Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy Read online

  He hoped it wasn't.

  The sermon slouched along as sermons will when every single soul in the building is wishing that the ushers would start passing around cool glasses of lemonade. Turner watched a small yellow hornet buzz listlessly around the pulpit as the priests of the Hebrew host organized their march. It meandered a bit, then settled down into one of the rosettes and went to sleep. Turner wondered what might happen if it woke up and decided to sting his father at some prominent moment—say, when the trumpets of Jericho sounded. He imagined the hornet turning on Deacon Hurd, and the general melee as he ran down the aisle, chased by the eager insect, hollering and swatting at the thin air.

  He thought of swatting at thin air, of swatting at rocks on the shore, of Lizzie Bright Griffin, of tossing a ball back and forth, digging clams, sitting on the beach watching the tide heave in and out like the vast breathing of a whale.

  Could it all have been a lie?

  He had almost touched a whale.

  By now his father had gotten onto the woes of Jericho, and he was finding his stride. Jericho, his father announced, was a place that needed to be rooted out so that God's good and perfect purposes might be fulfilled. So God had brought to its walls the Hebrew host to be His hands to carry out His righteous work. Reverend Buckminster paused and cleared his throat. He paused some more and cleared his throat again. He looked down at Mrs. Buckminster. He looked away.

  "In this same way, good people of Phippsburg, God calls us to be His hands, and to do His will, to blot out spoil and contagion from among us, to bring His people to the place where He would have them be. Just as Jericho was wiped out and is gone to human history, and just as the Promised Land was taken up by the faithful, so also should we blot out what is not wholesome, what is not good, what is not pleasing, and take up our own promised future."

  Turner felt his mother stiffen beside him. She reached out and took his hand.

  "Amen," said the Reverend Buckminster.

  "And amen," said Mr. Stonecrop behind them.

  The organ turned to a melancholy last hymn, playing too slowly; after four verses, it sighed to silence a phrase or two behind the congregation. Reverend Buckminster descended from his pulpit and processed down the aisle. Mrs. Buckminster and Turner went behind him and stood with him at the back of the church to endure the handshakes and knowing looks. ("Did he really go out into the bay with a Negro?") Willis passed without looking at him, as, in fact, did most of the congregation, until he stopped holding out his hand. And when it was all over, he ran through the gossiping crowd and sprinted back to the parsonage, where the blue sea breeze laughed and swirled and invited him down to the water, down to the shore.

  Oh Lord, if only Malaga Island hadn't all been a lie.

  But no minister's son in Phippsburg, Maine, can follow a sea breeze to the shore on the Sabbath. Especially not to a forbidden shore. So Turner settled in for a quiet and still dinner, and a quieter and more still afternoon.

  If he had been in Boston, where baseball was as it should be, he would be standing at home plate on the Common, the smell of grass and leather in his nose, his hands sticky with the pitch on the bat, waiting, waiting, waiting for the streak of white he would slash past the first baseman.

  Instead, the quiet and still afternoon wore on like a too-slow hymn while Turner read some, stalked about the house some, looked out the window some, and wondered a great deal about why God had settled on Sunday afternoons to be dreary and miserable.

  When his mother could stand the stalking no more, she sent Turner out—she used the word forbidden only once—and he strolled off, hands in his pockets—until he remembered that ministers' sons do not keep their hands in their pockets—down Parker Head, heading to Malaga but knowing he could not go there. He thought for a moment of trying to see if, by any chance, there was a ball game down in Thayer's haymeadow. He would risk breaking the Sabbath for one good hit. Even if it was only a hit to left field. But the thought of the greeting he would receive from Willis and his crew stopped him. And when the sea breeze sprang up again, it pulled him toward Malaga.

  If it had not been for Mrs. Cobb standing by the gate of her grandfather's picket fence, as though waiting for him to try to sneak by, who knows how many forbiddens would have flitted away like yesterday's gypsy moths.

  "So your mother got those bloodstains out."

  "Yes, ma am.

  "It's too bad that she ends up with the work when you're the one out in the street brawling. And a minister's son at that."

  Turner thought back on the day so far. He added one to the number of things in it that were almost more than God had any right to expect of him.

  "Well, your father said you play the organ. You may as well come in and play for me."

  "Mrs. Cobb, I wasn't coming to—"

  "You weren't coming to what? To bring some peace to an old woman whose household you've thrown upside down? Is that what you weren't coming to do?"

  Turner sighed. He ran his finger around his collar and followed her into the imprisonment of her house. He wondered why his father couldn't have chosen a decent career. A conductor, maybe. A conductor who rode trains with his family and lit out for the Territories.

  Mrs. Cobb sat in her horsehair chair and pointed to her organ impatiently. Turner sat on the stool, and he heard her settle back, bones creaking and snapping. He started to pump, and the stale air of the organ dusted around him.

  "You remember," said Mrs. Cobb, "that if I have to say my last words, you'll write them down."

  "Yes, ma'am. I'll write them down just as you say them."

  "There is paper there on the organ. And pen and ink beside it. And you won't need to pretty them up any, because they'll be pretty enough."

  Turner nodded and decided he wouldn't play "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," choosing instead "Shall We Gather at the River?" and realizing too late that Mrs. Cobb might figure that was an invitation. But when he heard her humming to it, he played the second verse, and then the third, and while his fingers took on the chorus, he turned to look at her. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth, too, with her humming, and she was smiling. She looked, Turner thought, as though there was a day once upon a time when she might have been happy.

  Mrs. Cobb did not have to say her last words that afternoon. Turner played hymn after hymn, repeating a few verses when she hummed to the chorus, taking care to avoid the ones that suggested the pleasures of leaving this weary world. When he heard her tapping her foot, he sped up, and she always kept up the pace. And when he closed with a rousing "As Flows the Rapid River"—and it wasn't easy to be rousing with four sharps—she actually, really, honestly, truly clapped.

  Turner supposed that if the Apocalypse had come, he could hardly have been more surprised.

  When Turner left Mrs. Cobb, the sun was still high, his shadow was still small, and the mischief of a sea breeze was still hovering by the gate, waiting for him. And Mrs. Cobb was no longer there to stop him. He followed it down Parker Head, along the street as it dwindled toward the shore, down past the pines and through the scrub, all the while the salt in his nose and a hope singing in his ears that Malaga wasn't a lie, that there was some one person in all of Maine who wasn't playing him for a fool.

  And when he came down to the beach, the tide was up and the gulls were circling, and the New Meadows flowed so high and strong that there was almost no beach to stand on. And across the water, Malaga's pines waved their boughs at him.

  But no one stood on the shore.

  And the island had never seemed so far away.

  He waited to see if Lizzie might come around the point. He counted waves and told himself he would leave after twenty-five had tumbled in. After that, he skipped rocks and told himself he would leave after he skipped one seven times. (He did it with the eleventh stone.) After that, he counted fifty gulls—except they came almost all at once. And then, with nothing left to count, Turner climbed back up the ledges, with a pile of loneliness on his back as heavy as nightf
all.

  The sea breeze had scooted the heat of the day out in front of it, and Turner found himself shivering by the time he came back up to Parker Head. Mrs. Hurd was out on her porch now, and she waved to him. He wondered suddenly if this would be his life from now on: walking down Parker Head to see Mrs. Cobb, walking down to the shore to an empty Malaga Island, and walking back up to see Mrs. Hurd. The days stretched awfully long.

  "I heard you playing the organ across the way," Mrs. Hurd called.

  "Yes, ma'am. Over to Mrs. Cobb's."

  "You're much better than that wretched Lillian Woodward. She hasn't played anything faster than a dirge since the Civil War."

  "I didn't see you at church."

  She smiled and winked at him. "I went every Sunday until my hair turned white, and in all that time I never heard a sermon worth that"—and she snapped her fingers in front of him, a dry, sort of soft snap. "So one day I up and decided I wouldn't go anymore. Imagine that, Turner III. After all, why should Sundays be so dreary?"

  Turner wondered if his hair would have to be white before he didn't have to put up with dreary Sundays.

  "Not that I think your father is dreary," Mrs. Hurd said quickly. "It's just that I've gotten into the habit of keeping the Sabbath here at home." She balled her hand into a fist and pounded—sort of—her chest. "Here is where God speaks. Here is where I listen."

  A sudden gust of warm wind came up and swirled a moment around them both. But watching Mrs. Hurd's old white hand, watching that surprising fist, Turner shivered. He wondered what his father would say to Mrs. Hurd. He wondered if his father would believe—really believe—the things he might say to Mrs. Hurd.

  "Do you think I'm wicked?" she asked.

  "I don't think you could be wicked if you tried, Mrs. Hurd."

  "Oh, it's not that difficult. You hardly have to practice at all."

  "Mrs. Hurd, whenever I play over to Mrs. Cobb's, that's for you, too."

  She smiled at him. "Turner, that is one of the nicest things you could ever give to me," she said. "You might play 'I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone."'

  "I'm trying not to give Mrs. Cobb hymns about dying."

  "Good Lord, Turner III, she's almost as old as I am. Every second thought is about dying. And she doesn't have any friends before her gone anyway."

  "But I'd rather she didn't think of dying while I'm playing."

  Mrs. Hurd considered this. "No," she finally agreed, "you wouldn't want her to die while you're playing. That wouldn't be polite. But if she does die while you're working on 'I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone,' be sure you finish the chorus before you cover her up."

  "Mrs. Hurd! That is wicked!"

  "Well, I suppose you might stop to cover her up. But be sure to go back and finish the chorus."

  Turner figured the likelihood was remote enough that he could promise to finish the chorus, and so he did.

  "You see, Turner III, you're as wicked as I am. You hardly have to practice at all." He smiled, and felt then that some part of the dreary afternoon of the dreary Sunday had been saved.

  He was almost whistling when he climbed the steps to his front porch. He was whistling for sure when he opened the door and went in. But he wasn't whistling when he saw his father, who took two quick strides toward him, opened his hand, and slapped it flat and hard against Turner's face.

  Turner stood stunned. He felt his entire body grow taut and then begin to quiver with surprise and humiliation and ... anger.

  "That's how it feels," said his father. "That's how it feels every time you humiliate me. Do you know what forbidden means, Turner? Do you understand the word forbidden? You were forbidden to go to Malaga Island. Absolutely forbidden. I could not have been more clear about that. Yet here comes Willis Hurd to ask me to tell you that when you come back from the island, you'd be welcome to join him and the others down on the docks.'Oh no,' I say,'Turner couldn't be down to the island.' But Willis tells me that he saw you heading down Parker Head. He tells me that Parker Head leads to Malaga, and he figured that's where you were heading."

  Turner hoped wildly that Willis's nose was pushed so far to the right he couldn't even pick it.

  "Is it true, Turner? Did you go to the island?"

  "To the shore," answered Turner. "I couldn't get across to the island."

  "You disobeyed me."

  Turner thought this should be pretty clear. "Yes."

  "May I ask why? Or is this something else that wasn't intended to embarrass the new minister?"

  "Because I wanted to know if it was true."

  "If what was true?"

  "If Lizzie was lying to me. If all she wanted to do was to get me on her side so she wouldn't have to leave the island."

  Reverend Buckminster sighed. "It doesn't matter if it's true. It matters what people think. It matters that my congregation can tell me what to think when my son goes out to visit a Negro girl on Malaga Island. It doesn't matter at all how she got you out there."

  "It matters to me,"Turner whispered.

  "Speak up!"

  "It matters to me."

  The grim silence circled the room like an eager tiger. It flicked its tail greedily at them, circling, circling, circling. Turner felt that it was about to pounce, claws fully out.

  And then it did.

  "Forbidden is forbidden. You will stay in the house for the next two weeks, Turner. If I cannot trust you not to go to the island, then I will have to keep you under my eye. You may not leave here except for church services. And this means that you may not go down to the docks today."

  "They're not down on the docks."

  "Speak up, Turner. Good Lord, don't mumble like a little whipped boy."

  "They're not down on the damn docks."

  Another circling silence. "I think I can trust Willis Hurd to be telling the truth over a boy who can't even keep his own mouth clean," said Reverend Buckminster, and took his presence out of the room.

  That Sunday turned out to be the dreariest one on record. And it had to go some to pass a handful of others Turner could recall.

  ***

  It seemed to Turner less and less likely that he would be lighting out for the Territories anytime soon. But as the days went by and he settled into his imprisonment, he was comforted by one thing: who knew how, but he was more and more sure that Lizzie had not lied to him, and that Malaga was as real as real.

  And there was one other comfort, and it came from a surprising source. After three days of his absence, Mrs. Cobb appeared at the parsonage to ask if he had been sick. When she found out he wasn't, she asked if Turner might come to her house to play the organ for her. His mother agreed. Turner was not told how Reverend Buckminster came to agree to this, too, and he did not ask.

  Turner dawdled on his way down to her house each afternoon. Not that there was much to see. But there was the sea breeze, and the trees were starting to yellow and blush. So he dawdled until he came to the picket fence, and every day Mrs. Cobb was standing at the door waiting for him, scowling and sour. And she stayed scowling and sour through the first hymn or two, and then she started to hum a little, and eventually, by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," she was singing—"Glory, glory, hallelujah!"—and her voice trembled and then grew stronger—"Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is marching on."

  And sometime after the glory, glory, hallelujahs were over, Turner glanced at her to assess her general state of health, and if she seemed hale and hearty enough, he meandered into "I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone," and played more loudly than it ought to be played so that Mrs. Hurd could hear it across the street.

  And when he finished each afternoon, Mrs. Cobb leaned back in her chair and smiled, not a scowl anywhere on her face. "I've made it through another day," she said.

  "No last words yet," Turner agreed.

  "You're not such a bad sort after all, Turner Buckminster. I'd be pleased to have you be the one to hear them."

  And Turner nodded, strangely glad with the honor—tho
ugh not so eager to fulfill it—and headed on home. He would wave at Mrs. Hurd, who was sometimes rocking on the porch with her shawl around her shoulders, or sometimes sitting by a window watching for him. And he dawdled as the clouds turned their mackerel undersides to him and the cool of the late afternoon started to settle in over the town.

  One afternoon, after another dreary Sunday, he walked home from Mrs. Cobb's with the sea breeze determined to shove him to Malaga Island. It scooted around him and pulled at his ears. It threw up the dust of the road into his face to turn him around, and when he leaned into it, it suddenly let go and pushed at him from behind, laughing. But with the iron word forbidden tolling like a heavy bell by his ears, Turner would not let himself be brought to Malaga. And so with a last abrupt kick, the sea breeze twisted around and left him. Turner watched it rushing pell-mell down Parker Head and toward the shore. "Go find Lizzie," he whispered.

  And it heard him.

  That night, after a quiet and still supper, Turner sat by his window watching the late dusk turn purple, and suddenly there was the sea breeze again, chuckling and rolling down Parker Head, whipping three times around First Congregational and then rollicking across the street, up the clapboards of the parsonage, and to him, rustling his hair and scooting down the back of his shirt so that he shivered and laughed.

  "Is that you up there, laughing like a loon?"

  Lizzie. Lizzie Bright.

  He put his head out the window. "What are you doing here?" he called down.

  "Well, I've missed you, too. I'm stealing chickens."

  "We don't have any chickens."

  "Your dog, then."

  "We don't have a dog."

  "I figured you didn't have a dog—or he was deaf as a post. What does a minister have to steal?"

  "Books. Preaching books."

  She paused. "I guess you can keep those. I'll try somewhere else."