs. Cobb suddenly.

"I don't know," said Turner."I don't know where she's been and I'm not allowed to go down to find out and I don't even know if she's there anymore or if she's gone with everyone else on the island and Lord knows they haven't done a single thing that calls for people being so awful to them and taking away their home and I haven't even said goodbye, if she's gone, that is."

He stopped to breathe. Mrs. Cobb looked at him, startled, with eyes as wide as daybreak.

"You said all that in one breath."

"I suppose.

She nodded and looked down at her hands gripping her knees. "I've gotten to like her, too. Awfully much."

"I didn't say I liked her."

"Turner Buckminster, you don't have to be a minister's son all the time."

You don't have to be a minister's son all the time.
You don't have to he a minister's son all the time.
Turner had never thought he could ever, at any time, be anything else. The thought shivered him—as if he had almost touched a whale.

"I do like her," he said.

"Of course you do. And it doesn't matter a damn—yes, even old ladies cuss—it doesn't matter a damn what anyone else in the town of Phippsburg has to say about it. It doesn't matter what anyone else in the whole state of Maine has to say about it."

Turner nodded.

"And if anyone has anything to say about it, it should be me!"

"You, Mrs. Cobb?"

"Yes, me, Turner Buckminster. You don't think people haven't been talking about me letting this colored girl into my house to hear you play? Next thing they'll be taking me down to Pownal. Yes, I know all about Mrs. Hurd. That son of hers, sending her to Pownal so he can sell her house and invest the money. You think there's any other reason?" She shook her head solemnly.

Turner stood up from the organ.

"That's right. Go find out about her as fast as you please, and faster."

And Turner—Turner ran out of Mrs. Cobb's house and down Parker Head. He did not see the lace curtains parting, or Mrs. Cobb watching him sprinting, or hear her humming "I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone." But he felt the sea breeze rolling beside him, and he heard the rising of the gulls, and he felt the fire in his hands again. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of the sea cliff with the green waves roaring in and their yellow froth churning at the tops—and he was ready to leap.

He half ran, half tumbled down past the scrub trees and over the ledges, almost expecting that Lizzie would be waiting for him—and so he was hardly surprised when he reached the shore and she was there, her arms muddied up to her elbows, a bucket of spitting clams beside her, and her dory pulled up against the shore.

"Hey," he called.

She looked up, then back down.

"Hey," he called again as he came up.

"Hey."

"I haven't seen you for days."

"Nine days," she said. "You haven't seen me for nine days."

"Nine days, then."

She went back to her clamming.

"I could clam with you some."

"There's another rake in the dory, if you want to so badly." Turner went to fetch the rake. "What have you been doing?"

"Same thing I'm always doing."

They raked together and dug, silently.

They raked together and dug a
long
time, silently.

"Lizzie, you mad about something?"

"Well now, Mister Turner Ernest Buckminster, why should I be mad about anything?"

"I guess if there were people in a town trying to take away my home, I'd be mad."

"I guess you would, but it's not hardly likely"

"And I guess if they were taking it away just for money, I'd be madder still."

"I guess you would. And you'd be even madder if you had a granddaddy so sick he couldn't move, and a deacon from the town come down to tell him he had to move anyway."

Turner stood over the clam hole he had raked."How sick?"

And Lizzie Bright threw her rake across the flats, sat down in the mud, and began to cry. Turner set down his rake, sat beside her in the mud, and took her hand.

Muddy palm in muddy palm they sat, and the sea breeze was quiet. Not even the gulls called out. And Turner did not care if Willis Hurd called down the whole town of Phippsburg upon them.

"You done holding my hand yet?" asked Lizzie after a season or two.

"Not yet."

"You going to tell me when you're done?"

"I suppose."

She nodded. "After a while, this mud will dry so hard we won't be able to get apart."

"It'd be all right by me."

Lizzie looked at him, and it seemed as if she might start crying again, but this time, she'd be crying and laughing at the same time. "I guess it'd be all right by me, too, Turner Buckminster. But what'll we do when the tide comes back in?"

"Go see your granddaddy."

And that's what they did. When the tide came back in, they rinsed their hands together in the seawater, and together they climbed into the dory and rowed to Malaga, and together they hefted the bucket of clams around the point and up to the house.

Lizzie's granddaddy was not sitting on the doorstep smoking his pipe, and Turner felt the loneliness of the place. For a moment he imagined the Tripps wheeling out of the woods and flying around them. But there were no Tripps anywhere on the island anymore. He stretched the fingers of his hand and was surprised that he could no longer feel Lizzie's hand in his own. Is it possible to forget the feeling so quickly? he wondered.

Inside the house it was darker than he remembered, darker than it should have been. Lizzie's granddaddy was propped up in a bed, perched on his angled elbows so that he could see out the window. "Lizzie Bright." He smiled when they came in, and he spoke her name as if he were reciting a blessing. "And Turner Buckminster. Boy, we've missed you here. No, no, don't go explaining. You don't need to go explaining. We're just glad you're here today."

Lizzie handed Turner a knife. "You know how to open clams?"

"I will in a minute or two."

"You think you'll just figure it all out on your own?"

"No, I think you'll just tell me."

"You think so?"

"Of course I think so. You never can keep from telling me something you know that I don't."

"Then I must be telling you a whole lot all the time, because there's a whole lot I know that you don't know."

Lizzie told him a whole lot, even after Turner got the knack of it and could open the shell with the point of the knife, slit the muscle before the clam objected too much, and drop it into the pot along with its juice. It was enough, Lizzie's granddaddy said, to make even a man sick in bed look up and take notice, seeing those clams slip out of their shells. But Turner saw that Reverend Griffin couldn't do much more than look up and take notice, and that once the chowder was set to cooking, he lay back down on the bed, exhausted from having propped himself up. He coughed once or twice, weakly, as if he didn't have the heart for it, and then lay too still.

Lizzie and Turner sat by the shore while the chowder hottened up. They didn't talk much—didn't have to. The New Meadows was quiet, with the tide slow and careful not to scrape itself against the shore rocks. The gulls rode its back as if for a joke, calling now and again to each other, but mostly just riding the waves up and down, then up and down again. They must have been doing this for more years than anyone could count, thought Turner, and for a moment he saw Darwin standing on the bridge of the
Beagle
and watching the seabirds of the Galápagos, and maybe thinking the same thing.

"How do you think that gull learned to swim like that?" he asked Lizzie.

"His mama and his papa showed him. How else?"

"How did they learn?"

"Because they had mamas and papas, too, Turner. You know about this stuff, right?"

"But how about the first one? The very first one. What made him start to swim?"

"God took him in His two hands and threw him out there and got him all wet and told him he should stay put. And gulls are still squawking about it."

"You read that in the Bible?"

"Somewhere in Genesis. Toward the middle."

"Well," said Turner, standing up, "I guess God doesn't mind if He gets squawked at sometimes."

"I hope not, since I've had reason enough myself lately."

She stood, too, and together they watched the gulls riding the waves. Then they went into the shack, and Turner helped Reverend Griffin sit up in the bed, and Lizzie brought over a bowl of the clam chowder and fed him. All the time he was smiling, telling them how it was just like Lizzie's grandmama used to make it for him. All the time Turner held him up and wondered at how light he was, so light it hardly seemed his body could heft his soul. Whatever would happen if he really did have to leave Malaga? And whatever would happen to Lizzie if he couldn't?

Lizzie rowed Turner back across the New Meadows after her granddaddy finished the chowder. He jumped out and held the dory for a moment, then let it go, and the tide took her out a bit. She turned the boat with one oar, and with the smooth movements of one who knew how, she began to row slowly back to the island. Turner watched her across to the shore, watched her pull the dory up and give a wave. And then she spread her arms out, smiled broadly, and began to fly across the beach, bobbing and weaving until she turned the corner of Malaga and was gone. Turner climbed the granite ledges back toward home.

And as he climbed, a fire grew in his gut, a fire as hot as Darwin's and maybe hotter. He felt it flaring as he went down Parker Head, and flaring again when he passed Mrs. Hurd's empty house, and flaring when he passed First Congregational and climbed the porch steps to his house. He felt it through supper, so that even Reverend Buckminster stared at him sometimes, and Turner's mother dared to break the silence by asking him how his day had been.

"Fine," he said, and burned.

He was still burning when his father told him to get ready for the season's last baseball game that evening. Because he couldn't think of a single reason why he shouldn't go—that is, he couldn't think of a single reason he could tell his father—he went and burned on the sidelines, trying not to watch the people who were laughing and passing around bottles of dark Moxie and waving straw hats at each other and getting ready to turn Lizzie and her granddaddy off Malaga Island. He wondered that God could let such a thing be.

And then Deacon Hurd called to him. "Turner, you going to try again?" He chuckled, and Willis next to him chuckled, and everyone on the whole dang field chuckled. Turner nodded, let himself get chosen up for sides, and felt the fire burning brightly.

He did not lead off. He was set down in the end of the lineup, so that it wasn't until the end of the second inning, with a couple of outs, that he stepped up to home and swung his bat low and set his front leg. The days were shorter now, and the white sunlight cold as it settled onto the field and thought about dropping frost. Every tree was blessed with a halo, and the sparkling silver beams slanted down to Turner as he thought about streaking a ball right back up alongside them until it disappeared in the silver-haloed glow.

"You still have that front leg out pretty far, son. You want to think about that?" Deacon Hurd chuckled again.

Willis, standing easy on the mound, threw the ball into his glove over and over, watching Turner. The holy beams backlit him, so that Turner could barely make out his face. He was just as glad.

"Batter up!" yelled Deacon Hurd.

"Here it comes," said Willis, and lofted the ball into the air, so that it rose into the silver light and took on its own halo.

To Turner, there was nothing but the ball and the sky and the light and the bat in his hands and the fire in his gut. And Lizzie, lofting a rock to him on the beaches of Malaga and hollering at him to swing low to high, and the gulls crying and the waves cresting and the rock coming down and him feeling the tingling in his hands as he began to swing.

As he swung, he broke his wrists forward and took the ball as if it were as big as a melon and curled it skittering and skating along the beams of silver light, twirling it foul far, far off into the woods beyond third base, higher than any pine trees Phippsburg might set against it, high and far and gone forever.

"Strike one!" Deacon Hurd called.

No one chuckled.

Someone from behind the backstop threw a new ball out to Willis. He took off his glove and roughed the ball up, then put the glove back on and stared in at Turner, not chuckling, but his face dark as the sun spun down and the beams slanted up. The next ball he threw was higher than the first, with a wicked spin he put on with his fingertips just before he released it. Turner sidled his front leg a little to the right and watched the ball come, hearing again the crying gulls and the cresting waves. This time he held his wrists back and sent the ball curling foul past the first-base line, curling away and over the haloed maples and skipping over a gravelly road until it disappeared into a ditch about a county away.

"Strike two!" called Deacon Hurd.

And no one chuckled.

Another new ball from behind the backstop and Willis roughing it up again. A third pitch, as high or higher than the first, without a single bottle of Moxie being passed around, without a single straw hat waving, and Turner waiting, waiting for the ball, and the fire burning in his gut. He broke his wrists again just as the ball came in and threw a roundhouse swing that skied the ball and then curved it foul into the third-base trees.

Whistles from the people of Phippsburg, and shouts of wonder that the minister's boy, the minister's skinny boy should be able to hit a ball that far three times in a row.

But it wasn't three times in a row. It was twelve times in a row. Twelve balls hit as high as pride. Twelve balls hit as far as hope. Twelve balls curling away as though they were lighting off for the Territories. And after every one, whistles and shouts and even clapping for baseballs as foul as baseballs could ever be.