Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Newbery Honor Book)

by Gary D. Schmidt

  The ashes fell against the books Turner carried down Parker Head that afternoon. With each load, Turner felt he was leaving something behind, and though he could not say why, he felt lighter. It no longer mattered to him how the people of First Congregational voted; he imagined that his father would hardly care, either. Maybe they would leave Phippsburg. Once his father was conscious again, they could go down to Pownal, pluck Lizzie Bright from the asylum, and leave forever.

  Maybe they would head out for the Territories, after all.

  But the next new snow covered the ashes on the trees, covered the ashes on the houses, covered the ashes on the steeple of First Congregational, and covered the ashes Turner had strewn over the newly dug grave of his father.

  ***

  The funeral service was strained. Turner's mother declared that Deacon Hurd was not to have a thing to do with it, and so the deacons sent over to Bath for the First Congregational minister there. He came in late, brushing the wet snow from his coat and blustering about the roads, and he said all the right things at all the right moments. But it was clear that he had never met Turner's father and so could only speak of the Lord's Anointed as if the Reverend Buckminster had just stepped out of the Epistle to the Galatians. They sang the hymns Turner's mother had picked out, and sang the hymn that Turner had picked out: "I Have Some Friends Before Me Gone." They prayed about God's calling Reverend Buckminster home to do His work in heaven.

  Then the Bath minister asked if the bereaved would like to come forward and speak some words to the assembled congregation about this good man, comforting others through an account of this holy man's homegoing.

  This part had not been planned. Turner heard his mother draw in her breath. He heard, more nearly felt, the congregation draw in its breath. He knew that the congregation would rather not have the bereaved say a single thing. And he knew that his mother was afraid that if she stood up, she might say what was truly in her heart.

  So he stood up instead. The Bath minister held his hand out to invite him to the pulpit and moved aside, smiling as Turner went up.

  Behind his father's pulpit, Turner was surprised that he was tall enough to see over it easily.

  "My father," he began quietly.

  "Speak up, son," said the Bath minister."Gladden the hearts of this grieving congregation."

  But Turner had no intention of gladdening the hearts of this grieving congregation. "My father is with God, just as the minister here says. But God didn't call him there because God had work for him to do. My father died because he was doing God's work here. He wanted the people of Malaga Island to live in a place that was their own."

  The Bath minister's smile was gone.

  "The best way to honor my father would be to rebuild the homes on the island and invite everyone back. It would be to go down to Pownal for the Easons and"—he stopped, his face tight—"and for Lizzie Griffin. But I don't think any of you will do that."

  The Bath minister was probably wishing that the service had ended with the last prayer.

  "So everyone on Malaga is gone. And my father is gone, maybe to do God's work in heaven. I don't know. All I know is that they're all gone." When he finished, Turner could feel again his father falling away from him. He was empty.

  And then, about halfway back in the sanctuary, Mr. Newton stood, his big hands set on the pew in front of him, leaning over so far that he looked like he might topple. Then Mrs. Newton stood beside him, and all the little Newtons, one by one.

  On the other side of the aisle, close to the front, Willis Hurd stood. He looked at Turner and didn't need to say a thing. When Deacon Hurd grabbed at his arm, he ignored him.

  One by one, a few—not many—of the people of First Congregational stood. No one said anything. It was as quiet as if the roof had been lifted off and the new snow falling outside had blanketed them all in soft down.

  To Turner's mind there came again the image of his father that had been with him of late every night when he fell asleep and every morning when he woke: his father's eyes as he fell over the ledge of the granite cliff. What was in those eyes? What was he saying?

  Turner sat back down by his mother. She took his hand in hers.

  The Bath minister stepped behind the pulpit again, wheezed some to gain time, and then figured that they would conclude the service with "Bringing in the Sheaves."

  It was an unfortunate choice. If he had been hoping for a sprightly rhythm, he didn't get it. Lillian Woodward played the hymn like a dirge, and there is nothing like playing a march like a dirge to irritate a congregation. Not that they needed much more to irritate them. As Lillian Woodward droned on, most of them whispered—loudly—to each other instead of singing, and their words came to Turner even over the bass.

  "That he would stand there and lecture us!"

  "The apple doesn't fall far."

  If Mrs. Buckminster heard, she gave no sign of it. When the hymn ended, she held Turner's hand and walked behind her husband's casket as the deacons carried it out of the church. They crossed the vestibule and went down the stairs and on to Parker Head. The snow had mostly stopped, and Turner smelled the salty sea breeze taking up its place behind him—not playful but solemn and steady.

  And so they came to the First Congregational graveyard and committed Turner's father to the earth and to the Lord. The deacons lowered the casket into the ground and dropped the ropes in afterward. Turner took a shovel, and Mr. Newton took a shovel, and Old Mr. Thayer took a shovel, and together they laid the Reverend Turner Buckminster II to rest. Then Turner took a vial of ashes from their own hearth and sprinkled them across the mounded grave. And the snow covered them.

  ***

  That night, the snow came thick and thicker, heavy and wet and piling up so quickly that Turner could watch it mound itself up from his bedroom window. It was the first real snowstorm of the winter, and he imagined the snow lying hip deep across Phippsburg, down Parker Head, across the granite ledges, and on to smoldering piles of the houses on Malaga Island. He imagined it sweeping all the way down to Pownal, and he thought of Lizzie looking out a window, her head in her hands, missing the sounds of the New Meadows tides, missing her granddaddy, missing Malaga. Missing him.

  And he knew that he would have to get down to Pownal to free her himself.

  But the snow never let up through the night. The snow never let up through the next day. And when the clouds finally shredded themselves and the silvered moon looked down upon Phippsburg again, it looked down upon a town strangely changed, its sheds turned into hills, its woodpiles into igloos. Parker Head had become a curved slope lolling easily and lazily up against houses and over fences, leaving a bare patch now and again to show just how high the snow had reached.

  It had sloped up so high onto Mr. Newton's house that when Turner got there the next morning, Mr. Newton had crawled out the second-story window and was shoveling off the roof of his porch. Turner—who had been up not long after first light and had shoveled off his own porch and steps and walkway, then had gone on down to shovel the porch and steps and walkway of Mrs. Cobb's house—hollered up to ask if Mr. Newton had another shovel. Soon he was clearing the porch and watching the sheets of cascading snow Mr. Newton pushed down from the roof above him.

  Together they cleared the steps and the short walk out to the road. By the time they were finished, the walls of snow rose above Turner's shoulders, and he had to pitch the snow so high that his arms were starting to ache. Afterward, they went into the store and Mr. Newton stoked the woodstove—"Don't know why. Won't be anyone out on such a day," he observed. He went in the back to the brewed coffee and brought it out in two mugs. Turner cupped his hands around his, and they sat silently together for a time, feeling the warmth of the woodstove and of the coffee thawing their frozen selves.

  "You haven't asked me yet," said Mr. Newton.

  "Sir?"

  "What you came to ask. You haven't asked me to take you down to Pownal."

  "Will you take me down?"
>
  "That why you came to shovel me out?"

  "Maybe so."

  Mr. Newton laughed, a laugh that probably would have been loud had any sound come out. But he laughed with no sound at all, his mouth open, his eyes watering some, his ample belly moving up and down, until finally he drew in his breath, gathered himself together, and took another gulp of his coffee. "I suppose it's good to be honest if you're a minister's son."

  "I'm not a minister's son anymore."

  Mr. Newton reached over and laid his hand on Turner's knee. "You'll always be a minister's son. You'll be a minister's son until you take your last breath in God's sweet world. Now, there's a load down to the textile mill in Brunswick that's been waiting for me to pick up this last week. And after that, there's a fellow down to Yarmouth who still has some of last year's syrup to sell, and I'm all out. I figure if you come along and help me load, we'll be able to make it down to Pownal, too."

  "I'll help load," said Turner. "Whenever you're ready to go, I'll be ready."

  "Well, you talk to your mother about it. And we'll need to wait until I roll the roads. And until we have a clear day."

  "I'll tell my mother."

  "And Turner, you might ... what I mean to say is, I don't want you to be too disappointed about what you might find there."

  "I'll be ready when you are, Mr. Newton," he said, and he finished his coffee.

  Now that the trip down to Pownal was real, Turner could hardly think of much else. The snow had stopped him from wheeling their household over to Mrs. Cobb's, and so mostly Mrs. Buckminster spent her days sorting and looking things over. In the study, she would stand and hold a book for a long time without even opening it. In the parlor, she would finger a vase as if it were some sort of talisman. She never cried in front of Turner, but Turner could hear her sometimes, late at night. And he felt his heart beat like a bird's.

  It snowed all that week, ending a white November and beginning a whiter December. Turner shoveled most of the time, stopping to watch Mr. Newton's great Frisians pulling the rollers to pack the snow, their breath steaming out of their nostrils and their heads turning with ease and power. Their flanks were so massive that it would not be hard to imagine them pulling Malaga Island right up to the mainland, if they could only find the right place to tie on to.

  Turner shoveled out the parsonage again, and Mrs. Cobb's, and Mr. Newton's. He even shoveled out First Congregational in time for Sunday services, which Deacon Hurd now led and which Turner and his mother did not attend.

  Finally, when the sun decided it was time to rise clear and white, Mr. Newton was at Turner's door, the bells jingling on the Frisians' harnesses, the buffalo robes draped in the sled, and the hot soapstones on the seats and the foot warmers almost glowing with coals at their feet.

  They stayed warm all the way to the textile mill in Brunswick, with the wind at their backs and the heat under the robes. They brought the soapstones in to hotten by the mill's coal stove and loaded up the sled with bolts of cloth wrapped in brown paper. Then Turner fetched the soapstones and they headed to Yarmouth, the wind on their beam now and colder, so that Turner hunched the buffalo robe up around him and wished that the embers in the foot warmers weren't dying so quickly. At Yarmouth they were disappointed: the man had already sold more than half of the promised syrup, and he had doubled the price on what remained, a price that no righteous anger or bargaining could bring down. "Lots of buyers to take it if you won't," was all the man kept repeating. Since this was probably true and since old Mr. Thayer had told him he would "have his scalp" if he didn't find some syrup to stock, Mr. Newton paid the price, and they loaded the syrup onto the floor of the sled, in front of the bundles of cloth.

  And then they headed down to Pownal.

  By now it was late morning, and the sun was about as high as it was going to get. Even so, the light was weak and paltry in the cold air. The Yarmouth man had given them new embers for the foot warmers, but the air grew even colder as they got farther from the sea, and the road more desolate, and the houses a little more desperate, as though they were already losing the battle against winter. Woodsmoke hung heavily over them, lowering across the housefronts and onto the spruce branches patterned around the foundations.

  Turner grew less and less hopeful the farther they went, and he wondered what he would say when they got to the asylum. How would he get Lizzie out? And what would Phippsburg say when he brought her home?

  Well, he would bring her home anyway.

  But when they finally reached the Pownal Home for the Feeble-Minded, Turner almost thought they should just turn around. An iron fence surrounded it, topped with sharp spikes, sharp as needles. Beyond them, a frozen expanse of gray, dirty ice, the snow whisking across it in wispy curls and then disappearing. Beyond that, a few bare elms, arching high and graceful, though in that bare landscape looking like the skeletons of trees. And beyond them, a brick square of a building with small windows—barred on the first two levels, bricked over on the third. No smoke came out of the center chimney. It all looked as deserted as if the Flood had newly receded and left this one cold building in its wake.

  A cold and annoyed guard left the gatehouse to let them onto the grounds.

  Another cold and annoyed guard opened the front door to their repeated knocks.

  And a cold and annoyed matron led them to her office and sat them down on one side of her desk, while she ascended to the lofty chair behind it. She listened to Turner say that they had come to fetch Lizzie Griffin. She pointed out that one could not simply waltz into the asylum and remove those committed to it. Turner asked if they might at least see Lizzie. Without answering, the matron went to her files. She returned with a card and informed them that that would be impossible.

  Mr. Newton asked why.

  "Because," said the matron, "Elizabeth Bright Griffin died ten days after coming to this institution."

  Turner felt the cold of the place come into him. He could not move. It was as though the bricks surrounded him and him alone. He felt that he would never escape them, never see anyone he loved again, never see the ocean waves again. That he would always be cold, and the cold would be in him more than around him.

  The matron stood. "Those people hardly ever last long when they come here," she said. "Will there be anything else?"

  CHAPTER 12

  The storm that had thrown such snow at Phippsburg was the first of many that winter. Sometimes the storms came so fast and so close that one had hardly finished tapering off before the next came, with winds Turner could hear before he could feel. Sometimes they were separated by a few days, and those days were the clearest and bluest Turner had ever seen. He figured if Darwin had written about snow, he would have said it was one of the things in the world most beautiful and most wonderful.

  In February, Mr. Newton called on Turner and his mother. They were missed at First Congregational, he said. He wondered if the time wasn't right for them to come back.

  They waited two more weeks.

  When Turner and his mother did appear at church, silence followed in a spreading wake as they walked up the center aisle. They passed into an empty pew about halfway up the sanctuary, feeling the wake of the silence pass over their heads and carry forward, so that folks in front looked back and then turned away quickly. Turner picked up a hymnbook and thought he might fling it at the next set of peering eyes. He imagined it circling end over end, its pages fluttering like wings, until it struck, oh, say, Deacon Hurd, just on the side of his nose.

  The church filled silently. The ushers tried not to look their way No one sat in their pew. The prelude began, Lillian Woodward playing too slowly. The candles were lit. The ushers brought up the latecomers and searched for a place to insert them.

  But no one sat in their pew.

  "I think we should go," whispered Turner to his mother.

  "So do I," she said.

  They might have gone then and there if Mr. Newton and Mrs. Newton and all the little Newtons had not sud
denly stood up from a pew toward the front and flocked down to Turner and his mother. "Oh, Mrs. Buckminster," said Mrs. Newton, "would you mind terribly if we came to sit with you?"

  So they did, all the little Newtons bustling past them, the two boys putting up their fists as they passed Turner and grinning like loons when he put his fists up, too; the four prim and pink girls putting their fists up and hitting him full in the belly as they passed, one by one. Mr. Newton tousled his hair, and Mrs. Newton sat next to his mother and took her hand.

  Turner put the hymnbook back.

  Each of the little Newtons took a turn sitting on his lap to get through the sermon. And Turner couldn't help tickling each of them in the stomach—especially Ben and Meg Newton, who laughed like Abbie and Perlie.

  When he didn't have a Newton on his lap, he looked out the window to watch the snow falling.

  ***

  With all the snow, Turner could hardly keep the walks clear in front of the church, the parsonage, and Mrs. Cobb's house, where they were living now. There were still boxes and one trunk to cart over, but the books from his father's study had already been set on the shelves in front of Mrs. Cobb's books until they could be sorted out. Turner had cleared away the round study table in the library and left only his father's Bible, the Aeneid, and The Origin of Species on it, along with the lamp.

  When his mother saw the table, she put her hands to her cheeks and nodded, her eyes brimming.

  Willis helped Turner move the heaviest things, and it took them most of a week. Afterward, Willis had supper with them, and he told stories about teachers in the Phippsburg school, and for the first time in a long time there was laughter over a meal—so that even the apple crisp Turner's mother forgot to take out, which baked to a hardness no spoon could ever breach, meant only more laughter.