The Keening

by A. LaFaye

  As he faded into the window, the chill of losing him took hold of me. Had me crying right there in front of that five-and-ten. I almost wished I didn’t have to tell his mother about the locket. I knew that Jake would move on when I did.

  But how on this earth could I hold him back from his heavenly reward? I couldn’t. That’s why I marched up to the curb to meet Mr. Penwarren.

  He practically staggered when he stepped out onto that sidewalk.

  “Spit in my eye and call me blind.” He held my hands. “You are your mother all over again.”

  Little did he know how much I took after my father. And during that whole rumbling, dusty, stop-for-gas, stop-to-fix-a-tire ride home, I fought with myself about how to tell him about George. How to tell him the truth. But I had barely accepted the truth myself. It would take me some time before I could share it with others.

  A True Tell on the Tide

  As we finally rumbled up the road toward the house, I told Mr. Penwarren it was better to pull off the road under the old oak tree than to brave our drive. I let him into the house and he set to making a fire as I cobbled together a few things fit to be called breakfast, then explained that I’d better go out to the island and see after Pater. I wanted to prepare him for Mr. Penwarren’s arrival.

  Mr. Penwarren agreed, saying he had a few things to get in order himself. He promised to row out to Abner’s Island when he had everything ready.

  I left him by the fire, sipping tea and eating the last of the cookies Mater had baked just the other day. Finding myself standing in the doorway of the kitchen, I closed my eyes to imagine her there in front of the stove, winking at me before she opened the oven to check the cookies. What message would she have for me if I could see her now?

  Walking down the cliff-side steps, the wind echoing through the icehouse cave, I pulled my jacket tight around me, chilled by visions of spirits carried on those icy gusts. I turned to Pater’s workshop, knowing now what he really did in that dark room built into a cave.

  With picks and shovels, Mater and Pater had carved the workshop out of a cliff-side cave—a tenth anniversary present to themselves. Mater got to have Pater close at hand and Pater got a new work space all his own.

  I rarely entered the workshop. The seaside wall of wood held a row of windows, but they never seemed to let in enough light to penetrate the darkness within. My shadow fear kept me in the doorway as a child, the sun bathing my back making me feel safe.

  I longed to study the room, learn its secrets so that I might help Pater, put the gift he’d passed on to me to some good use. The door opened with a rusty sigh of the hinges. The sunlight cast the grid of the windows onto the worktable in the center of the room. Half-hidden in shadow, rough-hewn shelves lined the back wall. Workbenches skirted the other three walls. Pater had laid out his tools as he had his childhood toys—one after another along the benches, surrounding him like a fairy circle.

  The wood sprite gone from his workbench, I figured Pater had already sent her to sea, but the room didn’t feel empty. The heaviness of a crowd hung there, nearly as daunting as the rush of people in Portland.

  Whenever I had to go to the fish market or to Gunderson’s at harvesttime, being amongst so many people made me twittery inside. I’d close my eyes to calm myself, but I could always feel them—the heat of their souls pressing in around me. If I didn’t go about my business and return home in a hurry, I felt sure I’d simply start to cry under the weight of it all. And that wing-flapping panic filled my chest as I stood in the workshop alone.

  I’d always told myself this fear was born of a solitary life, but standing in that dark room, knowing what I did of Pater and myself, I began to wonder if I’d felt my inherited talents hiding among the shadows.

  Had I brushed off shadowy visions of the spirit world as childhood fears? Would I find them now hidden in the darkness before me? True tellings I never had the strength to face? Pater had offered to show me in the stories he told of his sculptures, but I’d shied away. He never pressed, probably waiting for me to ask for his help. And now I could feel the spirits pressing in around me like a crowd.

  As I closed my eyes, I caught the hint of a whisper. Holding my breath gave that whisper strength, like the fierce mutterings of the shadow spirit who’d haunted the walls of my bedroom. Or the muttering voices of the all too real world of the hospital in Portland. I couldn’t make out any words, but then one voice became distinct, even loud, then another joined it, and another, all of them whispering frantically. But their words remained muddled, unclear. The effort to understand them pulled my mind too thin.

  Nothing came clear.

  I shook my head, opening my eyes to hold off a wave of nausea. Force the spirits back into the shadows.

  But a knot formed in my chest as if I’d left something important undone. Growing as I stood still, that knot would surely draw short my breath if I didn’t act.

  Closing my eyes, I listened again. The whisperers spoke in a whirlwind of sound. So I focused my mind, like listening for Mater calling to me from a distance in a strong wind. Slowly, words rose out of the din. “Send . . . Send . . . Send her home.” The voices pulled me forward into the darkness.

  I opened my eyes to see nothing. Slowly, they adjusted. I could make out details in the darkness. I saw eyes staring at me, pleading. The wood sprite sat on a shelf, waiting. Her hair flowing through the grain, her eyes fixed on me, her mouth open in a whisper, she remained unfinished. Unreleased.

  I turned to find her boat. Pater always built a boat. With nothing but tools visible on the work surface, I started to search the cupboards below. In one cupboard, I uncovered a graveyard of sorts. Stacked high in a jumble of rotting fabric and water-stained wood, my fear boats looked like a pile of old bones.

  Holding one up, I sighed. They’d come back with the tide like so much flotsam. This made me wonder how far the sea took Pater’s sculptures. Did they return up shore? Sink to the bottom? Clink against the hull of distant ships? What good did it do to carve these faces and set them adrift?

  I had no answers, but like my childhood fears, they gripped my good sense so tightly I couldn’t use it. I took that fear boat, recast the sail with a polishing rag and scrap lumber, then placed that girl’s face into the hull. Carrying her to the shore, I found myself moving as carefully over the rocks as if I held an infant.

  I wondered who this girl had been. Did the fever take her? How did she find Pater? And what of angels flying in meteors? Did she believe such tales?

  As I set the boat in the water, I sent it to sea with a prayer for her safe journey. In her departure, I heard an answer in what I believed to be her soft voice. “The angels aren’t meteors. They fly among the meteors to be sure no harm will come to those below.”

  Taking in a sharp breath, I stood, cupping my elbows, remembering Mater’s words, “You’ll find your calling in college. The only reason you haven’t run across it yet is because we’ve lived here all your life. This place is so small you trip on your own feet.”

  She hadn’t seen it clearly. I’d tripped over my own talent since I was a child, but it got lost inside my fears. I sent them out to sea, but they returned. Only Pater had known that until now.

  The Sway of the Spirits

  I rowed out to Pater on the island, the green “coming over” flag snapping in the wind behind me. My mind tossed with the waves, haunted by a new round of fears. How could this talent with spirits come to any good? They haunted Pater, kept him from the real world. Just that one visit with George nearly barred me from the here and now of that hospital. All this time I’d been afraid of leaving home. Now I saw that my talents could rip me from it while I stood in my very own bedroom.

  And what of the spirits? Did the lingering among the living risk their passage to heaven? The woman on the train spoke of the length of her journey—did she miss her chance to join the heavenly host?

  Pater had taken up his post again. Climbing onto the bed next to him, I said, “Penwa
rren.”

  Pater slapped the wall. “That’s it!”

  “He’s coming.”

  “Like your mater.”

  “As a spirit? Mater’s spirit is coming?” I gripped the blanket under me.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Doesn’t that frighten you?” Seeing Mater would be a blessing, but I worried about the risk of keeping her soul on this side of heaven.

  “No fears.” He kept his eyes on the floor just inside the doorway.

  “Spirits crossing into the world of the living. Isn’t that wrong?”

  “No crossing. They haven’t left.”

  “Do they block out the world, Pater?”

  Pater didn’t look at me. He just put his hand over mine. “No. You spoke to Bethany. You saw the sea, felt the air, thought of Mayra.” He turned, his eyes clear, fixed on me. I felt a twist of panic and love.

  “You heard me?” Perhaps Pater had never learned the boundaries of the living. Having spent so much of his time under the sway of the spirits of the dead, he could think as they do, share thoughts as they did.

  He nodded, then shook his head in sadness. “Poor Mater. She thought the Aunties brought the spirits. They brought Pater, so sad and sorry for what he’d done, but the spirits have spoken to me since the day my memories began to stick inside my head. Emily of Amherst told me a poem about all the things I could see and do and never leave our little shore.” His hand swept over the horizon we could both see from that cabin bed.

  As I pictured the truth of Pater’s words, the people, the hints of the possible, I felt myself opening up, seeing things I’d overlooked.

  “They’re not evil, Lyza. Just wandering.” Pater squeezed my hand.

  “And you’re just helping them find their way.”

  “I am.” I waited, knowing he’d say more. The breeze rustled the curtains. The sea lapped at the shore.

  “When they first came my world lost all its walls. In their stories, I could go anywhere. Know anyone. Climb a mountain. Sail the sea. Then the world became too thin. Like the blade of a knife. Until it disappeared. That’s when my mater locked me away.

  “And the world threw up its walls all white and filled with broken people and angry guards. Stiff old doctors with blind questions. I carved, carved, carved, but I couldn’t find their faces, only empty lines. I sat by a window watching a leaf tugging at its stem, ready to fall into the wind at any moment. Was this a sign of freedom? Or death?

  “Mayra came. Tapped the table. ‘Did you carve this?’ I’d freed a yawning hippo from the wood. ‘They sound a bit like elephants,’ I said.”

  Pater faced me, saying, “Mohomodou told me that too.” He patted my hand.

  Mohomodou was a face that Pater carved in a block of ebony, set in a small boat, then pushed off to sea, saying, “May you hear the lions howl on the savanna.” Now I also knew he was a soul Pater helped to get on the right path to take his journey into the next world.

  “And Mayra came back to see more carvings. She brought me wood. They wouldn’t let her bring stone. A guard had to watch, but Mayra sat in front of him. Made him disappear. She made it all disappear.”

  “Even the spirits?”

  “I didn’t need them anymore.” He sighed. “But they needed me. To remember them. Send them on their way. Now they come when they need me. I listen to what they have to say as I carve them, then send them on.”

  “They won’t haunt you now that Mater’s gone?”

  “Not haunt, Lyza.” He squeezed my hand again. “Sometimes my soul rides choppy waves, but that’s not on account of what they’ve done. It’s what they’ve left undone. Me trying to find a way to set it right. A mother who didn’t have the chance to say good-bye to her child. How would my words sound like hers if I wrote a letter? A man who’d taken a life and buried it within the earth never to be discovered. If I told the police, would they hunt me?”

  For my whole childhood, I’d seen Pater as a simple soul sputtering around the edges of life. But Pater had spent my entire life saving souls. He’d reached beyond the grave to help people he’d never even seen. All those letters to right wrongs left untouched, unknown by the living, giving the spirits sway in the lives they’d left behind. And all this time, the people around him thought him crazy. Pride filled me up until I had to cry.

  I squeezed his knee. “Stitches of love, Pater.”

  He laughed.

  Pater fell silent. I’d been filled so full with the new and the impossible, I came close to bursting. The still silence gave me time to settle.

  For lunch, Pater made us egg sandwiches. Not fried egg. Not egg salad. Just boiled eggs cut in thin even slices, then placed on bread dry as bones.

  Biting into the sandwich, my mouth drying up, I asked, “Where’d you get the eggs?”

  “From the Sheffield Pond.” Pater smiled.

  I swallowed, falling into a memory—but not my own. Mater’s. I felt as if I too had been plunged into a freezing pond, my world suddenly dark and dangerous. I began to shake. The boundaries of this world and the next had cracked like so much ice. The size of my new world was too big for me to feel safe. Visions of the dead could pull me under before I had the chance to protect myself.

  “Lyza?” Pater reached his hand across the table.

  “Just need a little air.” I stood and went to the door. More than air, I needed mooring, something to weigh me down. Give me assurance that I wouldn’t be set adrift. Without thinking, I found myself sitting at the end of our dock, hugging the post, wishing I had Mater there to tell me what to do.

  In a flash, I remembered her notebook. Fishing it out, I started to read, Mater’s smooth voice filling my thoughts.

  I don’t know what’s taken me from you, but I promise you’re loved. And though you’ll miss me, know I’m waiting. Waiting in a place time doesn’t touch. I’ll wait a lifetime watching you grow. Don’t think of pleasing me, Lyza. Or doing honor to my memory. All of that’s for fools who believe I don’t know better from where I sit. All the world’s behind me. I pray only for your happiness. I found a well of it in college—drinking up all the new ideas, the classes, the people, the professors who needed their heads cracked open to give a woman’s mind room to grow—and your pater.

  He’s not crazy, you know. His eyes are set differently. Not on the world you live in, nor are they heaven set. He sees between those worlds. Let him look, Lyza. Let him look. He’ll show you what he can.

  I’ve left you money. I won’t call it college money like my family and their cursed boat money. It’s money to help you build your happiness, find your way. Use it as you will, but don’t be foolish. Spend it on things that will give a good return. Good returns in life are measured not in instant pleasures, but in growth. Listen to me prattle! Prattle I will.

  If you get the chance, jump into the sea from a cliff—test the water’s depth first (the mother in me breaking in).

  When you reach a big city, find the dead center of its train station and watch the world travel by you—person by person. Map their journeys with your mind’s eye.

  These tiny notes of advice filling the page told me I could carry Mater with me. Keep her wisdom close at hand to weigh me down, guide me through. I didn’t want to run out of them, so I pocketed the book and stood up.

  A boat edged across the water toward the island. I figured it must be Mr. Penwarren, but it hadn’t sailed from High Point. This boat came from town. Squinting, I made out Dr. Mansfield, Uncle Garrett, and Uncle Marl.

  Racing back toward the cabin, I shouted, “Pater! Garrett and Marl are coming!”

  Pater appeared in the doorway, white and tense. “We’ll leave them an empty cabin to find.” He took my hand.

  “No, Pater, I’ll send them away.”

  “Isn’t that for me to do?”

  “They won’t listen to you, Pater. Not until Mr. Penwarren sets this right.”

  “True.” He nodded, checking the sea over my shoulder. Kissing my check, he said, “K
eep safe.”

  “I will.”

  He disappeared into the woods. I headed to the dock, a thought creeping into my head. How long would it be before people called me crazy? I’d heard the voices of the dead, set a spirit free onto the sea; I believed every word Pater told me.

  Would they come to lock me away someday?

  Uncle Garrett’s shouts pushed these thoughts away. “It’s foolish to have him run, Lyza. He’s only hurting himself.”

  Grabbing the pole we used to crack ice, I asked, “How do you figure that?”

  Uncle Marl rowed. Dr. Mansfield watched me from the far end of the boat, his face weighted down by pity.

  “He needs help, Lyza. And you know it.”

  “I know this is our island.” As the boat came in close, I put the pole into the water to block their path. “And you’re trespassing.”

  “Your island!” Uncle Marl shouted, standing up, the boat swaying. “My father’s buried here. So is my sister!”

  “And if you were here to visit their graves, I’d let you land. But you’re not.”

  “Tie us off.” Uncle Garrett tossed the rope toward me. I didn’t bother catching it.

  “You can’t keep us away.” Marl glowered at me.

  “What will you do? Pull your knife and cut me?” I slashed my finger along the path of Mater’s scar.

  “You disrespectful little cretin,” Marl snapped.

  “Respect? What do you know of respect? If someone doesn’t follow your tidy little rules, you’ll cut them clean to the bone or pack them off to the work farm!”

  “Stop that!” Marl shook a fist at me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Garrett had steadied the boat with their rock pole.

  “Or what?” I shouted, pulling the ice pole out of the water. “You’ll come beat some respect into me?”

  “I ought to . . .” Uncle Marl slammed into his seat and took to the oars.

  “No!” Garrett shouted, looming over Marl.