"But how about the first one? The very first one. What made him start to swim?"
"God took him in His two hands and threw him out there and got him all wet and told him he should stay put. And gulls are still squawking about it."
"You read that in the Bible?"
"Somewhere in Genesis. Toward the middle."
"Well," said Turner, standing up, "I guess God doesn't mind if He gets squawked at sometimes."
"I hope not, since I've had reason enough myself lately."
She stood, too, and together they watched the gulls riding the waves. Then they went into the shack, and Turner helped Reverend Griffin sit up in the bed, and Lizzie brought over a bowl of the clam chowder and fed him. All the time he was smiling, telling them how it was just like Lizzie's grandmama used to make it for him. All the time Turner held him up and wondered at how light he was, so light it hardly seemed his body could heft his soul. Whatever would happen if he really did have to leave Malaga? And whatever would happen to Lizzie if he couldn't?
Lizzie rowed Turner back across the New Meadows after her granddaddy finished the chowder. He jumped out and held the dory for a moment, then let it go, and the tide took her out a bit. She turned the boat with one oar, and with the smooth movements of one who knew how, she began to row slowly back to the island. Turner watched her across to the shore, watched her pull the dory up and give a wave. And then she spread her arms out, smiled broadly, and began to fly across the beach, bobbing and weaving until she turned the corner of Malaga and was gone. Turner climbed the granite ledges back toward home.
And as he climbed, a fire grew in his gut, a fire as hot as Darwin's and maybe hotter. He felt it flaring as he went down Parker Head, and flaring again when he passed Mrs. Hurd's empty house, and flaring when he passed First Congregational and climbed the porch steps to his house. He felt it through supper, so that even Reverend Buckminster stared at him sometimes, and Turner's mother dared to break the silence by asking him how his day had been.
"Fine," he said, and burned.
He was still burning when his father told him to get ready for the season's last baseball game that evening. Because he couldn't think of a single reason why he shouldn't go—that is, he couldn't think of a single reason he could tell his father—he went and burned on the sidelines, trying not to watch the people who were laughing and passing around bottles of dark Moxie and waving straw hats at each other and getting ready to turn Lizzie and her granddaddy off Malaga Island. He wondered that God could let such a thing be.
And then Deacon Hurd called to him. "Turner, you going to try again?" He chuckled, and Willis next to him chuckled, and everyone on the whole dang field chuckled. Turner nodded, let himself get chosen up for sides, and felt the fire burning brightly.
He did not lead off. He was set down in the end of the lineup, so that it wasn't until the end of the second inning, with a couple of outs, that he stepped up to home and swung his bat low and set his front leg. The days were shorter now, and the white sunlight cold as it settled onto the field and thought about dropping frost. Every tree was blessed with a halo, and the sparkling silver beams slanted down to Turner as he thought about streaking a ball right back up alongside them until it disappeared in the silver-haloed glow.
"You still have that front leg out pretty far, son. You want to think about that?" Deacon Hurd chuckled again.
Willis, standing easy on the mound, threw the ball into his glove over and over, watching Turner. The holy beams backlit him, so that Turner could barely make out his face. He was just as glad.
"Batter up!" yelled Deacon Hurd.
"Here it comes," said Willis, and lofted the ball into the air, so that it rose into the silver light and took on its own halo.
To Turner, there was nothing but the ball and the sky and the light and the bat in his hands and the fire in his gut. And Lizzie, lofting a rock to him on the beaches of Malaga and hollering at him to swing low to high, and the gulls crying and the waves cresting and the rock coming down and him feeling the tingling in his hands as he began to swing.
As he swung, he broke his wrists forward and took the ball as if it were as big as a melon and curled it skittering and skating along the beams of silver light, twirling it foul far, far off into the woods beyond third base, higher than any pine trees Phippsburg might set against it, high and far and gone forever.
"Strike one!" Deacon Hurd called.
No one chuckled.
Someone from behind the backstop threw a new ball out to Willis. He took off his glove and roughed the ball up, then put the glove back on and stared in at Turner, not chuckling, but his face dark as the sun spun down and the beams slanted up. The next ball he threw was higher than the first, with a wicked spin he put on with his fingertips just before he released it. Turner sidled his front leg a little to the right and watched the ball come, hearing again the crying gulls and the cresting waves. This time he held his wrists back and sent the ball curling foul past the first-base line, curling away and over the haloed maples and skipping over a gravelly road until it disappeared into a ditch about a county away.
"Strike two!" called Deacon Hurd.
And no one chuckled.
Another new ball from behind the backstop and Willis roughing it up again. A third pitch, as high or higher than the first, without a single bottle of Moxie being passed around, without a single straw hat waving, and Turner waiting, waiting for the ball, and the fire burning in his gut. He broke his wrists again just as the ball came in and threw a roundhouse swing that skied the ball and then curved it foul into the third-base trees.
Whistles from the people of Phippsburg, and shouts of wonder that the minister's boy, the minister's skinny boy should be able to hit a ball that far three times in a row.
But it wasn't three times in a row. It was twelve times in a row. Twelve balls hit as high as pride. Twelve balls hit as far as hope. Twelve balls curling away as though they were lighting off for the Territories. And after every one, whistles and shouts and even clapping for baseballs as foul as baseballs could ever be.
Until when another ball was thrown out from behind the backstop, Deacon Hurd called back,"How many more you got in there?"
"That's the last one."
"You lost twelve balls on us," said the not-chuckling Deacon Hurd.
"I won't lose this one," answered Turner, and he swung his bat, and put his leg out, and waited for the pitch from Willis, still and quiet.
Willis roughed up the ball again. He stepped off the mound for a moment, turned and motioned his center fielder to go out some more, and waved his left and right fielders out against the lines. By now the whole field was in a dusky shadow and the sunbeams were level and tree-high above them. When Willis began his windup, Turner couldn't see his face at all. But the ball, the ball was as big as the moon, floating up into the light, then back down into the shadow, spinning in a way that didn't matter, and ready to cozy up to his bat and then streak on out.
And so the ball came down, down, spinning, spinning, and Turner gripped his bat, brought his front leg in ... and then stepped back from the plate just as the ball dropped, smacked the granite, leaped up, and then rolled to his feet.
"Strike three!" hollered Deacon Hurd.
For a moment, no one else said anything. Then Turner heard his father call out, and Willis's friends, and probably most every other soul in Phippsburg, telling him that he should have swung, that he should have straightened his swing out and hit the ball, that he should have homered. Straw hats were thrown on the ground, and heads were shaken.
The only one who said nothing was Willis. The only one. When Turner picked up the ball and threw it to him, Willis caught it and turned his face so that the shadow was not so dark—and he saw that Willis was smiling.
Turner did not play the rest of the game, which was just as well, folks figured, since they were down to their last baseball. He went back to the parsonage with his mother, walking a lit— tie ahead of her. They didn't talk
all the way up to the front steps, where they both paused at the top and turned to looked across at the church—now only the steeple was quickened by the light—and then on down Parker Head. Turner shivered in the shadows, but he wasn't ready to go in yet, not while the light was still on the steeple, so he sat down on the stoop to watch it fade, and his mother stood above him and laid her hand on his head, playing with his hair.
"You know, Turner," she said quietly, "you may have embarrassed your father."
Turner considered that for a moment. "Maybe," he said finally.
"Not that I'm so against it—embarrassing your father, I mean. It's good for ministers to be embarrassed now and again. Helps them to remember who they are."
"I'm not sure the Reverend Buckminster would agree," said Turner.
"Of course he wouldn't. That's when he needs it most."
The light on the steeple began to pink. Malaga, Turner thought, would already be in deep shadow, lying low in the water as it did. He had never been there in the dark, but he imagined it now, him standing on the shore and making out the waves only when they broke. Up above, the sky would be spangled, and he could sit side by side with Lizzie and watch the stars fall out of their places in sudden shrieks of light. The gulls would be quiet. The light from Lizzie's house would throw a yellow column onto the sand. And they would move closer together when the sea breeze got into mischief.
That's how it would be at night on Malaga Island.
The light began to disappear by the far end of Parker Head. The houses were still mostly dark, everyone being down to Thayer's haymeadow playing with their last baseball. Soon they would come home in groups, talking quietly beneath the naked maples, the striped blankets they had used to sit on now wrapped around their shoulders. The lights would come on and throw their columns across from one house to another, and the coal stoves would be stoked against the coming cold of the fall night as the town settled into evening.
That's how it would be at night on Parker Head, where folks knew that, come winter, their houses would still be on Parker Head, not floating down the New Meadows.
Turner wondered what it would be like to float down the New Meadows with his house on a raft, floating to where he did not know. Suddenly, he wasn't so sure about lighting out for the Territories. Suddenly, he wondered if having a house wrapped around him wasn't something he wanted a whole lot more.
It was sure enough what Lizzie Bright wanted.
Turner heard the first group coming back from the game. His mother took her hand from his head and backed up a bit into the darkness of the porch. "Don't stay out too much longer," she said. "It gets cold so quickly here."Turner nodded, listening to her as she closed the door on the town and disappeared into the house. The group passed, did not wave to him as it went on down Parker Head, hushed.
Turner wondered what Darwin might have said about the evolutionary advantages of being silent. He figured they might be considerable. He figured he might give it a try the next time he met Willis Hurd.
Four more groups came by, one after another, laughing as they passed by the parsonage. The last group held Reverend Buckminster, who separated from them and came up the stairs, then went by Turner silently into the house. The purple darkness had rolled farther and farther up Parker Head, rolling in front of it thin, wispy lines of silken fog that hovered chest high over the ground, like ribbons waiting for racers to part them.
When Parker Head quieted and it seemed that there would be no more laughing groups up from the haymeadow, Turner jumped off the stoop and strode with giant strides down to the street, breaking one ribbon after another, leaving them swirling and re-forming behind him, leaving his house deeper and deeper in the purple night, and coming finally to the darkened, empty house of Mrs. Hurd—and seeing someone standing on her porch. He stepped closer, and closer still, until he was close enough to see who it was who stood there.
It was Willis. He was painting the shutters yellow.
Turner walked up the porch steps. "Willis, it's dark as all get out. What are you doing?"
Willis spun around at the sound of Turner's voice, but then he turned back to the painting. "What does it look like I'm doing?"
"Painting shutters."
"Gee, you know how to hit a baseball and you're smart, too.
"You're painting in the dark."
"I'm painting in the dark."
"Because you don't want your father to know."
"I told you you were smart."
"It's for your grandmother."
Willis did not answer. He went on with his painting, covering the green shutters with sunlight yellow.
"You have another brush?" asked Turner.
Willis stopped painting. "Why didn't you hit that last pitch? You could have hit any one of those twice as far as the center fielder, but you didn't. Not even the last one. So why didn't you hit it?"
"Because everyone expects green shutters."
Willis stared at him. He stared at him for a long time. "There's another brush in the pail in that corner. There by the strawberry red. Are you fast?"
"Not especially."
"That's all right," said Willis. "You can hit a baseball so high that God can catch it without stooping. You don't have to be fast at painting shutters."
Turner took the brush and dipped it in the paint can. He moved beside Willis, painting in the dark. Heaven only knew what the shutters would look like come morning. But they would be yellow again. Just as Mrs. Hurd had kept them.
He began to paint, while behind him the stars glittered for all they were worth—which was considerable—and every single one of them held its place in this night's sky without falling. Every single one.
CHAPTER 9
A round and golden moon rolled low along the horizon for the next few days, too huge and weighty to rise up any higher into the sky. When it finally began to shed its weight and loft higher, it lost its golden hue, and the light became grayer. The air began to frost every night, and the stars to glitter more coldly, and so October came upon Phippsburg and Malaga Island. The cold snapped the tethers of the last leaves, and they fell straight down onto Phippsburg's roads and over the gravesites of Malaga. Even the pine trees down to Thayer's haymeadow put on their darker green and hunched their branches closer as the mornings came in colder and colder. It would not have surprised anyone to see the first flakes of snow.
Turner ran to the shore every day now, the forbidden having been silently lifted—or at least not imposed. From the granite ledges he could count twenty, sometimes more, plumes of white woodsmoke rising from the houses on the island, but each time he went, there seemed to be fewer, though the days grew colder. Slowly, little by little, souls were drifting away from the island, their own tethers snapped. And the houses, left soulless, died—windows glassless, doors hanging on single hinges, some of the clapboard already pruned.
Usually, Lizzie would be watching for him. He would wave from the top of the ledges with both his hands over his head, and she would run down to the dory, push off, and be across by the time he had climbed down. Once over on Malaga, they would go up to her house to see her granddaddy—he was always propped up on his elbows and waiting for Turner—and then they would go down to the shore until the sea breeze turned too cold for them to sit by the waves. They'd walk across the island, through the quiet green cemetery, past the foundation of the Tripp house, and then around the whole island, hardly talking, hardly needing to. Everything was as quiet as quiet could be.
If Lizzie wasn't there waiting for him by the shore, Turner would figure her granddaddy needed her, and he would wait, hoping she might come around the turn. If she didn't, he would walk home with his coat wrapped about him, a tang of salt in his mouth.
Back at First Congregational, folks were quiet around Turner, though Deacon Hurd had stopped him outside church the Sunday after the game. "Still can't get a hit off my Willis's pitching, can you, Turner?" He had laughed, then stopped suddenly and stared at Turner. "What's that on the
tip of your ear, boy?"
"On the tip of my ear?"
"Looks like yellow paint. Have you been painting anything yellow the last few days?"
"Nothing around my house needs painting," Turner said, which was not a lie at all—sort of.
"Then what's that on your ear?"
"It's an old family disease that keeps coming back, no matter what I do."
"Old family disease?"
"My grandfather got it from missionary work. Somewhere in the Galápagos Islands."
That was as out loud as an out-loud lie could be, but it was such a good one that Turner couldn't feel too bad about using it. Especially with Deacon Hurd.
"In the Galápagos, my grandfather shouted, 'Unclean, unclean,' whenever someone came near him."
Deacon Hurd backed away when Turner held out his hand to shake.
"An old family disease?" said Turner's father after the evening service. "You told Deacon Hurd that your grandfather gave you an old family disease?"
"Well, that he might have gotten sick once while doing missionary work."
"Your grandfather did missionary work in Iceland. I don't think people in Iceland call out,'Unclean, unclean!'And how did you get yellow paint on the tip of your ear? No. I don't want to know."
Turner obliged him.
The next Sunday after services, Willis Hurd nodded to Turner as he filed out with the rest of the congregation to shake Reverend Buckminster's hand. (No one was shaking Turner's hand.) "Next time keep your ears out of the paint," said Willis, and went on to the minister. Turner decided he probably didn't hate Willis so much anymore.
Turner was still playing the organ for Mrs. Cobb on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and hoping that Lizzie would come. He and Mrs. Cobb waited together by the back door for her. Usually, she wasn't there, but every now and again she'd run across the backyard and up the stairs, and Mrs. Cobb would sniff and say something about being kept waiting for the only pleasure she had left to her. Then they'd process down the hall and into the parlor, and Mrs. Cobb would sit in her chair, Turner at the stool, and Lizzie on the floor against the horsehair chair, and Turner would begin.