Suitcase of Stars

by Pierdomenico Baccalario

  “Dad, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d be happy to work with you and Doug —”

  “No, you wouldn’t be happy,” my father interrupted. “After a summer of working, you’d be miserable — and you know it.”

  I knew he was right. To me, sheep were the dumbest, most boring animals in the whole world. Except for Doug, of course.

  “We’ve made a lot of sacrifices for you,” Dad repeated, “and this is how you pay us back. We knew right away that your brother wasn’t cut out for college, but I thought you were different.” He let the last sentence hang in the air for a while. “I’m taking you to see Reverend Prospero tomorrow.”

  Then he left without waiting for a response.

  I ran to the window. “Patches! Did you hear what they’re going to do to me? They’re taking me to Reverend Prospero!”

  But the little traitor had already deserted his spot beneath my window. In the distance, I could see my dog chasing sheep happily in the moonlight.

  That was the longest night of my life. I lay awake with my eyes open, listening to the whispering wind outside my window. Eventually I fell asleep only to be awoken by my mother at the crack of dawn.

  “On your feet,” she said. “Come on, lazy bones.”

  She literally pushed me out of bed, marched me to the bathroom, and pointed to the bath already filled with steaming water. On one side was a towel, on the other was my best suit — the one I wore to church. I cringed.

  “You have fifteen minutes to get ready!” Mom said.

  If I refused, I knew she would just push me into the tub with my clothes still on and wash me herself like I was a baby.

  Ten minutes later, I sat at the kitchen table. The water in my bath had been so hot that I felt like I’d been skinned alive. My stomach was grumbling. Dad was reading the sports page of the newspaper. He didn’t speak.

  “Hey, Einstein!” Doug said, sitting down across from me.

  I didn’t reply. My brother had made himself a mountain of scrambled eggs and was now pouring honey and mustard over it simultaneously. I was so hungry that I would’ve eaten that disgusting concoction. Instead, my mother gave me toast with jelly and some scrambled eggs, which I hated. But I didn’t complain.

  I quickly ate my breakfast, trying my best to ignore Doug’s finger-tapping as he listened to his headphones. I just sat and waited nervously for whatever would come next.

  My father rustled his newspaper and slapped it on the table. “Let’s go,” he said to me. Then he turned to face my brother. “Take those things out of your ears when you’re at the table, Doug.”

  Dad and I climbed into the front seat of the van. Patches sat between us. As soon as we started moving, Patches scampered over my dress pants and stuck his nose out the window to let the rushing air tickle his ears.

  I let him stay that way, but I held his collar so that he wouldn’t fall out.

  Soon, the small houses of Applecross came into view.

  “Why do we have to go see Reverend Prospero?” I asked my father.

  He kept staring straight ahead. “I asked him to find you a job this summer,” he said.

  “A job?” I said. “Why can’t I work with you at the farm? Yesterday you said that you needed my help.”

  Dad parked the van in front of the church. He turned to stare straight at me. “Like I said last night, you’d probably enjoy yourself working at the farm for one summer,” he said bitterly. “So I’ve asked the reverend to find you a job that you won’t enjoy at all.”

  Dad climbed out of the van and slammed the door shut. “That way, maybe next time you’ll think twice before wasting our money — and your life.”

  I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. I slowly climbed out of the van, gently closed the door, and followed my father toward the church.

  Reverend Prospero was the village pastor. He’d baptized everyone in town, taken confession from all those who wished to confess, married every couple who wanted to get married, and had spoken the last rites for anyone who was dying. He lived in the parsonage behind the church with Ms. Finla, his housekeeper. She was probably the only person in Applecross who was older than Reverend Prospero.

  My father led me toward the parsonage. As we passed between the house and the church, I saw the shadow of the Reverend rise before me. His fiery eyes burned into mine.

  The reverend was a giant. His muscular arms and shoulders seemed better suited for a construction worker than a pastor. He’d been a chaplain in the army for a war or two. I couldn’t remember which ones, but I could easily imagine him leading a troop of soldiers under enemy fire while playing the bagpipes.

  He had a commanding voice and a stern attitude. He was fond of saying, “To save your soul, you have to beat it into submission.” The only thing that prevented him from being completely intimidating was his huge mustache and the tufts of hair that sprouted from his ears. He was bald everywhere else.

  Meb McCameron once told me that Reverend Prospero had a mysterious tattoo on his shoulder. She claimed she’d seen it when he was being measured for his new vestments at her shop. I was curious to find out if it was true, but I wasn’t about to ask the reverend.

  “So, Finley McPhee,” Reverend Prospero boomed. “What have you done this time?”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been dragged into his presence. About a year ago, Jackie Turbine, Sammy Monkfish, and I had broken Mr. Everett’s window with a rugby ball. Mr. Everett’s house was right behind the field, and Jackie Turbine had the best kick in the entire village, so it wasn’t really our fault. Although we probably should have stopped playing after we’d broken the first window. And maybe we shouldn’t have trampled through Mrs. Gordon’s garden while fleeing from Mr. Everett.

  That time, Reverend Prospero said that it was just a matter of boys being boys. He made me and Sammy weed Mrs. Gordon’s garden for a month, and he ordered Jackie to clean the moss off all the gravestones at the cemetery.

  “Well, Finley?” the reverend asked. “Why are you here?”

  “I spent too much time fishing, Reverend,” I said.

  Reverend Prospero laughed heartily. “Instead of going to school, you mean,” he said. “So what are we going to do with you?”

  “It’s up to you, Reverend,” I said. I may have been smiling, but I was also sweating through my best suit.

  “What are you good at?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. I knew how to fish pretty well, and I had a sharp eye for finding things that washed up on the beach. I could read and write pretty well, and I loved American comic books. I could sprint through the forests in the winter and through the fields in summer. In fact, when I went running with Patches, sometimes I even beat him in a race. I also knew how to recognize the entrances to the Little People’s kingdom, and I knew all sorts of sneaky shortcuts through the village.

  But those weren’t the types of things the reverend was looking for, so I simply shrugged.

  “So you aren’t good at anything?” the reverend said. It sounded more like a challenge than a question.

  I frowned. My father gave me a sharp shove forward, making me almost fall over. “I leave him in your capable hands, Prospero,” Dad said. “I need to get back to the farm.”

  The two men nodded at each other as if they had worked out everything beforehand. I imagined them talking to each other on the phone while I had been locked in my room, discussing the situation in that clipped, concise way that grown men use when they discuss important stuff.

  “Follow me,” the reverend said, leading the way.

  Because I was younger than fourteen, I couldn’t legally work. There was a law against the abuse of child labor, or something like that. But that fact wasn’t going to stop the reverend from forcing me to “give him a hand” here and there for free wherever he needed help. “Besides,” he often said, “giving back to the community is the traditional Scottish cure for laziness.”

  The first day, I had to work in the supermarket. They pu
t me in the warehouse, where I unloaded the packages, and then lifted them onto the shelves. At first it seemed like it might be fun, but it didn’t turn out that way. More and more packages arrived as the day went on, and they all had to be placed on the shelves in a specific order. Apparently there was a particular way of shelving the items, but I didn’t get it. I had no idea so many products could fill the back storeroom of a small market, or that so many people could come in asking for so many different things.

  By midmorning, my shoulders were aching. Mr. Cullen, the owner, hadn’t spoken to me until then. He saw that my work rate had slowed, so he pointed at a stool by the register. “Take a break from shelving while I go to the bank,” he said. “If anyone comes in, tell them I’ll be back shortly.”

  As soon as he’d left, I went to get a popsicle from the freezer. I ate it quickly so he wouldn’t see me with it when he came back. Just then, a man I’d never seen before entered the shop. He looked like a rock star — really tall and thin with blond, shaggy hair and a spaced-out expression.

  He glanced left and right as if trying to figure out where he was. “Do you have any pizza?” he asked. I pointed to the appropriate shelf. He walked over to examine them. A moment later, he picked up three pizzas and carried them to the register and set them on the counter.

  The man rifled through his pockets only to find that both of them were empty. “Sorry about this,” he said, “but I seem to have forgotten my wallet at home. Can I come back later to pay for these?”

  I looked outside in the direction of the bank to see if Mr. Cullen was on his way back, but he wasn’t. I had to make a managerial decision.

  “Okay,” I said to the stranger. “But you will come back later to pay, right?”

  “Yes, of course I will,” he said. “Thanks, kid.”

  Later, when I told Mr. Cullen about the situation, he simply pointed at a sign on the wall that read “NO CREDIT. NO EXCEPTIONS!” He sent me back to Reverend Prospero.

  * * *

  The next day, I began to “volunteer” at the post office. I stayed there a whole week, moving and sorting mail. Again I was surprised by the sheer quantity of letters and packages that the people of Applecross sent and received. With email and smartphones and computers, I’d figured that snail mail was dead and gone.

  I enjoyed my time there for the most part. At the end of that week, some good news came my way. Jules, the village mailman, had sprained an ankle while running away from the McBlack sheepdog. He re-enacted the entire incident, gesturing wildly and even using different voices. My new colleagues seemed quite shocked by the whole series of events. “No one,” Jules stated, “should have to deliver mail to the McBlacks.”

  There was a lot of local gossip that supported his perspective. The McBlacks had a reputation for being troublemakers. Their house had been given the nickname Eerie House even if there was nothing frightening about it, apart from maybe the headless statue in the front yard. People loved to gossip about the supposedly ferocious McBlack sheepdog, but it had always seemed nice enough to me.

  Regardless, Jules had definitely sprained his ankle. He had it propped up on a chair, covered in ice packs.

  “This is a bad situation, Jules,” said the lady who sat behind the counter. “If you can’t ride your bike, then who is going to deliver mail on your route?”

  In a split second, all eyes were on me. It took me even less than that to graciously accept my new job.

  School officially closed its doors for summer vacation on the second Saturday in June. It was also the day when the names and grades were posted, along with the names of those who had failed (only me).

  Meanwhile, I was out pedaling the mailman’s bicycle. Patches was scurrying behind me, determined not to let me get too far ahead of him. When the route took me up a hill, I pedaled even harder. Jules’s bike felt like it might break at any moment, which would have been a disaster. After all, it was my first day being a mailman.

  I had the mailbag slung over my shoulder as I rode. I hadn’t sorted the mail before leaving like Jules usually did. Instead, I pulled out one letter at a time from the mailbag, read the address, and then took off to deliver it.

  It was actually kind of fun. Everyone, especially the people living on the farms, thanked me for bringing them their mail. Several families invited me in for lemonade and kept their dogs outside so they wouldn’t fight with Patches. During the few weeks I delivered their mail, I learned more about the families of Applecross than I had in the previous thirteen years. After that experience, the village of Applecross seemed both larger and smaller at the same time.

  As I traveled from house to house, my dog happily marked his territory at every stop we made, completely untroubled by the many growling sheepdogs we passed by. Around one in the afternoon, Patches had started to pant as he trotted along behind me. I was getting pretty tired myself, so I decided to deliver one last letter before taking my lunch break.

  I remember the next few moments perfectly. I was biking on a small country road beside a long stretch of grass that was bordered by a stone wall. There was a gnarled oak tree by the side of the road that had a dense array of twisted branches. My watch read 1:13 p.m. exactly when I stopped my bike to pull the letter from my mailbag.

  The envelope felt strange in my hands, almost as if it were alive. It was long, narrow, and had ornate handwriting that looked like it had been pressed with gold foil. The envelope had been sent from somewhere in London called The Imaginary Travelers Club. The letter was addressed to:

  The Lily Family

  Enchanted Emporium

  36 Eggstones Heaven

  Reginald Bay, Applecross (Scotland)

  At first I thought it was a joke. I’d never heard of a Lily family who lived in Applecross, or a place called Eggstones Heaven, or even a Reginald Bay.

  I noticed the letter had a strange scent, and it seemed to quiver in my hands. I tried to fold the envelope, but it wouldn’t bend. It seemed to be made of something much stronger than paper despite the fact that it didn’t seem to weigh anything at all. When I tilted the letter, it sounded like sand was falling from one end to the other.

  “Like an hourglass,” I murmured. I held the envelope up to the light, but I couldn’t see anything inside it.

  I sighed. “Let’s go home for lunch, Patches,” I said. “We’ll have a better chance at cracking this case with full stomachs.” Patches barked in agreement.

  Lost in thought, I pedaled toward home at a leisurely pace, wondering about that mysterious letter.

  I had no idea at the time, but delivering the mysterious envelope would prove to be much harder than I thought.

  I sat down at the table across from my brother and mother. “Hey, Doug,” I said. “Have you heard of a place called Reginald Bay?”

  My brother stopped chewing for a moment. “Huh?” he asked.

  “Reginald Bay?” I repeated, enunciating each syllable. “Have you heard of it?”

  Doug just shrugged and continued chewing.

  “Ask your father,” Mom suggested. “When it comes to Scotland’s geography, nobody knows more than he does.”

  It was true. Talking to my father about Scotland, you’d think he had traveled the country many times over by the way he recognized every single place’s name. Yet I never saw him look at an atlas or map. The Imaginary Travelers Club should have addressed their letter to my dad, I thought.

  I found Dad leaning against the sheep pen while gazing over the gently rolling valleys. I was still a little nervous as I approached him, but not as much as I had been the previous week. Now that I had a job, in his eyes I was doing something useful instead of “wasting my time down by the river.”

  “Hey, dad,” I said, “Have you heard of Reginald Bay?”

  He seemed to think for a moment. That’s a good sign, I thought. It must mean he knows it.

  “Reginald, you say,” he said, thinking out loud. “If it’s the place I remember, it’s no longer called by that name.” />
  Dad pointed toward the northern coast of Applecross, a little way beyond the old mill. “Have you heard of the White Bay before?” he asked.

  I nodded. “It got its name because of the light-colored pebbles on the shore.”

  Dad nodded. “There are a couple of coves in that area,” he said. “There used to be an oak forest past a small promontory. Past that, there’s a big beach with stones and rocks.”

  “You mean Burnt Beach?” I asked.

  “That’s the one,” Dad said. “Once upon a time, before the oak trees were all burned down, they used to call it Reginald Bay.”

  “Why did they call it that?” I asked.

  “That story is actually quite interesting,” Dad said. He rubbed his chin. “It’s an old shipwreck tale. A man named Reginald once crashed his ship there, so they named the place after him. You know what the people of Applecross are like — if something out of the ordinary happens, they name it after the event.” Dad rolled his eyes.

  “Well,” I said, “I think a shipwreck kind of deserves a name.”

  “There have been dozens of shipwrecks in Scotland,” Dad said with a wave of his hand. “Although that particular one was unusual, if I recall correctly — that Reginald guy’s ship was painted completely red.”

  I nodded. Both of us silently regarded the rolling hills for a few moments. “Do you know where 36 Eggstones is?” I asked after I’d determined my father had finished speaking on the previous subject.

  Dad shrugged. “Never heard of it,” he said. “If it’s near the Reginald Bay that I’m talking about, it’s on the other side of Applecross — at least twenty minutes by bicycle.”

  “More like half an hour if Patches tags along,” I said. For the first time in weeks, my father smiled at me.

  * * *

  I reached Reginald Bay early that afternoon. I was greeted by sunlight sparkling in a continuous stream of reflected light from the sea. By comparison, the outline of the isle of Skyle looked like a brooding sentry.