Western Wind (5 page)

“There's my own moon!” he shouted so loudly Elizabeth heard each word.

In a few seconds, a girl ran toward him and grabbed him. They struggled briefly until she pinned him to the ground. He lay still like a small, toppled statue. The girl sat up. Aaron, as thought electrified, sprang to his feet and raced back into the house. At that moment, the girl looked up, spotted Elizabeth, and stuck her thumbs in her ears and waggled her fingers.

When Elizabeth got back to the cottage, Gran was bending over a cabinet. “Hell is trying to get a big frying pan onto a crowded pot-and-pan shelf,” she said. “Did you see the sea? You've been gone for hours. Oh! Your face is so red! I should have given you something to put on. It's hard to keep in mind all the new warnings.”

Did Gran talk to herself when nobody was around? Elizabeth wondered.

“I saw Aaron,” she said. “He ran out of the house and his sister came right after him. Last night, I saw them, too, all walking toward your dock. He jumped a few feet ahead of them, and they acted as if he were going to run across the water to Molytown.”

“He does like to startle them. I heard he once got into their car when he was five or so and managed to start it and drive several blocks before they caught him.”

Now that it was noon and the sun was overhead, it was darker in the room. Gran was pushing her easel closer to the window.

“When you're old,” she said, “what you want is light. Your eyes change. You begin to see much more yellow in everything. That presents an interesting problem to painters. About lunch—there's peanut butter and jelly and some tomatoes. We have the milk we got yesterday.”

Yesterday! It seemed a week ago!

“I saw a lot of driftwood on the other shore,” Elizabeth said. “You must have some storms out here.”

“We do. Grace and I have sat in the middle of this room waiting to be blown to Oz like Dorothy and Toto. Nature's violence doesn't leave you much time to be scared. Human violence is something else.” She began to clean a brush. “I was staying with a friend in Texas once,” she went on, “when a hurricane hit. We had to gather up her mother's chickens. I have a hard heart where fowl are concerned. Infuriatingly dumb they are, squawking hysterically when you're trying to save their lives. I've been in an earthquake, too, in California. I was around six, I think. I'd just cracked an egg open when the first tremor struck. For some peculiar reason, I hadn't yet understood how eggs got out of their shells. As it dripped into the sink, there was a great shudder in the little house where my parents had left me to be cared for by an elderly woman. Anyhow, I found myself on the floor. I recall creeping outdoors. A huge cloud of dust was rising in the street. When it cleared, I saw the street had opened up as though it'd been struck by a giant tomahawk.”

Elizabeth had made herself a peanut-butter-cracker sandwich while Gran talked. Suddenly, she fell silent. Elizabeth glanced at her. Gran was looking back, an expression of uncertainty on her face. She held the paintbrush in the air as though not only her words had been arrested, but her cleaning.

“I seem to be trying to tell you everything that's ever happened to me,” she said, her voice touched with surprise. “You'll end up knowing nearly as much about me as Will did.” She gestured toward one of the drawings of Elizabeth's grandfather.

Was she asking for reassurance? Elizabeth didn't want to be the person to give it to her. Then Gran turned away and went on with her work.

There were difficult moments with Gran—when she had recited that poem about the western wind, and now when she seemed almost apologetic. Elizabeth ate her sandwich. It was hardly fair that along with being shipped away from home, she was expected to make a grown-up feel it was all right to talk about herself. The crackers were stale and the peanut butter dry. Her gloom was coming back, gray like the morning light. But she couldn't sit there silently forever. She cleared her throat.

“Didn't you live with your parents?”

“Barely,” Gran said. She came to the table and sat down across from Elizabeth. “My father was an actor. My mother didn't know what a child was. I was left with various people. The old woman in California was one of the nicest.”

“Was she mad because you cracked the egg?”

Gran smiled. “She never knew. The earthquake covered up for me.”

“Daddy never told me about your father and mother.”

“Family history can get stale—like those crackers—and sink out of sight. And it's not always a bad thing. When you asked me about the storms on the island, I remembered all those natural catastrophes, like a string of firecrackers going off. I didn't mention the storm at sea.” She smiled broadly. Was she making fun of herself? Or of Elizabeth?

“Was your father in the movies?” Elizabeth was interested in that possibility. She imagined herself telling Nancy that her great-grandfather had been a movie star in the old Gary Cooper days.

“For a few years. He never got more than bit parts. Once he was the second male lead in a play that ran in New York for three months. Not a bad run in those days. He didn't do well at all as an actor. After he and my mother were divorced, he got steady work as manager in a men's clothing store in Boston. The owner thought he'd please the customers. He was so handsome and winsome.”

“Did Daddy know them?”

“He met them each several times … not the same as knowing them. They both died young, in their fifties.” She was looking at Elizabeth intently. “Like Will,” she added quietly.

Some emotion of Gran's was about to wash over her and leave her as bare as the wave-scoured boulders on that other, wilder shore. Suddenly, like something glimpsed from the corner of an eye, a picture formed in her mind of a small boy and a young woman, walking slowly down a street, empty save for those two figures. She knew who it was she had imagined in that instant—Gran and Daddy years ago, alone as they had been.

Gran would answer anything she asked. But she wasn't going to ask. She got up and strode across the room to look at the painting on the easel. She wasn't going to feel someone else's feeling. It was too unfair!

Gran came and stood behind her. “That's a watercolor wash,” she said. “Ocean, sky, shore. It's mostly what I've been doing lately. Though I am going to make some drawings of you from the snaps I'm taking.”

“Will you have a show this year in Camden?” Elizabeth asked, hearing a tremor in her own voice. It came from relief, she knew, that they were talking about something else, not those long-ago days.

“I don't know,” Gran said.

Voices, a child laughing, made them both turn to the door. Grace got up from the red sweater and ran across the room to stand near them.

“The Herkimers are taking their daily dip,” Gran said.

Through the open door, Elizabeth saw Mrs. Herkimer near the dock, wearing a black bathing suit with a wavy skirt and a long string of pearls. Mr. Herkimer was standing in water up to his knees. The girl who had waggled her fingers at Elizabeth was swimming toward shore. Aaron splashed and laughed in the shallows.

“The boy is the only one having fun,” remarked Elizabeth.

“That often appears to be the case,” said Gran. “Don't you want to take a swim?”

“I couldn't even wade in that water.”

Mr. Herkimer bent and threw water on his face. He looked up blankly. He had a large, fleshy face with a mustache on the upper lip that was so thin he might have drawn it with a pen dipped in black ink. As he plodded awkwardly out of the water, his wife plucked a towel from a canvas bag, shook it, and walked down to him, holding it out. He took it and buried his face in it. Elizabeth decided she didn't like him.

“Can't he get his own towel?” she asked.

“Is it a bad thing that between being born and dying, a person should be handed a towel?” Gran asked coolly.

“I just meant—” Elizabeth began to protest.

But Gran took hold of her arm, interrupting whatever she was going to say. “Let's go out and meet them.”

After the introductions were over, Mrs. Herkimer remarked, “You have noticed my pearls, Elizabeth. They're real. I would never, of course, wear anything that wasn't real.”

“I can see you're Cora Ruth's grandchild,” Mr. Herkimer said to her, but looking at his wife as though to find out if she agreed with him. Deirdre had emerged from the water and was staring up at the ridge, shivering.

“Manners, Deirdre,” said her mother. “And put on your robe at once.”

“Hello,” Deirdre said without looking at Elizabeth.

But Aaron ran out of the water, grinning. “Take my ice-cold hand,” he demanded, thrusting it toward her. She barely touched it with her fingertips. “She thinks I'm repulsive,” Aaron said gleefully.

“Hush!” commanded Mrs. Herkimer. “Deirdre! What did I tell you? Cover up! You'll get pneumonia. John, will you kindly see to these children?” She turned to Elizabeth. “It's rather nice to see a new face on this splendid shore.”

“Can I bring anything for supper?” Gran asked stolidly.

“Don't tell me your ice is holding up!” exclaimed Mrs. Herkimer. “I'm glad that fool is coming tomorrow in his broken-down boat.”

“That's a beautiful old launch, Helen,” Gran said. “And why on earth do you call Jake a fool?”

“I have my reasons,” Mrs. Herkimer said mysteriously.

Deirdre let out a snort of laughter. Aaron began to run in ever-widening circles, shouting, “Grown-ups! Grown-ups!”

“You'll have to take your chances, tonight,” Mrs. Herkimer said to Gran and Elizabeth. “I'll throw something together, though you can be sure I'll go to some trouble.”

They walked away at last, Mr. Herkimer keeping a firm grip on Aaron's arm as he wriggled like a fish on a hook.

“Does she really want us to come?” Elizabeth asked Gran when the Herkimers were out of earshot.

“Helen usually sounds a bit put out. Pay no mind.”

Elizabeth wished she could pay no mind to the kind of things Gran said. What was wrong with Mr. Herkimer having to get his own towel? Oh, it was all too much here! Thinking about what this meant and that meant. Back home, she hardly had to notice her parents. They were just there.

When they went back into the cottage, Gran took an apple from a basket. “I'm going to lie down now. Maybe you'd like to explore this part of the island. Or read.” She took a bite of the apple. “I have some books of poetry and some of history, a few on Maine. If you're interested …”

“I have books to read for school,” Elizabeth said curtly.

Gran went on as though Elizabeth hadn't spoken. “If you go past the Herkimers', you'll find a tiny cemetery. When I had the walls taken down here, I found old newspapers stuck to the laths that must have been used for insulation. The date on one was 1847. That means there have been people on Pring for one hundred forty-five years! There are only three gravestones in the cemetery. The names have worn away except for one.” Gran leaned against the table. “Here's a poem to say to yourself when you're there:

“In this little urn is laid

Prudence Baldwin, once my maid

From whose happy spark here let

Spring the purple violet.

“Robert Herrick wrote that around 1640. Perfect, isn't it?”

Gran's smile was pure mischief.

Elizabeth bent to stroke Grace. She had tried to shut her ears as Gran recited. She had clenched herself like a fist. Yet despite her effort, the lines of the poem settled into memory. Brainwashed by my own grandmother, she thought to herself.

She heard Gran going up the stairs. A moment later, her voice floated down. “Don't forget to write a note home. We can send it back with Jake, tomorrow.”

There were some sheets of paper on the work-table. Elizabeth took one, and a pencil from one of the jars.

She wrote: I'm here. Gran tells lots of stories. The water's too cold to swim in. I'm okay.

She hesitated, then signed only her name.

5

After writing the note home, Elizabeth looked down at her stingy, graceless lines, folded the paper quickly, and slipped it into an envelope Gran had left for her. Her parents would know she was offended—if they didn't already—but these days, it would hardly matter to them.

She felt listless, as she sometimes did on one of the steely cold days in late November when she came home from school after dull hours in the classroom and could find nothing she wanted to eat in the refrigerator.

In the early dark of such an afternoon, as they met in the kitchen, her mother had told her about the baby that was coming. Elizabeth had felt her knees go weak. The headlights of a car sweeping across the windows had made her blink and cover her face with her hand. Her mother had asked, “Elizabeth? Are you all right?”

She knew she ought to begin reading one of the books on the table upstairs. But, instead, she went out of the cottage into the bright afternoon. She was stuck on the island; she might as well get to know it.

Instead of going past the outhouse to reach the Herkimer place and the cemetery beyond it, she followed the shoreline to that sandy point where the birds came to sit at sunset. The beach on the farther side of the point was composed almost entirely of stones bearded with green waterweed. Above it lay the gradual slope of a meadow of tall grass, through which a path had been worn. The rambling old house sat in a dazzle of sunlight, its weather-beaten clapboard burnished. It was as silent as a monument. Had they all disappeared?

Mr. Herkimer suddenly stepped out of the shadow of the barn and looked intently up at a broken window. She had an impulse to tiptoe past. Then, as had happened in the morning, Aaron sped out of the house; a door slammed. In a second, Mrs. Herkimer appeared. The door slammed again.

“Aaron! Come back here!” she cried. Then they saw Elizabeth. Aaron halted. With both hands, Mrs. Herkimer smoothed down her feathery hair.