What Came From the Stars (9 page)

“Mr. Burroughs,” said Patrick Belknap, “was his the only house?”

“Of course not, dummy,” said James Sullivan. “Every single house in Plymouth got broken into. Didn’t you smell the seaweed in your kitchen?”

Tommy saw Patrick Belknap glance back at his accordion case. He figured he wouldn’t let it out of his sight for a while.

Mr. Burroughs shook his head. (Tommy knew that if it had been any other day, Mr. Burroughs would have done a whole lot more than shake his head, since James Sullivan had called Patrick Belknap a dummy, and Mr. Burroughs would have been all over him for that—if it had been any other day.) “Mr. Zwerger’s house wasn’t the only one. At least half a dozen houses on the coast were broken into and pretty much the same thing done to them. Everything opened and smashed. And this horrible rank seaweed everywhere. But maybe that’s because of the storm.”

The chain warmed against Tommy’s chest.

Tommy shook his head. “Not because of the storm,” he said.

Mr. Burroughs looked at him.

“Tommy,” said Mr. Burroughs, “did something happen at your house last night?”

“No,” he said.

Didn’t they know about the fah smell of the O’Mondim? Tommy wondered. Didn’t they know?

“Enough of this,” said Mr. Burroughs. “Let’s start the day again. With something cheerful.”

“You don’t mean...” said Alice Winslow.

“Patrick, why don’t you go get your accordion?” said Mr. Burroughs.

Patrick Belknap rushed to get his accordion. Everyone groaned.

“Something you can tap your toe to,” said Mr. Burroughs.

“Something you can throw up to,” said James Sullivan.

So Patrick Belknap started playing and everyone groaned again, even though they were all sort of glad to hear him.

In the afternoon, Patty wanted to go home on the bus, but Tommy walked with her to the shore. They stayed up on Water Street and didn’t go down onto the beach. They only looked—and only long enough for Tommy to see that the O’Mondim he had sculpted was gone.

The chain was cold on his chest.

“Patty,” he said, “don’t ever go down to the water unless I’m with you, okay?”

She looked at him.

“You’ve got enough white stones for now.”

They walked home. Tommy watched the ocean the whole time.

He wondered if something might be watching back.

That weekend, and in the days that followed, a whole lot of people might have been glad to hear Patrick Belknap’s cheerful accordion, because every night, every single night, terrible winds blew off the ocean and into Plymouth, bellowing so loudly that the noise was louder than doors thrown open, and louder than closets and pantries emptied, and louder than rooms ruined with rank and rotting seaweed. First, houses along the coast were attacked, and the police began to send out seven patrol cars each night. Then houses farther from the shore were ruined, and Officer Goodspeed began to look pretty drawn, and two policemen from Sandwich came up to help patrol. And then one night, the vandals broke into the Mayflower Society and Pilgrim Hall Museum up the street, and the bookstore and antique mall and coin shop between them. With the roaring of the winds, no one heard.

In the mornings now, everyone in Plymouth gathered around the news telecast to find out which houses had been targeted.

Officer Goodspeed looked like he wasn’t sleeping. And two more policemen from Brewster came up to help patrol.

But everywhere, people were afraid.

And still the nightly winds tormented, and in the early morning, the smell of seaweed lay all over Plymouth.

But the days!

That fall was the most spectacular fall Tommy Pepper could remember—exactly the kind his mother had loved. Easy breezes in the morning, but cool enough at the dawn fires that Tommy and Patty had to wear the wool blankets. A bright sun that grew dark yellow at suppertime and threw long shadows across anything that lay flat. The beaches copper in the slanting light.

And the leaves!

Tommy and Patty should be sitting at the kitchen table, with new scrapbooks open and their
Field Guide to Trees and Shrubs of New England
at the ready, their mother softly handling the bright shapes—the red maples, the yellow sassafras, the scarlet oaks. Patty should be clipping off the corners of envelopes to mount the leaves into the scrapbooks—the mottled sycamores, the red and white pine needles, the golden birch. They should be turning each page carefully, carefully, so as not to crinkle the drying leaves—the rusty beeches, the browning ashes, the blushing apples. Their mother should be smiling.

It was that kind of fall.

Perfect, perfect, perfect for the Plymouth Fall Festival.

But hardly anyone in Plymouth noticed.

They were waiting for the shrieking winds at night. And what came with them.

A week after the storms, Tommy’s father rented a chain saw and cut up the downed pines. Then, Saturday morning, they burned the sappy branches on the beach. And as the branches turned to embers, Mrs. Lumpkin’s surveyors came to plant the yellow flags—again. Mrs. Lumpkin herself drove up in her yellow Mazda to watch. She never looked at Tommy Pepper’s home, not once the whole time. If she had, she might have seen Tommy and Patty watching through the front windows.

On Sunday afternoon, the Peppers raked up the rotting seaweed below their house—rucca!—and the broken crabs and shells, and buried it all beneath the sand. They set up the red hurricane fences again, and the pieces of fencing that couldn’t be fixed they burned on top of the pine ashes.

On Monday, Mr. Burroughs worked hard at pretending that everything in Plymouth was exactly as it was supposed to be—which might have been easier for him since he lived across the bridge in East Sandwich. But it was a lot harder for Tommy and everyone else to pretend, especially since on Sunday night, the steeple of First Congregational came down and its doors were thrown open and its pews covered with seaweed.

In Plymouth, everyone listened for the winds.

Even during the day, in William Bradford Elementary School, they all listened for the winds.

“Today, we’re beginning our unit on the solar system,” Mr. Burroughs announced. “Who can name the eight planets in order?”

James Sullivan raised his hand. “Do you think the storms have anything to do with all the houses getting broken into?”

“That is something the police are working on, I’m sure, Mr. Sullivan. Let’s let them do their job. Can anyone name the eight planets?”

Alice Winslow raised her hand. “The storms must have something to do with the break-ins, because they both began the same day. Whoever is breaking in probably uses the noise to cover their entry.”

“Let’s stay focused,” said Mr. Burroughs. “Can anyone name any of the giant planets?”

“But how can they depend on storms coming every night?” said James Sullivan.

“Any of the inner planets?” said Mr. Burroughs.

“And what’s with all the seaweed?” said Jeremy Hereford.

“Any planet at all?” said Mr. Burroughs.

Patrick Belknap drew his accordion close to him. “No one’s going to touch this,” he said.

“The planet we’re on right now?” said Mr. Burroughs.

“Maybe we could use an accordion for bait,” said James Sullivan.

Mr. Burroughs sat down.

That night, another storm. Terrible winds. High waves. And three more houses broken into south along the coast.

Then, on Tuesday, a house broken into in broad daylight—with no storm at all.

On Wednesday, four more in the afternoon—with no storm at all.

Three more patrol cars came, this time from Brookline.

But Plymouth began to be very afraid.

Though no one had made any announcement, the parents of William Bradford Elementary started driving their kids to school and back. Mr. Zwerger sent a letter home to let parents know that there would be bus service even during the current crisis, and he strongly recommended that if students were not driving with their parents, they should use the buses. Children should not under any circumstances be allowed to walk home alone, he wrote, even for short distances. And if they must walk, then he asked parents to form groups with chaperones.

And that was how someone finally broke into Tommy Pepper’s house.

Because while Tommy’s father drove to school to pick up Patty and Tommy, and while they stopped at one store for the Styrofoam balls that Tommy needed for his solar system project and stopped at another store for Patty’s new backpack—made of some vinyl-y stuff colored the brightest pink that the human eye can endure—and while they stopped at the A&P for a roasted chicken, macaroni salad, tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and a pineapple, someone entered their house.

When Tommy and Patty and their father got back home, they didn’t have to open the door—which had been torn off and broken in two—to smell the rotten seaweed that lay all over the floors. One look and Tommy’s father pushed Tommy and Patty outside while he phoned into town. But Tommy saw everything in that one look: the thrown-down shelves, the overturned chairs, the emptied cabinets, the books opened and stained green, the piano pulled away from the wall, the walls with holes punched through to the framing.

Tommy sat with Patty on one of the pine stumps while the policemen came and went, came and went. Patty leaned against him, her eyes closed so she didn’t see the lights on top of the police cars—all ten of them.

But you can’t have that many police cars with their lights going crazy without someone seeing, and pretty soon James Sullivan with his not-Tom Brady-signed football and Patrick Belknap with his accordion strapped to his back were on the dune. Even Alice Winslow came up, and she sat on the sand and took Patty in her lap and tied her hair in braids.

Tommy could almost not bear to watch them. He remembered.

His chain was warm.

He knelt down and swept the sand with his palms until it was flat. With two fingers, he dug around the smoothed sand, dragging up the darker sand into a frame around it. He looked again at Alice Winslow and Patty and he began to draw inside the frame, using only his two thumbs. On one side he drew Patty, sitting calmly in Alice’s lap, but a little younger than she was now, her head bent back a little, her smile. And beside her, on the other side, he drew Alice, leaning over Patty, working gently at her hair, intent.

James Sullivan stopped twirling his not-Tom Brady-signed football. “That’s amazing,” he said. “Pepper, how can you do that?”

Alice Winslow and Patty got up and came around to see the picture.

“That’s you two,” said Patrick Belknap.

“It’s Patty,” said Alice Winslow, shaking her head. “But not me.”

And she looked at Tommy in perfect understanding.

It wasn’t her.

When Tommy and Patty went up to the house, Officer Goodspeed had his hat off and his hand up to the back of his neck. He was shaking his head. “I don’t think this could be Mrs. Lumpkin,” he was saying.

“I’m not saying she did it herself,” said Tommy’s father. “She probably hired someone else to do it for her.”

“She’s the wife of the lieutenant governor.”

“She’s the ruthless wife of a ruthless lieutenant governor. Look—she’s the only one in all of creation besides us who wants this house. Why else would anyone come inside? There’s nothing that we have that anyone would want.”

“Who knows why someone would vandalize a house?”

“This isn’t just vandalism, Mike. Have any of the other houses been torn apart as completely as this one? Look at the studs.”

“Mr. Zwerger’s, maybe.”

“Anyone else’s?”

Officer Goodspeed rubbed the back of his neck again.

“I guess not,” he said.

Officer Goodspeed drove down to Lumpkin and Associates Realtors, and when he came back up at suppertime, he told the Peppers how he had said to Mrs. Lumpkin that he didn’t even imagine she had anything to do with the wrecked Pepper house, but would she mind answering a few questions anyway? Mrs. Lumpkin had told Officer Goodspeed that she certainly did mind answering a few questions anyway and was this something that Mr. Pepper had put him up to in order to tarnish her reputation because Mr. Pepper had sworn to do whatever it took to stop the PilgrimWay Condominiums and this was just what she might expect from someone like Mr. Pepper who didn’t care a tinker’s curse about the town’s housing needs.

Officer Goodspeed told her there had been an unusual amount of damage in the Peppers’ house and everyone knew—

That explains everything, said Mrs. Lumpkin, because Mr. Pepper was certainly capable of wrecking his own house if he thought it might discredit her but she wasn’t going to stand for it.

“You know that’s ridiculous, Mike,” said Mr. Pepper. “I’m not going to ruin my own house.”

“I know,” Officer Goodspeed said. “But Mrs. Lumpkin claims you’ve taken up all the surveying flags twice now.”

“That’s ridiculous too.”

“I know, I know.” Officer Goodspeed looked out the front windows. “All the same, what did happen to those flags?”

Tommy’s father shrugged. “No idea,” he said.

“You kids have any idea?”

Patty shook her head. Tommy shook his head too.

Officer Goodspeed gave a big, weary sigh. “I don’t suppose you could break a door in two, could you, Tommy?”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy said.

“Patty, you breaking down any doors lately?”

Patty shook her head again.

Officer Goodspeed laughed and reached out to muss up her hair. “I know,” he said. “You cook that chicken yourself?”

They ate the roasted chicken, macaroni salad, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese, and when Officer Goodspeed had toothpicked the last piece of the pineapple, he stood up, thanked them, promised he’d try to keep Mrs. Lumpkin off their backs—“How about off our property?” said Tommy—and told them he’d let them know if he found out anything.

Tommy doubted he’d find out anything.

Tommy and Patty slept that night in sleeping bags in their father’s room—the only room that had enough windows to let out the stench of rotting seaweed. Sort of.

It was when Tommy took off his shirt and started to wriggle down into the sleeping bag that his father saw the chain.