Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (21 page)

Maybe someone who knew he was there.

Maybe even more than one someone who knew he was there.

In the cold, dead, dark air of Mrs. Cobb's house, Turner began to sweat.

He lifted his fingers from the keyboard and sat perfectly still. He felt his hearing sharpen and sharpen until it seemed like another sense entirely, reaching out and around him. He listened for a step. He listened for another creak. He listened for breathing.

Nothing.

He swiveled the organ stool around, slowly, slowly, slowly, stopping the moment a sound came from it. He opened his eyes as wide as he could.

Nothing.

He stood, put his hands out in front of him, and groped his way across the parlor. He stuck his head out into the hall and looked back toward the kitchen. But it was too dark to see anything. He turned the other way, then stopped. Suppose there was someone standing there, a pale face at the window? Or suppose there was someone standing in the very hall?

He turned quickly, afraid that the fear suddenly welling up in him might overtake him. There was no one in the hall. There was no one at the door.

Two more sharp creaks from overhead, like someone walking across a floor and trying not to be heard.

He would have to go upstairs.

He groped back up the front hall and around to the staircase, not swallowing. He set one foot on the first stair, and then the thought that maybe it was Lizzie Bright upstairs warmed him. She knew it was to be her house. Maybe it was so cold on Malaga that she had come in. Maybe she'd meet him at the top of the stairs with her hands on her hips, her head to one side, laughing at him.

For less than a second, the thought filled him with relief. For less than a second.

Because Lizzie had no key.

He began to climb the stairs. Freezing at every creak he made. Freezing at the silences. Listening with quick ears for any sound. Watching with sharpened eyes for someone to appear suddenly at the head of the stairs.

When he reached the top, he crouched down and looked around the hallway. There was more starlight up here, and he could see clearly. Three open doors, and a fourth, closed. He stayed still, watching, until his crouching legs began to hurt. Then he stood up and moved as silently as a murderer to the first open doorway and peered inside. A bedroom that hadn't been slept in for a hundred years.

To the second doorway. A sewing room. He could make out the trestle of the sewing machine, and the straight-backed chair behind it.

To the third doorway But before he reached it, he heard the creak again. From behind the closed door.

He did not move for an eternity or two. Then he figured he could either run down the stairs and out of the house and let whatever was going to happen, happen, or he could pull open the door.

Another loud creak decided it: his eyes open wide; he bolted across the hallway, pulled the door open, shouted, "I see...," and smashed into a flight of steep stairs, striking shins, knees, a hip, elbows, and his nose, which began bleeding. But he couldn't stop to staunch it now. He clambered up the stairs with his hands and feet, missing a step and stumbling, picking himself up, all the time crying, "I see you!" even though he couldn't see anything, and then, suddenly, he was at the top of the stairs and crouching again on a floor as cold as a ledge of granite and it seemed to him that he was suspended in the night sky over Phippsburg.

There was glass all around him—even above him. When he stood, his arms held out for balance, the whole town was laid before him, the houses black against the snow that reflected the silver starlight. The spire of First Congregational rose until it was itself a part of the night sky. He could make out Parker Head heading down to Thayer's haymeadow and the coast; its snowy backside showed between the bare trunks.

And above him, straight above him, the stars followed their own tides. He could almost see them move. His knees bent; he could feel the sea breeze wrapping itself around the cupola and leaning into it some, setting the frame to creaking cheerily at the familiar nudge. Turner set his hands against the freezing glass. Wouldn't Lizzie think this was fine, he thought. And with the thought, he stood on his tiptoes and looked out to where Malaga Island lay in the dark of the New Meadows.

But the island wasn't dark.

This high above town, Turner could see lanterns moving up and down and across Malaga—some in a line down by the coast, some clustered more toward the island's far side, blinking on and off and on again as they passed stands of trees. There must have been fifteen, twenty of them. Then the lanterns on the far side seemed to come together and grow suddenly brighter, until Turner realized that it wasn't lanterns he was seeing—it was a full fire shining a weird orange on the island's snow.

Then the door at the bottom of the stairs slammed shut so hard that the glass rattled around him.

He abandoned the starlight and scrambled down the dark steepness, shouting like the enraged Aeneas until he fell against the door, which did not yield. He stood and pounded, then sat back against the stairs and kicked at it with both feet.

"Strike three," he heard a voice say on the other side of the door."You're out."Then footsteps down the stairs.

Turner pounded again, but the door had been bolted.

Breathless, Turner ran back up into the light of the cupola. Out on Malaga Island, the orange light flared higher, and a line of lanterns headed toward shore, disappearing from Turner's sight as they neared the granite ledges. Desperate, he looked down at the darkness of the town, but there was no one to call to. Pressed against the glass, his hand began to burn on the icy pane.

The glass.

Turner sat down on the floor of the cupola, held his legs up, hoped that Mrs. Cobb wouldn't mind too much that he was about to do a whole lot more to her cupola than he had ever done to her grandfather's picket fence, and kicked against the glass.

It shattered around him. He kicked again and again, knocking shards out of the pane until he could crawl out onto the roof. It was, he knew as soon as he put his hand on it, a very icy roof, and it slanted more than he wished it did, and the elm branches that lay upon it looked more brittle in the dark cold than they did in the dark green of early fall.

'"Safely to Your mansions guide me. Never, oh never, to walk alone,'" said Turner, and let himself slide off the sill and down into the branches—which did not break, but which gathered him up like the pocket of a baseball glove catching a falling ball. Holding on to the elm, he drew himself across the roof, then crawled down the trunk and onto Parker Head Road.

He ran panting, grimacing with the cold air that struck deep into his lungs, hoping, praying that Malaga was not lost.

When the road gave way to the woods, he ran on, using the light on the snow to guide him, holding his arms out across his face to ward off the branches that swiped at him, hoping, praying.

And when he reached the granite ledges and looked across to Malaga, he could almost believe in hope and prayer.

Because there was nothing to show that the lanterns had been there. Not a sign. He could hear the waves quarrel as they made their way up the New Meadows, but no other sound. Turner lifted his face to the sea breeze and sniffed. Not even the scent of smoke. He thought about climbing down the ledges, but in the dark he wasn't sure he could find the holds. Some of them might even be iced over.

The moon came up, jumping right over a sea cliff to hang above the horizon. And it laid its veil over the island, so that Malaga shone with a luminous silver—every stone, every pine—as if an artist had engraved it and set it on the water. For a moment, even the waves stopped, and the island held its breath, and Turner thought, This is how I'll always remember it. This is how it will always be.

Then, in the quiet of that whitening night, standing in new snow with the pine boughs coated above him, Turner felt the hand that he had feared all night long grab him by the shoulder.

Felt it spin him around.

Felt the roar of a shotgun blast flash into the night, a white explosion almost in his face that startled the sleeping gulls up into the air.

Turner screamed as he fell backward into the snow. He scuttled to the edge of the ledges, felt his hand miss, pulled himself back, and tried to get his legs under him. He could hardly see for the explosion, and he held one hand out to ward off whoever had shot at him.

"You're all right, boy. Nobody's going to hurt you."

Turner wasn't sure he was making out every word, what with the ringing in his ears and the clanging in his brain.

"It's the sheriff. Sheriff Elwell. Stand up. Nobody's going to hurt you."

Turner crawled away from the ledges and stood up unsteadily, as if the blast had loosened the granite beneath him and it was swaying with the quarrelsome waves.

"You all right?"

Turner tried to stop the swaying beneath him. He bent his knees, then decided he would do better back on the ground. The bright white spot that was his whole vision began to darken at the edges.

"A shotgun blast right up close to you sure is enough to knock you down, isn't it, boy? There's lots of ways to knock a man down, and that's one of them. I took this shotgun away from a friend of yours just a little while ago, a Mr. Jake Eason. He had it pressed up against my chest at the time, and he was ready to pull the trigger."

Turner kept blinking, trying to darken the bright white. He could just make out the sheriff off to one side, standing tall and dark, the shotgun held up over his shoulder.

"I wanted you to know what it felt like, boy. Wanted you to know what one of your friends was about to do."

Turner wasn't sure if his clanging brain could make sense of the sheriff's words. He shook his head.

"You stick to your own kind. Better for you and your folks. Go on home."

Turner stood again, trying to straighten his knees. His brain was still clanging, but the ground was steadying. He could see more of the sheriff's outline now. He could see his face.

And Turner was filled with a stony, granite rage.

"Boy, you watch yourself."The sheriff backed up a step and leveled the shotgun from his shoulder. Turner could almost see him against the moonlight thrown up off the snow. He could see sudden fear. He could smell it.

"Lizzie was in Mr. Eason's house,"Turner said.

"Maybe so, but she isn't there now. You're not understanding, boy. They're all crazy over there. They're not even right in the head most of the time."

"Lizzie was in that house,"Turner repeated."Did you blow a shotgun off above her, too?"

"As a matter of fact, I didn't need to. She just got up and went along quiet, like she was supposed to."

"Went where?"

"Where all the crazies go. Down to Pownal."

Turner leaped at him, screaming something out of his still-clanging brain. The sheriff backed away, tripped, and went down, and when the butt of the shotgun hit the ground, the other barrel exploded, its white roar glazing the snow around them. But Turner did not even pause. Not for a second. He was on top of the sheriff, pounding at anything he could pound at, leaping back when the sheriff brushed him off, battling like Aeneas, knowing that the battle he fought was a hopeless one, and crying, crying, crying at the hopelessness.

He wasn't ready to stop when his father first shined his lantern on him and pulled him away from the sputtering sheriff.

But he did.

Because he saw his father grab the sheriff by his coat, heft him to his feet, shake him, and toss him back on the ground. Then he reached down and picked up the still-smoking shotgun, turned toward the sea, and flung it spinning over the water, the circle of it shining in the moonlight as it flew over the ledges; over the New Meadows; Lord, maybe over Malaga Island itself; and on and on until the moon set and the night sky darkened once more.

Turner went to stand beside his father, his father of the flinging arm, his father of the heaving chest. "They've taken her away," he said.

"They've taken who away?"

"Lizzie. And the Easons with her."

His father looked at the sheriff.

"Phippsburg has to look after its own," the sheriff said, standing up. "Everyone around here has known for years that Jake Eason is crazy as a loon—him and his whole lot. Sooner or later they would all have gone to Pownal anyway. We did tonight what we should have done long ago."

"What you did tonight you didn't do for the sake of the town. You did it for yourselves."

"We are the town. Everyone around here seems to understand that except for you. You come here and act like you're still in Boston. But you're not. You're here. And in this town, we don't need someone from outside to tell us which way is up."

"Which way is up? By God, Sheriff, you're getting way ahead of yourself. A man who would send a little girl off to an insane asylum just so he could grab her land, he doesn't even know which way is down."

"This way," said the sheriff, and he grabbed Turner by the coat as Turner's father had grabbed him, half lifted him, and threw him back behind him, not even watching to see where he fell.

By the time Turner had spun around and looked up, his father—his father!—and the sheriff were gripping each other's arms and pushing back and forth, sliding and stumbling and tripping over rocks. By the time Turner had gotten to his knees, they had shoved each other close to the edge of the granite. And by the time Turner stood, the sheriff had suddenly let go and backed away as his father's arms windmilled in the moonlit air, and he was over the ledge.

The last thing Turner saw was his father's moonlit eyes.

T
HE
deacons' meeting on Wednesday night was as awkward as a deacons' meeting could get. Deacon Hurd had it all arranged: a typed-up agenda, a written-out prayer—and the formal deacon's letter to the congregation recommending that First Congregational dismiss Reverend Turner Buckminster from its pulpit. But with Reverend Turner Buckminster lying in the parish house with more ribs broken than not, with a leg smashed and his scalp laid open, and still unconscious after three days, Deacon Hurd wasn't eager to begin the meeting. And when Turner walked in just at the stroke of seven o'clock, it was even more deucedly awkward.