Out of the Wild Night

by Blue Balliett

  And don’t forget: The sea transforms the island itself and all who live by it. Day after day, year after year. Century after century. It gives and it takes. Shapes and reshapes. One kind of being becomes another kind.

  Was there anything good about a fishing boat going down on that wild night and taking the lives of seven children, their families, and others who cared about our community? Certainly not. It was tragic.

  BUT. There have been ghost stories around the world, in every language and century, for as long as people have experienced love and loss. What do these stories mean? Perhaps that none of us who live are ever truly gone or done, even when our time is up; that love is bigger than death; that beauty continues in what’s left after life evolves—like a shell in the tide.

  This quietest-ever of Novembers has turned out to be one of the oddest the island has ever known. One of the strangest and most bountiful. Even I have been surprised.

  Never believe that what you feel but can’t see isn’t there, because it usually is. Never believe that passions or attachments die, because they don’t.

  And remember to join hands, as old Eliza Rebimbas cautioned.

  She’d heard talk about the work of Nantucket Hands, and about Sal and his granddaughter, Phee, Flossie’s little girl. Maybe Eliza wanted the church bells all ringing on the day she died in order to signal that she was on board. I think she meant to wake all who couldn’t hear my bell and horn.

  I do believe that many of us became deeper souls in that windless month. We were pulled from our everyday selves, whether living or not, by an emergency. If you had told me when I was alive that I’d one day die and later howl from a rooftop on Main Street, I would have run inside and slammed my door, thinking you were crazy.

  I wouldn’t have been able to imagine the beauty of that terrifying moment.

  Lastly, call me outspoken, but I’ll say it anyway: Watch your step, because you may bump into one of us.

  Literally.

  For heaven’s sake, we’re not trying to get into or out of your way! It’s just that there are projects to be finished and situations to be stirred up, and we don’t always put the spoon or the oar down with care.

  We leave some of ourselves behind. This is true for each one of us: the living and the dead. Didn’t you know that? Words. A touch. Sounds.

  What? Don’t feel sad! From the perspective of a ghost on this island, I can tell you that we don’t see the living as you folks see yourselves. Sure, being alive is wonderful, but it isn’t the only kind of being.

  A word of caution. Never forget that some of us are descended from those murderers who went out on whaleships, folks who executed both giants of the deep and, in a rough spot, each other.

  And some of us who are dead aren’t quite finished.

  We watch. We listen. We warn. Sometimes we act.

  But we can’t control the currents that bleed the past across the present or the present into the past, any more than a human can control the sea.

  Did I know, when I was spreading the news, that Sal, Phee, and everyone else in Nantucket Hands were not alive?

  I didn’t.

  Did they know? Do they now?

  Clearly not.

  And if Flossie and her continuation of the Nantucket Hands group seem like ghosts to Sal, Phee, and all, are they?

  Is there one kind of wonder? Or only one kind of ghostliness?

  Again, I don’t think so. On this island, the line dividing the dead from those still living is hard to find. Take it from me. And there are, I have come to realize, many simultaneous layers that fan outward over time, just as a tree has rings and a scallop shell arcs.

  We ghosts can’t always contact the living, nor can we control each other. But because we have nothing to lose—having already lost it!—we are free to do our best. Often that’s far more than we did when breathing.

  Beware! Shhhhh. The tide is coming in and that twist of shell by your foot—shaped from a sea creature once alive but now gone—may soon be washed away. Put it in your pocket. Store it in your soul.

  And here, hold my hand.

  Armloads of thanks go out to my husband, Bill, and to our family, who are a part of everything I write. Our daughter, Althea, shared an amazing true story about a crow and a young girl, which I promptly absorbed. Doug Klein has been passing along Shirley Jackson gems for years, and Mary Ann Dempster Klein gave me permission to drop the capital D on dumpster. My sister, Julie, found me ghost-catcher earrings and the crab shell with a wise face. My brother, Will, told me not to tone down this story. All have helped me more than they know.

  Many hugs go to my friends in Chicago and on Nantucket for understanding when I needed to disappear into the book. I’m indebted to Paul Farrell for philosophy and Skip Hampton for footprints.

  Many thanks to everyone at the Nantucket Historical Association Research Library for helping locate old photographs and recipes. I greatly appreciate seeing a number of nineteenth-century Inquirer and Mirror articles in the Nantucket Atheneum Library Great Hall Reference Department.

  David Levithan, my brilliant editor and friend, has once again kept me company from start to finish, diving into the world of ghosts and even supplying a scream at a critical moment. Doe Coover, patient friend and agent extraordinaire, has been enthusiastic throughout, reading many drafts and weighing in. Scholastic works as a family, and I can’t thank all of you enough—especially Ellie Berger, Charisse Meloto, Lizette Serrano, my amazing designer Elizabeth Parisi, and the copy editors, whom I’ve no doubt puzzled to distraction. Leo Nickolls’s cover painting is a beauty. The team is big, and I am grateful for every ounce of your creativity and expertise.

  Nantucket residents’ names appear, disappear, and reappear over the centuries. I tried not to borrow the name of anyone living. Please forgive me if I have. Any factual errors relating to the island’s history, current statistics, and geography are entirely my own.

  Lastly, I want to thank the ghosts.

  Here are the old Nantucket terms that appear in this story, in case you’d like to use them, too. Most started at sea and belong to the island’s glory days, to the nineteenth century. There are many more in a 1916 book called The Nantucket Scrap Basket, a collection of stories and expressions compiled by an islander, William F. Macy.

  at the helm: in charge, with the helm being the wheel, tiller, or other equipment used to steer a boat.

  bow on: head-on or face-to-face, the bow being the front of a boat.

  everything drawing: all working well on board, as in “all sails drawing” in a stiff breeze.

  fair wind: a streak of luck.

  fall to: to begin work.

  gally: to frighten or terrify. Often applied to an alarmed whale.

  greasy luck to us all: wishes for a good voyage with lots of whale oil.

  grouty: grouchy.

  heave ho: to pull with all one’s strength, a command on board a boat.

  keeping a weather eye open: looking out, staying alert.

  meeching: mean, sneaky.

  mollygrumps: low in spirit or down in the dumps.

  muckle: to bother or disturb.

  put out: to start, or to set sail.

  running before the wind: lucky or in a good position; in a sailboat, being pushed forward by the wind.

  scrimshaw: an image or piece of writing engraved on whalebone or whale’s tooth ivory, then rubbed with ink to make it visible.

  scud along: to hurry.

  set sail: to get under way.

  shooling: roaming about, in an unhurried way, looking for berries, clams, or some other treasure.

  slatch: a bit of good weather during a storm, or a short time to relax.

  taking a lunar: a look at the night sky, from the days of celestial navigation.

  up scuttle: on the roof walk, a fenced platform also known as a widow’s walk. The trapdoor to the roof was called the scuttle.

  wadgetty: nervous or fidgety.

  watch the pass: watch everyone g
oing by.

  whick-whacking: to dash back and forth.

  Fried dough is not the healthiest treat in the world, but it may be one of the most delicious.

  Wonders have been around for centuries on this tiny island. Apparently the term arrived on Nantucket with some of the earliest European settlers—people that traveled from Devonshire, to the north of the Channel Islands, which perch between Great Britain and France. It was those islanders who first called a twist of dough a wonder, something so irresistible that no one wonders why.

  Heather Atwood mentions this in her 2015 cookbook, In Cod We Trust, and she also supplies a Nantucket recipe for wonder-making. As the handwritten versions I’ve run across in the Nantucket Historical Association files are not specific about amounts of flour and other ingredients—or call for lard and “pearlash,” an early form of baking soda!—this one is a find.

  Nantucket has bakeries that make doughnuts every day. Hardly anyone gets more than a few steps with a bag of wonders intact.

  I know I never have.

  Nantucket is not just a location. There is a pulse. An awareness. Perhaps a response. This is something I’ve known for a long time.

  Born in New York City, I first came to the island as a teenager, after high school. I waitressed and worked as a chambermaid, lived in a boardinghouse, and thought this New England outpost was the most intriguing, soulful place I had ever seen. From the moment I arrived, it pulled at me—insistent, a magnetic force. After college I came right back, on my own, to be and work and think. It was then that I heard my first Nantucket ghost stories. My husband and I met each other, fell head over heels, lived in a small house he built on a windy hill, struggled to pay our mortgage while two of our three children were born here—natives!—and then, over a decade later, it was time to go.

  I worked to barnacle our island family to Chicago’s world of skyscrapers and big signs and airports and highways. Urban parks and traffic. Sirens. A local diner where the undercover cops came to eat, wearing bulletproof vests. This was right, for many years. I knew how to do it, having grown up in a huge city, and grew to deeply love our Hyde Park neighborhood. I still do.

  We filled our home in the Midwest with Nantucket scallop shells, large and small lucky stones, conch shells, horseshoe crabs, slipper shells—symbols found and kept. Treasures carefully carried away in pockets, boxes, bags. They landed in bowls and baskets, on shelves and by bedsides; Nantucket’s jewels were everywhere in our home. Even after years in Chicago, if I needed peace, back I went, in my mind, for a walk on the dirt road near what used to be our island home, or perhaps a swim on the beach nearby. Early morning, pale water the color of celery, lemon juice, bubbled glass … into the line between sea and sky, the day slap-lapping and rich with minnows—a moment of pure delight. On the windowsill next to my writing table sits a large globe of a rock I had pried up from our dirt road when we moved. A stone rounded in the ocean thousands of years ago. One we passed over each time we came and went.

  I guess it’s obvious. A part of me remained rooted on Nantucket. A dictionary for the spirit, that’s what this island is, packed with images that mean more than a person can absorb in one breath: shadows caught by the dusky bayberries that cling to a twig, calligraphy left by beach grass on wind-smooth sand, the poetry of cloud plus sky.

  I first heard ghost stories on Nantucket a very long time ago, and collected many through interviews with an unlikely assortment of people, all of whom shared an experience they’ll never forget. I’ve wanted to write Out of the Wild Night for decades, but had to meet Mary W. Chase first. Most of the details of her life that appear in this story are fiction, but Mary was not. She died in 1917.

  Why Nantucket has so many ghosts is anyone’s guess, but I do know they’re here.

  NANTUCKET

  1.1 Streetscape, late 1800s, courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association

  1.2 Mary W. Chase in front of her house, late 1800s, courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association

  1.3 Cobblestones, old house and roof walk

  2.1 Crier’s horn

  2.2 Old North Cemetery

  2.3 Door in snowstorm

  3.1 Old house lifted for basement dig

  3.2 Old outside, new inside

  3.3 Window with old glass

  4.1 Jagging wheels

  4.2 Walking sticks

  4.3 Whale’s tooth and shells

  The Crier’s horn, jagging wheels, and walking sticks are all a part of the

  Nantucket Historical Association collection.

  Photos by Blue Balliett and Bill Klein unless otherwise noted.

  Copyright © 2018 by Blue Balliett

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

  First edition, April 2018

  Book design by Abby Dening

  Additional imagery © 2018 by Leo Nicholls; and © Shutterstock; Daniela Barreto (bell), and Aleks Melnik (trumpet)

  Cover art © by Leo Nicholls

  Covery design by Elizabeth B. Parisi

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-86758-0

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