The Keening

by A. LaFaye

  Now if I could just decide who Lyza might be!

  Orphaned by Family Talents

  Passing Founder’s Rock, I pulled out my pocket watch to check the time. I still met Jake there every morning before school. 7:50. Late again. He’d promised me he’d head out if I didn’t get there before 7:20, so he wouldn’t be late for school. Still, he rarely kept that promise. But today, it appeared he had.

  Perhaps it was the fog that’d rolled in with a gusty spray of rain that had chased him on to school. I placed an apple from my lunch pail on the rock to let him know I’d stopped.

  “Lyza!” Jake’s shout spun me around. He stood a good ways away in the tall grass. He’d probably seen me and come running back.

  “Get to school, Jake Finch! I won’t have Mr. Beecher writing me another letter about my academic priorities!” Jake’d blamed me for his tardiness so often, the schoolmaster felt the need to write to me.

  “Beecher can swallow a whale!” Jake yelled.

  How could he just stand in that wet tall grass in the chill of an April morning? My bones would be shaking with the cold of it.

  “You’re late. Which means I’ll be late if I don’t head down shore, so go on!”

  “Not until you promise!”

  “Promise what?”

  “To bring me with you to Portland when you go to take the exam!”

  Oh, bother. To Jake, Portland was next door to heaven. The boy thought God himself had built the place—going on about streetcars and department stores and museums and libraries and whatnot. He actually wanted me to take my high school exam there so I could bring him along and let him see the sights. His parents wouldn’t send him. Didn’t even plan for him to go to college. No, he was meant to work the nets with his father like his grandfather before them. He wanted to cut free of the family business as much as Mater did, but he didn’t have her set of teeth. Brave with the tongue, Jake was, but when it came to standing up to his father, Jake folded like a lady’s church fan.

  “Kingsley Cove’s far enough for me.”

  “Well, you better promise now, or I’ll be gone for good before you can!”

  “Your mother threatening to send you to Oregon again?” Mrs. Finch thought sending him to live with his uncle in Oregon would protect him from the influenza, but that illness could travel just as far.

  “Just promise me, Lyza!” Jake seemed upset, scared even.

  I heard the peal of the schoolbell that could reach out over the mile that stood between us and town. “You better get going, Jake.”

  “Promise me!”

  “Fine, if it’ll make you get a move on!”

  “You will? You’ll take me when you go to Portland?”

  “I will.” Even though the very idea squeezed blood from my heart and left me pale and shaking. Not the thought of taking Jake along, but the very idea of having to go to Portland at all. Keeping to the Layton population of three was plenty crowded for me.

  Jake ran off, shouting and squealing. He even jumped into the air to click his heels, but in the mist I couldn’t even see his feet.

  As I marched on down the shore, I set to planning how I could turn that promise around. Would Jake take bribes? A promise to write his next history theme? Wonder if helping him memorize the Gettysburg Address would work? Anything to keep me from going to Portland.

  Uncle Fenton caught sight of me as I cleared the bluff north of his shop. At his height, he could see over a maple five years tall. Waving, he shouted, “Shake a leg, Little Lyza! Gunderson’s breathing fire over his sign!”

  Stepping down onto the deck of Uncle Fenton’s shop—an old tackle and bait shop from when they’d still used Bradley Cove for docking—I said, “Call me that again and I’m liable to set fire to that sign.”

  Next to Uncle Fenton most everyone’s little, but I stopped being anybody’s “Little Lyza” about the time I could snatch the hat off Uncle Fenton’s head without standing on tiptoes. I might even be a hair taller than Mater, and she’s probably the tallest woman in Kingsley Cove.

  “All right, all right, but you know I’m not good at letter work.” Uncle Fenton rushed toward me, chisel in hand, apron already full of wood chips. He looked panicked, like a child who’d been set to a task fit for a man.

  Made me feel good. After half a decade of chipping, chiseling, and cursing, I finally had a knack for letters, but it wasn’t a talent. It was a blood-earned skill. I had two hands full of scars to prove it.

  No, talent left me bobbing in the tide. Pater could carve a face fit for a cathedral out of soap. Mater could sew a dress fit for meeting the President. Quinna could write poetry that’d bring Ezra Pound to tears, but all I could do was carve straight letters into wood. I suppose that’s why Uncle Fenton and I fit.

  The Bradley men put their hands to nets before they pledged their loyalty to the church. Fenton found himself the crab in a net of mackerel when he learned the sea tossed his stomach. Grampy felt sure that Fenton’s stomach would grow seaworthy. But it turned more fickle and Fenton turned to sign making. His stomach wouldn’t even let him join the fight in Europe. When the Great War started Uncle Fenton enlisted, but the army sent him home because he couldn’t keep their food down. A land man in a family of seagoers, Uncle Fenton was like me, orphaned by the family talents.

  So it felt good in a settling way to have a skill I could ply my hands to and make a bit of difference. As I chipped into the wood, my mind shifted with the wind. A breeze came in off the ocean and chilled me, filling my mind’s eye with the sight of that shadow on our front stoop. I shook it away. As Mater said, “Daydreaming’s only stalling.” And I had a sign to finish.

  Angels and Meteors

  As I worked my way through the “son” in Gunderson, Uncle Fenton made me a potato and pea pie with his fireplace iron. He loved those pies, but couldn’t eat them. So I traded him for the cheese and apple slices I’d brought. The tasty flaky pie held me over until everything was done but the painting. Grabbing a lantern off a deck post, I left Uncle Fenton to do his magic with a brush as I headed home in the dark.

  The blue flag flapping above the distant treeline called me home. Mater had put up a signal flag between the house and the forest so she could call Pater home when he worked in the cabin on Abner Island, the small island Grampy Bradley bought years back. The flag let us talk to Pater across the water. Yellow meant “We miss you.” Red said, “Danger! Come home double-quick.” Sometimes Mater ran up the red danger flag just to make Pater come home. Blue meant “still waters,” though it looked silvery in the moonlight.

  As I walked with that flag in sight, I wondered how I could leave this place. The comforts of it had soaked in soul deep. Traveling about didn’t require thought. My body knew the way. And sights like our house standing on the high grass plain between the glen of sugar maples and the forest made me feel safe. Then again, with the place hemmed in by a road to the west and the sea to the east, it was hard to tell if that kept others out or us in.

  With the house dark, I figured Mater hadn’t lured Pater out of his workshop. Walking against the wind, I moved closer to the cliff’s edge and into the mournful notes of Mater’s cello floating up from the shoreline like a keening in strings. Looking over, I saw her skirts lit from below as she straddled the cello on the flat rock just beyond Pater’s workshop door, a lantern in the sand below. She looked like a paper lantern set adrift on the sea. If I hadn’t been stiff from standing over a wooden sign all day, I would’ve made the trek down the cliff to the dock and laid myself out on our longboat to listen—the cliffs surrounding Mater acting like an orchestra shell to carry her music out to sea.

  Instead, I took a rest on the bench Pater carved at the top of the cliff. Staring up at the stars, I let myself float with the notes on the wind. As they drifted, so did I, right off to sleep.

  In my dreaming mind, a squirrel had gotten on the roof over my bed, then a strange sound woke me. When I opened my eyes, the skittering feet turned out to be sticks dislodg
ed by Pater as he crossed the roof. My skin cool in the night air, I wrapped the quilt someone had brought me around my shoulders, then sat up on the bench to see Pater taking up a post on the peak.

  Mater stood on the front stoop, staring up to the roof, waiting for me. Seeing me crossing the yard, wearing the quilt like a cape, she said, “Do you think he’s up there to repair leaks?”

  Pater might take to such a project anytime the mood struck him. In her white nightgown, Mater glowed like a clamshell in the moonlight. Wrapping her shawl around her, she yelled up, “Evanae! What’s got you acting like a gargoyle?”

  “Angels!” he shouted.

  Mater looked at me, her eyes wild with the possibility. “And what are the angels doing?”

  “Flying!” Pater shouted, annoyed to be stating the obvious.

  Mater shrugged, smiling. “Wouldn’t they just.”

  Beckoning me to follow, she headed to the side of the house. Pater had built a stone chimney with its own staircase hugging the wall. Holding the house for support, we headed up.

  Perched on the ridge of the roof, we all sat staring into the black marble of the night sky with its swirls of stars and clouds.

  “I don’t see them,” Mater said, with her head tilted skyward.

  “They’re coming,” Pater said.

  I fell back to sleep against Mater’s shoulder. Their shouts startled me awake.

  “The angels!” Pater said. “They’re coming!”

  “How grand,” Mater answered, hugging her knees and leaning into Pater.

  Sitting up, I looked. The sky filled with bright streaks of light like fireworks set off by God. Angels flying at night. Pater had known they were coming. He had waited there for them.

  Jake’d given me a book on astronomy that said meteors made those streaks appear, not angels flying about. Bits of rock falling into the gases around the earth. Angels or rocks, it was still a beautiful light show.

  We had supper at dawn. Pater broiled some halibut with lemon pepper and cumin. Pater lived on cumin. He steamed the asparagus just enough to bring out the color, then arranged it in patterns on his plate rather than eating it.

  “Mater, how often do meteors fall to the earth?”

  Passing me the fish plate, Mater said, “As often as they like.”

  That had me thinking. Pater saw angels in burning rocks hurtling through the air. Instead of protecting as an angel would, those things could kill a person. Sometimes Pater’s visions hid dangers he should be seeing. “Do they ever strike the ground and hurt someone?”

  Mater dabbed her forehead with her napkin. Pater had left the oven open, giving Mater the hot seat. “Rarely. They burn up, most of them. Luckily there’s a lot more open ground than people.”

  Pater looked up, coming back into our world for a bit. “I wonder how hard apple wood is? Do you suppose it smells like apples at all?”

  I told him, “The Vincents have a whole grove of apple trees. I could stop over and cut you a switch.”

  “A good size branch would do better. Tell them there’s a whirligig in it for them.”

  And Pater meant it too. He’d carve the whirligig out of the branch I brought. When lightning struck the walnut tree in the Hemsons’ yard, Pater offered to make them a box for their good silver in exchange for the rest of the wood. Mr. Hemson thought Pater meant to buy him the box or trade from something we owned, but Pater carved that box out of the wood itself—no pegs, no glue, just a solid box carved out of wood. Pater had me edge the lid. I wondered if he might pull me in on the whirligig. I often helped Pater on his barter projects when they involved wood.

  “Will do.”

  Pater tugged the quilt in my lap. “Stitches of love.”

  Mater had made the quilt for me when I moved to a bed, but by the way Pater gripped my knee, I knew he was trying to say something more than that. He wanted to tell me he missed me.

  “Stitches of love.” I squeezed his knee.

  He laughed.

  “Is she done?” Mater asked, speaking of the sculpture Pater had forming in his shop.

  Pater shook his head, standing. “She told me of the angels, asked me to watch for them. I’ll go finish.”

  Pater disappeared into the dawn fog.

  Mater slammed her cup into the table, cursing under her breath. Waving her hand at his plate, she said, “He didn’t even eat!”

  An asparagus face stared back at us from the plate. So much for getting Pater to eat.

  To Learn a Thing or Three

  Sculptures became Pater’s life when he worked. The faces even took on personalities, like this wood sprite of his who told him stories of angels. “Tales to make her true,” Mater always said. As Pater carved a face, the details breathed with life, and you expected it to talk. And somehow, Pater heard the things such a face might say.

  That’s when he stopped listening to sensible things like the growling of his own stomach, which worried Mater threadbare.

  She started to clear our supper plates, but staggered. I rushed to catch her. She laughed, saying, “Got up too fast.”

  She looked flushed, sweaty. “It’s too hot in here,” I said. My arms around her, I kicked the oven closed.

  “Not enough sleep,” she smiled.

  I walked her to the bedroom. She patted my hand, saying, “I’m fine.” But she leaned into me.

  We lay down together, staring at the ceiling.

  “I used to imagine I could peel my way into the cracks in the ceiling—like so many cracks in the shell of an egg. I could peel the ceiling away and sleep under the stars.” Mater took a deep breath.

  “Sounds nice.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “I took an astronomy class in college. We learned about meteors, red dwarfs, brown dwarfs, the whole universe.” She raised her hands in the air as if to indicate all of the night sky we both imagined we could see through the ceiling. “You can learn so much there.”

  “I know.” But what good did it do to travel all the way to Portland, live among so many strangers, and then come home to tiny Kingsley Cove?

  As if she’d been reading my thoughts, Mater said, “You don’t have to come back.”

  “You did.”

  “I wanted Evan to see where I came from. He loved it here.”

  “And you?”

  “I love Evan.” Mater sounded so tired.

  “But not here?”

  “I’ve never loved places, Lyza.” She wrapped her arm around mine. “Only people.”

  “Where else would I go?” I only knew home.

  “Anywhere.” Mater squeezed against me. “You’ll learn about fascinating places filled with jungles and mountains and deserts. You could travel the world. I’m sure Jake will insist on tagging along.” She winked at me.

  I laughed. “Oh, yes, even Jake knows signmakers are wanted everywhere.”

  Mater swatted my shoulder. “You won’t be making signs for the rest of your life, Lyza. That’s a hobby. You’ll finish high school, then find your calling in college. The only reason you haven’t run across it yet is because we’ve lived here all your life. This place is so small you trip on your own feet.”

  I knew Mater didn’t take to the folks in town, but I never realized how much she wanted to leave town altogether. Why was she telling me this now? To get me to leave?

  “I’m not that keen on traveling, Mater.” We’d taken the train to Boston once. I hated the boxed-up feeling, like I’d been packed away and shipped. And the crowds frightened me so much I spent the whole time in Pater’s arms with my head buried in his neck.

  “Then don’t.” She turned her head away. “But college will show you a thousand other paths.”

  “Are you sorry you took this one?”

  Mater startled like I’d poked her. “Not hardly!” She turned to me, her face pale and waxy in the faint light. “Life’s hard, Lyza. Filled with little invisible walls you have to climb over. The walls surprise you. Little things your parents have built up arou
nd you. Or, who knows, maybe you put them there yourself to keep your parents out, but the climbing’s the thrill of it. The real work. I love your pater. I love you. And this house. My sewing. And God forgive their stubbornness, my family.”

  She shivered, so I pulled the quilt over us. Her eyes fluttered and closed.

  “Tired?”

  She hummed.

  “I’ll let you sleep.” I started to crawl out of the bed.

  Her eyes snapped open. “You didn’t study!”

  Kissing her cheek, I said, “I’ll study, Mater. I’ll study.”

  And I’ll pass that exam and enter college a full year ahead of those classmates who doubted the soundness of my mind. I couldn’t imagine staying away for four whole years. I felt like saying all those things as I went back to my room. Mater didn’t want me to live the life she hadn’t. She just wanted me to live a full one. The least I could do was spend a few hours at Pater’s desk in the study and learn a thing or three. I loved that old rolltop with the tiny cubbies Pater kept locked with a skeleton key.

  When the muse fell silent, Pater wrote letters. Not to friends or family. Pater never spoke of friends and as an only child he had no close relatives, save his mater. Of her Pater only said, “That woman lives in a castle with a moat. I’m not good at fighting dragons.”

  No, he wrote letters to strangers all over the world. How he found them was just one more of Pater’s odd little secrets. He’d sit for hours, laboring over the words. When failure overtook him, he’d burn them, then drift off to the cliffside for a long walk. He didn’t speak of what he wrote, nor did he even include his return address. He’d send them off with a silent prayer, then wander into the forest.

  Mater kept a close eye on him when he wrote, always just across the room with a book in hand. I often wondered why she seemed so leery of those letters. Did she fear the things he might have to say? Wonder why he never said them to her? He spent a good deal of time wrapped up in those letters or in his carving. Did she envy those strangers as I did?