He could remember all that.
But nothing like this. The boughs that he helped Mrs. MacKnockater put up over the bookcases so that the whole house began to smell like pine. The baking baking baking as if an army were coming to dinner. The cards from old students that she read again and again and kept in a wooden box beside the huge tree that he had dragged in, so huge he’d had to cut the stupid top off to get it to stand upright in the corner. The bright lights, the gold and silver ornaments so thin and fragile he had to hold them with two fingers—and even so he’d broken three. The tinsel that picked up the bright glow from the birch logs that burned in the fireplace. And the wrapped and ribboned presents, some with his name on them, some with Captain Hurd’s name. One had Bagheera’s name on it—the one with the worst wrapping job.
Mrs. MacKnockater made Matt go to the midnight service at St. Luke’s on Christmas Eve. She made him sit between her ample self and Captain Hurd, as if they were protecting him from the whole world—as if they could. And there was a little too much praying for Matt’s taste, and a lot too much preaching, and he let the offering plate pass by even though he was tempted, but the singing was okay. It even felt as if he’d heard the tunes before—maybe.
And afterward they came out and it was past midnight, so Christmas Day, and the yellow lights of the church shone through the windows onto the soft snow that was falling, and Mrs. MacKnockater had turned to him right there in front of the church and done something she’d never done before: she kissed him on the cheek, and she whispered, “Merry Christmas, Matthew.” And Captain Hurd had said, “And one for me?” and Mrs. MacKnockater had said, “Old coot,” but she’d kissed him anyway, on the cheek, lightly and quickly, and he’d said, “Not your best effort,” and she’d said, “How would you know?” and he’d said, “I remember,” and they walked home through the soft snow, quiet after that.
The next morning, Matt opened his presents under the tree, as Mrs. MacKnockater and the Captain watched. A field compass from the Captain and a new slicker—“For squalls, because they can come up, you know.” A tortoiseshell pen from Mrs. MacKnockater—“It’s time you had a good one,” she said—and two sweaters that were a little too big but “you’ll grow into them.” Some wool socks because everyone should get wool socks at Christmas—the Captain got a pair too. And then Mrs. MacKnockater opened her present from Matt: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson. “He’s the guy that wrote Treasure Island,” said Matt. “And it’s a lot shorter.” He’d practiced the first chapter over and over, and they sat down in front of the fireplace and he read it to the two of them, word perfect.
He was sort of surprised when Mrs. MacKnockater cried. It wasn’t the sort of thing she did.
So Christmas came to Mrs. MacKnockater’s house, the happiest Christmas in a long time. And at the end of each of the days that followed, Matt lay down in his bed and thought about a day filled with good chores—keeping the wood stove going, splitting maple splints, repairing lobster traps. And he thought about going out on the bay on Affliction, sailing on calm days and chugging around the islands, coming back to read some more of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, eating the Christmas cakes that Mrs. MacKnockater would keep baking. At night, having climbed through the chute up onto the slate roof, he thought, So this is happiness. This is what it is. And he remembered Georgie. And he remembered Pastor Darius and Sophia, and Mr. Tush and the Myrnas, and even though he was a bit afraid of going down to New Bedford again, he figured there would be no reason that Leonidas Shug would be watching for him in Portland. And it was just a short bus ride, after all.
And so, that first week of January, Matt told Mrs. MacKnockater that he’d be going down to visit some people he knew in Portland. He’d take the noontime bus and be back not too late. He was pretty sure they’d feed him well enough. No, she didn’t have to wait supper for him. No, he’d be fine. Of course he’d be fine.
On the day he left, he’d been gone only an hour or so—maybe he’d just arrived in Portland, thought Mrs. MacKnockater—when Lieutenant Minot came to the house again.
* * *
Mrs. MacKnockater was wrong about his getting down to Portland; he’d already been there twenty minutes. The bus trip had been faster than usual—it was freezing cold and snowing a bit, and even people who live in Maine don’t always want to travel when it’s freezing cold and snowing, so no one had been waiting at the bus stations—and Matt had already come down Commercial Street and was standing across from the Chowder House.
Or what used to be the Chowder House.
It, and the two stores beyond it, and the art gallery beside it were burned-out ruins.
Even the pier behind the Chowder House was mostly gone. Just three or four darkened columns led out into the harbor, one with a seagull standing atop it, its wings out, its head bobbing up and down, its mouth open to squawk.
As the new, soft snow gentled Portland, Matt could hardly breathe. He turned and went into the Odds and Ends Gift Shop, where the manager was packing Christmas away. Yeah, he said, the fire had happened six, maybe seven, months back—maybe more—he couldn’t remember. Funniest thing, the fire had started in the art gallery, for no reason that anyone could find. It had spread right into the Chowder House, and Cyrus Tush had been plenty lucky to get out with his tush intact. The fire had run across the attics in the buildings, and the whole block was burning before the fire trucks had even gotten there. Too bad. Folks around town, especially the lobstermen, really missed the Chowder House. Didn’t look like they’d be rebuilding anytime soon, though.
And Mr. Tush? And the Myrnas?
Cyrus had gone to Georgia, or some such southern place. Myrna—there was only one, you know—Myrna had gone out to her people in Alberta. Nope, he didn’t know a thing about any cat.
The manager finished putting away the strings of lights. “You sound like you knew them,” he said. “You aren’t the kiddo who worked for them? I heard there was some kid that worked for them.”
“No,” said Matt. He backed toward the door. “I used to eat at the Chowder House when I came to visit my aunt.”
The manager shook his head. “Sure is a shame,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Matt, and he backed out into the frigid air and the snow.
He looked up and down Commercial Street.
No one was out in this cold.
He walked across to the wreck. There was already enough new snow to whiten the timbers, and he reached down and let his hand rest upon them. Then he walked around and behind what remained and stood on the shoreline, looking out at what he had looked out at from the window where he’d slept for months.
He could imagine the Chowder House standing behind him.
But it wasn’t easy.
He felt the presence of those charred beams as if he were carrying them on his back.
“Hey, kid,” he heard.
He turned quickly.
“Kid, that’s not a healthy place to be standing.”
And Matt took off, clambering over the beams. He slipped a couple of times and tore his hand against a nail that stuck out, but made his way down to the pier, and then quickly up toward Commercial Street so that he wouldn’t be trapped against the water. He headed down one side street and up another, slipping on the new snow, and turning to face away from the wind that was cutting through him now. Somehow, his face had gotten all wet. He slowed to a hunched walk so that no one would notice him moving through the streets, and kept the harbor to his right so that he could find the bus station.
He took off his hat and wrapped it around his hand, which was starting to throb.
Dang, it was cold.
He hurried toward the station, feeling the tips of his ears start to freeze.
“There’s not much I can tell you,” said Lieutenant Minot. “There was a fire down to New Bedford. A church burned—Second Baptist. It’s pretty clear it was arson. And it happened a few weeks after a boy who was living with
the pastor and his wife disappeared.”
“That hardly represents conclusive evidence, Lieutenant.”
“The way that people who worshiped at Second Baptist described the boy, he’s a ringer for your Matthew. And the way the pastor and his wife stayed strangely quiet about what happened to him makes me wonder.”
“Still, none of that—”
“Mrs. MacKnockater, there was another fire. After a boy who was living in a restaurant suddenly disappeared. And the owner of the restaurant isn’t talking about him either.”
Mrs. MacKnockater turned toward the windows and looked out at the ocean.
“That fire was in Portland,” said Lieutenant Minot.
“Portland?” she said.
“You understand what that means? It means they’re getting closer.”
“And the ‘they’ that you refer to is who . . . ?”
“I don’t know. But I think Matthew does. I think he’s hiding from them. And I think they’re very good at finding him.”
Mrs. MacKnockater nodded.
“I need to talk to him right now,” said Lieutenant Minot.
“He’ll be back tonight,” she said. “Probably on the seven forty bus.”
* * *
Meryl Lee walked out of the Trelawney and Smollett Real Estate Offices and into the bitter cold welling up from Portland Harbor. How do people live here, she wondered, glad that she had decided not to pack all the books she had wanted to lug back to St. Elene’s. Mr. Smollett had promised that the bus station was close: three blocks, then a right, and it would be on the next corner. Wavy wisps of snow blew down the street against her, and she kept her face covered with one mittened hand. She breathed through the wool, which quickly became wet and then icy. How could that happen so fast?
The drive up from New York with her father had been too quiet and too long. They had not talked about the trial separation, or about Philadelphia, or about anything much. When they veered toward her life at St. Elene’s, it was a relief. They could act as if they both really, really wanted to talk about St. Elene’s. She could talk about her classes, about the teachers, about Thanksgiving dinner at Dr. MacKnockater’s home—though she didn’t, for whatever reason, say a thing about Matt—about how nice the grounds were in the fall, and how lovely they were when snow-covered, and how wonderful it would be to see them in the warm spring, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.
They talked so they didn’t have to.
“You’re sure you can find the way?” her father had said at Trelawney and Smollett’s. “It’s pretty cold out there. And that snow is coming down harder.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “Are you going to be okay?”
He looked at her. “I guess,” he said.
“I guess I will be too, then,” she said.
He held the door open for her and waved her out into the snow. And when the door closed, everything that was warm was gone—just like that.
She walked the three blocks, pulling her suitcase through the gathering snow, and then she took the right turn and the bus station was on the corner, just as Mr. Smollett had promised.
It wasn’t a very big bus station, but it was warm. She bought the ticket up to Bath, sat on one of the long benches, and thought about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She wondered, Suppose Dorothy didn’t want to get back to Kansas? What then? So she took out The Grapes of Wrath, which she was reading for the third time—because if there was anything lewd, she’d missed it entirely. What she’d found instead was one beautiful thing after another, especially at the end, when Rose of Sharon fed the old man. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever read.
She went out to the bus twenty minutes or so before it was due to leave. The bus driver saw her coming and motioned for her to put her suitcase in one of the open bins. She did, and climbed on board, and went to hand the ticket to him. “Put it under the clip on the seat ahead of you,” he said. “I’ll pick them all up when everyone’s on board.”
She took a seat about halfway back, put the ticket under the clip, then leaned back and looked out the window. The sky was darkening early; it really did look as though the snow was coming down a lot harder.
* * *
Meryl Lee did not recognize Matt when he boarded the bus at the last second—probably because he came down the aisle pretty quickly, and he was all hunched over, and he had his hood up and his face turned down. He might have walked right by, except he had to stop when the passenger across from her stood in the aisle to push a full shopping bag into the overhead, and they looked right at each other, and in his eyes was what had been in his eyes when he’d bounded down the stairs in his boxers, holding a hatchet.
“Matt?” she said.
He sat down next to her. He was breathing kind of raggedly. His right hand was hidden in his hat.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
She looked at him. “You are a stinky liar,” she said.
He looked at her. “What are you doing on this bus?”
“Water-skiing. What are you doing?”
“Tickets, please.”
In the front of the bus, the driver had stood and was slowly moving back, punching holes in the tickets.
Matt froze.
“Do you have a ticket?” said Meryl Lee.
“Of course I have a ticket.”
“Put it under the clip.”
“He’ll see me.”
The driver—the same one, the very same one whom Matt had seen before—moved closer.
Matt took the ticket out from his back pocket and held it.
“Who cares if he sees you?” she said. She took his ticket and slid it under the clip.
“He’ll see you, too,” he said.
“So?”
The driver was only a couple of seats in front of them now.
“Don’t you get it?”
“No, I don’t get it. What’s the problem?”
The driver moved ahead toward them.
The driver who knew Shug.
The same dang driver.
Matt suddenly reached behind Meryl Lee’s head and leaned toward her and kissed her. And kissed her. And kissed her. Meryl Lee could hardly breathe, and she didn’t know what to do. Of all the times she had imagined kissing Holling, it was never like this—like someone kissing her as if his life depended on it. And all she could feel was this close presence of Matt, and his face against hers, and his desperate need, and she put her hand behind his head and held on, and she heard the chuckle of the bus driver and the clicking of his hole punch, and she sensed, more than heard, that he had moved on.
She let go of Matt and backed into her seat.
When she looked at him, she thought he was going to cry.
She thought she might too.
“What was that about?” she whispered.
“I can’t let him see me,” he said. “We should get off the bus.”
“Oh, and he won’t see you if we get up now?”
Matt slumped down. He gathered his hood closer around his face.
“Matt, you have to tell me what is going on.”
And there was the image of Georgie in that Alley, fixed into Matt’s mind. He held his hand up to his face, but he couldn’t wipe the picture away. He just couldn’t wipe it away.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”
Meryl Lee took a deep breath. “The bus driver is going to be coming back in a minute. You better be ready for what I’m going to do.”
Matt looked up from his hood. “What are you going to do?”
She looked behind her and over the seat. The driver was already coming back up the aisle.
“You shouldn’t imagine that this means anything more than it does,” she said, and she leaned into Matt and kissed him again, and kissed him, until the driver, chuckling, had passed, and she leaned back up and they looked at each other and suddenly, Meryl Lee wondered if it had meant more than she thought it might
.
She sat back against her seat, turned, and looked out at the snow. When she reached up to her face, she was surprised that she was crying.
“Are you okay?” Matt said.
She nodded.
He touched her shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. “I mean it. Thanks.”
She turned back to him. “You’re in trouble.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“And you can’t tell anyone what it is.”
He shook his head. “Not unless I want to get them in trouble too.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
Matt looked long and hard at Meryl Lee. He reached over and took her hand—and this time it wasn’t just acting . . . though maybe his kiss hadn’t all been just acting either.
She let her hand stay in his, and as the bus passed into Yarmouth, she told him about her parents, and the trial separation, and Philadelphia. And then, kind of stuttering, she said, “A-and . . . and then Holling.”
He listened.
“He was in a car with his father. This car that he always wanted to drive. They were hit and when they got hit, Holling’s head snapped back and they tried to get him to Syosset Hospital but there was nothing they could do.”
Matt still listening.
“He loved baseball and especially the Yankees. And he loved Shakespeare. I know, can you believe it? Really, he loved Shakespeare. He once played Ariel, who was a fairy, but Holling said he was a warrior and I said . . . I never really said what I always wanted to say—that he was a warrior too. That I loved that he loved Shakespeare. That—”
She stopped.
“That you loved him too,” whispered Matt.
“And I couldn’t tell him goodbye. And I can’t tell him how much I miss him.”
“That everything afterward became sort of gray,” said Matt. “That sometimes, everything is a Blank,” said Meryl Lee.
And they held each other’s hands as Meryl Lee cried softly—softly because the lady with the full shopping bag was sort of watching them—and when she quieted up toward the turn to Bath, Matt did what he had not done for a very long time: he told her that his parents were gone, and that he had had one friend, Georgie, and that he was gone too.
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