Homecoming

  “How should I know?” James asked. “Can we eat in a restaurant?”

  “If one’s open. It’s pretty early.”

  Early as it was, no more than half-past seven, the water was already dotted with white sails. Everybody here must sail, Dicey thought. Everybody must have his own boat. “Did you ever see so many boats?” she asked James, as they descended the main street.

  He paid no attention to her. He was looking for a place to eat. They passed three closed restaurants before they found one open. Its single narrow room wasn’t air-conditioned, but the cool morning air came in through the open door and was moved around by big ceiling fans. They sat down in a tiny booth.

  Dicey read the prices before she read the menu. “Pancakes,” she said. “Maybeth, Sammy and I can split an order. James, you can have one to yourself, if you’ll give me half of a pancake. Is that okay? And milk.” James was too hungry to argue. Dicey realized that they hadn’t had enough dinner the night before. She would have to be careful about that.

  The counter was filled with people drinking coffee and reading papers. The little room hummed with activity as waitresses whisked about taking orders, bringing food. When Dicey paid the bill, she asked the man at the cash register where an army-navy surplus store was. He told her it was out beyond the bus station, and he took the time to be sure she understood his directions, even though there was a line of people behind her waiting to pay.

  Fast and relaxed, that was what it was like in that restaurant.

  It was that way out on the street, too. The temperature was climbing up, and the sky was bleaching yellow with heat. People were entering the little stores that lined the streets or standing in groups before the doors of the several banks. The working day was about to begin. But almost all of these people turned, before they entered, to look down the hill to the water and boats, and then up the hill to the church within its ring of trees, as if they could take their own sweet time going in to work. Some of them smiled at the Tillermans. Some wished them a good morning.

  At the army-navy store, Dicey studied the shelves of goods before she made her purchases. It was like a library in there, tall stacks of rods, shirts, hats, pants, shoes and jackets, and tennis rackets and inflatable rafts lining the narrow aisles. Dicey picked out a one-quart aluminum saucepan, four ponchos in children’s sizes, a packet of hooks and the smallest, lightest reel of fishing line she could find. After some thought, she chose a red canvas bookbag and went to the front of the store.

  The jackknife she picked out of a glass-fronted case was the most expensive thing she bought. It had two blades, one large and one small, a gadget to open cans with, a little screwdriver and a file. The bill came to seventeen dollars all together, seventeen dollars and twenty-four cents to be exact. Dicey sighed, but paid. She asked the salesman to put everything into the canvas bag, except the jackknife. She slipped the jackknife into her pocket. It felt heavy and good there.

  Outside again, Dicey waited until they were out of sight of the store, then she transferred everything from the suitcase to the canvas bag. She gave James the empty suitcase to carry and slung the bag over her shoulder, holding it by the rope that pulled its neck closed. It was much easier to carry than the suitcase, so much easier that she wondered why she had bought a suitcase in the first place.

  Dicey went into the small bus station and set her empty suitcase down by the door. She went out to rejoin her family. She was entirely pleased with herself.

  “Now what?” she asked them.

  “What do you mean?” James asked.

  “What do you want to do now?” Dicey asked.

  “Get going,” Sammy said.

  “I don’t know how yet,” Dicey answered. “I haven’t figured that out. Are you tired?”

  None of them was tired.

  “Let’s just wander around then, okay? I think better while I’m moving.”

  They walked the morning away. They stayed away from the hospital and their sleeping place and stuck to the historic section on the map. They wandered down narrow streets lined with narrow houses and up broader streets where the houses were grander, where the street-level windows rose from floor to ceiling of the rooms within. People in Annapolis, Dicey decided, must like bricks. The sidewalks were brick as were many of the houses and public buildings.

  Dicey also decided that she liked brick. It was so sturdy looking and symmetrical, in the first place. And then, when it was very, very old, it achieved a gentle, mellowed look, like old photographs or long-burning fires or a pair of blue jeans you’ve had for so long that even when you take them off they still have the shape of your body in them. When brick aged long enough it could look soft.

  They spent some time on the college lawn, watching other people wander about. They spent some time on the main street, walking down to the foot, where the crowds were just as thick as they had been the night before. At a stall in an open market, Dicey bought little sandwiches made of flat sausages in biscuits.

  Nobody stared at them. There were lots of kids messing around, and almost everybody, adults and children alike, wore jeans and shirts. Not full, but no longer hungry, the Tillermans sat by the water and stared. Lots of bare feet and long hair, like Provincetown. But also lots of gold watches and big diamonds in rings. Boys and girls together, men and women, with arms around each other’s waists.

  “Too much lovey dovey stuff,” Sammy announced.

  Dicey noticed something else. Most of the young women wore no bras. Their breasts went jiggle-jiggle as they walked. Finally, she could hold her tongue no longer.

  “James—the girls aren’t wearing bras.”

  He turned red. “I noticed.”

  “Do you see how they all go jiggle-jiggle? No, look—see the one with the long red hair? The pretty one, with eye makeup? Jiggle, jiggle, jiggle—see what I mean?”

  James giggled helplessly. Dicey joined in. Then she noticed a bridge, down the river, leading over to another part of the city. From where they sat it seemed that this other part was given over entirely to boatyards and docks.

  “Let’s go over there,” she pointed. “Let’s go look at some boats.”

  “Do you think the jiggling hurts?” James asked her. “I’d think it would.”

  “How would I know, James? I don’t have bosoms.”

  “Yeah, but you will.”

  “I’ll tell you about it if I do,” Dicey said. “Do you want to go look at the boatyards?”

  “Could we row it?” James asked her.

  His brain, Dicey thought, must work twice as fast as hers. It had taken her all that time sitting there to think of the possibilities of a boatyard.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “First, let’s see what’s there. It might be twenty miles across—I’ll check the map later.”

  “We couldn’t possibly row twenty miles, could we?”

  “Let’s worry about all that later, okay?”

  They followed the water around to get to the drawbridge. Everywhere in Annapolis fingers of water would appear at the ends of streets or around corners, unexpectedly. Back in Provincetown, there was a belt of sandy beaches all around the town, except for the harbor side, where houses were built out over the water. Here, the town crowded down onto the water, trying to get as close to it as possible, all the time, at every opportunity.

  They threaded their way through crowds of tourists. They passed countless cars, with license plates from many states, locked and empty.

  The drawbridge humped over the water. The air around it was a little cooler, so they stood for a while, leaning against the railing, looking down at the busy harbor. There were no working boats, just pleasure craft.

  The boatyards hummed with laboring. Some boats were up on racks, and men and women worked over the hulls, sanding, scraping, painting. One hull hung from a huge crane, ready to be returned to the water. Most of the boats were moored at docks that stretched out into the water. Many had people sitting on them, eating, reading. Others were empty,
their sails furled, their hatch covers locked. The only rowboats the children saw were locked onto storage racks or tied on top of the cabins of the boats they belonged with.

  Nobody stopped the children or asked them any questions. Many people seemed to be wandering like them, just looking at the activity. More were at work on their boats, polishing brass, sitting on deck splicing ropes, hosing down the sails.

  Dicey led her family out to the end of one dock. The bag over her shoulder had grown heavy, so she put it down. They all sat, staring out across the water. The afternoon sun reflected off the water onto their faces and arms and legs. Next to them, two boys were scrubbing down the deck of a sailboat. They wore only bathing suits. Their bodies were tanned and their hair was bleached by the sunlight. They looked as if they spent all summer outdoors in bathing suits, on boats. One of them, the heavier one, whose stomach had ripples of fat on it, jumped lightly onto the dock to pick up a hose that was coiled there. Dicey watched him lazily.

  He turned on the water, then leaped back onto the deck and rinsed off the suds their brushes had left.

  Dicey knew what he would do before he did it. It was inevitable. It was what anybody would do with a hose in his hand and a friend who wasn’t looking. He picked up the head of the hose, put his thumb over it and sprayed his friend.

  The friend charged him, his hands up before his face. The heavy boy stood and sprayed him, holding him off at arm’s length. The friend looked younger, because he was so much lighter and smaller. He spluttered and turned under the shaft of water, but he didn’t stop trying to get it. Then, he stamped on the heavy boy’s foot and grabbed the nozzle during that moment of distraction.

  They wrestled for the hose, spraying one another, shooting the water over onto the dock, laughing and cursing each other. Neither of them could take the hose away from the other. Great, heavy arcs of water shot out from the boat, spraying everywhere.

  “Hey!” Dicey yelled. “Look out!”

  The two wet faces turned to her. The heavier boy spoke immediately. “I didn’t see you,” he said. “You really wet?”

  “You could say so,” Dicey said, wiping her hair off her face. “But it’s a hot day and the water’s cool.”

  “That’s true,” he said. “But still, come on up and dry off. Jerry? Doesn’t your dad keep towels onboard?”

  The slimmer boy swung down out of sight. He reappeared with two large towels. “It’s okay if you want to come onboard. It’s my dad’s boat.”

  James looked at Dicey. Sammy was already standing by the bow. “Why not?” Dicey said.

  The boys pulled on the bow mooring line until the boat was only two feet off the dock. “Can you jump?”

  Dicey could, and did. She reached out a hand and helped Maybeth over. James swung over on the hand of the heavy boy. Sammy refused help. He stumbled as his feet hit the deck and fell on his face. Jerry leaned a worried face over him, but Sammy came up smiling. “I said I could do it,” he said proudly.

  “My name’s Jerry,” the slim boy said, “and this is Tom.”

  Dicey introduced her family.

  They were given a tour of the boat, above and belowdecks. It was small, only thirty-two feet, but it had everything possible onboard, and everything tucked away into its own place. There was even a shower in the head, and the walls and floor of the tiny space sloped down, following the curve of the hull, to a central drain.

  “You could live on a boat,” Dicey said.

  “Lots of people do just that, especially in summer,” Tom said.

  “I’ve tried to talk Dad into letting me live on her,” Jerry said. “He just says I should be grateful he lets me have a key to her. Grateful . . . ” He grinned at Tom. “I do enough work for him.”

  “Let’s take some Cokes up with us,” Tom suggested. They were in the cabin at the end of their tour.

  The icebox was a two-level locker holding a huge chunk of ice. Tom pulled out six cans of Coke and shut the heavy wooden door. Dicey took a last look around the cabin. A table was hinged so it could be pulled up flat against the wall and clamped there. This enabled the berth, which served as a sofa during the day, to pull out into a double bed. There was storage space behind and below the berths. The efficiency of it took Dicey’s breath away.

  After they had seated themselves around the cockpit, back in the blazing sunlight, Dicey asked, “Do you work on this boat?”

  “Yeah. We’re free labor right now. Next year, when we’re sixteen, he’ll have to pay us. Or we can get work at one of the yards. I know a lot of people,” Jerry said.

  “Can you take the boat out sailing whenever you want?” she asked.

  “Well, I’ve gotta ask permission.” The two boys exchanged a glance that Dicey could read—it meant they often didn’t ask permission.

  “You must be a pretty good sailor,” James said.

  “I guess you’d say so,” Jerry answered. He stretched out his legs and admired his tanned feet.

  “Do you sail too?” James asked Tom.

  “Not like Jerry does. I just hack around.”

  “Are you brothers?”

  “Naw,” Tom said. “We’re old friends. Since first grade.”

  They drank their Cokes silently for a bit, basking in the sunlight.

  “Does your dad sail the boat?” James asked.

  “On weekends,” Jerry said. “During the week, she’s pretty much my own.”

  “Gee,” James said, admiration in his voice. He looked at Dicey, hard.

  Dicey got the feeling there was something James wanted her to understand, but she didn’t understand it yet. She tried to help by talking about the same topic. “What does your dad do?”

  “Works in Washington.” Jerry’s voice had pride in it as he said that.

  “Gee, is he a senator?” James asked.

  “Not so important,” Jerry said. “Just a representative—you know what they are?”

  “House of Representatives,” James said quickly.

  “Yep. He’s the representative from Ohio, third district. It’s his first term.”

  “Gee,” James said again. He looked significantly at Dicey again. She didn’t pay any attention because she had sensed it was a lie. She was busy wondering why this boy would lie about his father’s job and why his friend would go along with it without saying anything.

  “We live over here because my mom doesn’t want to get all caught up in political circles. She says it’s no good for kids. She’s a regular hawkeye, my mom.”

  “She only wants to keep her baby boy as long as she can,” Tom remarked.

  Jerry flushed and bit his lip. “At least she cares about her kids.”

  Tom laughed. “You can’t get me that way, old friend. My parents care about me—but I’ve made my declaration of independence, and they were smart enough to accept that. I’ve got my freedom.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “Not yet, old buddy. When you’re ready, when you want it bad enough, you’ll have the nerve to fight for it. But what the hell—it’s summer—nothing’s worth worrying about in the summer, is it?”

  Sammy had lost interest in the conversation and was lying on his stomach on the deck, trying to dabble his hand in the water.

  “Do you ever go to the eastern shore?” James asked Jerry.

  At last, Dicey understood what James was driving at. She nodded her head at him briskly. He raised an eyebrow at her, as if to say, “Well, it’s about time.”

  “Go there?” Jerry asked. “I’ve spent almost as much time there as over here. When you sail the Chesapeake you learn all about the eastern shore. Why?”

  “We gotta go over tomorrow,” James said.

  “Yeah? Where?”

  “Easton,” Dicey said quickly. “We’re visiting an aunt for a couple of weeks. Our parents sent us down from Wilmington. To get fresh air,” she said, trying to sound disgusted.

  “What are you doing in Annapolis?” Tom asked.

  “There’s this old lady my d
ad knows, from when he was a kid and his father was in the navy,” Dicey said. “She always says she’s dying to see us—I guess because she never had any children of her own. We’re spending the night with her first. But she sleeps all the time. She told us to go run around while she slept. She’s awfully old. I dunno,” Dicey said, “I think she’d rather just invite us and not have us come. But Mom says she really enjoys our visits, as long as we don’t hang around the house too much.”

  “Where is this?”

  “Over on Prince George Street—you know where that is? Everything in her house can’t be touched. It’s hard on Sammy.”

  The boys seemed to believe this.

  “So, you’re making the great trip to the eastern shore tomorrow,” Tom said.

  “On a bus,” Dicey said. “It’s crazy. My aunt and her kids aren’t even going to be there until dinner, because she works and they go to some camp. I told our parents we should wait until tomorrow and take a late bus to Easton, but they said—you know how parents are.”

  “Man, do I know,” Jerry said.

  “It’s too bad you can’t sail over,” Tom said to Dicey.

  “It sure beats the bus,” Jerry agreed.

  They didn’t sound like they were offering, so Dicey played it low. “Yeah. But it’s a short trip. We’ll survive.”

  “Yeah, it’s too bad,” Tom said to her. “We’d offer to sail you over, see, but Jerry would have to ask permission, and . . . ”

  Dicey nodded, as if she understood. Well, she did. She understood what he was up to.

  Jerry studied his feet.

  Dicey stood up. “We gotta get back now. Thanks for the Cokes.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jerry said. “Would you really like to sail over?” he asked. He was looking at Tom, not at them, as he spoke.

  “Gee, yes,” James said.

  “We could get back by dark, you know,” Jerry said to Tom. Tom just smiled. “I’ll tell my mom I’m having dinner at your house. Do you think we could? Get over and back?”

  Tom looked doubtful.

  “I’d like to try it, wouldn’t you?” Jerry insisted.