True Blue (Hubbard's Point)

by Luanne Rice

  “Sixtus drove to Hawthorne to buy charts for his voyage.”

  “Do you know what's going on?” Rumer asked, watching the activity at the old Mayhew house next door. The new owner stood in the top yard, pointing at various spots while the contractor took notes. Obscured by the thick trees and overgrowth, it was hard to see what he was doing. All the rabbits had run for cover and were out of sight.

  “That is the question,” Winnie intoned. “What, precisely, is going on?”

  “Big doings,” Annabelle reported. “I looked through that truck window and saw a veritable forest of rolled-up blueprints.”

  “Has no one told them of the hammer law?” Winnie asked.

  “They're not hammering yet,” Rumer said, her heart sinking as she watched the workmen unloading shovels and pickaxes.

  “Perhaps not yet,” Hecate said, “but they will… and soon… all those tool belts.”

  “Dad said this would happen,” Rumer said. “When we met the new owners, they seemed awfully interested in ‘improvements’”

  “Improving. Such an overrated occupation,” Hecate purred, shaking her head and rolling all her Rs. “When nature has given us such beauty and the senses and capacity to enjoy it.”

  Winnie's car, an orange Volvo, was parked in the road, and the women gathered around it as if for warmth. Rumer leaned forward, her front pressed against the driver's door, and Winnie left her students to come over and place a hand on her arm.

  “Darling, your bosoms. Never squish them,” Winnie admonished as she pulled Rumer back. “Now, will you walk up the hill and do reconnaissance with me? Since the property lies between you and Hecate, I think you should both come.”

  Rumer glanced down toward the water at the cottage Zeb was renting. She wished he were standing with them now, but seeing no activity, she nodded and led Winnie and Hecate up the crumbling stone steps lined with bluebells and day lilies.

  “Mr. Franklin,” Rumer said, reaching the top. “I'd like you to meet two of our neighbors, Winnie Hub-bard and Hecate Frost.”

  “How do you do?” Hecate asked.

  “Charmed,” Winnie said, holding out her hand as if she expected him to kiss it. When he didn't—and didn't seem to recognize her as a local celebrity—she got straight to the point. “What, exactly, are you doing?” she asked.

  “Doing?” he asked, seeming shocked to be asked. “I'm consulting with my contractor.”

  “So it appears,” Wnnie said. “But do you realize that no work can be done until after Labor Day?”

  Mr. Franklin laughed. “No offense, Ms. Hubbard, but I don't believe that's up to you.”

  “It has nothing to do with me,” Winnie said. “It's the hammer law—an ordinance here at the Point.”

  “People summer here for the peace and quiet,” Rumer explained. “To get away from the noise of life and find time to think.”

  “And to create,” Winnie said. “There are many artists here… writers, musicians… we need peace for our creations to grow. A refuge from the noise and bother of the outside world.”

  “I heard someone down there singing before,” the new owner said, gesturing down the hill. “Loudly. Isn't that noise?”

  “Singing is not noisel” Winnie said.

  “It's music,” Hecate said kindly, as if the fellow were dimwitted.

  “This is my property now,” the man said. “If I want to build, I'll build. Nothing personal, it's just how it is. We're not going to sleep in there till some improvements are made, so that's what we're going to do. I've applied to the zoning board for everything we plan to do—don't worry, we'll dot the i's and cross the t's. I'm a good guy—everyone who knows me will tell you. I go by the book, but we don't want to waste the summer…”

  “You're not going to swing a hammer this summer,” Winnie warned.

  “Surely, Mr. Franklin,” Hecate said, “you can enjoy this lovely cottage the way it is—for a night, for a weekend. Perhaps you will fall so in love with it, you'll find all this expense and bother unnecessary.”

  “Not one night in that firetrap till we make some changes,” he continued as if the women hadn't spoken. “My wife saw bats flying out the attic vents. The ceilings have water damage. The closets smell like mildew.”

  “Pshaw,” Winnie said. “What did you buy an old house for if you don't like old houses?”

  “Bats are lovely,” Hecate said. “They keep the mosquitoes under contrrrol.”

  Rumer took a step back. She had spotted the rabbits peeking out of their hole beneath the azalea. Perhaps they had heard her, Winnie's, and Hecate's voices, ventured to the aperture to investigate. Crouching down, Rumer eased her hand into the cleft. She felt soft breath and delicate whiskers brush her skin.

  When she glanced up again toward her own house, she saw something gold glinting in the trees. Blinking, she stared, trying to make it come into focus. But then the sun moved, or a shadow shifted, and it was gone.

  Winnie was still arguing, and Hecate had started soothing. Rumer closed her eyes, knowing in her heart that they were fighting a losing battle. The man had made up his mind. Perhaps the hammer law would keep him quiet till Labor Day, but after that, changes were coming. Looking through the tall grass to her father's boat sitting in her own yard, past the tree where she'd seen a flash of gold, Rumer felt like a ship in a rocky sea.

  After seeing Winnie, Zeb had jumped on his bike to ride the hills of Black Hall. Wearing himself out till his lungs burned and muscles ached, he had done all the paved roads and half the dirt roads, wishing the hills were even higher. Overshadowing all the things that were on his mind was the idea of what Rumer would think when she saw what he'd done.

  So many things made him think of her.

  That morning he had received from Caltech a FedEx delivery of NASA satellite photos taken on his last flight and a request for his interpretation. He had opened the envelope, slid out the photos, and laid them across his desk. The images were blurred, undefined. They showed the North Pole taken from the Terra satellite. It had been the payload on his last flight, and just seeing them brought back memories of the explosion. The photos were of seals—hundreds of thousands of them stranded by encroaching ice—and Zeb thought immediately of Rumer.

  What Rumer would say if she knew…

  He had examined the data with the sound of waves splashing Winnie's rocks in the background. The juxtaposition of fear and peace was jarring—terror up in space, creatures stranded and starving at the North Pole, a summer day at Hubbard's Point, a surprise for Rumer.

  The explosion in space had been Zeb's wake-up call. How could he come that close to death and not see his life pass before his eyes? And what kind of life was it anyway? He had thrown away his only love so many years ago: hurt her so badly, left her hating him for what he'd done.

  Because of Zeb's own stupidity, he had lost Rumer once. Now, riding his bike back to the Point, he knew he'd do everything in his power to get her back. By the time he coasted down the far side of Cresthill Road, the moon was rising over Winnie's cove, and the stage was set for her surprise. Her car was in the road at the foot of the hill; all he had to do was knock on her door, drag her out of her house, and—

  “Zeb?”

  Her voice shocked him. He had just been thinking of her so intensely, it was as though he'd conjured her out of his fantasies.

  “Hi, Rumer,” he said.

  “I have to talk to you,” she said.

  “Funny—I have to talk to you,” he replied. “I was just going to come find you.”

  She stood in the shadows. A pine bough waved across the light coming from Winnie's windows, making it hard to see her. Zeb's pulse kicked in: Silhouetted from behind, her body was so pretty and fine. He saw the curve of her breasts and hips, and exhaled. As she got closer, the light caught the sparkle in her eyes, and he saw her smile, and his heart began to pound.

  “Did you see it already?” he asked.

  “See what? Oh, the thing I was supposed to be wat
ching for?”

  “Yes,” he said, happy that she had remembered.

  “Actually, no. I've been too distracted by what's going on up the hill. Did you see when you rode in?”

  “No—what?”

  “You missed all the heavy equipment at your old house. The new owners have bigger plans than we thought.”

  Zeb looked at her. He had known her so well for so long that he couldn't miss the signs—the tension behind her blue eyes, the hesitation in her walk, the hitch of laughter in her voice as she tried to be a good sport. Leaning the bike against Winnie's garage, Zeb wanted to take her in his arms but held himself back.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked, craning his neck to see the machinery. “Sabotage the construction site?”

  “Now, that's an idea, Mayhew”

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing her hand. “Let's see what we can do.”

  “You're kidding, right?”

  Peering at the sky, ignoring her question, he asked, “How are the stars tonight?”

  “Pretty bright,” she said. “Even though the moon's rising fast and they're dimming the higher it gets.”

  They crossed the street and cut through Hecate's yard, filled with fireflies. The branches hung low, brushing their heads. Rumer preceded Zeb, the tall grass swishing against her long legs. They climbed over an old wall, its granite quarried fifty yards down the rocky shore from Winnie's.

  “You planning on us shinnying up the chimney?” he asked.

  “Not exactly. There's an easier way.”

  “I hope we don't land in jail.”

  “Come on,” she said, ignoring him and leading the way through the grass.

  He didn't have to follow her; he knew exactly where she was heading. The full weight of their time together and apart on this planet hit him, and he felt a jolt in his bones. She stood aside, and he stared at the place he knew so well: under the flat rock just beneath the azalea bush, beside the hole that led to the rabbits’ warren. Crouching down, he inched his fingers between the rock and the soft earth and came out with the key. His heart was racing as his eyes met hers.

  “It doesn't belong to me anymore,” he said. Maybe they should forget the roof, the stars; his eyes darted into her yard next door. There it was, the surprise he had set up. He wanted her to see, but he didn't want her to turn away from his eyes.

  “I know.”

  “I don't belong inside.”

  She paused. He watched her gaze between the houses, to the Wickland Rock Light. She stared for a few seconds, as if the beacon were giving her a message.

  “I think we do,” she said. “For tonight only.”

  “Tonight only?”

  “The house doesn't really belong to anyone right now. The old owners have sold it; the new owners don't love it yet. If you want, I think it's okay to go up on the roof—this one last time.”

  They walked to the door. Zeb felt the key in his palm—the metal was thin, worn by time. He wondered whether the lock had been changed. The screen door creaked as he pulled it open. The wooden steps groaned beneath their feet. Across the small screened-in porch to the kitchen door: a burglar's paradise. Large -paned windows in the door, a single lock. Inserting the key, it turned easily, and they were inside.

  The house smelled exactly the same. The spicy perfume of salt air, cinnamon toast, musty cushions, well-worn rugs braided by his mother. They were still there, covering the dark pine floors. The subsequent owners had changed nothing.

  “God, it's like going back in time,” he whispered.

  “As Winnie always says,” Rumer whispered back, “why mess with perfection?”

  They crossed the living room, went up the old wooden stairs. Zeb counted: one, two, three, four. The fourth step still creaked loudly—his perpetual downfall when trying to sneak out as a teenager.

  “The new owners want to change this?” he asked.

  “Shhh,” she said. “Let's not talk about them tonight…”

  In the upstairs hall he passed his parents’ room on the left. Looking in, he saw the same iron bedstead where they had slept, covered with a thin chenille spread. In the dim light, he had memories of waking up from a bad dream, standing in this very doorway to watch his parents sleep.

  Years later, he and Elizabeth had slept there a few times. Time flashed, and now when he looked at the bed, he saw himself where his father had slept and Elizabeth where his mother had—closer to the window, overlooking the beach. It had never felt right to Zeb— staying with Elizabeth next door to Rumer. Their trips here had been brief and uncomfortable.

  Rumer walked first through the door of his old room. All of his old collections were gone, thrown out long ago: insects, shells, starfish, vertebrae. His meteorite. One had fallen to earth here—right at the dead end of Cresthill Road, as if the land itself exerted a pull so strong, it reached into space. He had picked it up despite his mother's fear it could be radioactive, and displayed the small, craggy rock on a shelf he had made from driftwood boards.

  Now, excited and stirred inside, Zeb unlocked the window and climbed out. Half turning, he offered Rumer his hand and helped her over the sill. They eased their way across the long, shallow stretch of shingles below the dormers, then up the steep side to the upper roof.

  “Don't slip,” Rumer said.

  “Or I'll break my ankle again?” he asked.

  “Just watching out for you, Zeb,” she said, sounding breathless as they balanced their way along the peak. They inched along the shingles until they reached the midway point between the crooked brick chimney and unicorn weathervane, and then sat down.

  From there, the sky was the clearest Zeb had seen it since coming east. This house was on the Point's highest land, and climbing to the roof had brought them above the marine layer of fine sea mist. Rising in the east, a big gold moon balanced over the cove. Above, the sky was paved with stars.

  “I used to look up,” Rumer said, “and wonder where you were…”

  “Really?” Zeb asked, staring into the Milky Way's white cloud.

  “Did you think I wouldn't?”

  “I thought you wouldn't, Rumer. After what I put you through—”

  “Tell me what's new on the ground,” she challenged him. “The work you've found that will keep you here on earth.”

  He found himself thinking of the photos he'd examined earlier, the report he'd made to the lab at Caltech. “I looked at some pictures today. NASA Terra satellites spotted an ice sheet,” he said. “In northern Russia.”

  “And they wanted you to look at the photos?”

  “Yes.”

  “What's so unusual about ice? Especially in northern Russia—it must always be icy up there.”

  “Not like this,” Zeb said softly.

  Branches crackled in the yard below; a creature moving through the brush, Zeb thought. Seeing Rumer tilt her head, listening with interest for whatever animal it might be, made it hard for him to say the next part, wondering why he was telling her at all.

  “The thing is,” Zeb said, “the photos show about four hundred thousand baby seals trapped by the ice.”

  “Trapped by the ice?” Rumer asked. “Seals?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did it happen? Do they know?” she asked, visibly upset.

  “Their path to the Barents Sea was blocked. Abnormally high winds created an icy bottleneck at the White Sea's northern entrance… the seals should have started their journey a month ago, but they can't get through.”

  “You can see this?”

  “The photos show a sharp contrast between the clear waters and the large ice sheet.”

  “Zeb, what will happen to them?”

  “They're starving,” Zeb said, picturing the photo, knowing that not even the best vet in the world could save them.

  He didn't have to look to know that Rumer was close to crying. His chest tightened, hearing her choke back a sob. She had always been like this: If a bird fell from its nest, she'd climb the tallest
tree to put it back. If a swan got tangled in fishing line, she'd cover her head to protect herself from its strong wings and set it free. He had seen her with the osprey, and he knew she'd do anything to save the seals.

  “What can we do?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” Zeb said. “That's the problem. We can see the way it is, but we can't fix it. All this satellite technology, the ability to see anything in the world, and no way to help. That's what I thought when—” He broke off.

  “When what?”

  He didn't want to tell her. It didn't take much for him to hear the explosion ringing in his ears again. He'd been clenching his teeth so tight, his jaw ached.

  “That's why you're so lucky—to be able to do what you do. Help animals; save their lives. Like with the osprey…”

  “We don't know if he survived,” she said.

  “I know he did,” Zeb said. “I saw him today.”

  “You did? When?”

  Zeb tried to breathe. Here he was, sitting beside the best friend he had ever had, surrounded by stars and the smell of honeysuckle, feeling the real magic of a summer night in Hubbard's Point.

  “This afternoon,” he said, pointing. “When I was doing that…”

  Rumer turned her head. She gazed down the rooftop, across the hedge, into her own yard. The moon had risen over the houses across the street, and it was caught in the tall dark pines. Its light, filtered through the boughs, had done its job: The branches of the old oak tree between the houses were a filigree of golden threads.

  “What is it?” she asked, breathless.

  “I did that for you,” Zeb said, taking her hand. “Because I want you to believe in us again.”

  “Believe in us…”

  “The way we used to be,” he said. “When you said we were connected by a golden thread.”

  “Zeb…”

  “And that it could never be broken,” he said.

  Rumer couldn't speak. Staring at the tree, moonlight dancing on the web of fine brass wire, she seemed to spin back in time. Her hand felt warm in his, and she glanced up to meet his eyes.

  Now, looking over the unicorn weathervane, he saw Arcturus in its transit. From this angle on the roof, the star appeared to be speared on the creature's horn. He thought of the opposite perspective, looking down at Earth from space, and felt his throat tighten. Glancing at Rumer, he wanted to tell her.