Out of the Wild Night

by Blue Balliett

  Phee is not in the habit of talking about Flossie, at least not with other kids, and truthfully—well, she isn’t quite sure what she feels about her mom.

  There is love, always, but also a fear of being hurt. Of disappointment. After all, what if Flossie never comes home from off-island? Isn’t it better not to miss her too much? Phee knows she and Sal have a great life together. A life other kids envy, one that includes everyday evenings by the fire and using all that the island offers—making fish-bone jewelry, wild grapevine wreaths, and bayberry candles. Scavenging at the dump and cooking up a mission like Nantucket Hands.

  While tiptoeing back downstairs with her friends, Phee hears the old latch on Flossie’s bedroom door click open again, ever so softly.

  Someone is listening, Phee thinks to herself.

  She doesn’t tell the others.

  When Sal and Herbie burst into the kitchen, both filthy, the house rocks with an explosion of questions and news.

  “You guys been mud-wrestling?” Phee asks.

  “Dad!” Gabe grins.

  “We heard noises upstairs!” Maria’s eyes are still huge.

  “Where’ve you been?” Phee gives her grandfather a gentle poke. “Really, Sal!”

  “Thought we’d defend ourselves,” Markus says, swinging his piece of kindling and whacking the rocker by mistake. It creaks back and forth wildly, as if insulted.

  “Sorry,” he mutters to the chair.

  “You guys got ghosts, no doubt about that,” announces Paul.

  “We do?” Sal asks, winking at Phee.

  “Ones that don’t stay in the graveyard,” Cyrus adds.

  After the kindling is returned to the stove pile, Herbie leaves with all of the kids but Phee. He’ll see them safely home.

  Once alone, she and Sal plop down by the fire.

  Both sigh with relief at the same moment, just as an old copper horn suspended on a hook by the back door clangs gently against the wall. The horn is part of a long line of hanging pots, ladles, and other metal doodads, as Sal calls them. It doesn’t look as though anyone has used it in a long time.

  Sal stares at it thoughtfully. “Now, that’s odd. One of Flossie’s favorite toys, that Crier horn,” he says. “Used to belong to old Billy Clark. He was around when I was a kid, and that man loved to play tricks. Told the news but also fed the flues. Made things up. I used to blow it for your mother when it was time to come in for dinner. We should polish it up one of these days. It’ll shine fit to sing. Horn must’ve liked the news of you kids sneaking around with ghosts!”

  This Crier grins!

  “Maybe someone wants us to use it,” Phee suggests, not at all surprised by the idea of something old in the house having ideas of its own. “I mean—I don’t mean for Flossie, not like it’s needed, just …”

  She then tells Sal about the what-if whisper of someone speaking her name and the rumpled quilt in her mother’s room upstairs. Plus the hated book falling, the dresser, and the click of the door latch opening on its own as the kids went back downstairs.

  Sal stops rocking. He watches his granddaughter’s face as she talks, then rubs his hands together, that dry sound that tells Phee he’s thinking.

  “A noise isn’t a person. Sometimes it’s meant to confuse. Like smoke in a magic show. You’ll sleep in my room tonight, my girl,” Sal announces. “We’ll bring your mattress in and make it cozy. The way we used to when you were little, remember? That way if there’s any more bing-banging around here, whatever it is will know where to find us both.”

  Phee needs no convincing. After Sal blows out the candle that night, she rests quietly in the dark, listening to her grandfather shift on his crunchy horsehair mattress. Like smoke in a magic show. She loves the way Sal makes everything okay. Then she hears him sit up. He listens to the nighttime quiet for a moment and then creeps on bare feet past his granddaughter and out of the room. Phee hears him try the latch handle on Flossie’s closed door.

  Click-a-click! He tries it again.

  The door is locked from the inside. This was something he’d always allowed his daughter to do, as she’d been afraid of ghosts as a child.

  Phee now hears Sal whispering, “Flossie! Pssst! Is that you?”

  There’s no response.

  Ghosts don’t sleep while the living do, but we drift, treating the darkness like water. Some might say we soar like a crow, black on black, but I think our movements are closer to dreaming. They can appear solid when needed, and even leave footprints. Delicious smells. Sensations that confuse the living.

  Some are physically strong, as you’ve heard and seen.

  That night, I, Mary Chase, am suddenly aware of a familiar vibration. It’s the same dreadful feeling that first rattled me back from my peaceful rest in the walls of my home—a bone-deep roaring and shaking takes my breath away even though I have none. I sharpen my senses and wish with all my heart to be where I am needed.

  This time, I don’t ring or hoot. I concentrate.

  I’m not in my home, that much I know.

  Right here, a voice seems to whisper to me. Right here.

  I find myself on the roof of an old house, its surface slippery with moss. Looking down, I recognize the yard.

  In the distance, the roaring bobs between houses and trees, moving this way like an angry firefly.

  Horn ready, I open my mouth and fill my lungs with air.

  Phee is awake.

  The moon is perfectly round, and as she peers up at it, she remembers how it used to dance on the water outside the houseboat when she was very young. At times when she woke with a bad dream, Flossie would take her up on deck to see the gentle beauty of the night.

  Phee settles her pillow, snuggling down, then pops to a sitting position. What is that?

  The room is vibrating, as if a big machine is at work. Not nearby, but close enough. And over the distant roaring, she hears … a screaming. A woman is howling as if she needs to wake the world.

  Here is a steady flag of sound, flying windless beneath a startled moon.

  Hardly aware of what she’s doing, Phee is soon up and dressed. She tiptoes down the stairs.

  Outside, the roar is louder, grinding and bumping over the cobblestones on Main Street. Phee also hears the loud, frantic ringing of a bell.

  Right here, she calls out. RIGHT HERE, as the words of her old game with Flossie fill her head. Now she sees children running toward her.

  Coming from all directions, the kids are every size and shape. Some she knows, others she doesn’t. And there is Gabe! He’s racing toward her, next to a boy in a straw hat and a girl holding a doll.

  On his other side are the three children from Pine Street, who are somehow recognizable. They arrive higgledy-piggledy, hair on end, jostling others. Maria, Markus, Paul, Cyrus, and Maddie are right behind Gabe, who waves energetically at Phee as if to say, All here, all good.

  They did it, Phee realizes with a sigh of wonder. The Gang managed to lure out a whole bunch of kids, some from the houses that were mostly gutted. Dozens now pop over fences and from behind the old stuff in the Folger yard, like a murder of crows, she thinks, untroubled by the thought.

  A chase of kids! The words pop into her mind from nowhere.

  Then Phee sees the hulk of an earthmoving machine, one without its headlights on, rumbling closer. She recognizes it: one of Eddy Nold’s bulldozers! Help, oh, help! What is he doing? The ground trembles under everyone’s feet.

  The howling is louder now and the sound comes from above. Phee looks up, puzzled, and sees a woman on what’s left of their old roof walk, one with ankle-length clothing, her profile sharp against the moon. Her head is thrown back and her mouth open. Who is it and how on earth did she get there?

  I watch myself through Phee’s eyes right now, and love this moment. I ring, I scream, I glow with all the glory of a ghost who is heard and seen!

  Startled awake, crows circle the house, their cawing slicing the night air like so many knives. I feel safe
in their company.

  Ages ago, Sal nailed shut the hatch door to the roof. He explained to Phee that the railings had rotted and it was too dangerous to be out there. Phee pictures the woman tumbling down, and her stomach jumps. Where is Sal?

  The bulldozer turns toward the house, and the headlights click on for a moment, as if to check location. In a rush, Phee understands.

  Eddy Nold has come in the middle of the night to knock down their house! To stop the uprising of ghosts at his other sites by getting rid of Sal and Phee’s home!

  Adding shock to shock, Phee now sees light stream clear through the bodies of the children standing just in front of her, kids she doesn’t know. Blink! The light goes off again, leaving the crowd once again solid and shouting. Phee wails also.

  She and the rest of the Gang need more than the help of ghosts.

  Phee yells, “Saaaal! Wake up! Mommmm! Where are you? Hurry, oh, hurry!”

  And it’s then that she sees Sal rushing out the front door. Next, she hears the slap-clatter of heavy boots running from all directions.

  Herbie vaults over a fence and into the yard and, finding Gabe, stops in front of his son. He nods his head in a way that says many things: You knew it before I did and Great job and I understand now. Gabe returns the nod in reserved Pinkham style and then throws both arms around his dad’s middle, giving him a quick squeeze. Herbie looks goofy with pleasure.

  Soon the Folger house is surrounded. Phee sees Sal give Eliza Rebimbas’s shoulder a pat and then turn toward a young woman who looks similar to Flossie—her grandmother Polly? An old man with wild hair peeks out of the kitchen door. Phee thinks she recognizes her great-grandfather, Sal’s dad, looking pleased. Soon, neighbors from all over fill the sidewalk in front. Phee knows a few as recent buyers in the area, others as longtime residents. No one seems surprised that some are flesh and blood, others not. Everyone’s mouth is moving.

  Big hands hold little hands. Old hold young. Hand-woven coats and shawls mingle with modern jackets. And—can it be? Phee now touches Flossie’s hand, and somehow it isn’t sad—it feels wonderful. Her mom’s hand, warm and true!

  But how can this be? Phee’s soul drops and then hits a dark surface. She is lost before something begins to reel her in.

  At that moment, Phoebe Folger Antoine realizes that even if her mom is dead, she’s not. Not, not, NOT! Flossie’s here, RIGHT HERE with her girl, and that is all that matters! Right here, at home where they both belong. Phee feels her heart fill and then spill over in all directions, and suddenly she’s hugging her mom, her face buried deep in her shoulder, her cheeks wet with tears. Hugging her so tight she’ll never again disappear.

  The screaming, cawing, and mishmash of voices stop suddenly as the bulldozer is switched off. Phee raises her head, wiping her cheeks with a sleeve. Eddy Nold climbs very slowly out of the cab.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he mutters, looking at the crowd around the house. “I give up. Please … please forgive me. I didn’t understand. I thought the house with the doughnuts was the only one … I didn’t believe my dream. The kids who came to see me in the hospital … I should’ve paid attention. I thought I could stop all of this craziness by, well, giving your place a nudge in the middle of the night. I knew about all the old wood piling up in back and didn’t think anyone was living here. Stupid of me, I just thought that because the place is so old and dark—Well, I’m done. No more trouble. Done.”

  Phee, to her surprise, realizes that Eddy Nold is talking to Flossie. Her mother now straightens her shoulders, crosses her arms on her chest, and says quietly, “Good to hear your thoughts, Mr. Nold. Odd way to take a spin on a moonlit night. Let’s pretend that’s all it was.”

  Eddy nods gratefully, shakes his head, then pulls himself back into the monstrous machine, his movements clearly painful. The bulldozer grinds in a slow semicircle and heads away, the roar retreating into the darkness.

  Flossie thanks the flesh-and-blood neighbors who ran from their houses. She looks at the children already melting back across fences and slipping into shadows, but only mutters something softly to herself. Phee, realizing her mom is distracted, takes over and gives the Gang and all those other kids a grateful wave as they head off.

  She wants to introduce her Old North friends to Flossie, but that can wait.

  Phee and Flossie sit on the front porch steps in the dark and study each other, absorbing every detail. Phee’s eyes glitter like stars and Flossie’s hair clip sparkles beneath the moon. Soon, Sal joins them, and the three hold hands as if they’ll never let go.

  Sal lifts his head as though someone has called and hops up to meet that same young woman who looks like Flossie. The two of them slip sideways into the night.

  Phee and Flossie get it. “Must be your mom, Polly. They missed each other,” Phee says. “Like you and me.”

  “We did it,” her mother murmurs.

  “With a lot of help.” Phee grins. “The kind of help that won’t go away.” And right then she realizes with a thunk of certainty that certain connections, ones made from love and belonging, don’t break. They don’t go away. Like the connections in the Folger family, she thinks, those between Sal and her grandmother Polly, or those between Sal, his daughter Flossie, and his granddaughter Phee.

  Even if Flossie’s not alive, Phee knows now that she is here.

  Phee Antoine is right. And I, Mary W. Chase, am proud to know this.

  What I’ve realized tonight is that we humans all need one another, although most of us don’t see that while alive. Or dead! I thought before tonight it was just we ghosts who are swept around by change, but no—the living also ebb and flow like the tides.

  Some swim and some struggle. None of us are the same souls we were a moment before, just as no splash or ripple in the ocean ever repeats.

  From up there on the rooftop, I spot Aunt Thankful down in the yard, and we wave happily. She is old, and raises both arms toward me, her face shining with an approval and joy I never saw in her before. I blow my horn and ring my bell like mad, feeling as proud and wild as the wind. Wind?

  “I’m back,” it whispers in my ear. “Back, baaaaaack!”

  “Wiiiind!” I shout through my horn, and yell so loud and long that it flies from my hand, turning end over end and falling below.

  My grip relaxes, I wriggle my fingers and am glad. I sink to my knees on that mossy roof, exhausted. The crows are gone.

  Perhaps it’s time for another Crier.

  The Old North Gang managed to work with little old me, a chase of kids, a murder of crows, and a once-heartless developer and, in doing so, changed us all. They tipped the island.

  I’m headed home.

  As Sal settles back under his blankets, there are sounds from farther down the hallway.

  Rattle-rattle! Plink, plink! “It’s my old chicken-bones-and-dried-beans game! The one with scallop scoops! Remember that bowl with all the pieces on my shelf? The game I played with my dad! I remember that sound!” Phee whispers, scooting closer to Sal’s bed.

  He reaches out and pats his granddaughter’s back. “This is just a change in the weather. Whoever is in there won’t hurt your things,” he whispers back. “Let’s get to sleep. Maybe it’s the wind finally coming up.”

  And as he speaks, that is exactly what happens.

  After a month of utter stillness—one of the strangest Nantucket Novembers on record—the wind is back.

  Whooooooo! it seems to be saying. Whooooo toooo?

  Across the island, people of every age snuggle deeper under covers, relieved to hear the familiar buffet and swirl. Windows and doors rattle in their frames. Islanders sleep better than they have in weeks. Their dreams blow and drift, adding weight to the snow that deepens on front steps and chimney caps, sparkling beneath a wintery moon.

  Wind plus snow erases angles, softens corners, hugs the old, and quiets the new. It whirls and blurs, rising in whipped-cream peaks. By the first rush of dawn, the island is a sugary landscape simply wa
iting for a wonder.

  I’m talking about a wonder, the old-fashioned doughnut kind.

  First peek, then find! Beware and behold! Early crows are gathering in the tree nearby, dark ink on white paper, wings fanning.

  Hide your secrets, all that’s shiny may fly! Just now the message for my horn is gone, blown across frost-feathered glass and around empty houses, or what’s left of them. It’s icing the beach grass and pebbles. It’s cupped in my open palm.

  Fill your hands with snow and the diamonds of dreams! Quick, for I am tired and there is much to do.

  December 1.

  The woman stands. She is dressed in a long, seaweed-colored skirt and nubbly sweater, and her hair, dark with streaks of gray, is rolled into a bun. She wears no jewelry aside from a pearl earring in each ear, softening the sadness around her eyes and mouth.

  “Thank you for coming tonight despite the unseasonable blizzard. As many of you know, I was born here. As were my parents, grands, great-grands, and so on—I’m one of those! And I returned just over a year ago, after several years away. I returned to my home, yes, but also to unspeakable tragedy. But then again, tragedy is something my loved ones have become quite good at.

  “Quite good—” She pauses, ducking her head. “What I mean is, many untimely deaths have happened in my family. My father refused to allow this ache to stop him. He believed with all his heart that it is up to those of us living on this island to reach out past our own concerns and help those who can’t build a life here on their own, and to do it while protecting the beauty of our old ways.” The woman, gripping the podium in front of her, pauses and swallows.

  The crowd is silent until someone calls out, “Go on now! You tell it! Tell it for the children!”

  The woman raises her head, ignoring a lone tear that rolls down the side of her nose, catching on her lip. She continues, her voice now stronger. “I speak of a beauty built by hand.