Down to Earth

by Betty Culley

  “Dad said there was no water better than spring water, coming right out of the earth. Never hurt a fly.”

  I grab the phone off the floor.

  “Sorry, Dr. Morgan. I dropped the phone.”

  “I concluded that, based on the clatter in my ear. Thank you, Henry. I would like to accept your kind invitation. I can arrive tomorrow around twelve noon if that is convenient.”

  “That would be great. Do you know where we live?” I ask Dr. Morgan.

  “It says in the paper that you live on Bower Hill Road in Lowington, Maine.”

  “That’s right. We’re the first house at the top of the hill after you pass the cemetery and the granite quarry and the gravel pit.”

  “And will there be signs for these attractions?”

  “Signs? No, but you can’t get lost because the water is flooding the road past us.”

  “That’s a comfort, I suppose. I look forward to meeting you and your family. I will ring off now and make my travel arrangements. Thank you, Henry Bower,” Dr. Miles Morgan says, and hangs up the phone before I can answer.

  “We have company coming tomorrow, Nana. The curator from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where the Ahnighito is. It’s the heaviest meteorite ever moved by humans, and they had to build a stand for it that went down to the bedrock under the museum. He says he’ll be here around noon. He wants to see the stone.”

  “Oh my. A visitor all the way from New York City. Do you think he’d like baked beans and biscuits for a noon-hour meal?”

  “Sure, he’s coming a long way. Thanks, Nana.”

  In some ways, Nana is like the big stone. No matter what’s happening around her, she stays the same. She takes ketchup and two onions out of the refrigerator. I realize she was asleep in her recliner this morning and doesn’t know what happened to our house.

  “Nana, I have bad news. The water washed away our house.”

  “Henry, don’t joke about something like that.” Nana frowns at me.

  “I’m not, Nana. Nothing’s there anymore. No house, no garden, no stone wall. It’s all covered in water.”

  “Oh no. All gone?” Nana sounds like Birdie. She stands there still holding the onions and ketchup.

  “Yes, the only thing you can see is the top of the chimney,” I answer, “and pieces of the house all in the water.”

  “Who would have thought the water would do that?” Even though you can’t see the stream from the kitchen window that faces the road, Nana goes over and stands there looking out. I wait for her to say something else, but she’s completely quiet.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine I’m still in my own house, but I can’t do it. Our house smelled like the pinecones Mom used to start fires, and the herbs she hung from the kitchen ceiling. Nana’s house smells like old wallpaper and the cream she rubs on her knees. I sniffed near the walls when I was little and figured out that was where the house smell was coming from. Dad says it’s something called menthol in the knee cream that makes my eyes burn and stays in the air.

  Nana’s house is like the replica. It’s what we’re left with now instead of our real house.

  “Are you okay, Henry?” Nana asks.

  Before I can answer, the door slams and I open my eyes. Mom and Dad and Birdie come in.

  “Where’s James?” I ask.

  “Wendell picked him up. But he’ll be staying over tomorrow night,” Mom says. Instead of helping Nana in the kitchen or putting wood in the stove, she goes into the living room and sits down on the couch. I’m not used to seeing Mom just sitting in the middle of the day unless she’s sick.

  “Are you getting sick?” I ask her.

  Mom puts a hand on her cheek, like she’s checking her temperature.

  “I don’t think so. Why?” she asks.

  “Just wondering,” I answer.

  I remember the phone call from Dr. Morgan.

  “A scientist from the museum in New York City is coming tomorrow. Around twelve noon. To see the stone,” I announce.

  Birdie gives me a pebble from her pocket.

  “Throw stone,” she tells me.

  Out of habit, I bring the pebble to my nose, but all I can smell are the onions Nana is cutting up.

  “Isn’t that something,” Dad says. He goes in and out of the house, bringing kindling and firewood from the woodshed, armload after armload. Then he fills the pans of water on the stove. After that, he looks around like he’s not sure what to do next.

  “He grew up in Nottingham, England,” I add.

  I want to ask Dad what the plan is now. All the floating pieces of our house can’t be put together to rebuild our home. The rock-wall basement Dad laid stone by stone is probably part of the streambed now. I have socks but no shirts except the one I’m wearing. Dad and Braggy’s old bedroom opens into a long hallway, not a kitchen like at home. And since the bedroom is upstairs, I won’t be able to hear the sounds of the wood stove being filled before I go to sleep, or the crackling of the firewood burning during the night.

  We’re all out of order. Our family on Bower One instead of Four, higher up the hill than Lincoln and Braggy, and no dry land past Bower Four for me and Birdie to build our houses on when we’re older.

  “Henry, would you stir these beans for me?” Nana asks.

  I stand at the cookstove and stir the simmering beans with Nana’s long-handled spoon while she adds the salt, pepper, ketchup, and salt pork, but I turn so Nana can’t see my face. For once, I’m not happy to be here.

  Mom hasn’t moved from the couch.

  “I wish I’d taken your mother’s rings and dishes and Birdie’s crib mattress,” I hear Dad say to Mom. “I really thought we’d be back to mop up the water and dry out the house.”

  I can’t hear what Mom says.

  I wish I’d taken the rest of my clothes and my books and my rock collection.

  I especially wish I’d found Lilygirl.

  Nana leans over and starts to whisper in my ear, “You know, Henry, you all can—” but I stop her.

  “Please don’t say it, Nana,” I tell her. “I know what you’re going to say, but please don’t say it.”

  Nana opens her mouth, then closes it. Maybe she understands that I don’t want to hear how we can always stay at Bower One. Sometime, I know, she will say it, but I just don’t want it to be today.

  “Not today, anyway,” I add, so her feelings won’t be hurt.

  “Okay, Henry.” Nana is quiet for a minute, watching me stir the beans. “How about you bring your mother a sandwich.”

  She takes a spoonful of egg salad from a bowl in the refrigerator, smooths it out on a piece of white bread, adds a slice of tomato, and covers it with another slice of bread. She puts it on a plate and I take it over to Mom. Birdie leans against Mom on the couch.

  Mom takes the top piece of bread and the tomato off the sandwich and stares at it like she’s never seen an egg salad sandwich before. She picks up the other half, takes a few bites, and hands the plate back to me.

  Sometimes when a big snowstorm was coming, we stayed at Nana’s house, but we always had our house to go home to the next day. Tonight feels different. Mom and Dad sleep in the other upstairs bedroom, Uncle Lincoln’s old room. Birdie sleeps there, too, on a couch cushion Dad brought up for her.

  I wake up during the night and I’m confused, thinking my bed got turned around and the windows are in the wrong place. Then I realize I’m at Nana’s house.

  Thump thump thump Thump thump thump.

  A thumping sound comes from downstairs.

  Thump thump thump Thump thump thump.

  I tiptoe to the top of the stairs and look down into the living room. Dad is pacing back and forth like he did down by the water. I tiptoe quietly back down the hall.

  Dad is like a nocturnal animal, awake when everyone else is asleep. Mom is like an anim
al going into hibernation, eating less and slowing down her movements to conserve energy.

  In my father’s old room, I push the bed so it’s up against the wall in the same direction my bed was at home. It’s colder in here than in my bedroom at home, so I take the blankets off the second bed and pile them over myself. I get my notebook from my backpack. There’s a pencil marking the page where I wrote my last question.

  Is the other mammoth tusk still in the mud?

  I imagine digging in the old drainage pond in Scarborough and suddenly hitting something as hard as the antler James found on the snow as I uncover the second real tusk. It would be like the moment I stood on the roof and watched the meteorite flash across the sky.

  I pick up the pencil and write:

  When it traveled through the universe, did the meteorite ever pass anything that was alive?

  The extra blankets finally warm me enough to go back to sleep. I put my notebook and pencil down and turn out the light. Twelve noon can’t come fast enough.

  Meteorites have enabled us to come close to answering questions such as “How did the Earth, Sun and planets form?”, and even “How did we come to be here?”

  —Robert Hutchinson and Andrew Graham, Meteorites

  I WISH I’D ASKED Miles Morgan the color of his car so I could be sure not to miss him coming over the hill. I put on my coat and hat and go out on the porch to wait.

  The Lowington Fire Department water tanker truck is down where the moving water crosses the road, filling up. Dad and Lincoln and Braggy help fill plastic barrels in the back of a pickup truck with a hose connected to a generator. Birdie stands there in her red coat watching them. Mom is upstairs in Lincoln’s old bedroom, resting again.

  I guess that Dr. Miles Morgan’s car will be silver, then I guess black, then red, and then a very ordinary dark blue car pulls into the driveway.

  The driver’s-side door opens and Dr. Miles Morgan steps out. His skin is a lighter shade of the meteorite, and he wears a gray suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. His shoes are black and shiny. I’ve only seen men wear clothes like these at my grandfather’s funeral. He doesn’t wear a coat or a hat, and he carries a briefcase.

  The wind at the top of the hill blows strong and cold, good for keeping the frost from hitting the garden, but not good for city men wearing thin clothes in February. Dr. Miles Morgan shivers as he looks up at Nana’s big farmhouse, painted white but peeling from years of wind and snow.

  “Hello, Dr. Morgan. Welcome.” I hold out my hand.

  Dr. Morgan’s hand is cold. He looks around at the patches of snow still in Nana’s fields and the leafless maples in front of the house. Smoke rises straight up from the chimney, and you can taste it in the air.

  “What a spectacularly wintry landscape you have here,” he says.

  “It is winter,” I explain.

  He takes a cell phone out of his pocket and holds it up.

  “There doesn’t appear to be any cell phone service here,” he says.

  “There’s no cell phone service in most of Lowington,” I say, and lead the way into Nana’s warm kitchen.

  Dr. Miles Morgan is nothing like Mr. Ronnie. He sits at Nana’s kitchen table for an hour and doesn’t ask a single question about the meteorite. He doesn’t ask how big it is. He doesn’t ask where it is. He doesn’t ask to go see it. He’s most interested in Nana’s baked beans and biscuits. After eating two biscuits, then two more, covering them with so much butter you can hardly see the biscuits, Dr. Morgan takes a small leather notebook and a fountain pen out of his briefcase.

  “Would you be so kind as to share your recipe for these delightfully flaky scones?” He holds a biscuit up between two fingers.

  “These biscuits? I just take some flour…,” Nana starts to explain.

  “And how much might that be?”

  “Why, enough to leave room in the bowl for shortening and milk.”

  “Ah, and the shortening?”

  “Crisco. Don’t you have that in New York City?”

  “Yes, we most certainly do. And how might you measure that?”

  “I add enough of the Crisco and milk so it doesn’t stick to the bowl. And some salt. Just a few shakes. With the baking powder.”

  Dr. Morgan stops writing and closes his notebook. He takes another biscuit.

  “I see. You are a natural cook. That is a rare thing,” he tells Nana.

  “Is that your science notebook?” I point to the leather book. “I have a homeschool notebook.”

  “No, this is my daily planner. It helps me keep track of those many tedious appointments and meetings,” the curator says.

  I take my notebook out of my backpack, open it to the pages about the meteorite, and lay it on the table next to Dr. Morgan’s plate. No one has ever read my notebooks. It’s like the Honor Box. Mom trusts what I write in it.

  “You can read my notebook if you want,” I tell him. “This is the only one I have left. Numbers six, seven, eight, and nine were on my bookshelf at home when the water washed everything away.”

  Dr. Morgan takes one more bite of his biscuit, puts it down on his plate, and starts reading my notebook. At some of the pages, he nods his head, at others he puts his finger under a line of my writing like he’s really thinking about what’s written there.

  While he’s reading, Nana pours him another cup of coffee. He scoops three teaspoons of sugar into his cup and sips it as he reads.

  “Hmmm.” He hums to himself, reading, and when he’s done, he closes the notebook and lays his hand on the cover.

  “Henry, I see you’ve been asking yourself many of the same questions I have over the years. What is most important is not always the answers, but the questions. Keep asking the questions. Which isn’t as simple as it seems, to devise the kind of questions and observations that will lead to answers.”

  I’m thinking the answers have to be important, too. Like, why dowsing works for some people and not others, and if there’s a secret dowsing sense that a scientist could find if he knew where to look. Or why a rock brings enough water to flood a road. But I don’t want the curator to think I’m being rude.

  Before I have a chance to say anything, Dad and Birdie come into the house.

  “This is Dr. Miles Morgan,” I say. “He’s in charge of the meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. And he came all the way here because he saw an article in the paper about the rock.”

  “Welcome.” Dad shakes his hand. “Harlan Bower.”

  “I’m Boss,” Birdie tells the curator.

  “This is my sister, Birdie,” I explain. “ ‘The Boss’ is her nickname.”

  “I’m three,” Birdie adds.

  “On your birthday this summer, then you’ll be three,” I remind her.

  “Three now,” Birdie repeats.

  “Okay, Birdie.” Ever since we came to Bower One, Birdie acts older, walking instead of wanting to be carried, swinging by herself on Nana’s swing instead of asking to be pushed, even shouting less. I know our house is really gone, but I’m not sure Birdie does.

  “Mom,” I call up the stairs, “the curator from the museum is here.”

  Mom comes down the stairs slowly.

  “Alice Bower, pleased to meet you,” she says to the curator.

  Dr. Morgan opens his briefcase on the table.

  “I appreciate the hospitality you’ve shown me on such short notice, and I want to present you all with some gifts from the museum.”

  For the second time in three days, there is gift-giving at Nana’s house.

  “Shall we choose youngest first?” Miles Morgan asks, and gives Birdie three postcards.

  “I am not sure of your personal preferences, but these are some of our most popular cards.”

  “No, THAT.” Birdie hands the postcards back to Dr. Morgan and points to his neck.
>
  “Oh, Birdie.” I turn to Dr. Morgan. “She wants your tie. Because it’s red. That’s her favorite color. Birdie, that’s part of Dr. Morgan’s clothes.”

  “My tie?” Miles Morgan touches a hand to his tie.

  “Red tie.” Birdie nods.

  Miles Morgan unknots his tie and holds it out to Birdie. She lifts her chin and points to her neck.

  “She wants you to put it on her, the way you wore it,” I tell the curator.

  “Dr. Morgan, you don’t have to give Birdie your tie,” Mom says.

  “Put on,” Birdie says, softly this time, and Miles Morgan kneels down and places the tie around her neck. He crosses one end over the other, loops it up and over, knots it carefully, and adjusts it so it isn’t too loose or too tight.

  Birdie throws herself at Dr. Morgan and hugs him.

  Next out of Dr. Morgan’s briefcase is a five-hundred-piece dinosaur puzzle for Nana, free passes to the museum for all of us, and T-shirts that say american museum of natural history on them.

  “Thank you, Dr. Morgan.” Nana studies the stegosaurus on the cover of the puzzle box. “I love puzzles, but I never had a dinosaur one.”

  “Henry, I brought something special for you.” The curator unzips a small compartment inside the briefcase and passes me a plastic bag.

  “This is from my personal collection.”

  I lift the bag so the sun coming through the low farmhouse windows shines on the little pebble inside.

  I study it through the plastic bag.

  “It looks like our rock,” I say.

  Dr. Morgan clears his throat and looks into his empty coffee cup. Despite his missing tie, and his shirt having come loose from his pants when he kneeled down to put the tie on Birdie, he still looks very dignified.

  “Dr. Morgan, would you like some more coffee?” Nana asks him.

  “Certainly, thank you kindly. This was an unusually early morning for me.”

  “I’ll get it, Mom,” Dad says. “Save your knees the trip.”

  “Why, my knees feel good as new right now! Not a bit of an ache.”

  I take the stone out of the bag. It fits in the palm of my hand and looks like a miniature version of the rock in the field. It’s surprisingly heavy for its size, with a single thumbprint-shaped ridge on one side and a few specks of shiny metal. Its fusion crust is black and shiny but flaked away in places, and the underneath rock is gray and pitted.