Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

  Lizzie thought that maybe he really was an idiot, bending down that way, letting the blood spout out. "You're supposed to lie down," she called, "with your head back. So's the blood will stop." He did not answer her, so she spoke slowly. "Are you understanding what I'm saying?"

  Turner was starting to sweat and feeling sort of weak. He was also beginning to seriously doubt that he would survive his first week in Maine. He knelt down on the beach, careful to keep the gushing blood away from his pants, and wondered if it was possible for all the blood in his body to drain out through his nose.

  Lizzie set down the clam bucket and rake she'd carried from the dory and walked carefully up to him, a little wary because you never can tell what idiots might do. "Do you understand me?"

  Turner nodded.

  "Lie down and put your head back. Like this." He felt her hands on his shoulders and let her push him down. She put one hand behind his head and laid him back until he was flat. "Turn your head."The blood started to run down over his left cheek. "You better now?"

  He was not better now. He would not be better now until he had put this entire state somewhere about a thousand miles away from him.

  "You talk any? I mean, if you understand me and all."

  "I talk," said Turner, "but not usually to people who hide out and scare someone so that a rock comes down on his face."

  "Well," said Lizzie slowly, "as far as the rock coming down on your face, I'm not the fool who threw it up."

  Turner was in no mood to allow that this was so.

  "It looks like it's letting up some. Looks like it might be. A little, anyways."

  Turner moved his hand to his face, hesitated, and then gently, gently touched his nose. "Is it pushed off to one side?"

  "Not much. Not so that anyone would notice—unless they were up close. But not so much."

  This was not the answer Turner had been hoping for. He touched his nose again and decided that he probably shouldn't try to push it back into place.

  "What were you doing anyway, hitting at stones?"

  "I was hitting at stones."

  "You've got a reason to do that?"

  "Yes, I've got a reason to do that."

  Lizzie sat down on the ground to consider."You don't have to snap so."

  Turner sat up slowly, touched his nose again, felt a new spurt of blood, and laid his head back. Lizzie thought he looked like a dog trying to sniff out something but not quite getting hold of the scent. She decided she would not tell him this. "If you take that shirt off, we could try to wash out the blood," she said. "Salt water is fine for that. Salt water will do for everything."

  "Maybe not," said Turner. He stood up, his head held carefully, and looked fully at her for the first time. He was surprised to find that he immediately liked her. In fact, he was almost shocked that he immediately liked her. He'd never even spoken to a Negro before. Never once. But he liked the smooth, easy way she stood, as if she were part of the contour of the shore. He liked the oak brown of her eyes and the grip of her long toes on the rocky ground, the tilt of her head like a sail catching the wind. She had lit out for the Territories and found them, he thought.

  "I could teach you how to do that," she said.

  "How to do what? Get hit in the face with a rock? I don't need to learn how to do that."

  "No, you're plenty good enough at that as it is. I mean to swing a bat, if that's what you're doing. And my name, by the way, is Lizzie. Lizzie Griffin."

  "Thanks, but I already know how to swing a bat. And my name, by the way, is Turner. Turner Ernest Buckminster."

  "Doesn't look to me like you do. And I have a middling name, too."

  "I do any place where they know how to pitch. And what is it?"

  "Well, Turner Ernest Buckminster, your problem isn't the pitch, it's the swing. It's Lizzie Bright Griffin."

  "Then let's see you swing, Lizzie Bright Griffin."

  She picked up the driftwood branch that Turner had let fall. "Pitch one," she said.

  So he did. The first was too high and fell short. The second was too long and lobbed over her head. But then Turner got used to the weight, and the third went somewhere in the middle, and Lizzie, Lizzie of the steady eye and firm hand, Lizzie Bright Griffin swung and hit the stone dead center. In fact, every time Turner pitched her a stone within shouting distance, she hit it dead center—no matter how high the arch, no matter how straight the descent.

  "Good?" asked Lizzie finally.

  "Better than good," said Turner.

  "You don't look so bad when you smile, you know. Even if you are still sort of bloody and your nose is pushed off to one side."

  "It isn't pushed off to one side. And you don't look so bad when you swing. You start with your hands low, don't you, and when the pitch comes down, you set them lower and draw in."

  She nodded. "You're not an idiot after all. Not even halfway." She handed the branch to Turner. "Now you."

  She was, in addition to being a better batter than he was, a better pitcher than he was. "Start lower and come higher," she said.

  "If I start lower and come higher, I'll pop it up every time."

  "Of course you'll pop it up every time. We'll straighten that out later."

  Turner lowered the branch and looked at her skeptically.

  "Here," she said, "I'll show you again." And she stepped next to him and put her hands over his, and together they swung the bat in an arc as graceful as a fish hawk's winging slide through the air. They did it again and again, until Turner suddenly shivered, stepped back, and looked at her.

  "You never touch a girl before, Turner Ernest Buckminster? Or is it just that you never touched a girl with black skin before?"

  "I've never even talked to someone with black skin before."

  "Well," she said, "never mind. You're holding up your end just fine."

  By noon, Turner could hit most every pitch she threw to him—and not just a glancing hit, either. He was starting to level out his swing, and he even tried sending one or two down a sideline. His hands were ringing with the hits, and blisters were starting to bubble up. It was only when a couple of them broke and started to bleed that he thought he'd better stop, since he was not sure how much blood he had left to lose.

  "You can wash that in the water," Lizzie said.

  "I know," said Turner. "Salt water will do for everything." He knelt down to where the sea lay flat and exhausted after tumbling in close.

  "It'll sting some," Lizzie called as he held his hand down. "Maybe a little more than some."

  It did sting. A little more than some. But Turner did not mind all that much. He held his wet hand up and watched the salt sea drip from it.

  "My granddaddy says it's the stinging that drives out the hurt."

  "Your granddaddy?"Turner asked.

  "Reverend Griffin."

  And that was when Turner suddenly knew that he was late for dinner, that Reverend Buckminster would be figuring that he'd fallen into some rocky chasm or drowned in the sea, or worse yet, that he'd come up with some other way to embarrass the new minister. And he figured that when he showed up alive after all, his father would stand on the porch and look at him in a way that said Turner would never be the kind of son he had hoped for—it would be as loud as if he had just announced it from the pulpit.

  "Lizzie Bright Griffm, do you ever wish the world would just go ahead and swallow you whole?"

  "Sometimes I do," she said, and then smiled. "But sometimes I figure I should just go ahead and swallow it." And she held her arms out wide, as if she would gather it all in. And for a moment, Turner had no doubt that she could.

  He clambered back up the ledges, retrieved his collar—it took some time to find—and so sprinted home, hardly able to breathe by the time he reached the front porch.

  He was right. His mother and father did think he had fallen into a chasm or drowned, and when he showed up alive—and bloody again—his father did look at him in a way that said Turner would never be the kind of
son he had hoped for. The thought prowled quietly among the plates on the dining room table. When his father started to read from Proverbs, Turner was surprised at how many verses about rebellious children he had been able to collect on such short notice.

  "Do you think you'll be able to last the afternoon without bleeding over your shirt, Turner?" his father asked. He held a spoonful of yesterday's egg pudding in front of him, and Turner was fascinated by the delicate balance of the thing, the way it jiggled and threatened to plop off onto the tablecloth but never quite did—almost as if it didn't dare to, because it was the Reverend Buckminster holding it.

  Turner nodded.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a game down to Thayer's haymeadow this afternoon. You could get to know some of the boys."

  Another nod. Egg pudding still jiggling. The spoon slanting a bit, so that a bulge of the pudding was about to slide off, nutmeg skin and all.

  "You'll need to keep your clothes clean, though," Reverend Buckminster observed.

  "Yes, sir," said Turner. He could just imagine himself running down to the field, wearing his starched white shirt and pretending he wasn't, begging to play with Willis Hurd. An afternoon couldn't look much worse. Maybe reading to Mrs. Cobb—that might be worse. He wondered if Lizzie would still be down on the shore.

  "On the way back, stop by Mrs. Cobb's house to apologize. Then you can read to her as well."

  Turner looked up from the egg pudding. Things were getting much worse indeed. "Do I play the organ for her today, too?"

  "And apologize," finished Reverend Buckminster. "Turner, God does not want us to ..."

  But Turner did not particularly care just then what God did not want us to do. He watched as his father became The Minister. His face took on a kind of faraway look, as if he were seeing something no one else could see, as if he were eager to talk to anyone lower than the seraphim for a time. His voice got higher and slower, as if he expected it to be rising into the church rafters.

  The egg pudding fell to the tablecloth, and Turner's father did not notice. It lay there, slowly spreading out, a yellow blob against the white.

  And suddenly, Turner had a thought that had never occurred to him before: he wondered if his father really believed a single thing he was saying.

  And suddenly, Turner had a second thought that had never occurred to him before: he wondered if he believed a single thing his father was saying.

  The intoning went on, its bulk bloating and bloating so that Turner thought the very ceiling might be pushed up. It went on, pressing on his eardrums. It went on, threatening the very roof. It went on, until the last thing Turner thought could ever happen—the very last thing—happened.

  "Buckminster, stop it!"

  It took Turner a moment to figure out who had just spoken. He saw that his mother had stood, that she had one hand against her face, another clenched into the checks of her apron. Since there was no one in the room but the three of them, it had to have been her. But that couldn't be.

  Turner looked at his father, who was coming to just about the same conclusion.

  "Turner," his mother said quietly, "go upstairs and change into something you can hit a baseball in. And I'll stop by Mrs. Cobb's this afternoon."

  Turner stood.

  "Go on now," she said tightly.

  He wondered what might happen as soon as he left the dining room, and he was more than a little tempted to dawdle. But his father's face—which no longer looked as if it were facing only the seraphim—was convincing enough. And the prospect of wearing something that had not been made for church was too good for him to wait any longer, so he sprinted upstairs.

  When he came back down, he was in a shirt and trousers he had found lying at the foot of his bed, a shirt and trousers that would never have marked him as a minister's son. After just a single stealthy moment of listening at the closed dining room doors—there was absolute silence—he leaped out into the free air, and headed straight for the haymeadow, the memory of the driftwood in his hands.

  But a storm was boiling up in more places than in his dining room. Dinner had taken long enough for thickened thunderheads to swell off the coast. Turner felt the heavy air they dropped, heard their rumbling like the distant chariots of the Assyrians. He ran to the shore to see them come in.

  Before he reached the haymeadow, the first big raindrops were plopping down and exploding in the yellow dust. They fell sudden and cold on his back. The wind bucked up, shifted once, and then again, and set the buoys out in the Kennebec bowing toward him. When Turner looked over the river, he saw an iron sheet of rain coming toward him, lit up from behind through a rip in the dark purple of the clouds.

  He thought suddenly of Lizzie on the shore and flung out his arms and opened his mouth as the sheet came upon him. If Mrs. Cobb had seen him just then, she would have thought he was grinning like a loon and would have scampered off to tell the new minister that his son hadn't the sense God had given him, that he was standing out in the middle of the storm with his arms spread out and his mouth open. And she would have been right—about him grinning like a loon.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE rain passed Turner, swept across Thayer's haymeadow, charged up Parker Head, and swirled around First Congregational, ripping off some of the still-green maple leaves and sending them in whirling cones against Mrs. Cobb's grandfather's fence and up onto Mrs. Hurd's porch. By the time Turner had started to feel the chill of it, the rain had already run down through the cedars, over the shore, and across the New Meadows, and had begun to scatter on Malaga Island, where Lizzie was just running into her house before it soaked her.

  It rained all night, and Turner up in Phippsburg and Lizzie down on Malaga Island lay in their beds in the deep dark, their arms up behind their heads, listening to the play of the drops on their roofs. The drops played long after Turner and Lizzie had fallen asleep, and they played while Turner's mother and father lay still and unmoving in the dark, and they played while Lizzie's granddaddy sat quietly at his door, an unlit pipe in his mouth. They played across the coast all through the night, until the soft new day shrugged itself awake, tried on amethyst and lavender for a while, and finally decided on a pale yellow.

  The day was brighter by the time Turner finished his breakfast, and a whole lot brighter when he ran out of the house, his bat over his shoulder, his glove slung onto it, and the other tossing a baseball up and around, behind his back and over his head. He left in a shirt that he had hung carefully up to dry the night before, that was not white, and that Mrs. Cobb probably would not approve of It surprised him that he felt a little bad that his father would not approve, either—but not so bad that he would change it. Still, he hurried by Mrs. Cobb's, trusting that maybe the Lord would get things right today and she wouldn't be out by her grandfather's fence.

  She wasn't out. But Mrs. Hurd was, sweeping the leaves off her porch. When she saw Turner, she waved at him with a merry hand. She was still dressed all in white, her hair tied tightly into a bun. Turner wondered if she had ever looked any other way. Maybe God had created her just like this, plunking her down old and white and with her hair tied back, without any preliminaries at all.

  He waved back at her. "Morning, Mrs. Hurd."

  "Morning, Turner III. Did you enjoy the rain last night?" Yes, ma am.

  "Me, too. Did you go out in it?"

  "Yes, ma'am, I did."

  Mrs. Hurd leaned over her porch rail."Me, too." She smiled like a conspirator. "You know why you got whipped, don't your?"

  "Ma'am?"

  "You know why you got whipped?"

  "Whipped?"

  "You were supposed to hit that boy in the eye."

  Turner went to the bottom of her steps. "I thought I got whipped because I shouldn't have been fighting."

  Mrs. Hurd sighed a mighty sigh. "Don't be such a Christian. You got whipped because you got only the first part right—when you're fighting someone bigger than you are, you've got to break his nose first, and you
did that just fine. But then there's the second part. You have to figure he's going to be mad, and so you have to hit him in the right eye to shut it. After that you're even."

  Turner stood, stunned. Mrs. Hurd went back to her sweeping. "Don't you know about these things, Turner III?"

  "I'm sort of surprised that you do, Mrs. Hurd."

  She smiled, a smile as beautiful as the yellow day, and came down the steps, leaving her broom against a post. "What a lovely thing to say," she told him, and she reached up and kissed him lightly on his cheek. "But remember"—she balled her right hand into a fist—"first to the nose, like this, and then a left up to the eye, like that."

  "First to the nose, then to the eye." Turner was smiling, too.

  "Now go on your way. The day's too bright to spend it fighting with an old lady."

  He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

  "And it won't do to go courting an old lady, either."

  "I'm not courting you,"Turner said. "I just figure it would be smart to stay on your good side if I don't want to get my nose broken and my right eye shut."

  "You learn quickly, Turner III. Go on now."

  He went on now.

  It had been dry too long for even an all-night rain to leave the dirt of Parker Head muddy, and Turner ran down the road and up into the woods. By the time he began to clamber down the ledges, he was wet through with the rain the branches had swiped at him, and he did not care, not wearing a shirt a minister's boy would have to be particular about. The day was bright and the sea blue and the salt air clear. It was all so perfect that Turner was hardly surprised when he reached the shore and found Lizzie was waiting for him, her dory pulled up by the chin onto the rocks and bucking a bit with the tide.

  He tossed her the ball, and she caught it with one hand. "No more rocks!" he called.

  "I don't know," Lizzie said. "You were getting on with rocks. You think you can hit something like this?"