Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

  Even Mrs. Buckminster was surprised. "Does that seem fair?" she asked.

  "Yes," said Reverend Buckminster.

  "For the rest of the summer?"

  "Yes," said Reverend Buckminster, and that was all.

  So the next afternoon when it was hot and close, Turner climbed the steps to Mrs. Cobb's house with the sea breeze at his heels, urging him to play. The green door jerked open before he even knocked—as if Mrs. Cobb had been watching for him. "So you're here," she said.

  "I'm here to to read to you ... every day ... for the rest of the summer ... if you like," Turner said. He wondered if he was supposed to say something about being sinful and hoping for forgiveness and grace. But he wasn't sure he could muster any real hope in this heat.

  Mrs. Cobb eyed him. "So you want to read to me."

  Turner nodded. He hoped a nod wasn't the same as an out-loud lie, since he might need one in the near future and didn't want to waste it when things weren't too awful.

  "Did you know my grandfather built that picket fence?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Well, he did. And it's stood all this time and not a single scratch to it. Not until you started stoning it." She took a step back. "You may as well come in."

  With a sigh, Turner decided he might as well. The sea breeze rolled in before him and stirred the fern by the front door. But then it fell panting in the hall, gasping for breath.

  Mrs. Cobb strode on in front of him, passing a stairway that rose up too steeply, and then a library hoarding shelves of dark volumes—the arts of necromancy, Turner figured. Though probably they weren't nearly so interesting.

  She followed the worn tread in the throw rugs, and Turner went after her into a house as hot as it could possibly be without the whole place flaring up. He looked back, hoping the sea breeze might revive, but it lay in the hallway, stricken and still.

  They went into a parlor where no one but Mrs. Cobb had stepped since the century had turned over. The windows had been shut against sea breezes long ago, and they let in only a little sunlight. An organ with yellow ivory keys and threadbare pedals leaned back in the shadows beside a black leather chair whose horsehair stuffing cantered out from every crack. Another chair, straight-backed, cushionless, waited beside a dark round table with a dark book on it. Turner picked up the book—Lives of the English Poets—and the red dust of its leather cover came off in his hand.

  Mrs. Cobb sat down on the leather chair and the horsehair galloped out. "I thought you'd enjoy reading something entertaining," she said.

  "Yes, ma'am." He sat down on the straight-backed chair.

  Silence. It was too hot for words.

  "Would you like me to read now?"Turner asked, almost as if he meant it.

  "I'm going to die in this room," said Mrs. Cobb.

  Turner stared at her.

  "I said, I'm going to die in this room."

  "Today?"

  "Not today," she snapped.

  "No, ma'am," agreed Turner. He was relieved.

  "I'll be sitting here reading and I'll set the book aside on that table and lay my head back right here." She laid her head back. "And then I'll fall asleep. Just like that. Fall asleep." She closed her eyes.

  Yes, ma am.

  "The only thing I'll regret is that nobody will hear my last words. People are always remembered for their last words. They're almost like a message from beyond the grave."

  Turner nodded. He wondered if his father had known that Mrs. Cobb was absolutely and completely crazy when he'd sent him to read to her. He guessed that he probably hadn't.

  Suddenly, her eyes opened and she lifted her head. "Have you thought about what your last words might be?You're never too young to know what your last words might be. Death could come along at any moment and thrust his dart right through you." She jerked her arm out at him, and Turner shot back against the organ.

  "I suppose,"he whispered,"something like,'The Lord is my shepherd.'"

  "Too expected," she said, shaking her head. "Nobody would care to remember that, and you'd have wasted your one opportunity. You don't get two chances to say your last words, you know."

  Turner suddenly felt sick with sadness, as sick as when he had been standing on the rock ledges waiting for the sea to come crashing in on him. Mrs. Cobb was so alone, sitting in a dark room as hot as Beelzebub and waiting for Death's dart to come so that she could say the one thing people would remember her for—knowing all the while that there would be no one there to hear it.

  "Well," she said, "your father said you were coming to read.

  "Yes, ma am.

  "Best get on, then. Start with John Milton. Then we'll get to Alexander Pope."

  "Mrs. Cobb, if I could just have a glass of—"

  "You're young. You don't need it. Get on with Mr. Milton."

  Turner got on with Mr. Milton. He was reading Mr. Milton when he heard the clock chime three with a weary, halfhearted chime. He was reading Mr. Pope when the clock chimed the half hour. He was reading Mr. Addison when the clock chimed four and Mrs. Cobb fell asleep. At least, Turner hoped she was asleep. Her head was back and her eyes were closed and she hadn't said anything since he'd started on Mr. Addison.

  He hoped she hadn't missed her one opportunity.

  He set the book down, quietly. He stepped out into the hall, quietly. Wondering if there was any water left in his body that hadn't been drawn into the starch of his shirt, he walked down the hall—quietly—past a dining room, and finally to the kitchen. He didn't bother looking for a glass; he just held his face by the spout and pumped. At the second pumping, a rush of warm water rusty with iron flushed out, but at the third it was cold and clear. He drank in gulps, then let it come down over his face.

  Turner wasn't sure he should leave Mrs. Cobb asleep and alone, but he was sure he needed some air that hadn't been wrung out inside the house. Slowly, quietly, he went back down the hall. Slowly, quietly, he looked in on Mrs. Cobb to see if she was breathing. He couldn't quite tell, but he decided that the odds were pretty good that she hadn't left the world this very afternoon. He went on to the front hall and stepped over the sea breeze. If he could just open the door and gulp some air, he'd be able to sit with her through Mr. Addison, and his amends would be over for the day.

  So he opened the door—and stared beyond the picket gate at Willis Hurd and his friends, who all broke into sudden and uproarious laughter—all except Willis, who was smiling his chicken-killing smile.

  "Nice shirt, Buckminister," sneered Willis. "You calling on your girl?"

  A sea surge of laughter from the road.

  "I'm not calling on my girl."

  "Oh," said Willis, turning to the others. "He says he's not calling on his girl."

  Turner reached behind him for the door.

  "She wouldn't have him anyway, scared as he is to jump into a wave. Hey, Buckminister, you jump about as good as you swing a bat."

  Turner let go of the doorknob and went down the porch steps.

  "You got him mad now, Willis!"

  "Sure. He's coming to fight for his girl." Willis held the gate open. "You know how to fight. Buckminister? You know how to throw a punch as good as you swing a bat?"

  Turner threw one. Even before it landed, he realized that Willis had never believed he would. It crashed into his cheek and slid over onto his nose, and Turner knew that Willis's face would probably be all blood in a second or two. He also knew that Willis, who was a head bigger than he, would tuck into him faster than a ball screaming down toward first.

  All this turned out to be true, and it wasn't much more than a minute before Willis landed an unsporting and sickening punch (which even he regretted) that had Turner on the ground, writhing and throwing up all the cold water he had swallowed.

  Willis backed up and wiped a hand under his bleeding nose. He stood still, watching Turner crumpled, holding himself, his face coated with the dust of the road, his white shirt smeared with blood.

  "You want us to call your girl?" br />
  "Let's get on," said Willis. "He'll be all right. Let's get on."

  But Turner didn't want them to leave with him sprawled in the road. He wouldn't let them leave with him sprawled in the road.

  He pushed himself up from his knees, winced, and reached out for the picket gate, not caring much whether he got blood on Mrs. Cobb's grandfather's work. He missed it the first time, organized his eyes so that they were seeing straighter, and grabbed at it again. Slowly he came up, trying to sort out his legs underneath him, wishing the world weren't spinning as fast as it was. But he was standing. His knees wobbled and he was bent over, but he was standing. Turner didn't look to see if Willis was watching him, but he figured he was, so he walked slowly, as unbent as he could under the circumstances, up the steps and onto the porch. He tracked down the doorknob, turned it, and went inside, making sure to take a quick but necessarily shallow gulp of air just before he closed the door behind him.

  He would not cry. He was trapped in the dark pit of the world, but he would not cry. God and all the heavenly host were witness that he had every reason to, but he would not cry.

  There was a satisfaction, though. He flexed his hand and looked down at his bloody knuckles. Willis's blood. He remembered the feeling of his knuckles striking Willis's cheek, and he didn't care a doggone bit that he had enjoyed hitting Willis, minister's son or not. Not one doggone bit.

  Still bent, Turner shuffled back to the kitchen, checking once more to see if Mrs. Cobb was asleep—or dead. She was, one or the other. Taking off his shirt, he pulled at the pump again and put his head under it, spitting out the bile in his mouth. The water was as cold and wonderful as before, and after a quick check, he realized that none of the blood that had spurted all over the place was his own—another satisfaction. But his or not, it had spurted all over him, and the shirt—and the pants as well—might be beyond hope. Still, they were worth a try, so he held the shirt under the streaming water to wash off as much as he could of Willis's blood; then he took off his pants and held them under the stream, too. He set them on the back of a chair to dry, which, he figured, would hardly take any time in a place as hot as this. If he did get them dry, he could wear them home and no one would be the wiser. Except maybe his mother. He might have to account to her for any bloodstains that were left, but that was the kind of thing he had saved his out-loud lie for.

  Now, Turner had heard his father say more than once that there are times when things spin away, when they go from bad to worse, then worse again. We should thank God for those times, he said, since they are God's reminders that we poor and lowly creatures need His help.

  Turner had never liked this line of thinking. He figured that if things got bad through no fault of your own, then God should stand up and do something about it. It seemed only right.

  He was thinking that now when he wheeled about at a sudden breath behind him and saw Mrs. Cobb staring. She had one hand up to her open mouth, and her eyes were as shocked as if the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypse had come riding down into her kitchen.

  "What in the name of all that's holy are you doing?"

  Turner sighed.

  "You are standing in my house, my very house, naked."

  Turner sighed again.

  "Turner Buckminster, you are standing in my house naked."

  "I'm wearing my underwear," he said weakly.

  Mrs. Cobb spurted back into the hallway, fast enough that the Seven Horsemen themselves would have had trouble with the pace. He heard her clomping up the steep stairs.

  There was nothing to do but take up his wet clothes and put them back on. He dripped down the hall, across the stoop, through Mrs. Cobb's front yard, past the picket gate, and most of the way home. He figured he might get there before the news reached his father. He had a while to wait and wonder why God hadn't handled things a little bit better.

  But he had enjoyed smacking Willis. He smiled and flexed his hand again.

  ***

  The problem of God's not handling things well troubled Lizzie, too. She had been watching a pale crab in a low pool for about an hour—maybe the same crab that had tumbled onto her toe the day before. And after all that watching, she figured the crab deserved a name, and so she gave it one: Zerubabel. When she called, it waved its tiny pink pincers at her frantically "You like your name, don't you, Zerubabel?" She twirled a finger and let Zerubabel catch her. She pulled it up, right out of the water, and then shook it back in with a tiny splash. "A toughie." She smiled.

  Lizzie peered up at the ledges across the way. Not a frock coat in sight. Not a white shirt in sight. The grainy rocks, the swaying pines, the cascade of stubborn blue mussels, the water splashing up green and streaming back white—they were all the same, as if the frock coats had never been there. They would always be the same.

  And it was right then that God didn't handle things too well.

  A sudden feathered swooping startled her back. A splash, a labored beating of wings, and Zerubabel was in a gull's beak, its pale, pink shell already crushed, its tiny pincers loosely dangling.

  And Lizzie was crying.

  Golly Moses, she thought, it was only a tiny crab, after all. There were crabs under every patch of floating seaweed. There were crabs in every pool up the shore. And gulls had to eat, too.

  But she had named it Zerubabel, and it had held its little pincers so prettily.

  So she cried. And she was still crying when she heard the splash of oars and saw a dory just digging its nose into the gravelly beach around the turn and Sheriff Elwell jumping out and getting his pants wet to the knees so that the other frock coats could step out onto the shore of Malaga Island.

  Lizzie stopped crying and ran. It might be that a dolphin could swim faster than Lizzie through the water and a fish hawk dive faster through the air, but nothing alive could run across Malaga Island faster than Lizzie Griffin. So before the five frock coats had clambered out of the dory, Lizzie's grandfather knew of their coming. And before they had climbed up the shore, the sea breeze blowing back their frock coats like beating wings, most of the folks who lived on Malaga Island knew of their coming, too, and were standing on their doorsteps.

  "Preacher Griffin," called out Sheriff Elwell. "Preacher Griffin!"

  Lizzie came out of her house hanging onto her grandfather's arm. He held a ladle in his hands and blinked against the bright sunlight. Lizzie loved him like this: stooped a little, as though something were dragging on him by the shoulders, his eyes the tiniest bit closed, his mouth pulled up on one side, his tread sort of slow. She knew he was strong. He could heft a dory right up onto its blocks, dig out a rock that a glacier had dropped into his garden patch, and cart enough firewood in his own two hands to warm their house and the Tripp house through a whole winter day—and the Tripp house had more sunlight between its boards than board.

  But you could never tell this by looking at him. Unless The Change happened. When he took his Bible in hand and stood up in front of God and all Malaga Island to preach, he'd be straight up, his eyes opened wide and glinting like mica. His voice would drop down three, four, five notes, and he'd hold the Good Book level, and you'd think he had the angels at his command. Golly Moses, he looked as if he could stamp his foot on the ground and the rocks would split open beneath him and fire and thunder come out.

  Lizzie prayed that The Change would come on now. She saw that not a single one of the frock coats understood what might happen if her grandfather decided to stamp his foot on the ground.

  But The Change did not come on. Not yet.

  "You all well, Preacher?" asked Sheriff Elwell.

  Lizzie's grandfather nodded. "Thanks for asking," he said.

  "Your fence here needs fixing."

  "It usually does, Sheriff."

  The sheriff nodded. "I haven't heard tell of anything missing in town since last spring. Not a single chicken, all this time. I suppose you've been preaching right."

  "I hope I have."

  "That one yours?" He pointed
to Lizzie. "You been climbing trees?"

  Lizzie scooted behind her grandfather. "She's my granddaughter. Thaddeus's girl."

  "She don't say much."

  "Sometimes folks who have things to say don't say them."

  Sheriff Elwell looked at him sharply.

  Just then, twenty, thirty gulls rose from somewhere on the island coast and turned to face the sea breeze, screeching like broken promises. The gulls beat up into the air, speckling the shore with their shadows. Sheriff Elwell watched them, and when he turned back, he saw that Reverend Griffin had not moved. "Preacher, I'll get right to the point of it, us coming out here and all. These shanties"—he waved his hand across the island—"these shanties have all got to come down."

  The gulls glided back around, all together, all yawing their wings to the drafts that brought them low to the water. Then they straightened and flew over the ledges on the far shore, out of sight.

  "They in somebody's way?"

  "They've got to come down and you've got to move on."

  "By this fall," added one of the frock coats. Deacon Hurd.

  "I see," said Reverend Griffin, nodding. Lizzie watched him for The Change, but she didn't see any signs of it. "And by this fall. I see." He thought some and tilted his head at Sheriff Elwell. "Someone worried about his chickens? Someone missing his traps?"

  "It's our tax money," said Deacon Hurd. "If a single one of you comes onto the pauper rolls, where do you think the money to keep you will come from? It will come from the people of Phippsburg."

  "We're awful glad to hear that the people of Phippsburg will care for us in our time of trouble. But Sheriff, when was the last time Phippsburg sent their taxes our way?"

  "The schoolhouse," pointed out another frock coat. "And the teacher's salary to go with it."

  "I guess," said Lizzie's grandfather slowly, "I guess I thought that every town in the state of Maine took care to find a teacher for its own."