They chugged into the dock, tying up at the far end. Dicey scrambled out and hoisted herself up onto the boards. Her grandmother climbed up the wooden ladder.
The dock was empty. There was no shade on it at this time of day, so not even the old men remained.
At first, as her eyes searched for her family, Dicey didn’t worry about the dock being empty. Then she did.
Where were they? She’d told them to stay there. Where were they? What had happened? Her eyes searched up the street to see three small figures.
Nobody moved on the sidewalks.
They were gone.
Dicey felt cold, despite the heat of sunlight reflected off water. It was not the gentle breeze that cooled her. It was fear that froze.
Not thinking, not caring whether her grandmother wanted to help at all, Dicey turned to her. “I don’t know,” she said. “You go up that side. Look in stores and restaurants. I’ll go up this side.”
Dicey didn’t wait to see if her grandmother started off. She ran, her heart pounding painfully.
As she reached the end of the dock, she heard her name called. She swiveled around and saw Sammy running toward her from the shade behind one of the shacks across the harbor.
Dicey’s grandmother was right behind her. “It’s okay,” Dicey said. “That’s Sammy.”
She was so relieved to see him that she ran across the crushed oyster shells to meet him and caught at his hand. He let her hold it briefly, then pulled away. “I told James,” he said proudly.
They walked back together.
“Told him what?” Dicey asked. “I didn’t know where you were. I’ll tell you, I was scared.”
Sammy ignored that. “Told him you’d be back.”
“Where is he? Where’s Maybeth?”
“They walked out to the farm. James said we should have all gone together anyway. He said you were wrong about that. We waited and waited. Then he said it was time to go. And I said no. And he said he’d thought it all over, and there was no good reason for you to go alone. He said I had to do what he said. And I said no. He said you said to. And I said you said to stay here and do what he said, not go off because he said to. So he took Maybeth.”
By this time, they were back to where their grandmother waited. She listened, watching Sammy, watching Dicey.
“Sometimes I get so mad at James,” Dicey said to Sammy. “But I’m glad you stayed—how would I have known where they were? He thinks he’s so smart”—she turned to her grandmother—“and he is smart—but I told them to stay here. I told him.” She scuffed her foot in the shells. How was she going to catch up with James and Maybeth? What should she do now?
“Are you the grandmother?” Sammy asked.
Their grandmother nodded.
“What am I s’posed to call you?” Sammy asked.
Dicey hadn’t even thought of this. Neither, apparently, had their grandmother. She didn’t answer Sammy. She pretended she hadn’t heard him. “Let’s get back,” she said.
“What about James and Maybeth?” Dicey asked. “I can’t just leave them.”
“You already did,” her grandmother said. “They’ll make their own way. It’s what James wanted, isn’t it? He’ll find you.”
She headed back down the dock to the boat.
Dicey followed. When they got back, if James and Maybeth weren’t there, she’d walk back toward town. James wouldn’t get lost. He’d listened to the directions, so he’d be on the right road. He didn’t forget things.
Sammy jumped down into the boat and climbed to the most forward seat. Dicey sat in the middle again, facing her brother. Behind her, she heard her grandmother untie the line and lower herself carefully from the ladder to the boat. “Hold on to the dock, girl,” she said to Dicey.
Dicey stood up and reached out for a firm grip on the wood. As soon as the motor started she pushed the boat away from the dock. Sammy leaned to her. “Where is it?”
Dicey pointed south. “A ways off,” she said.
“What’s it like?” he asked.
“Run down.”
“Are we going to stay?”
Dicey shook her head firmly. “Just tonight.”
“That’s okay, Dicey,” Sammy said.
They were silent the rest of the way back to their grandmother’s dock. The two children climbed out there. Dicey took the line and tied it around one post. Then she sat on the edge of the dock and held the boat steady with her feet while her grandmother lifted the motor up and rocked it into a resting position inside the boat. The metal propeller blades dripped water into the bay, like sullen raindrops.
Their grandmother led the way back to the fields and farm. Sammy walked behind her on the narrow path. Dicey came last, looking around over the waving fields of grasses, savoring the salty, muddy air.
When they got past the fields, Dicey broke into a run. She sprinted around to the front of the house, hoping to see James’s skinny figure sitting on the steps, with Maybeth quiet beside him. They weren’t there. Sammy had followed her. Their grandmother had not.
“I’m going to find them,” Dicey said. “Do you want to come or stay?”
“Stay,” he said.
“She’s not friendly,” Dicey warned him.
“Neither am I,” he said. “Besides, I’ll stay out here. James’ll be all right, Dicey.”
“I hope so,” she said. She loped down the long driveway without looking back.
As Dicey emerged from the pine woods, she saw the two figures standing far off, across the road by the mailbox. The brown grocery bag was on the ground between them. Dicey raised her hand in greeting and slowed to a walk.
James picked up the bag. Dicey stopped. Let them come to her. She had a few things to say to James.
His narrow face looked worried and relieved and ashamed and glad, all at once. He was too smart not to know all the things that could have happened. “Sammy’s alone downtown,” James said, before he said anything else. “I’ll go back and get him. If everything’s okay?”
Dicey forgave him, without a word, without another thought. “Everything’s not okay, but Sammy’s here. She doesn’t have a car, she uses a boat. That wasn’t very smart, James.”
“I thought it was, when I started out.”
“Well, don’t worry. She doesn’t want us to stay, but we can sleep here tonight.”
“Then what?”
“I dunno. Let me think about it. Why didn’t you come in? Were you there long?”
“We couldn’t see any house,” Maybeth said. “We didn’t know what it would be like.”
They walked back together. As they came up to the house, Sammy called to them from up among the leaves of the big tree. “I was right, James, wasn’t I? We went in a boat.”
“How’d you get up there?” James asked.
Sammy descended, with a shivering of branches. He slid down the curve of one trunk and stopped himself just at the bottom, where all four trunks came together. His legs were scratched.
The Tillermans stood together at the base of the tree. The house was before them, overgrown with honeysuckle, dark-windowed, looking abandoned. Off to the right, Dicey saw the lopsided barn. It had once been red, but the paint had weathered, faded and peeled, until it looked pink as a bad sunburn. The tin roof was rusted in large patches.
“Anyway,” Dicey said, “this is where Momma lived.”
“It’s beautiful,” Maybeth said.
“It’s a wreck,” Dicey answered. “The fields out front—and look at that barn. It’s gone to ruin. She hasn’t taken care of it.”
“But it’s big,” James said. “Big enough for all of us. Is it near the water?”
“There’s a marsh first,” Dicey said, “a long, empty marsh. Then the bay. There’s a path, but the water’s at least a quarter of a mile away. Not like Provincetown. Anyway, who cares? We won’t be staying.”
“True enough,” her grandmother said from the side of the house. “But you’ll be here for supper so there??
?s work to be done. I see you found them.” She stared at James. “James,” she said.
He tried to smile but her face discouraged him.
Her eyes flickered over Maybeth. “And Maybeth.” She looked away quickly, as if nothing about Maybeth could interest her. The little girl moved closer to Dicey.
“I’ve got crab pots set down by the dock,” their grandmother said. “Who’ll fetch the crabs?”
“I will,” Dicey said.
“Me too,” Sammy said.
“James and Sammy will,” their grandmother announced. “It’s after four. I eat early, and so will you. I put a basket by the back steps.”
The two boys ran off.
“You two come with me. I’ll show you where to sleep.”
She strode around to the back of the house. Dicey picked up the grocery bag and followed her. Maybeth clung to Dicey’s hand.
They saw James and Sammy heading off down the path to the water. James carried a bushel basket by its two metal handles.
Their grandmother led them through the kitchen and into a dim hallway. “That’s my room,” she said, pointing at a closed door, “and my bathroom,” pointing to the closed door next to it. They turned left down the hall and ascended a narrow staircase.
Upstairs, they saw a long, U-shaped hallway with five closed doors around it. A window at one end looked out over the front yard, through the leaves of the big tree. Their grandmother stood on the top step and let them go past her. “That’s the bathroom at the far end. Sheets are in one of the bureaus. I can’t recollect which.”
Dicey went to look out the window. “What kind of tree is that?”
“Paper mulberry,” her grandmother answered.
Dicey noticed from above what could not be seen from below. There were strong twisted wires running around the tree. “Why is it wired?” she asked.
“Because paper mulberries are fragile,” her grandmother answered. “It’s the way they spread out at the top, it’s the way they grow. If you didn’t brace it, the weight of the leaves and the growing branches would pull the tree apart. Like families.” She went abruptly downstairs.
Dicey and Maybeth stood in the dim hallway. “Cripes,” Dicey whispered. “It’s like a ghost house.”
The air was warm and old, as if the same air had been up here for hundreds of years. The closed doors looked like so many secrets.
Maybeth’s eyes were round and frightened.
“Look at it this way, Maybeth, it’s only for one night. And besides, this was Momma’s house, when she was little. Isn’t that right?”
That didn’t make Maybeth feel any better, but it made Dicey feel better. She forced up the old window to let in fresh air. She braced it with a piece of wood lying on the sill. Their grandmother wasn’t going to take any trouble for them, but Dicey would show her.
Dicey opened the nearest door and stepped boldly into the room. This was a bedroom with a plain iron bedstead overlaid with a thin white quilt. The pillow had no cover on it. The room held a dresser, a desk and chair and a wardrobe, all of plain wood. Dicey went to a window and snapped up the shade. This room faced the big tree. She snapped up a shade on the other wall and found a window that looked out to the barn. Between them, she and Maybeth got the four windows up, and braced them with pieces of wood. Fresh air filtered around the room and light came in.
The smaller room across the hall was almost identical, except the quilt was faded blue instead of white. On the front of the wardrobe somebody had painted a picture of Indians coming out of the woods, carrying bows and arrows, wearing warpaint and bright headdresses. It was a kid’s painting with blobs of green paint for leaves and the sun a yellow circle with lines coming out. Dicey liked it. They opened this room too and returned to the hall. With two doors open and the sunlight and the clean air, the upstairs seemed more friendly. Dicey walked down the wooden floor to the opposite end.
First she opened the door opposite the hall window. This was a bathroom. It had a toilet with a wooden seat and a wooden box above the seat from which hung a long, wooden-handled chain. The bathtub was raised off the floor by four stubby legs that ended at four feet with claws on them. The sink stood on a tall pedestal. Above it was a shelf where you could put soap and toothpaste.
Dicey and Maybeth both went to the bathroom. They pulled on the chain to flush. When you flushed, you could hear the water gurgling down the pipes from the overhead box.
Then Dicey opened the window and looked out.
From this window you looked over the roof of the porch, over the backyard, over the planted fields, over the long stretch of marshes—to the water. The band of water lay blue and sparkling, out and away. A boat, tiny at this distance, moved up the bay, maybe heading back to Crisfield with its day’s catch.
Dicey hurried into the room on the right. Here there were some small differences. There was the same iron bedstead, and the quilt was multicolored, faded but still cheerful with reds and blues and greens and yellows. The bureau and wardrobe had been painted white. The desk and chair were plain wood. A picture hung on the wall, a childish picture of a little boat sailing on blue water. Fish swam in the water, and crabs ran about the sandy bottom. Gulls wheeled in the air and rode, with folded wings, on the waves. Dicey snapped up the side shades and held the windows while Maybeth put the braces under them. These windows looked to the barn. But the other two windows, as she had hoped, gave out over the marsh and to the bay.
The last bedroom had a ruffled quilt and pictures of ladies in old-fashioned dresses on the walls, pictures cut out of magazines and pasted on a white background. The childish painter had put a picture on the wardrobe here too, of a castle and town and a queen, wearing an impossibly tall crown, walking in the garden.
Dicey hurried to open the windows, one over the backyard, and two to the piney woods that closed around the house.
She turned to Maybeth. “Well. This isn’t bad, is it?”
Maybeth smiled quietly.
“It’s only for a night. Let’s each take our own room. Which one do you think was Momma’s?”
“This one,” Maybeth said.
“Then you’ll sleep in this one. Okay?”
Maybeth nodded happily. They found the sheets in one of the front bedrooms and made up the beds together, folding hospital corners, plumping up the pillows. For herself, Dicey chose the other back bedroom, because it looked to the water.
There was nothing in any of the rooms to show that they had ever been lived in by anyone. But they must have been lived in by the three children, Momma and her brothers. None of their personalities had been left in the rooms, except for the two paintings on the wardrobe doors, the lady cutouts, and the little picture of the boat.
None of the children had wanted to stay here. They had all left home, one way or another. Except the one who had died, maybe. You couldn’t be sure. He might have wanted to come back.
They went downstairs. Maybeth followed Dicey like a shadow. The kitchen was empty. Their grandmother was out in one field, wearing a broad straw hat, picking tomatoes into another of the bushel baskets.
“We can do that,” Dicey said, coming up behind her.
“And so can I,” she answered without looking up. “They’re coming in too fast. They always do this time of year. Gotta start canning again. Can she pick beans?” She nodded toward Maybeth, without looking at her.
“Can you?” Dicey asked Maybeth. Maybeth didn’t answer. “Sure, I guess so,” Dicey said.
“Over there then,” their grandmother said, jabbing with her head to another side of the field. “Bring ’em back here to me. Take the biggest. You”—this to Dicey—“go into the barn. There’s a bin of potatoes up against the far wall. Get as many as we need. Keep your shoes on. I don’t know what-all’s on that floor.”
Hedges of honeysuckle—twisting, strangling vines—had grown over what must once have been a split rail fence between the house and barn. The big barn door was pulled half open. Bits had rotted out of the wood
at the base of the door, as if someone had kicked at it in unappeasable anger.
Dicey stood for a minute, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. A large shape loomed in the center, and lofts lay in high darkness along both long walls. She brushed cobwebs away, waiting until she could see enough to go on.
Empty stalls lined one side. The smell of dry hay was in the musty air. The center shape grew smaller as she found her twilight vision. The thing seemed to hover in the air above the packed dirt floor.
Something rustled in the lofts. Many things rustled there. Where the boards had fallen away at the sides of the barn, honeysuckle grew in. Dicey stepped into the dim darkness.
The first thing to do was to define that shape. Whatever creatures were living in the barn were probably more frightened of her than she would ever be of them, even if they panicked and touched her.
Dicey approached the shape. It was something long, slightly curved, and resting in a kind of saw-horse cradle. It was about shoulder height to her, with a flat back.
She approached it with her hands behind her back.
Dicey almost didn’t dare name it, even when she knew what it was, even after she had raised herself onto tiptoe to peer inside and seen there a long mast, tied down around the sides, surrounded by tangled ropes and projecting over the bow.
A sailboat.
It was small, only fourteen or fifteen feet. It had an open cockpit, without any seats in it. It had a slot in the center of the cockpit, beside which rested a long centerboard.
Dicey reached her hand into the cockpit. Cobwebs. She touched the long arm of the tiller, resting against the stern. Where were the sails? Would it still float? Whose boat was it?
She rushed to the back of the barn. There, three large bins had been built. She opened one, and little creatures scurried at the bottom. The lid of the second revealed a mound of potatoes. Dicey put her hand in. The potatoes had begun to sprout. Each eye of the potato she held had knobbly, pale growth on it. But when she squeezed it with her hand, it felt firm enough. Dicey took out a dozen potatoes. Of these, she selected the seven largest (four kids and one woman, and James could eat two or three), cleaned off the sprouts with her fingers and tossed the remaining five back into the bin. Her arms were full of potatoes as she hurried back out of the barn.