Out of the Wild Night

by Blue Balliett

  “That’s a wooden leg,” Maddie announces promptly, as if identifying something as obvious as a pebble or a caterpillar.

  Cyrus gives her a gentle shove. “How would you know?”

  “I know,” his little sister says, sticking out her tongue. As her brothers both look at her, she asks, “Hey, did Grandma make us cream cheese and jelly today? She’d better, because I’m giving Maria part of my sandwish. And hey, where ARE they this morning? The twins weren’t sick yesterday. Sheesh. They’re always late. Mariaaaaaaa!”

  Maddie’s voice warbles out over the quiet stones.

  “Huh.” Cyrus spins, peering in all directions, although he knows Maria and Markus will walk down only one particular footpath.

  The quiet ones are good with a wonder, as I well know.

  As the bus approaches, the Ramos twins hurry toward them, backpacks bouncing. Cyrus is busy staring at deep prints he’s just noticed on a patch of bare ground not far from the oldest gravestones, the chipped ones covered with lichen. It’s an area in which the five kids rarely play, as it’s often boggy and damp.

  Wait, he tells himself. I’m not seeing this!

  I understand his concern. Steps made by bare feet after a snow? These are wide, man-sized toes, big ovals that point away from the graves and toward the road.

  Not the twins. Not Cyrus or Paul or Maddie. Not a kid.

  Who could have been out there without shoes on at this time of year? An unpleasant trickle of worry keeps him quiet.

  The Ramos and Coffin kids pile onto the bus in a hurry, as the driver always seems impatient at their stop. There’s a new kid from down the road, a girl who runs up at top speed at the last moment. She hasn’t yet said hello and the driver practically slams the door after she’s up the steps.

  Today they slide past the girl and Maria smiles. The girl doesn’t look friendly, but turns around to stare as the five kids sit down.

  Choosing a seat of his own, Cyrus takes a moment to think. The footprints he’s just seen belong with his grandma’s words: Nothing out there will ever hurt you. Just family.

  Really?

  He wonders if relatives who died before you were born can recognize you.

  He also wonders if, as family, they’d be nice. He thinks of the footsteps everyone heard yesterday at Phee’s house.

  Do relatives always know each other, or are they sometimes connected but apart, separated by time and space? Never actually touching?

  Cyrus shakes his head, reminding himself that he’s on the way to school and it’s daytime. He can hear what Grandma Sue might say: “For heaven’s sake, stop worrying about a bunch of footprints!”

  Slouching in his seat, he tries.

  Courage can go wrong. I want to sit down on a rock and think, but my job isn’t to do that. It’s to spread the news while I’m here.

  I am the town’s Crier today, but as you know, I will be silent—dead silent—if my home is destroyed.

  Gone and dead are two different things, with the first stronger than the last.

  I’m not trying to scare you away—I want you to stay.

  Hunting for what may help to save the soul of this island means sorting, and it’s like cleaning out a sewing basket. What will be needed? Which past buttons to keep? Which present tangles to toss? I wish I knew all the answers. I certainly don’t.

  But I do know one truth: We islanders tend to stay.

  In the old days, plenty lived and died on this tiny island and never set foot on the mainland. Of course, the whaling crews and their officers sailed far, far away, but most came hurrying back, sat in the kitchen, and smoked pipe after pipe. Islanders are proud of their distinct speech, habits, and homes, and most seem content to be just where they are in the world, on this scrubby patch of sand.

  They might complain about bad weather or a fence the neighbor put up, but unless forced, few leave.

  They don’t have the same need for change that many on the mainland have, and until recently this included a calm sense of this is ours. For many decades we natives were able to gather money from visitors and send them packing, no harm done. It was a harvest, like catching fish, raking for quahog clams, or gathering greens.

  Let’s face it. Nantucketers cling to this sandy soil with an intensity that borders on obsession. The Quaker houses in the old part of town are tightly clustered but refuse to line up. The streets wiggle and wander, and gardens and yards—rarely rectangular—bump and drift around the gray shingles. Front doors are set so that each of us looks out at our own angle. It’s as if we care about each other but remain thorny. Or is it solitary?

  Sal and Phee live this way.

  Come to think of it, that’s just how the scalloping fleet works. The small boats are outfitted with heavy nets and a culling board, most of the rigs made by hand. The fleet looks out for one another’s safety, but each boat works on its own. The scallopers respect territory.

  As on water, so on land: There’s a harrumph to these houses. A knock-first message. Perhaps that is the key to all kinds of survival around here, including mine.

  Does it explain our population of ghosts?

  Any resident will tell you that we like to do things our own way.

  The Old North Gang knows this.

  I do, too.

  Ours has always been an island of immigrants, starting with the English settlers in the 1600s, many of whom are relatives of Sal’s and Phee’s. And mine, come to think of it. There were also the Cape Verdeans, who came in the eighteenth century from a cluster of Portuguese islands. They still have many descendants, most with other backgrounds stirred in, like the Rebimbas and Ramos families.

  And now little Nantucket is bursting at the seams with energetic newcomers, folks who work hard and save lots of what they earn but can’t find a place to settle down. Many arrive, camp out for months or even years in cars, garages, or with friends, and then give up and leave, exhausted by the housing struggle. These workers make me think of hermit crabs, those brave creatures that move from empty shell to empty shell—snail to moon to conch—as they grow, sometimes having to compete with one another for shelter. There’s desperation to this drama. Some end up with nothing and are eaten by other crabs or a passing bird.

  I’ve heard that many of the island’s working population have no place to live. No one knows the exact number, but during summer it’s said to be easily hundreds of souls.

  It’s a dark secret in the middle of the wonder.

  The same thing happens to one wave of hopeful workers after another. People travel from around the world to find jobs, providing services that tourists and residents want, then fall in love with the place just as our ancestors did, and want to stay for good. They come from countries on other islands, like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, or Haiti; from Central and South America, Northern and Eastern Europe, and even Russia. I’m told a few are from Asia. At last count, the public school has families speaking eleven distinct languages.

  The school wants to make room for all. But a family can’t live at school.

  In the old days, many found an unused boat and cast anchor in one of the harbors or hitched up to the wharves. No one minded—that is, if you didn’t party too much and could ride out the storms. It was normal to see underwear and work shirts drying on the rails or rigging on a sunny morning.

  That worked well for Phee’s mom and dad, until it didn’t.

  Now the rules in the harbor are stricter. Homemade houseboats are discouraged. The fancy boats have multiplied, crowding out many others.

  Phee is growing up with a big home and a deep tangle of island roots. When she started at the elementary school, other kids with Caribbean parents asked her how long she’d been on Nantucket.

  She always said she’d been born at sea, in a boat, but that wasn’t the whole story and she knew it.

  In first grade, she asked her grandfather some questions. “Sal, how long has our family lived here?”

  “Depends how you look at it. On your mom’s si
de, over three hundred years, and on your dad’s side, not long. Why?”

  “Kids ask.”

  “Oh.” Sal looked thoughtfully at his granddaughter. “What do you say?”

  “That I was born on a boat. Then they don’t ask anymore.”

  Sal scratched his head and his eyes twinkled. “Easier that way.”

  Phee nodded.

  “But not the full truth,” her grandfather added, placing an arm around his granddaughter.

  Phee ducked her head. “I feel sad for my friends who talk about no home. They really want one, more than anything. Some of them spend the summer in a truck with no tires or an empty school bus. A girl in my class cried because she doesn’t want to move again. Her family’s cottage got taken away and now they live in a shed that smells bad. Her mattress goes under the table at night. I saw her mom blinking fast and making smears on her cheeks when she talked to our teacher outside the classroom.”

  Mary Chase here! I blink and fight tears also, remembering both the pain of losing my family’s home and the relief, later on, of having my own place for so many decades. Sometimes I think home is everything.

  Sal sat back and looked as though an idea was rising in his mind like the summer sun, dazzling as it became brighter.

  “Let’s do something about it,” he said to his granddaughter. “Together. Shake on it!” He offered Phee a calloused, weathered hand, and she grinned, holding out her fist for a bump.

  “Like this, silly Sal,” she said, and showed him.

  That was six years ago.

  Soon families and single adults without housing began staying with Sal and Phee for stretches of time. All were welcome, as long as they could live as the Folgers did.

  Many couldn’t.

  Sal cooks on a woodstove and uses oil lamps for light at night. When his taxes went up many years ago and he had difficulty paying the gas and electric bills, he dusted off the old glass lamps lined up on a shelf in the basement and began chopping wood. He turned off the heat and cleaned his grandparents’ cooking stove, which had only been used recently in a here’s-how-we-used-to-do-it way, for drying sliced apples and cranberries during the holidays.

  In winter, Sal and Phee use both the old wood-fired kitchen stove and several working fireplaces, and their windows dance with a warm, rosy light missing from most other houses.

  Sal welcomes into their home any local who needs housing, and many land in one of the upstairs bedrooms for a time. People staying with them help out with the everydays, but without an Internet connection, most of their guests have difficulty; also, sleeping at the Folger home means doing some heavy lifting, working in the garden if it’s that time of year, getting used to old plumbing and cooking methods, using hot water sparingly, carting clothes and bedding to the Laundromat or washing them in a tub and then hanging them out to dry—and on top of that, putting in long hours at a paying job. Although Sal never wants money for his hospitality, most guests don’t stay long. Come to think of it, no strangers have knocked on their door in over a year.

  This is strange, as the housing crunch on Nantucket has reached an emergency level. Lots of businesses offer a place for summer workers to live, but there aren’t nearly enough rentals to go around in the winter. Many residents have been trying to help, but solutions are hard to come by. Affordable land is limited, and owning a home here is, for most, a distant dream.

  As islanders say, the housing shuffle gets old fast. You’d think a free place to stay would always be packed.

  Phee and Sal are puzzled that the number of people staying with them has dropped off, and think it might be the ghosts in their house.

  In some cultures, ghosts are terrifying. People from the Caribbean and Eastern Europe, in particular, don’t like the idea of cohabiting with ghosts. Several families left the Folger home abruptly, bundling their clothing higgledy-piggledy onto bikes and into cars. Not wanting to offend Sal, they didn’t exactly explain why. A look of shock, a vibe of fear—their faces told the story.

  Sal grew up with layers of ghosts. The Folger house was first owned by sea captains and whaling merchants. Then, after Nantucket’s depression, it passed to a cooper, a banker, and housewrights—a wright meaning a master carpenter like Sal. Births and deaths inside those walls were a part of life. For all families at the time, pain and happiness chased each other, and most of that drama happened at home.

  Until well into the twentieth century, people didn’t go to the Nantucket Cottage Hospital to have a baby or die, and children witnessed much more than they do today. Screams, tears, bravery, and loss were all a part of it.

  The Folgers collected oil paintings, silver and china, furniture, scrimshaw, sailors’ valentines made with shells from around the world, embroidery, and many other things. As the house was never sold, each generation kept what it wanted, which was just about everything that hadn’t turned to dust.

  Sal was raised understanding that home was a place still filled with the family who came before. His grandmother used to rock and knit by the kitchen stove on winter evenings; even when she was old and bedridden, she refused to allow her chair to be moved. She insisted that her basket of wool and her bundle of whalebone needles stay right on the seat and that it point southeast, toward all who’d gone to sea and never come home.

  After she died, the chair rocked on its own if anyone moved the basket. Sal remembers his mother speaking gently to it and gesturing to the seat. Finally the chair quieted.

  It’s still there, and Sal and Phee both like to use it. The worn rockers are as smooth as can be, and the chair practically moves itself. Phee suspects that she gets a helpful push sometimes while rocking, because she’s the latest child.

  She loves hearing Sal’s ghost stories, which are both shivery and cozy. He remembers his grandmother speaking to a wall of paintings owned by her recently deceased husband, a collection of paintings of hands. She needed to take down and then rehang the collection in order to replace stained wallpaper, but wanted to reassure those who’d collected the hands—her husband and his father—that the art wasn’t going anywhere.

  “See?” Sal heard her saying. “We’re just moving these to fix the room. Nothing is leaving.” As soon as she spoke, one of the paintings lifted itself off a hook and dropped gently onto a chair.

  As a boy, Sal was curious about the hands. His grandmother explained that Nantucket had been built by hand and we’d be nowhere without the creativity of so many workers, hands that fished and planted and carved and built. The Folgers, she said, never forget that.

  Sal still lives with most of the paintings of hands. He has his favorites. Some hold a tool, a weapon, or jewelry; others pray or point; still others reach for another hand. To make ends meet, he’s had to sell a few of the more valuable European ones, along with some of the silver that he and Phee never use. However, he holds on to everything he can.

  After his mother died, Sal heard the sounds of her calling his name, sometimes tearfully. Mostly at night, while his father snored, Sal caught her voice drifting through the rooms. His father, never an easy man, was ill by then and slept so heavily that nothing woke him.

  Sal told Phee this story: “I walked through the house with a lamp, talking to her. I let her know that I wouldn’t leave again, and that when I married, my children and grandchildren would be here. I also told her that I’d care for my father for the rest of his life, which I did.”

  Here Sal paused, looking troubled. “I’ll never know if that was the right thing to do, but family is family.”

  “What do you mean, Sal?”

  “Well, it’s like the roots of our oldest trees in town, the ones that slowly heave the brick sidewalks or interrupt fences. We don’t get rid of them when they don’t behave. Sometimes we love them even more.”

  “Huh,” Phee said. “And my grandma Polly, your wife and Mom’s mother, died here in the kitchen, right?”

  “Right,” Sal said. “Complications after childbirth. I was out working, and my father�
��Well, who knows.” He was quiet for a beat, studying the low rafters in the room where he and Phee spent most of their time.

  “This house is us,” he said quietly. “Sadness and all.”

  “And—” Phee paused, curious but not wanting to upset her grandfather. “Is Polly still here?”

  Sal squinted at Phee, as if measuring how much to tell her. “Hmm,” he said slowly, “she may be. Shortly after Polly died, my father passed, too. Then it was just me and your mom—little Flossie—in this big house. I needed help with the baby, and I have to think my Polly was still here with me. The fire in the kitchen stove was always burning brightly before I came down in the morning, and sometimes when Flossie woke in the night, in the room next to mine, I’d hear Polly singing softly to her.”

  “Really singing?” Phee asked.

  Sal nodded. “And it worked. Flossie went right back to sleep.”

  “So that’s not sad,” Phee said. “I mean, the ghost stuff is sometimes happy.”

  Sal straightened his sock hat. “Happy is too easy a word, but I think that sadness in a house can change into something else if you allow it to, like rubbing oil into wood to make it shine. It isn’t just oil anymore. It becomes part of the beauty of the wood. Beautiful things don’t always smile.”

  “So, Sal, the ghost visits come and go, right?”

  “Right.” Sal rubbed his hands together as they talked. “And sometimes a ghost will appear to one member of the family but not another. Flossie used to say when she was around your age that she knew an older man was watching over her during the day if she was in our house alone while I was out doing an errand. She described a man with a white beard and big hairy ears, someone who peeked around corners in a raggedy sweater and smiled. He sounded to me just like my father. And when Flossie saw this man, she felt safe. He was reassuring. Kindly.”

  “And you never saw him?”

  “Nope. He wasn’t a friendly man in life—at least not to me,” Sal said slowly.

  “So sometimes ghosts can care for one person in the family but not another?” Phee asked. “Or make things better, even if they didn’t when they were alive?”