Trouble

by Gary D. Schmidt

  He left before anyone else on his crew, and he drove back home with his mother and Sanborn.

  "Congratulations," she said. "That was your closest race yet."

  Henry said nothing.

  "It looked like you missed a stroke out there."

  "I did," said Henry. "More than one."

  "You seemed to take a while to get back into the rhythm."

  "Yup."

  "You still won," said Sanborn.

  No one is saying what we are all thinking, thought Henry. That I almost let a team of Cambodians beat us because I blew a stroke.

  "Even though you almost let a team of Cambodians beat you," whispered Sanborn.

  But Henry did not even answer. They rode the rest of the way home silently.

  Which was not how Black Dog greeted them.

  And which was not how she was after supper when she got up on her toes and pranced around the beach while Henry skipped rocks down in Salvage Cove and watched the low breakers roughing up the water and tossing the red buoys back and forth, sounding their low clong, clong, clong.

  Henry stretched his arms back and tensed his legs. The sweet ache from this morning's race had set in. If he had his kayak, he would have been able to work out the soreness by paddling up and down the cove. Maybe he would have been able to work out the memory of his missed stroke.

  But he didn't have his kayak, and the soreness hung on him.

  And then, suddenly, he felt the whole world stop. Even Black Dog quieted and looked up into the sky. It was as if everything near to him, and everything far from him, had decided to hold its breath, and the immensity of that holding fell down on him like slate weight.

  He tried to shrug it off. He threw a few more stones along the troughs left by the smaller waves. But the weight would not go away. When Black Dog came and lay down by his feet, she gave a little whine and poked her snout into the palm of Henry's hand, which suddenly burned with the wound from the ship. He drew his hand quickly back—so fast that Black Dog dropped her head as if she expected him to hit her—and Henry shook his hand to ward off the pain that he thought was coming.

  The telephone in the house rang. Henry could hear it clearly. It rang nine times, as if it would not surrender until someone finally picked it up.

  Then someone did. Or it stopped. Henry couldn't tell.

  Henry walked back to the wrecked ship—to the same rib that he had wounded himself on earlier. And he put his palm there again and felt the same spiky splinter of wood. He could almost feel the blood on his palm surging.

  Then, suddenly, there was his mother at the top of Salvage Cove, calling down to him.

  Henry did not want to hear her.

  "Henry," she called.

  He kept his hand on the rib.

  "Hen ..." She could not say his whole name.

  Black Dog started up the stones toward her. Henry watched her, her tail wrapped below her belly. She climbed up the rocks slowly, her head low, her ears limp, while the wind swirled strongly into the cove.

  Black Dog stopped by Henry's mother and sat at her feet. His mother reached down and touched Black Dog on the head.

  "Henry," she called again. "The hospital."

  And then the waiting Immensity gave up and let go its breath.

  Henry pressed his hand against the rib of the ship. The wound broke open again. He walked up the cove toward his mother, carrying with him the stigmata of Sorrow that would never, ever leave him.

  His mother knew he would leave. He saw that she knew in the way that she touched him. In the way that she would moan softly when she thought he did not hear. In the way she looked at him as if she wanted to memorize everything about him.

  His father—the man who had been his father—would not look at him at all.

  He had to leave home, because it was no longer home. He would leave at night and drive out into darkness where there were no tears and no laughter. He had to leave home, where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs.

  He packed the volume of Keats.

  10

  "WE JUST DON'T KNOW," the doctors said. Perhaps a seizure in the night. The brain scans had always been indeterminate, so it was impossible to tell exactly what had happened. It might have been another stroke. Perhaps a clot caused by inanition that entered the brain. Sometimes the patient may simply lose all will to live. "We just don't know," they said.

  But Henry knew what had happened.

  His brother, Franklin—Franklin Smith, O Franklin Smith—had been dying that early morning while Henry was rowing on the Charles River and his mother was cheering him on and the Cambodian team was trying to muscle their shell past the Whittier shell.

  And then, sometime that afternoon, when the world had held its breath, Franklin Smith had let his own breath go out forever.

  He had been all by himself.

  No one would be seeing the unlikely happen.

  And Trouble had found Henry's home and settled in.

  The house grew very, very quiet.

  If they hadn't had Black Dog, Henry didn't know what they would have done, because to Black Dog, all seasons, all hours, all moments were now. If she wanted to run down to the cove with Henry, it was now. If she wanted to roll over on her back and be scratched by Henry, it was now. If she wanted to untie Henry's shoelaces, it was now. If she wanted to wrestle wildly with Henry, it was now. And for Black Dog, if Henry was nearby, then Trouble was far away. And it is hard to weep when you are running with a dog by the shore of a blue cove.

  But at night, when Black Dog curled down deeply in her quilt at the end of Henry's bed, and the sky turned dark, and the sea was dark, and the cold weight of the darkness pressed against his throat, Henry thought about his brother.

  Then he would lean down and wake Black Dog, and she would put her wet snout into the palm of his hand without opening her eyes.

  But the night was still dark.

  The funeral for Franklin Waldo Smith was on the very last day of May. It rained, a dismal rain that kept everyone indoors. The funeral was private, in any case; Blythbury-by-the-Sea's two policemen were stationed outside the church doors to see that the reporter from the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle and the local-news cameramen gathered across the street from St. Anne's Episcopal did not disturb the mourners.

  Henry sat with his parents. Louisa did not come.

  The organ music was low; the solemn notes came out of the pipes and fell toward Franklin's casket, which lay under the white-and-gold tapestry that St. Anne's reserved for this ceremony.

  From the mahogany pulpit, Father Brewood spoke the old words: "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger."

  Henry was surprised, even amazed, to find himself thinking about Black Dog during the service. About how much Black Dog loved to run. About how Black Dog would never, never go near the waves. About how much Franklin would have wanted her.

  He saw his mother and father, sitting beside each other. Separate. Apart. Tight.

  He thought of Louisa, who would not get in the car for the funeral, who fled back to her room and would not be comforted—who would not see her brother Frank put in the ground.

  "We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

  "Blessed be the name of the Lord," whispered Henry's mother.

  Blessed be the name of the Lord? wondered Henry.

  And when the service was over, Henry and his parents followed the casket quietly down the aisle, their steps not sounding at all on the thick carpet. The eyes of the mostly unknown but respectful cousins and uncles and aunts who had come fixed upon them. At the door, helpful men in black suits held umbrellas over their heads as they all went out into the rain.

  The Smith plot was large, one of the l
argest in the graveyard behind St. Anne's, and it was surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence. A white obelisk stood in one corner, erected for the two Smith boys killed at Antietam. But the graves went back to the 1680s—dark, thin slates with urns and weeping willow emblems. In the dead center of the plot, a large double-sized and double-arched stone——unfolded over the graves, its winged skull brooding toothlessly and blindly over the silent, sodden spot. Someday, it said to Henry, you will be here. Another dead Smith. I will brood over you, too.

  Until today, Henry had never really believed it. Now he did.

  Beneath a black canopy and behind the center stone there was a terrible gash in the ground. It was covered with a bright green tarp. They gathered under the canopy, and the helpful men in black suits—now with black raincoats—pulled the tarp back; it came away with dark mud and grass on its underside. The rain sounded hard over Henry, over his parents, and over Father Brewood.

  "Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother Franklin Waldo Smith departed, and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection unto eternal life."

  Then the helpful men laid ropes across the terrible gash, laid the casket on the ropes, and so laid Franklin into the earth.

  "Most merciful Father, who hast been pleased to take unto thyself the soul of this thy servant; Grant to us who are still in our pilgrimage, and who walk as yet by faith, that having served thee with constancy on earth, we may be joined hereafter with thy blessed saints in glory everlasting."

  Henry tried not to taste the earth and ashes and dust in his mouth.

  "Amen," said Father Brewood.

  So the helpful men removed the ropes from the earth, and Henry's parents turned to leave.

  But Henry did not go with them.

  "Henry?" said his mother.

  Henry left the black canopy and went over to the pile of earth and sand and stones beyond the terrible gash. He reached down and pulled away the wet tarp that was over it, and then pulled out the shovel that stood beside it. He heard the chang of steel against stone as he jerked it out.

  "Henry," said Father Brewood, his arm across Henry's already wet shoulder, "we have people to do that. You had better get inside with your parents."

  Henry thrust the shovel deep into the pile of earth, and pulled it back, and walked over to his brother's grave, and threw the first earth onto the casket.

  The thud of it. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The loud, reverberating thud.

  Then he walked back to the pile and did it all again. His parents watched him.

  He shoveled enough earth into the grave so that he could no longer hear the hollow sound as it struck the casket. But he kept on, digging the shovel into the pile, and carrying the earth to the grave, and dropping it into the terrible gash, and so covering his brother, Franklin Waldo Smith, settling him beside the brooding stone.

  He carried the earth until it became mud in the rain, and still he carried it, himself wet and muddy, and then sore, and his face wet with the rain or with something else. Slowly he filled in the gash with the earth and sand and stones, until it seemed a low swelling of the ground. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  And when he was finished, Henry's mother took him by the hand—his palm was bleeding from the work of the shovel—and they walked together to the car where Henry's father was waiting. They did not go back to the unknown and respectful relatives gathered in the church parlor, sipping coffee in the cool spring morning, eating carefully prepared sandwiches. They went to their house by the sea. And though Trouble had made its home there, when they went in, Black Dog was waiting, too. And though Henry's father went in to the library and closed the door, and though Henry's mother went to the north parlor and closed the door, and though Louisa would not open her door, Henry at least had Black Dog, who thrust her almost completely healed snout into Henry's hand. And she did not whine at all, though the wound on Henry's palm had been torn open again and she could smell the blood.

  That night, she lay beside Henry, and he stroked her sharp shoulder blades and scratched behind her ears. He did this late into the night as he listened to the low and terrible moans that swept through the hallways of the house and that were not from the lonely wind but from his lonely mother, who had lost her oldest child and would never have him back again.

  Trouble, Henry learned, is not content to stay put—no more than Black Dog would stay put on a clear and bright June morning. Trouble is of a mind to spread, as it did in the days following Franklin's funeral, seeping out from behind the quiet doors of the Smiths' house and traveling down the long drive, following Main Street and so on into Blythbury-by-the-Sea, slithering into the fancy shops and gourmet delis, and from there down to the clapboard and brick and stone houses, and from there to Whittier Academy and Longfellow Prep, and even down to the little police station, where the town's two policemen shook their heads and wondered at the injustice of it all, and what are we coming to when a boy from Blythbury-by-the-Sea can be run down and killed and nothing happens to the killer from Little Cambodia but losing his license?

  What are we coming to?

  In the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle, the letters to the editor raged in a torrent of righteousness, first about the inappropriateness of the punishment to the crime, then about the failure of our justice system, then about the bleeding-heart liberals who were more sympathetic to new immigrants than to those who had settled America in the first place, and how those immigrants didn't come to America to become Americans but to take advantage of true American generosity, and about how something ought to be done—must be done.

  Henry watched his father—who always seemed to be up so late now. He watched him read these letters, and saw his face grow gray and set.

  He watched his mother grow angry.

  Finally, Mrs. Smith wrote a letter herself, and it appeared on the front page of the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle. Her son's death was an accident, Henry's mother wrote. A terrible accident. It was tragic but still an accident. Nothing that anyone could say or do now would bring Franklin back to them. The Smith family was trying to accept this and to move on. Mrs. Smith asked that Blythbury-by-the-Sea do the same.

  Henry hated her letter.

  He wanted to hate Little Cambodia the way Franklin would have wanted him to hate it. Franklin wasn't there any longer to handle Trouble. Henry was responsible now—like Franklin had said. So he would hate Chay Chouan, and he would climb Katahdin and hike the Knife Edge because it would show that he had the guts to do it. Even without Franklin. And after that, he'd be ready to handle anything. By himself.

  So Henry hated his mother's letter. And so did most of Blythbury-by-the-Sea.

  The very next issue of the Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle brought the worst letters yet. It is all very well, they said, to play the forgiving Christian and to turn the other cheek. But with all respect to the grieving Smiths, this trouble had been coming on Blythbury-by-the-Sea for some time, and the community needed to understand that those who have come late to this country do not have the same regard for human life that the founders of this nation built into the very fabric and experience of American life.

  Henry stopped bringing in the paper each morning. He left it on the stoop when he went to run Black Dog down to the cove. Afterward, he would pick it up and take it to the garbage can inside the carriage house.

  But Trouble is not easily quieted.

  This seemed especially true at Whittier, where no one—not even Coach Santori—had given Henry grief over his missed strokes during the Cape Ann Coastal Invitational. He wished that Coach would make him do laps until he dropped, or make him sprint up and down the bleachers. Something. But everyone believed Henry was filled with Outrage, and they wanted to share it.

  The only one at Whittier who understood what was burning in Henry's guts was Sanborn.

  "You know that Katahdin is five thousand two hundred and sixty-se
ven feet high, right?" he said.

  Henry looked at him. "Monday we start final exams," he said, "and you're reading about how high Katahdin is?"

  "It is sort of miraculous, isn't it? And what's even more miraculous is that I can read about how high Katahdin is and still do better than you on every final."

  "You are a wonder, Sanborn. How is it that the United States government hasn't picked you up yet?"

  "They're too ignorant. Do you think we can do it?"

  "Do what?"

  "Speaking of ignorant ... climb Katahdin."

  "Of course I can climb Katahdin. I'm a big boy."

  "I'm going with you."

  "You'd never make it, Sanborn. You're not coming with me."

  "I'll end up having to carry you."

  "You'd never make it."

  "Why don't you say that a third time, Henry, because after you say something three times out loud and tap the heels of your shoes, then it becomes true."

  "You'd never make it."

  Henry was surprised at both the strength and fierceness of Sanborn's initial assault, and how, despite a couple of pretty good blows to Sanborn's stomach and one strong chop to his left side, he found himself below Sanborn with his face deep in the grass and his right arm twisted behind him and Sanborn's left knee in the small of his back.

  From which Sanborn released him only when Mrs. Smith came to pick them up.

  "You'd never make it," whispered Henry as they drove to Sanborn's house.

  "You wouldn't make it without me," whispered Sanborn.

  "I guess we'll never find out, since you won't know when I'm going."

  "We'll find out," said Sanborn, "since if I don't go, they'll discover your dead body somewhere in the woods after looking for it for six months."

  "You'd never make it," whispered Henry again.

  At which Sanborn turned to him, and there was no laughter in his face: "Why don't you try to sound a little more like your brother, Henry?"