On a gray, low day at the end of February, they closed the door to the parsonage for the last time. Mrs. Cobb hadn't believed in electric lighting, so Turner settled into the tasks of trimming wicks and cleaning lamp chimneys, of banking fires at night and starting them come morning, of doing the hundred things that must be done each day to keep a house older than the country tight and warm. In between, he was in the library, surrounded by his father's and Mrs. Cobb's books, sitting at the study table in the morning to translate the Georgics— which he thought had nothing on the Aeneid. The afternoon was all Wordsworth, Longfellow, and Coleridge—Turner figured Coleridge would do—and last of all, Mr. Darwin's Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited During the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. Just knowing that the Beagle was ahead made it easier to plow through the Georgics, and he figured he'd best read it now, since in the fall he'd be going to school in Phippsburg, and Darwin was probably not in the curriculum.
He did not read Mr. Barclay.
Turner did not go back to the granite ledges. And he did not go back to Malaga Island. Even when March came in on an unexpectedly warm sea breeze and the snow began to melt and it was no longer so very hard to keep the rooms in Mrs. Cobb's house warm, he did not go back. When the seas softened and were more blue than green, when he and Willis rowed up and down the coast in the Hurds' tender until Turner felt the muscles in his arms toughen into cords, even then Turner kept the New Meadows at his back.
It was after a Sunday-afternoon row down to Cox's Head and back—Willis had had to sneak off with the tender, Deacon Hurd being a strict Sabbatarian—that Turner came back to find Mr. Stonecrop standing on the porch of the house, his mother holding the door open to speak to him.
"Here he is now," he heard her say. "You'll have to discuss it with him."
"Mrs. Buckminster, really, the two of us..."
"Circumstances being what they are, you'll have to discuss it with him. Turner," she said, "Mr. Stonecrop has something to propose. Won't you come in, Mr. Stonecrop? Perhaps the library will do."
Turner followed them into the library, Mr. Stonecrop seeming too large for the house. She motioned him to a chair—which he did not take—and then, without saying anything more, left the room.
Turner felt an assault about to begin.
"So," said Mr. Stonecrop, "you are the man of the house."
Turner didn't think Mr. Stonecrop expected a reply, so he didn't give him any. Mr. Stonecrop walked around the study table, picked up the Aeneid, and put it down after he flipped through some pages. "I don't know what good this will do you," he said. "I built a whole shipyard, and I don't know a word of Latin past e pluribus unum. No employer will hire you merely because you know Latin, young Buckminster."
Turner almost said that the whole state of Maine would have to pull up its skirts and dance a reel before he would hire on with Mr. Stonecrop. But he didn't think that needed saying aloud, either.
"And you're still reading this tripe," observed Mr. Stonecrop, holding up The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle."You won't learn much from a fellow who thinks we came from monkeys." He looked at a couple of pages, closed the book, and tossed it onto the chair. Then he rounded his hands into fists, set them on the table, and leaned down, his arms pillars supporting his top half. "Son, I came here this afternoon to discuss a business proposal with your mother. She tells me I need to discuss it with you—I suppose since Mrs. Cobb left you the house."
"I'm not your son, Mr. Stonecrop,"Turner said simply.
"No, you're not. If you were, you'd be in the boatyards, learning a trade, instead of translating a language not a single soul speaks anymore, and then this monkey foolishness to boot. It's a practical world out there. And people who aren't practical get—
"I know what happens to people who aren't practical, Mr. Stonecrop. I've seen what happens to people who aren't practical."
"Blunt. You're blunt, aren't you? That's good. Men of business should be blunt. They don't have to like each other to do business, but they do have to be blunt."
Yet another comment that Turner didn't think needed a reply.
"So here is your business proposal, Mr. Buckminster. I propose to purchase Mrs. Cobb's house from you outright. I'm prepared to offer you better than the market price."
"Why, Mr. Stonecrop?"
"This is a business matter."
"If this were a business matter, Mr. Stonecrop, would you be giving us an offer above the market price?"
Mr. Stonecrop smiled. "Well, young Mr. Turner Buckminster, all grown up. Handles his business affairs better than his father might have, and him only thirteen—no, probably fourteen years old now. Maybe there's more to Latin than I thought. Maybe I should be hiring you down to the shipyard after all."
"Did you know that Lizzie Griffin is dead?"
"Malaga Island is in the past. What matters is the future. I'll put it simply: you're not wanted here. Neither you nor your mother. A boy as sharp as you, a boy who reads Darwin, should be able to tell that. I'm giving you the opportunity to go back to Boston. This is a business proposal you can't turn down."
"You see things only one way, Mr. Stonecrop. We're not selling the house."
"Today is your best offer, young Buckminster."
Turner nodded.
"Boy, are you stubborn just to be stubborn? Or is there something else to it? You think some other Negro will come live with you? Will you be sweet on her, too?"
"Mr. Stonecrop, you're a rich man. And you'll be a whole lot richer once you build your hotel. But I don't think Mrs. Cobb would have wanted to help you. And I don't think I want to help you."
"Blunt again. Very good. But you're missing your chance, boy, just as your father missed his. You won't hear me make this offer again."
"I won't expect it."
"You'll regret living in a town where no one wants you."
"I'm getting used to it."
"I was the one who brought you here," shouted Mr. Stonecrop. "I was the one who insisted upon your father. I thought he was an up-and-coming preacher. A man with his wealth, with his connections—I thought he would rise like a star in Maine."
"I was the one who saw him fall over the cliff."
"And what do you imagine he was thinking then? He must have realized what was about to happen. He must have hoped that you would make good decisions and take care of your mother."
What had his father been thinking when he went over the cliff? What had been in his eyes? And it came to Turner, no matter how much he tried to hold it back, no matter how hard he tried to make the night darker so that he couldn't see it: his father tottering, arms reaching forward to nothing, leaning back. And his eyes.
And then he remembered. He had already seen what was in his father's eyes.
He had seen it in the eye of the whale.
Turner hardly noticed when Mr. Stonecrop left, snorting. He let the moment at the cliff's edge come to him again, wincing with the hurt of it but watching his father's face closely. He let it come again and again, until he was absolutely sure he could see his father's face.
What had been in their eyes? What was it that the whale knew? What was it that his father knew?
***
In May, Mr. Stonecrop's shipyard failed. He abandoned the house on Quality Ridge and lit out for parts unknown, taking with him what remained of the investments of half the town. All of Phippsburg raged. Quality indeed! What hope was there for a hotel on the New Meadows now? Here were all the workers in the shipyard unpaid for the last month. And the Hurds! All their investments were gone! They'd been left penniless!
The sea breeze carried the news up and down Parker Head—"Did you see?"
"Did you hear?"—until most souls in town were swearing they had known long ago that Mr. Stonecrop was a scoundrel, and wasn't it too bad about the Hurds?
Most souls in town except Turner and his mother, that is. They had stayed to themselves pretty much through the spring, settling into Mrs. Cobb's hou
se. The rooms upstairs felt as if they hadn't been lived in for a very long time, and so Mrs. Buckminster set about bringing them alive again. She had Turner cleaning and painting, dragging rugs outside and beating them, opening windows for new air, and bringing light to rooms that hadn't seen any since the century began.
They had not gone back to First Congregational since February, but soon after Mr. Stonecrop's absconding, the Ladies' Sewing Circle, led by Mrs. Newton, called on Turner and Mrs. Buckminster to invite them back to services. It was, to be charitable, a little awkward, and Turner kept sensing that Mrs. Newton was about to stick the steel point of her umbrella into any of the ladies who didn't behave. But they all did, and Turner and his mother returned to First Congregational.
Deacon Hurd, beset with financial woe, was no longer preaching. The Bath minister was rushing over after his own service, and he preached well enough, though he was always a little out of breath.
The Hurds had sold their sloop but kept the tender, and one day, late in May, Turner borrowed it to row his mother over to Malaga Island, carrying with them a pot of violets. He walked with her along the shore to the point of the island where Lizzie's house had stood, and there, at what would have been the doorway, they troweled up the earth and planted the violets, turning their hardy blossoms toward the sea. Afterward, Turner rowed all around the island, and his mother was surprised by how sure he was on the water.
"Goodness," she said, "I hope you don't ever go too far."
"I've seen whales," he told her.
"I never realized they came this close to shore."
Turner concentrated on his rowing.
The Hurds, unable to meet the loans upon loans the deacon had taken out to grow wealthy with the town's coming prosperity, sold the tender, too—or more properly, the bank sold it, along with their home, and Willis's grandmother's house, and everything else they owned. Speculators from Philadelphia bought up most everything, but not for what Mr. Hurd or the bank had hoped for.
The Buckminsters bought the tender.
The Sunday after the auction, the Hurds sat in the last pew of First Congregational, stone-faced, haggard, bent over. Since everyone knows that trouble can be contagious, they were alone until Turner and his mother sat down next to them. Turner's mother took Mrs. Hurd's hand.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered.
"How could we ever have known Mr. Stonecrop was such a scoundrel?" Mrs. Hurd replied quietly.
They sat through the service and listened to the Bath minister's breathy sermon from Galatians, and when the last chords of Lillian Woodward's postlude finished, they stood up. Mrs. Hurd fell into Mrs. Buckminsters arms and held back tears as the congregation walked past them, trying not to watch.
"I don't know what we'll do," she said. "I just don't know what we'll do."
"You'll come and live with us," said Turner.
Mrs. Hurd looked at him. Mr. Hurd looked at him.
"Of course," said Mrs. Buckminster. "We've got more rooms than we know what to do with."
Mrs. Hurd looked at Mr. Hurd, who looked down at the floor, his hands rigid on the pew beside them.
"We haven't ..."
"Just until you're back on your feet," said Mrs. Buckminster.
A long moment passed, almost long enough for another breathy sermon.
"Thank you," said Mr. Hurd, finally. "Just until we're back on our feet."
Willis punched Turner on the arm.
***
So high summer came to Phippsburg that year, and it promised to be the hottest anyone could remember—-just like every other summer. Together Turner and Willis spaded up a new garden in the yard behind Mrs. Cobb's, and they planted pole beans and snow peas and russet potatoes and a couple of rows of corn—which the deer and rabbits and every one of God's creatures living between the New Meadows and the Kennebec thought was just fine. They put new glass in the cupola, painted the fence Mrs. Cobb's grandfather had built, and then painted the porch. When they finished with that, they went down to Mr. Newton's store and bought some sunlight yellow and strawberry red paint to take care of the shutters and door.
Mr. Hurd helped paint until he began to clerk at Mr. Newton's grocery.
Turner and Willis got themselves hired on a lobster boat out of Bath, and even though, as Willis pointed out, Turner was a whole lot scrawnier than he was, Turner did heft his share of the traps and do his share of culling out the shorts. After the first two weeks, Turner was pegging lobster claws as fast as Willis and not getting pinched any more than anyone else.
The days were long, beginning before dawn when the sea was purple black, ending with the sunset when the sea was burning red. Turner was tired and sore most of the time, shivering in the morning and so hot in the afternoon that he and Willis worked sweating. "Probably there's better ways to earn money," said Willis most every morning, but even if there were, Turner wouldn't have taken another way, because hardly a day passed when the lobster boat didn't fool with a pod of whales as playful as kittens in the sun, showing off their dorsal fins, spraying the boat with their spouting, sometimes jumping full out of the water and grinning for all the world to see.
Watching them was when Turner got pinched the most.
Sometimes they would lay traps up the New Meadows, and they would sail past Malaga Island, going so close that Turner could stand by the rail and see the patch of violets planted by Lizzie's doorway. His heart stopped every time.
When Turner and Willis weren't lobstering, they were sleeping—even when they were trying to eat their supper. Mrs. Buckminster and Mrs. Hurd would try to keep them talking through the meal but would finally give up when the boys' yawns got longer than their sentences. They would stagger up the stairs to sleep.
And the eyes of whales would fill Turner's dreams.
***
One night, when the sea breeze remembered that autumn wasn't far away and so began to blow colder, Turner told Willis he wanted to take the tender out into the bay.
The next dawn, Willis was at the dock with him, loading in a jug, some cheese sandwiches, and some corn muffins, then casting him loose, waving him out into the incoming tide. Turner's arms felt strong against the long, smooth swells, so low they were not breaking, the sea the color of the inside of a mussel shell. He rowed down past Cox's Head, across the mouth of Atkins Bay, around Popham, keeping inshore along the line of tiny islands where the tide was weakest, and finally up and around Small Point Head and Bald Head and into the New Meadows. He let the last of the high tide carry him up the shoreline, the long swells growing ever smoother and lowering with the rising of the sun, until the tide gave its last gasp and settled down for a bit just as the tender tipped its nose onto the south point of Malaga Island, and Turner stepped onto it.
The sea breeze found him and twisted around him like a cat asking for a bowl of milk. It followed him up into the island and didn't stop its play even when Turner went up to the Eason place—the burned ruins already cleansed by the winter and starting to find their way back into woods. At the Tripp place the sea breeze scattered last fall's oak leaves inside the outline of foundation stones. At the graveyard, a few depressions, but otherwise the ground was filled with pine boughs the snow had brought down.
At the Griffin place, nothing. Nothing at all. He could have stood there like Darwin at the Galapagos and known that if he had come a thousand years earlier, everything would have been the same.
He sat down on the rocks and looked out.
When he had sat there long enough to see that the tide was beginning to empty out of the New Meadows, he rose and followed the shore of Malaga Island back to the tender. He got in and cast off, letting the tide take him out and away from the island, using the oars just enough to keep himself square to the swells. The island rocked gently as he moved farther and farther away from it, the chuckling of the water underneath the boat and the wooden creaking of the oarlocks an unrhythmic lullaby.
Rowing now and again so that he could feel the tautness of his m
uscles, Turner let the lowering tide carry him away from Malaga Island, down the New Meadows, and, some time past noon, out into open water, where the shoreline was a blue blur, the waves higher and longer, and the only company he had in the whole world was the sea breeze that followed him on out.
Mostly he drifted, though once he rowed inshore a ways to a spot where gulls were screeching and diving and trying to lift themselves back up into the air. But before he could reach them, they came out to him; suddenly, he was in the middle of a school of shimmering blue fish, all of them turning to their sides to feed and waving their silver fins up into the strange air. The sea was so smooth it looked sleepy, and the tender, even when Turner rowed as hard as he could, left no wake.
"Who's looking at things straight now?" he called out into the air.
"I suppose you think you are." He could almost hear her, just as if she were sitting in the boat with him on the lonely ocean. "What are you doing out here?"
"Looking for whales."
"That's a good thing to look for," she said. "I've seen some myself."
I guess.
"I have. They look at you like they know things."
"I know."
"Like they know things older than you could ever imagine."
"I know, Lizzie."
"They look at things straight."
"Are you looking at things straight now, Lizzie?"
Her laugh was in the boat. "Golly Moses," she said. "I always did."
Lizzie Bright.
And that was when Turner saw them: great mounds of water moving between him and the shoreline, following the coast. Above them, seagulls and black terns hovered and circled, screeching and cackling at each other, until suddenly the mounds erupted, and whales—two, four, five, seven, oh good Lord, nine—rose out of the water like easy behemoths. Turner hollered, waving his arms and standing up in the boat until it began to rock with the waves the whales made. He rowed toward them, in his excitement slipping the oars out of the locks, setting them back in, and slipping them out again, desperate to draw up alongside the whales, desperate to know what they knew.
Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Newbery Honor Book) Page 19