Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

  "What would you have me say, Mr. Stonecrop? That my own boy shouldn't find shelter for someone in need? That my own boy shouldn't care for the outcast?" Now he leaned across the desk. "By God, that my own boy shouldn't stand up—as his father should have stood up—against the money of the town when it set about to destroy a community that never harmed it, merely for the sake of tourists from Boston? Is that what you'd have me say to him?"

  Mr. Stonecrop went to the door of the study. "Ethics are a fine thing to have, Reverend. You can take them out and wave them around like a flag whenever you feel a qualm of conscience. And all that flag-waving will make you feel just like you're up there in heaven with God Himself. But God has seen fit to set me to live in the here and now, Reverend. And I do what it takes to live in the here and now."

  Turner's father reached over his desk and pulled away the sermon notes. "Have you read this book, Mr. Stonecrop? The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin. Turner and I have been reading in it quite a bit together. We've already finished The Origin of Species. I suspect you might not recognize it."

  "Are you, a minister of the gospel, taunting me with godlessness, even while teaching it to your son?"

  "Darwin writes that man is liable to slight variations, which are induced by general and complex laws."

  "The deacons will hear of this."

  "I have no doubt they will. But consider this, Mr. Stonecrop, my slight variation, induced by general and complex laws: I will not stand with you at the destruction of Malaga Island. I will instead stand with my son."

  Mr. Stonecrop narrowed his eyes. Turner had never seen anyone do it in quite this way before, and he thought once again of homicide. "There will never be a Negro living in the town of Phippsburg," Mr. Stonecrop said quietly. "I will see to it myself." He flung the keys onto the floor.

  ***

  That night, in the quiet of his dark room, while a deep and clear cold frosted the starlight over the town, those words came back to Turner: "I will see to it myself." He sat up in his bed and looked out the window. He stayed that way for a long time, as if to guard the world.

  He guarded the world most nights through that next week. When he was more angry than afraid, he recited Virgil: "Of arms and the man I sing!"

  He was more than halfway through the Aeneid now, and getting faster at his hundred lines. After lunch and a chapter of Darwin—he did not mind the summaries—his father told him he was free to find Lizzie Bright. She waited for him by the pines above the granite ledges—it was too cold to wait down by the shore—and together they explored the New Meadows coast, watching everything hunker down for the winter: the chipmunks and the squirrels with their last cheekfuls of larder, the deer toward dusk with their heavier coats, the rabbits whitening except for the tips of their ears.

  Every day Turner asked Lizzie to come live in Mrs. Cobb's house.

  Lizzie would smile at him and shake her head. "Turner, they'll never let us," she said.

  "It won't make a bit of difference," he said.

  And she would smile again and tell him he didn't look at things straight on, and then she would find some mouse tracks in the snow and they would follow them until they disappeared beneath a small bank.

  Mr. Stonecrop wasn't at church the next Sunday. At least, not at First Congregational. There were, in fact, quite a few souls of the Phippsburg faithful who did not come on that Lord's Day. Even Lillian Woodward failed to show for her prelude, and Turner found himself taking her place at the organ bench and looking over a mighty small congregation. The Newtons were there, with all the little Newtons. Deacon Hurd was there, and Willis, but none of the other Hurds. Reverend Buckminster waited for a few minutes past the hour to give the opening prayer, but the congregational singing that followed was thin, and Turner had to tone the volume down about as low as it could go if he was to hear any voices at all.

  From the organ bench, Turner listened to his father preach as though he were addressing a house packed full of the saints, but he could also see his mother fidgeting in the front pew, opening and closing her Bible, taking out her handkerchief and twisting it in her hands until she realized what she was doing and put it away. Then she'd take it out a minute or two later and start all over again.

  Turner imagined the houses up on Quality Ridge falling to the trumpets of the Hebrew host.

  It didn't take too long to shake hands with folks after the service. Most of the congregation didn't meet the eyes of their tightlipped minister. When Deacon Hurd went past, he nodded curtly. "There's a deacons' meeting this Wednesday night," he said.

  "I'll be there."

  "No, Reverend. For meetings of this sort, the bylaws tell me I have to inform the minister, not invite him."

  Turner wondered if his mother might swing out her right arm and go for Deacon Hurd's nose, then his eye. That would be worth seeing. And he was sorely disappointed when Mrs. Buckminster simply shook the deacon's hand as he went on past.

  But all thoughts of a bloodied deacon disappeared a few seconds later when Willis whispered to him, "Tonight. It's tonight," and then went on by, holding Turner's eyes with his own for as long as he could. Turner felt himself go cold in the center, a cold so deep it made him nauseated. He felt as though he were standing on a cliff over the sea.

  Tonight, something would happen to Mrs. Cobb's house.

  He did not tell his parents what Willis had said. They sat in silence through dinner, but it was not the same as the silence that had been there before. His parents' eyes often met, and sometimes they reached out to touch each other's hands. They ate quietly, glad to be together.

  So Turner let them be glad together.

  It turned out to be the coldest night Turner had spent in Maine so far, the kind of night that let him know that fall was pretty much wrung out, and that deep winter was on its way to freeze the salt water out into the New Meadows. Turner lay in his room, shivering even though he was still dressed, listening to the familiar sounds of his parents moving around in the room below him, coming up the stairs, closing the door. Their quiet talk. He listened to the mantel clock chime the quarter hours and to the house tightening itself against the cold.

  He figured he would leave the house just at midnight, but he got so fidgety that he couldn't wait that long, and around eleven-thirty he crept downstairs. Across the hall. Into his father's study for the keys to Mrs. Cobb's house. Back to the front hall. Slowly turned the doorknob and opened the door. The air was so cold it rasped in his throat, as cold as a hardened heart. He sat on the top porch step, put his shoes on, shivered, and then set off down Parker Head for Mrs. Cobb's house. "Arma virumque cano," he said to himself, and wished he had Aeneas's arms.

  He let himself in through Mrs. Cobb's back door—the door Lizzie had always used. Inside, only a faint starlight shone through the windows. He groped his way through the kitchen, down the hall, and to the front door, afraid to light a lamp, afraid to make a sound. Around him the house seemed huge, with rooms above and beneath him that he had never entered. Who knew what could be there? Who knew if Mrs. Cobb herself could be there, still trying somehow to get her last words right?

  Turner shivered, and not only with the cold—though the Lord knew it was cold enough to shiver. His breath frosted the window in the door, and he stepped back, wondering if someone outside might be able to see him—or his breath. But outside, Parker Head was as quiet as the hall inside Mrs. Cobb's house.

  Turner went into all the rooms on the first floor, his hands held out in front of him to feel anything he couldn't see. And when he got to each of the windows, he held his breath and peered out, looking for whatever it was Willis had meant was coming—though he wasn't sure what he would do when it came. He figured if someone snuck up to the house and looked in on him, he could pretty well startle whoever it was into a faint. But what would happen when he woke up and found it was only Turner inside?

  He fumbled his way back to the parlor and reached around for the organ stool. He sat down on it, careful to ke
ep his feet from the pedals. He let his fingers slowly stroke the silent keys, tapping out "I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone." He didn't need any light to find the notes, and the feeling of something so familiar on his fingertips kept him from thinking about a ghostly Mrs. Cobb.

  He was in the middle of the third verse when he heard something upstairs creak four times—four separate times—and he knew that while he had been sitting alone in the dark, someone had come in.

  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 s
topped, 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.