“Honestly, Matthew,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.
“You know how hard it is to put on a tie with one hand?” said Matt.
“You seem to have made that point.”
“The beans will get cold if I have to change again, Bagheera.”
She passed him the beans.
They ate quietly together. Through the open windows—maybe the last open windows of the fall, since the frosts were coming and already the night air was starry cold—through the open windows came the eternal sounds of the waves against the rocks, and they both imagined the dark pines leaning over to listen, and the frothy water swooshing up and drawing back, dragging the pebbles of the shore with it.
If only Georgie . . .
“Matthew,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, “tomorrow we start with lessons.”
“I’m not going back to school.”
“No,” said Mrs. MacKnockater, “you are not. You’ll be under my tutelage, which, I promise you, will be much more rigorous than anything you might experience at Harpswell Junior High School.”
Matt put his fork down. He looked at her. He almost told her how long it had taken him to get through the first two pages of Treasure Island.
But he didn’t need to.
“I know,” said Mrs. MacKnockater.
“I’m not any good at—”
“I’ll teach you,” she said.
He picked up his fork and started in on the ham steak.
* * *
They began the next morning. They began with the vowels.
After a week, they started in on the consonants—the stops first.
Then the fricatives.
Then they put them together. The ng together with the /o/ in Long. The fricative /j/ together with that /o/ sound again in John. The short /i/ in Silver, and “Do you see how the sound varies with the placement of the tongue?”
And that’s how Mrs. Nora MacKnockater, headmistress of St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy for Girls, and Matt Coffin, late of Captain Cobb’s fishing shack and now settled into the seaside home of said Mrs. Nora MacKnockater, spent their mornings, after which Mrs. MacKnockater walked over to St. Elene’s and Matt read his assigned pages beside the bay window nearest the parlor wood stove.
He had never read a whole book by himself before.
And this one he was reading for the second time, if you counted Mrs. MacKnockater reading the book aloud as the first time.
And while he read, the bruises on his face and on his chest healed. He began to wake up and have no trouble at all opening both his eyes. The bandages came off as the cuts across his back knit and faded. And Dr. Pulsifer, who visited every couple of days, said that his arm was doing fine, his fingers were nice and pink, and he wasn’t going to have any trouble with that shoulder.
“Better not,” said Captain Hurd, when this was reported at supper one Friday night. “I need a deckhand who can pull his weight.”
“I can pull my weight,” said Matt.
The Captain looked at him. “Scrawny as you are, that’s not saying much. Knockater, you’d better pass him some more of those brown beans.”
Meanwhile, the maples passed into their brightest reds, the birches to their quick yellows, the oaks to their brown garb. Some mornings the windowpanes in Matt’s room were webbed with frost, and Matt could see his breath in the room and would hurry downstairs, where Mrs. MacKnockater was “merrying up” the embers in the wood stove. And there would be the smell of bacon from the kitchen, and the sweet scent of burning applewood, and the sounds of the house creaking to its new warmth. And together they would watch for the passing of Affliction and they would wave at Captain Hurd, and Matt would wish that he were on that deck, tying buoy hitches.
And aside from those days when Lieutenant Minot—who had been assigned to the case, he said—came to ask the same questions, or Miss Phyllis’s office called to arrange visits that Mrs. MacKnockater never could seem to fit into her schedule, Matt realized that he was, for the first time in a very long time, maybe safe.
Still, truth to tell, on those long afternoons when Mrs. MacKnockater was off being a headmistress, he was a little bit lonely.
And every night, there was always Georgie, and all that blood.
And the two men who came out of the Alley.
And that blood.
Eleven
Soon, every morning had its frost, and now Matt got up before Mrs. MacKnockater to coax the wood stove into red life. Mrs. MacKnockater, who was hardly eager these days to kneel and blow on the embers, was more than a little grateful that Matt would. When she came down, she would smile at the warm rooms, at the crackling of the wood, at Matt sitting close to the warmth and flipping through the pages of Treasure Island, and she would go into the kitchen to make oatmeal.
But Matt was starting to feel housebound, and after lessons, when Mrs. MacKnockater left for St. Elene’s and before he began the assignments she had set him, he would go for walks through the pines and hemlocks above the ridge, and then past those and across the two-lane by St. Elene’s—the campus carefully guarded by the brick wall with the spears. Some pine-strewn paths that hunters had probably left meandered through the woods beyond the school, and he tracked those as if he were Ben Gunn, mapping out the island on which he was stranded.
On colder, stormier days, when the waves were high and the clouds weighted low, Captain Hurd, who didn’t feel like braving Affliction out on the Atlantic today, thank you very much, would find Matt out on the rocks below Mrs. MacKnockater’s house, and they would sit there, both huddled in pea jackets, watching the wind slice off the frothy tops of the waves, and they would eat the terrible brownies that the Captain brought.
They didn’t need to talk, and didn’t much.
* * *
By now, Miss Phyllis had pretty much given up on making headway with Matt—or maybe she felt that Matt was in a secure place. Or maybe Miss Phyllis was just afraid of Mrs. MacKnockater. But Lieutenant Minot had not given up, and now he started a new campaign: on Tuesday, he was at Mrs. MacKnockater’s house at breakfast time, and he was loud. In the kitchen, Matt could hear him as if he were right next to the lieutenant, who said to Mrs. MacKnockater, “Enough is enough.” And he said, “I’ve waited longer than I should have.” And he said, “It’s not his arm I need to get to work. It’s his mouth.” And he said, “I’ll see him now, Dr. MacKnockater. Here, or down at the station. Either one.”
After a few moments, Lieutenant Minot came into the kitchen.
Mrs. MacKnockater came in behind him.
Matt stood and carried his bowl of oatmeal to the sink.
“Matthew,” said Lieutenant Minot, “it’s time to answer some questions.”
Matt didn’t turn around.
Lieutenant Minot sighed. “What is it with you two? Listen, I’d rather ask these questions here. But like I said to Dr. MacKnockater, it can be at the station, too.”
Matt walked back to the table and sat down. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know who beat you up. I want to know who broke your arm. I want to know who bashed your face in.” Lieutenant Minot sat down at the table with him. “I want to know who cut you to the ribs. Matthew, I want to know who almost killed you.”
“I don’t—”
“And I want to know why you’re protecting him.”
“Look, it was just some guy.”
“Did you have something he wanted?”
“How should I know?”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“You think someone who’s beating you up stops to tell you his name?”
“Had you seen him before?”
“I told you, he was just some guy.”
“Who wandered into a fishing shack.”
“I guess.”
“And who waited for you.”
“Maybe.”
“And then beat you up.”
“Yeah.”
“Why was he waiting for you?”
Matt shr
ugged.
“Did he get what he wanted?”
“I guess.”
Lieutenant Minot leaned back against his chair. “You’re a whole lot of help. Did it even happen in the shack?”
Matt shrugged.
Lieutenant Minot leaned back into the table.
“Who’s Georgie?”
Suddenly Matt was staring at Lieutenant Minot. He did not move at all.
“You called for him all the time in the hospital. Did he get beat up too?”
Nothing from Matt.
“Because if this guy beat you up for no reason at all, and if he beat up Georgie, too, he could do it to someone else—maybe for a reason.”
And at that, Matt’s eyes flicked up toward Mrs. MacKnockater and back—and Lieutenant Minot suddenly knew.
“Dr. MacKnockater,” he said, “would you mind letting me and Matthew here talk by ourselves?”
“Yes, I would mind,” said Mrs. MacKnockater. “The boy’s a minor and I’m his guardian.”
“No,” said Lieutenant Minot. “The boy’s a minor, but scaring off his social worker doesn’t make you his guardian. I’m investigating an assault, Dr. MacKnockater—maybe an attempted murder. You need to let me do my job.”
Mrs. MacKnockater looked at Matt.
“It’s okay,” he said.
She waited a moment. “I’ll be in the parlor,” she said. She turned to Lieutenant Minot. “And if you—”
Lieutenant Minot held up his hands. “Gentle as a lamb,” he said.
Mrs. MacKnockater left the kitchen. She kept the door to the kitchen open.
Lieutenant Minot waited, and then he said, quietly, “You’re afraid he’s coming back.”
Matt didn’t move.
“Maybe he wanted something you had. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he got it. Maybe he didn’t.”
No move from Matt.
“Maybe he wanted to teach you a lesson.”
No move.
“Maybe he wanted you.”
No move.
“And he hurt Georgie, didn’t he? Maybe he did it, or maybe someone who worked for him did it.” Matt staring at him. “And now you’re not just afraid he’s coming back. You’re afraid he’s going to hurt Nora MacKnockater.”
This time, Matt did move.
He put his hands up to his eyes.
“But you don’t have anywhere to go. And what’s more, maybe for the first time, you don’t want to go.”
Matt looked at Lieutenant Minot. “Not the first time,” he said.
“Okay, not the first time. Listen, Matt, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me who he is.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” said Matt. If Mrs. MacKnockater hadn’t been in the house, he would have screamed it. Lieutenant Minot sat back.
From outside, Matt could hear that wild squawky call that seagulls make, and he let himself go to Affliction out on the water, tying the line of traps, letting them slide below the surface with that splash until only God could see them, and then later, when the sun was lower, pulling them back in, full of lobsters. And Captain Hurd smiling the way he did, with the ends of his mouth pulled down, and maybe laughing through his nose—the way he did.
“You know,” said Lieutenant Minot, “I’m pretty good at what I do.” And then Matt wasn’t on Affliction. He was in Queens. In that Alley that no one went down because everyone knew what happened in that Alley.
He looked at Lieutenant Minot. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “No one’s good enough.”
That afternoon, Matt lay in his bed instead of doing Mrs. MacKnockater’s punctuation lesson at the dining room table—as if anyone ever used semicolons. The day was warmer than it had been, and he lay with the window open so he could hear the sea. Maybe that’s where he should head again, he thought. It had worked for a while before. No one looks for kids on fishing boats.
Maybe he should go.
He’d moved the pillowcase from under the sofa to the convenient cabinet built into the chute out to the roof. He still had almost everything he’d stuffed into it.
Maybe he really should go.
He tried to stretch his left arm over his head. He couldn’t get it up that far.
He couldn’t handle himself in a boat yet.
He’d have to give it another week.
When he and Georgie used to talk about getting out, they’d dream about the West. They’d get jobs as cowboys and ride horses, and drive cattle, and do whatever else cowboys do. They’d brush off the city like they brushed off dirt, and they’d ride all day and into the night, and they’d camp by a fire and its sparks would light millions of stars. That’s what they’d do when they got away.
That’s what they’d have done.
Twelve
Meryl Lee decided she should go to Putnam to try—again—to find her classic American author for Mrs. Connolly. When she passed Marian Elders’s room, Marian was wearing a cast on her pinky that looked a lot bigger than it had to be, and she looked up at Meryl Lee sort of accusingly.
“I’m so sorry, Marian. Does it hurt?” said Meryl Lee.
Marian grimaced. “Sometimes it throbs and I can feel it all the way up my arm.”
“At least it got you out of field hockey practice,” said Meryl Lee.
“I love field hockey practice,” said Marian, and lifted her hand to wipe away an incipient tear.
Meryl Lee decided that Marian Elders was inclined to drama.
After she got to Putnam—where she should have been looking for her classic American author—and after she waved at Mrs. Hibbard at the reference desk, she decided to read just a few pages of The Grapes of Wrath to get her started, and she put her domestic economy book close by—just in case. Like before, it took only a couple of pages to put her on the highway with the Joads. Looking for work. Looking for food. Looking for a camp to stay in but they were turned away from everywhere. And the oranges were burning. And Ma Joad was keeping them together but only just. And the bosses didn’t care who lived and who died and they were hollering at the Joads, “Is that book for my class?”
Meryl Lee looked up.
It wasn’t the bosses hollering.
It was Mrs. Connolly.
Meryl Lee stood.
Several lower school girls at a nearby table quickly packed up and fled.
“You don’t have to stand, Miss Kowalski. I was merely wondering if that book is for my class—particularly since you have yet to turn in your author paragraph. May I see it?”
Meryl Lee handed The Grapes of Wrath to Mrs. Connolly, who opened it and slowly turned past the title page and through the opening of chapter one. Then she set it down on the library table. “Since this is a book by John Steinbeck, and since I have been very clear that John Steinbeck is not an acceptable writer, I must assume this is not your book for my class.”
Meryl Lee nodded. “No,” she said.
“And so I am led to ask the next, rather obvious question: Whose work will you be studying this year?”
Meryl Lee felt the name of every writer she had ever known seep out of her brain cells.
“You have had more than enough time,” said Mrs. Connolly.
Then, miraculously, like a gift, a name bobbed up into Meryl Lee’s memory.
“Have you consulted with Charlotte Dobrée, as I suggested?” said Mrs. Connolly.
Meryl Lee grabbed at the name as if grabbing at a paper cup bobbing in the deep end of the ocean.
“Miss Kowalski?”
“The Wizard of Oz,” Meryl Lee said in sort of a rush of breath.
Mrs. Connolly did that breathing thing with her nose. “You wish to study the writings of the Wizard of Oz?”
“No, no. To read The Wizard of Oz. I mean, I wish to read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and to study it as my classic American book.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Connolly.
“It’s really good. Have you seen the movie?”
“You feel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a work of such literary merit
that it might be called a classic?”
Meryl Lee nodded.
“And you feel this is a book to help you to develop taste and discernment?”
Meryl Lee nodded again.
“Judging from the film, I doubt that very much. Do you know the name of the author?”
Meryl Lee raised her eyebrows to chipmunk-y level. “Oz?” she said.
Mrs. Connolly sighed. “You have a great deal of work to do.” She did that thing with her nose again. “I am not completely sure you are equipped for success.”
“Me either,” said Meryl Lee.
“You have not made a good beginning. Developing taste and discernment through reading L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” She shook her head. “You may try, but I would advise you to consider the plight of the Scarecrow.” She turned and left.
Meryl Lee watched her strutting backside leave the library. If Holling had been there, right then, he would have tried doing that nose thing that Mrs. Connolly did. Or maybe the strutting backside thing. She might have tried too—at least the nose thing. She wasn’t sure she would have gotten it, but Holling would have.
But now she wondered if Mrs. Connolly was right. Could she become Accomplished by reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz?
Maybe not.
And not field hockey either.
So what could she be Accomplished in?
The Blank started to form in front of her, but then, suddenly, she wondered what Mrs. Connolly had meant by mentioning the plight of the Scarecrow. That he was missing his . . . hey . . . and Meryl Lee’s eyes narrowed on the retreating backside.
* * *
But after Famous Women of History on Monday morning, Meryl Lee wasn’t thinking very much about Mrs. Connolly and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
After Famous Women of History that morning, Meryl Lee had other things to think about—mostly homicidal thoughts about Jennifer and Ashley and maybe Charlotte too and the problem of finding a place to hide their bloody bodies. And if by chance their bloody bodies were found, any jury would declare their deaths to be justifiable homicides.
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