Just Like That

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Matt staggered up, holding his arm—which hurt like anything.

  “Matt, go,” he heard Mrs. Nielson cry, and he ran, sprinting away, trying to cradle his arm, looking back at the corner to see the Big Guy from the Alley down on the sidewalk with Mrs. Nielson’s son still pounding at him, and he crossed the road and headed toward the bus station.

  He stopped to check the time and platform for the Bath bus.

  He had an hour and a half to wait.

  He ran into the men’s room, into an empty stall, pulled the door closed, locked it, and sat with his feet up on the toilet.

  He noticed that he couldn’t move his left arm.

  Then he noticed the drops of blood that he’d left behind on the floor, leading right to where he was.

  He came out of the stall again, looked around. No one. He took off his sweatshirt—this was hard to do—and held it against the cut along his back as he wiped up the blood spots with paper towels. Then back into the stall, door closed and locked, feet up on the toilet, still holding the sweatshirt against his back, which was starting now to ache.

  He waited, listening, for an hour and twenty-five minutes, his heart stopping every time someone rattled the locked door, his left arm screeching with pain. Then he opened the stall and looked around the bathroom. No one. He threw away the sweatshirt, took handfuls of paper towels and stuffed them at his back inside the sweater, and tried to walk to the bus as if he couldn’t care less whether he made it to Bath or not—and as if his back wasn’t aching like all get out, as if his eyes weren’t starting to close.

  And he tried not to look as if he was looking around.

  He made it to the bus and showed the ticket to the driver—“Hey, you only had about thirty seconds to spare, kid. You okay?”—and took a seat in the last row, where he lay down, pressing himself against the seatback.

  That’s how he stayed all the way up to Bath, his eyes closed, hoping the other passengers thought he was sleeping, really hoping he wasn’t bleeding too badly, trying not to jostle his arm.

  When the bus finally reached the station, he didn’t turn around to see how much blood he’d left on the seat—probably plenty. He wondered whether he should leave his sweater behind but figured that the blood would show worse on his white T-shirt, so he waited until everyone got off before he came up the aisle, his hand on his back, and quickly went down the bus steps and into the station, staying close to the walls.

  No one seemed to notice him.

  Out of the bus station and into town, thankful that it was close to dark. Through the streets of Bath and out onto the peninsula, the ache like hell now, his hands bloody, his legs feeling like they didn’t belong to him, his eyes focusing badly, the way home a lot longer than it should be.

  He fell once on the path down to the shack, and he almost decided not to get up. But he did, and fell again against a stand of pines, their branches so sharp at his back that he almost screamed—or maybe he did scream.

  He crawled the rest of the way to Captain Cobb’s shack, pushed open the door, let it close behind him, tried to pull himself up to the pump to get some water, and finally collapsed.

  That night, Mrs. MacKnockater, who hadn’t heard from Matt for long enough that she was worried, told Captain Hurd to get off his duff and go check on the boy.

  Twenty-One

  More than a year had passed since Matt had come to the coast, and now, with Thanksgiving close, Matt did something he had never done before: he went to Breck’s department store and bought a bright yellow button-down shirt. He kind of guessed at the size. Then he bought a tie. Red. Sort of fire engine red. Actually, red like the center of a cooling star. Then he bought black dress pants. At home, when he tried the shirt on, twisting his back so that he could see the wicked scar along his low ribs in the mirror, it turned out that the shirt was a few sizes too big; he’d have to roll the sleeves up over his elbows and tuck the tails deep into his black dress pants. He figured Mrs. MacKnockater wouldn’t care. He knew Captain Hurd wouldn’t care.

  And Matt knew something else.

  His left arm was fine, and his back no longer hurt, not even when he twisted it. He knew he should go now. Staying more than a year in one place was really dumb. It was only a matter of time before Leonidas Shug sent someone else to find Matt and what he had taken—and probably do something a whole lot worse to him.

  And to anyone who helped him.

  He knew he should go.

  Everything in him told him he should go.

  But something had happened. Something he never expected.

  He’d found a home.

  And maybe it wasn’t like most homes. Maybe it wasn’t what it would have been if his parents . . .

  But it was still a home. In the evenings when Mrs. MacKnockater came back from St. Elene’s, they ate dinner together—and she wasn’t a terrible cook, even though she sure did like to boil anything she could fit into a pot. Then they’d go through the lessons he’d done that day, mostly literature and history. She’d given him Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, where, she said, “the two disciplines coalesced,” and he was working his way through it sort of slowly. But it was okay. He liked Santiago well enough.

  Usually sometime around seven thirty, Captain Hurd would stop by, and he’d fuss at Mrs. MacKnockater about the way she didn’t keep the damper right on the wood stove and how the headmistress of St. Elene’s never could learn the first thing about real life, and then he’d trounce Matt at one or two games of checkers, and then they’d all three talk, quietly enough to hear the waves in the dark, frothing into the shore.

  Matt couldn’t bear to leave again. He’d found a home.

  Maybe if he talked with the lieutenant. Maybe if he told him everything.

  But Matt knew that wouldn’t help. Nothing would help.

  So how long could he dare to stay?

  That’s what he was wondering on Thanksgiving afternoon, long before Captain Hurd would be arriving, when he went upstairs to try on his new black dress pants—which turned out to be so long that they covered his feet, so he took those off to figure out how to cuff them so they wouldn’t unroll, or he would wear his jeans—and meanwhile he put on his bright yellow button-down shirt and his red-like-the-center-of-a-cooling-star tie—and how was he supposed to know that you couldn’t use a buoy hitch on a stupid tie?—and that’s when his heart stopped completely because he heard someone knock at Mrs. MacKnockater’s door and he knew it would be just like Leonidas Shug to send a guy on Thanksgiving afternoon.

  Then he heard Mrs. MacKnockater’s high-pitched, surprised voice.

  Matt let every instinct catch him up. It was for this reason that he had carried his hatchet from the shack to Mrs. MacKnockater’s house.

  He reached under the bed, grabbed it, and banged out of his room and took the stairs three at a time.

  * * *

  Meryl Lee did decide to come early to Dr. MacKnockater’s home to help mash the potatoes and cream the onions. She had spent rather a long time dressing—since this was not a school event, she didn’t want to wear her regulation St. Elene’s Preparatory Academy uniform. So she had chosen her very best, and borrowed a garnet necklace from Marian, and shined her black pumps, and come well before time, figuring that it was better to arrive early to help than to come on time to be served. Somehow, she didn’t want that.

  At the door, Dr. MacKnockater was surprised and genuinely pleased to see her. She welcomed her in, wished her a most happy Thanksgiving Day, told her that if she would wait right there she would run and fetch an apron so that Meryl Lee wouldn’t get her pretty dress floured, and bundled back into the kitchen.

  And that was when Meryl Lee heard something like a scream and turned to see the boy, wearing a bright yellow button-down shirt and a red tie the color of the center of a cooling star on top, and nothing but his boxers on bottom—the boxers were red too—thumping down the stairs and toward her with an upraised hatchet.

  It wasn’t exactl
y what she had expected to see at Dr. MacKnockater’s house.

  She might have screamed. A little bit. She turned back to the door and reached for the knobbly walking stick that leaned against the corner. She whipped it in front of her and held its point against the boy’s chest—actually, right on the cooling-star tie.

  The boy was still holding the hatchet up. He looked sort of frozen, even though he was breathing heavily.

  Meryl Lee was breathing a little heavily too.

  And that was how Mrs. Nora MacKnockater saw Matt and Meryl Lee when she swung the kitchen door open.

  This wasn’t exactly what she had expected either. Slowly she walked toward them, holding the apron.

  “I see you’ve met,” she said.

  There was a long moment, and then Meryl Lee slowly nodded. Matt lowered his hatchet.

  “Matthew, this is Miss Meryl Lee Kowalski.”

  Matt nodded again.

  “Meryl Lee, this is Mr. Matthew Coffin.”

  Meryl Lee nodded.

  “If you would put your chosen weapons away,” said Dr. MacKnockater, “I think we shall call a truce for Thanksgiving Day.”

  Matt stood back and held his hatchet down by his side. Meryl Lee lowered the point of the walking stick a little.

  “Much better,” said Dr. MacKnockater. She handed the apron to Meryl Lee. “Forbearing the obvious questions here, I will return to the kitchen and its relative peace. Matthew, I’ll need your help in a few minutes to lift the turkey out of the oven to baste, and, Meryl Lee, if you’ll help me prepare the onion mix for green beans, I think we shall be right on schedule.”

  Mrs. MacKnockater hustled back into the kitchen.

  Meryl Lee looked at Matt, who looked at her.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” said Matt.

  “Who’s scared?” said Meryl Lee.

  “You, for one,” said Matt.

  “I wasn’t scared,” said Meryl Lee.

  Matt looked at her again.

  “Okay, maybe a little startled. It’s not every day that a boy comes at me with a hatchet.”

  “I thought you might be someone else.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you always run downstairs in your boxers?”

  Matt looked down, then back up at Meryl Lee.

  “I guess I’d better . . .”

  “Yeah, I guess you’d better.” Meryl Lee leaned the walking stick back into the corner. “Probably Dr. MacKnockater would . . .”

  “I know,” said Matt. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

  Matt went upstairs. He slid the hatchet—not too far—under the bed. Then he put on his jeans and tucked in the bright yellow button-down shirt as best he could. Then back downstairs and into the kitchen, where Meryl Lee was at the table, paring and slicing carrots, and Mrs. MacKnockater asked him to take out the turkey—a twenty-two pounder—and he set it on the table near Meryl Lee, and they watched while Mrs. MacKnockater basted it and its lovely smell filled the kitchen. Matt put it back into the oven, and then Mrs. MacKnockater gave them the cooked yams to scoop into a glass casserole dish and layer small marshmallows upon, which they did together, and Matt watched Meryl Lee while pretending he was not watching her and he thought, This is the first time I’ve ever done something like this with a girl, and he felt the heat of a cooling star inside him.

  Well, maybe not a cooling star.

  Later, after they creamed the onions and unmolded the Jell-O salad, they set the table in the dining room with Mrs. MacKnockater’s Spode and Waterford. “We’ll need five place settings,” she said, and Matt didn’t ask who the fifth person would be, and Meryl Lee didn’t either, because Matt was trying to figure out what that heat inside him meant, and Meryl Lee was . . . confused? Because somehow, this boy, this boy who ran down the stairs with a hatchet to protect the Awful Dignity, who ran down the stairs in his red boxers and with a tie knotted into a disaster, who was setting knives and forks and spoons beside china plates with her and getting them all mixed up, had done exactly what she could imagine Holling doing. Exactly. And now, even now when she was thinking of Holling—when she was thinking of Holling!—the Blank wasn’t there.

  The Blank wasn’t there.

  This boy was.

  Why wasn’t the Blank there?

  * * *

  Later, Dr. MacKnockater lit a white candle and brought it into the dining room while Matt took the turkey out of the oven again. It was perfect. Meryl Lee spooned the stuffing from the turkey, and Mrs. MacKnockater asked Matt to cut long slices of white meat and some shorter slices of the dark meat—“No one likes the dark meat nearly as much as the white,” she said—and he wasn’t terrible at it, and while he did that, Mrs. MacKnockater made the gravy, and then it was four o’clock and a minute or so later Meryl Lee heard a knock, and while Matt watched carefully, she ran to open Dr. MacKnockater’s door, where she found, standing on the stoop, the second person she had not expected that afternoon: Jennifer Hartley Truro, wearing her pearls.

  At least Jennifer wasn’t running at her with a hatchet.

  “What are you doing here?” said Jennifer.

  Well, maybe she was running at her with a hatchet.

  “Having Thanksgiving dinner,” said Meryl Lee. “Where’s Alden?”

  “As if it’s any of your business,” said Jennifer.

  “Is that Miss Truro?” called Dr. MacKnockater.

  “I’m here, Dr. MacKnockater,” called Jennifer, pushing past Meryl Lee. “Is there anything I can do to help?” She pulled her blond hair back and looked at Meryl Lee as if she was about to stick her tongue out at her. Then she went into the kitchen, and there was a boy—an actual boy. His shirt was way too big, and it was bright yellow, and he was wearing jeans that he’d probably worn to play in the mud. He didn’t say anything when they were introduced—he just mumbled. And look what he’d done to that turkey! A massacre! And sneakers? He was wearing sneakers to Thanksgiving dinner? And didn’t he believe in a decent haircut? And okay, she didn’t mean to laugh at what he’d done to his tie, but really, who would be able not to laugh at that?

  She’d have a lot to tell Ashley and Charlotte about the kind of people the Knock invited to Thanksgiving dinner.

  Captain Hurd arrived soon afterward—he didn’t knock, he just came on in—and he greeted Meryl Lee in the kitchen and then he went out with Matt to fuss at the wood stove’s draft until they got a steady blaze, and then they went into the dining room, where Jennifer sat across from the boy and as far as she could from the Captain, who, she thought, smelled like fish. Mrs. MacKnockater sat at the head, and she told them to hold hands for prayer, and she let silence go on for a bit, and then she prayed: “Oh Lord our God, help us to be truly thankful for the innumerable blessings Thou hast bestowed upon us in this past year. Thank you for those moments of joy that enliven our hearts and souls. And when it may have seemed to us, your servants, that Thou hast held Thine hand back and allowed us to be troubled, help us to see even in that, Thy blessing meant for our good, though we may not know how it might be so. Bless us in the Unexpected. Amen.”

  And strangely, Meryl Lee found herself close to tears, and when she looked across the table at Matt, in the light of that white candle, he was looking at her, and she thought that he might be close to tears too.

  Bless us in the Unexpected.

  The Captain, though, was not close to tears. He was hungry and eager for turkey, and filled with stories of his friend Buckminster, the old coot, grandfather to those young Buckminsters, who couldn’t manage a boat despite fifty years of life on the Maine coast. And Dr. MacKnockater was almost, well, merry, handing around the green beans and mashed potatoes with the gravy and sweet yams and onions and long slices of turkey and Jell-O mold—“We need to eat this before it starts to melt”—and opening the wine for the Captain—“You never could manage a corkscrew”—and bundling into the kitchen for the cold grape juice that would serve for the toasts “for the
young ones in our midst” and coaxing Matt into the conversation, which the Captain did much better than she did.

  But Meryl Lee watched Matt from across the table. The way, when he looked up, his eyes shone in candlelight. The way that he tried with his hand, sometimes, to hide the scar that went up his cheek. The way his left pinky was crooked, like it had been broken and not set right. The way his tie was knotted with determination. The way he handed Dr. MacKnockater a hot dish, waiting to be sure she had hold of it. The way he looked at the Captain when he spoke about their days on the water, and the smile that crossed his face—his whole face—and the one tooth missing as though it had been knocked out. The way he sometimes glanced across at her.

  Because he did glance across at her, more often than Meryl Lee knew. At the way her eyes looked in the candlelight, the way she held her hands, the way she ignored stupid Jennifer’s insults, the way she listened to the Captain’s stories even though she had probably never handled a boat in her life, the way her head tilted and her hair hung and that funny way she laughed with her head a little back.

  Jennifer might have noticed the glances. So she was wondering, she said, where Matt came from, and when Matt said, “Nowhere special,” she would not let it go. “Everyone comes from somewhere,” she said. “Is it a secret?” Matt looked at her. “I love secrets. Really, where are you from?”

  And Dr. MacKnockater said, “Jennifer is joining us because her plans fell through at the last moment, much as yours have, Meryl Lee.”

  And Jennifer paused, took her linen napkin up to her eye, and explained: Alden, it turned out, dear Alden, was not able to visit the vast Truro family estates over Thanksgiving and hand over one of his great-aunt’s rubies so he and Jennifer could be almost like engaged because, according to Jennifer, his family was commanded to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Windsors at Buckingham Palace. And no one, of course, can neglect royal obligations.