“Get that out of my face!” Lindsey snipped, tossing my hand aside and starting to walk away. I grabbed her arm, pushing her hard enough to plant her back a step.
When she tried to push past me a second time, I caught her by the wrist and leaned my shoulder into her to hold her still.
“Whh—wh—where?” The words fell into the inch between our bodies as nothing more than a whisper, but they were there just the same. Taking two steps back, Carly watched me with eyes as round as Wiffle balls.
“I don’t know,” Lindsey said. I pushed harder with my shoulder. “I don’t!” she snapped. “Jesus Christ, what do you think, I took him? I wouldn’t do something like that!” Images of the wounded bird cowering away from flying stones scuttled to mind, and she must have seen that I didn’t believe her because the sarcasm drained neatly out of her tone. “I wouldn’t!”
She shoved me back a pace before throwing her full water into a trash barrel and storming away, abandoning a panic-stricken Carly for a moment before she regained her wits and scurried after her. Several people had stopped outside the White Whale, lingering to see if there would be any excitement. As Lindsey turned the corner, they decided there would be none and walked lazily down the street, leaving me to wonder over the hurt tone in Lindsey’s voice.
Glancing at the big brass clock on the bell tower of the Congregational church, I trotted over to my bike. I had one more stop to make before meeting Remy at the bake sale.
The Tillings Free Library was a three-story Victorian converted into a public building. A small sign tacked beside the double door read, 1778 WILLIAM SAXTON HOMESTEAD. Tossing the bike onto the grass, I grabbed the flyers and bolted for the door before turning back to grab Remy’s book.
The man behind the desk gazed up politely, taking the book from my hand. Flipping the back cover open, he tsked, wagging his head, and pulled the call card from his box. “Mmm hmm. Well, I guess it would be a miracle of unnatural sorts if Ms. Mandolin returned a book on time.”
I grabbed a piece of scrap paper from a stack beside a cup of pencils fit for the fingers of elves and scribbled: She says she’ll pay the fine in pie at the festival.
“Oh, she does, does she?”
I nodded.
“Well, you tell her they’d better be baked with golden apples,” he warned playfully.
When he set the book aside, I handed over a stack of festival flyers and a poster about Luke.
“You ever consider a job with the postal service? People here usually take things out, not bring them in.”
I wagged my head no.
“Uh oh. We’ve got a puppy on the loose? Sorry to hear he’s missing, but I’m sure he’ll come back.”
A sharp pain worked its way up from my chest to the back of my throat.
Could you hang it up?
“I’ll do you one better: I’ll ask around and make copies to stick in the books people check out.”
Thank you.
“You’re taking that ‘No Talking’ sign a skoach seriously, aren’t you?” he asked.
I rubbed my throat, an old trick I’d learned to make people believe I had laryngitis.
“I see. Then I guess you’ve come to the right place to recover. Anything else I can do for you?”
I shook my head, starting for the door. I was almost through it before I turned around and went back to the desk to grab another scrap of paper and a tiny pencil.
Do you keep newspaper records? I don’t know what possessed me to ask or even what I thought I might find, but there was something in the way Riley seemed to hate me for no good reason that was eating at me. Something in the way people everywhere seemed to know who I was even though I hadn’t set foot on this island since the day my father walked out. Their expressions changed when I was introduced.
Not that any of that would crop up in a news article.
“Of course. We keep them on microfiche upstairs in the reference section. But we lost a lot of the older films in a fire a few years back. We salvaged what we could, but I’m afraid they’re in pretty rough shape. Anything in particular you’re hunting for?”
Yes, I thought. More than you could possibly fit on all the microfiche in the world. I held the pencil over the paper for a second, not sure where to start.
1966
The man whistled.
“That’s a ways back, but let’s see what we can find.” He came out from behind the desk and began climbing a narrow set of stairs to the second floor. We passed the display of Yemaya Remy had told me about. I paused to look at the array of cowry shells, pearls, books, and scrolls arranged neatly across the table. An oil-on-canvas nude of Yemaya took up the wall space behind it with golden drops of sun bouncing off her hair.
“Pretty, isn’t she?”
I nodded, recalling that those were the exact words Remy had said about her mother.
“She’s not truly a witch, but try telling that to folks around these parts! Ha! Still, it’s true. She’s an orisha.”
I nodded, biting my cheek. Grandma Jo was always right.
In the back of the second floor, he pulled out a chair at one of the microfiche readers.
“The films are over here, filed in chronological order. Here we go: nineteen sixty-six through seven.” He set the film under the clamps. “You just turn that little knob to scroll through. Good luck. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything else.”
I sat down, peered through the lens, and began spinning through the articles. Most were melted and mutilated from the fire, but I slowed the film at October 1966, moving frame by frame until I got to October 4 and stopped. A gaping hole had been melted in the center of the article, but a corner of the accompanying image remained with a photograph of the sheriff holding his hat and wiping his forehead with the back of his wrist. A boy of seven or eight stood three paces behind him, staring straight ahead with an utterly lost expression on his face. What looked like the back corner of a fire engine was parked beside them, although it was hard to tell since that was where the hole in the film began. What was left of the caption read, SHERIFF JAMES O’MALLEY AND SON RILEY WERE AMONG THE FIRST ON SCENE.
I flipped through the next month, but most of the film had been burned away. Scrolling back to the picture, I studied the expression on Riley’s face. His head was tilted, making it hard to tell if he was crying, but he was clearly distraught. The background of the photo was little more than a sea of shadows except for several flowers arcing up beside Riley on tall gangly stems. I let my eyes linger on them. Peonies . . .
The memory brushed against me with the sting of a paper cut and I closed my eyes, trying to push it back.
Not shadows. Darkness . . .
Before I got kicked out of school, my class had taken a field trip to the planetarium at Roger Williams Park. When the lights went out, there was nothing but a velvet dome of darkness with little holes punched through, sending pinpricks of light scattering overhead.
That’s what it looked like that night, what was missing from the photograph. There must have been a million stars winking and blinking overhead and two had fallen to the field below in specks of red. They danced and dipped across the daises and black-eyed Susans like fairies, and I recall thinking it was the Nikommo. Stars. Taillights. Take meee. . . . There was a scream. No, there were two. One from me, one from the field, and I thought I’d heard them; I’d finally heard the Nikommo.
Someday I am going to catch you a star.
A screech. Brakes.
Someday we are going to fly.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
Pushing away from the microfiche reader I stood up gasping. My chest ached, wanting air. The memories were broken shards of mirror dipping in and out of my consciousness, like the salmon of Potter’s Creek stitching their way upstream. I gazed at the film hanging out of the reader. I knew that look on Riley’s face, knew something awful had not just happened; it had happened to him. October 4, 1966. I was here when it happened. But I’d only been six; it couldn’t possibly explain w
hy he despised me. Still, the lost look in his eyes tugged at something raw and real inside of me.
Walking over to the cabinet the librarian had pulled the films from, I took another film from a reel marked 1959 and stuck it into the empty canister for 1966. Once I had returned it to the cabinet, I slipped the actual 1966 film into my back pocket. I didn’t know what I would do with it without a machine to read it, but it was at least one real thing about the night my father disappeared. Somehow I felt like it belonged to me, not the world. Grabbing my posters, I made my way downstairs more confused than I’d been before I’d come in.
“Find what you were looking for?” the man asked from behind his desk.
I shook my head with a wave and trotted outside before hopping on my bike. For the next thirty minutes, I handed out posters with Luke’s information on them to anyone who would take them and wove up and down the small lanes lining the village square in case Luke really had followed us to the wharf.
Running out of ideas and posters, I pulled into the church parking lot just before ten o’clock, following the bustle of trays and pans going in and out of the side entrance.
I was just crossing over to the stack of pies where Remy stood when I was stopped in my tracks by a woman’s voice barking commands at the group of church ladies propping pastries into place.
“Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! Over here with the scones. No, no, no—Bundt cakes go over there; cookies, bars, and brownies go here. Fruit pastries are beside the Yemaya—not that one, the pregnant one with crooked breasts! Buns!” squealed a fat woman wearing a paisley tent for a blouse. Brushed up into a beehive do, her hair was three shades of tangerine, making it look as though a fat marmalade cat might have crawled onto her head and died there. “Young la-dy. Yes, you. A little slow on the uptake, aren’t we, dearie? That’s okay; God loves all his children quick or slow.”
I stared blankly at the perfectly round circles of red rouge drawn on her cheeks as if she were Bozo the Clown’s sister. When I didn’t answer, she tilted her head curiously. “You’re not one of those children, are you? You know—touched?”
I shook my head.
“Oh!” She stepped back. “You’re the Haywood child!”
I nodded clumsily, praying for Remy to come in and save me.
“I knew your grandmother. One heck of a pinochle player, she was. Your daddy, too. Used to sit right up at the table with the old ladies.” She paused as though remembering. “You’re dumb, aren’t you? Not the stupid sort, the quiet sort—like ‘deaf and dumb’?”
I raised my eyebrows at her when she took hold of my wrist and began speaking very slowly, kicking the volume up three notches. Why people assumed my ears were attached to my vocal chords was a mystery, but it happened all the time.
“Why don’t you go see Mrs. Trainor? She’ll set you straight to work.” The woman turned on her heel and marched back to her table, sending the fat of her fanny jiggling wildly. I wanted to tell her to fuck off, that I didn’t have time to sell her stupid cookies, that Luke needed me and that he was more important. But I didn’t, and the fact was I didn’t know where else to look for him. I headed for a mousy-looking woman with tight aqua leggings and a sunny yellow sweater whom I guessed must be Mrs. Trainor.
“Well, aren’t you sweet? What’s your name?”
Remy sauntered up beside me quietly. I gave her a pleading look, waiting for her to jump in and answer for me. She did not. Mrs. Trainor bent a little lower, waiting, and I felt a warm flush redden my cheeks. I widened my eyes at Remy, who seemed to be staring right along with the woman waiting for an answer from me. I wanted to knock the plate from her hand.
“I guess she doesn’t have one,” Mrs. Trainor chirped, shuffling away.
“Guess not,” Remy agreed, breaking the corner off a frosted brownie then pinching the side square to hide it. “Any luck finding muttley?”
I shook my head, biting my lip.
“He’ll show up. Everyone on the island is keeping their eyes open for him and your mum’s out searching. Probably has a lady friend somewhere.”
“People! Peeeople!” the woman wearing a tent squealed again. “Let’s focusss!”
“Priscilla, get yourself a cup of chamomile tea. Your blood pressure’s so damn high your head’s about to pop right off your shoulders like some sort of Japanese candle.” Remy laughed aloud right to the woman’s face. There was a muted giggle across the room.
“Let’s not swear in God’s house.” The woman’s voice tensed. “What are those?” She pointed to a box.
“Those are Grandma Jo’s famous cheese biscuits.”
“Who is Grandma Jo?” The woman eyed the biscuits suspiciously.
“They’re cheese biscuits. Just chew one and stick a price tag on them.”
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and run the register, Remy?” she mumbled, reaching for a folded index card to price the biscuits.
“Not this year. I’m strictly a baker. Ask Izabella. She doesn’t like to argue.”
“Well, God’s work isn’t for every hand, I guess.”
“Hey, Priscilla.” Remy snagged a chocolate cookie from the plate of another woman passing by.
“Yes?”
“Bite me.” Remy smiled sweetly, chewing the cookie. “This is the Yemaya Festival, not some freak festival of the Holy Cross.” She patted the Yemaya bust on the shoulder in an animated act of sisterhood.
The woman glanced at Remy sternly then jiggled her way over to open the church doors to let the cookie buying commence.
“Don’t you mind about Priscilla Peabody.” Remy chuckled. “She thinks Christ came right down off the cross and hired her to coordinate the cookies of Christianity for him.”
The fact of the matter is, I wasn’t thinking about Pricilla Peabody or any other body. My mind was too crammed with thoughts about the burned picture in my pocket and running every horrific scenario I could conjure about Luke’s whereabouts. The same hurry, hurry whispery feeling I had every time I went into the Pepto-Bismol-pink room echoed off the walls around me now.
I was still thinking about Luke when the first customer stood in front of me balancing a truckload of cookies, breads, and brownies, sounding annoyed. “Is anyone going to take my money?”
“I’ll show you how to ring one,” Remy said, coming over to stand at the register. “Then you take over.”
When it was my turn, I tentatively began pushing down the buttons of the old Wood Grain Tin cash register.
“Little girl! Yoo-hoo, little Haywood girl.” Mrs. Peabody leaned over her table of Bundt cakes waving frantically in my direction and puckering pouty orange lips at me like a fat goldfish glugging around its bowl. “Strudels are fifty cents, not thirty-five cents. Amanda, you owe the register fifteen cents for those. We may cheat our waistlines, but we don’t want to cheat God!” I felt the heat move over my cheeks. “Chop chop!” Pricilla Peabody snapped her fingers at me.
“You can see from the girth of her hips, Priscilla has an eye for collecting the last crumb.” Remy shook her head when the next customer had gone. “Do you know her husband disappeared three years ago without one trace? We can’t prove it, but we think one day she just ate him.”
I rolled my eyes at her, shutting the change drawer.
“It’s true, I swear.” She raised one hand in the air, laughing aloud.
Kla ching, sang the register four long hours later.
“Two o’clock, ladies! Time to clear out,” shrilled Pricilla. “The pastor’s got a wedding this evening. Nora Smith’s girl is marrying that bloke from Boston at six. Let’s move our withered derrieres and make way for young love.”
Mrs. Peabody should have been a choreographer for the Boston Ballet, because fifteen church ladies rose from their seats in an act of synchronized standing, folded their chairs with fifteen pert snaps, and herded their way to the heavy double doors, discarding Styrofoam cups ringed with coffee in a large purple bin marked, REFUSE, along the way.
“Come on.”
Remy stood, snatching a few Boston teacakes. “Let’s get you out of here to look for your motley mutt. Here.” She handed two cakes to me. “There’s a brick house just as you make the turn off Main onto Laurel Street. It’ll be the only one with overgrown grass and a purple door. Mrs. Mulligan. She’s a friend of my mother’s. Loves sweets. Sweets and roses. And wind chimes. Drop this off to her on your way. The other one’s for your house.”
While Remy loaded up the taxi with empty baskets, I stood outside the front door balancing a large pottery platter and nibbling the corners off an oatmeal bar as I watched people pass on the other side of Main Street. Herman’s was far enough down that I didn’t need to worry about him seeing me when he came out to beat the sand from the storefront steps.
“I got a stack of posters from your mother,” Remy called. “I’ll bring them down to the pier.”
I popped the remaining bar into my mouth and brought her the platter to put in the car. Climbing onto the Schwinn, I headed toward home, pausing to stick a poster in the window of Merchant’s Hardware. It was purely by chance that my eyes slipped down the alleyway, catching on a white crumpled bag flitting in the breeze. Another few inches sharpened the corners of the image and pulled it into view with dizzying speed. Then my feet stopped pedaling altogether. What I’d thought to be a bag was really a tattered feather coat pulled into a tight ball—a weak attempt to fend off more stones.
The bird’s neck was twisted unnaturally upward, and its black eyes, trailing past the mortar lines between the brickwork of Merchant’s, stared sadly at the clouds as if the gull had spent its very last moment searching for God, wondering where the hell he’d gone when the bird needed him most.
To Potter’s Creek to watch the fish fly, I wanted to tell him.
A fat blue fly circled once overhead before lighting down on the gull’s left eyeball; when it didn’t blink, I knew for sure it was dead. Sometimes it needs to be made just that clear. The fly stepped over the gull’s eye, coming to rest on the yellow ridge of its lid where a brown stain like a tear ran down from the corner. My eyes settled on the stain, letting the I’m sorry sail silently through the air.
What the Waves Know Page 17
