Homecoming (41 page)

In spite of her discomfort, she worked fast. Once she looked over to see how James
and Maybeth were doing. When she checked on Sammy she saw that he had taken off his
shorts and underpants and was standing stark naked over the cucumber plants. Sometimes,
she thought, he has more sense than any of us.

Dicey carried the two baskets she and Sammy filled back to the porch, without going
inside. She ran to help finish the tomatoes. Sammy’s fanny gleamed white in his tan
body as he stooped
over to pick beside Maybeth. Maybeth was using only her left hand. She held her right
arm stiff by her side.

James and Dicey carried the full baskets back. Maybeth ran ahead inside. Sammy didn’t
want to go in. He ran about in the long grass of the lawn. He turned cartwheels and
the rain droned down around him.

When Dicey came up with the last basket, she saw him rolling about in the long grass,
like a dog. His face was bright, entirely happy. She looked past him and saw their
grandmother standing to hold the porch door open for James, who struggled up the steps
with a basket of tomatoes in his arms. The woman was watching Sammy with a smile in
her eyes. Their grandmother seemed to have a smile as sudden and complete as laughter.

Dicey called Sammy in. Maybeth had dressed and sat quietly at the table, nursing her
arm. Dicey ran the boys upstairs to dry off and change clothes.

The table was set for breakfast when they came down. The huge pot steamed and rattled
as the glass jars boiled, to be sterile for the day’s canning. Their grandmother served
them bowls of hot oatmeal with brown sugar and milk to put on it.

Dicey sat beside Maybeth. “It still hurts?” she asked. Maybeth just nodded. She held
the spoon in her left hand and ate sloppily. Dicey realized that she shouldn’t have
let Maybeth come out picking with them. She didn’t know what could be wrong. What
was it like when your arm was broken? How could Maybeth have broken her arm?

Maybeth reached across the cereal bowl for the pitcher of milk. She tried to pour
it over her cereal, but it splashed onto the table.

Their grandmother stormed up from the table and threw a dishcloth across at Maybeth.
“Can’t you even feed yourself? Mop it up.”

Maybeth mopped at the milk and knocked at her bowl. Dicey caught it before it spilled.

“What’s the matter with her?” their grandmother demanded. Maybeth’s face was white,
and she stared at her cereal. Dicey mopped up the spilled milk. She touched Maybeth
softly on the left shoulder, to let her know she wasn’t angry.

“Answer me,” their grandmother said. “Or is this the way she usually is, and it’s
all been an act until now.”

“Something’s wrong with her arm,” Dicey said.

“What something?” The woman sat down and began eating again.

“I dunno,” Dicey said. “It hurts.”

Their grandmother turned her attention to Maybeth. “How long has it hurt?”

“Since yesterday morning,” Maybeth said.

“Why didn’t you say?” Dicey asked, exasperated.

Maybeth shrugged. Dicey subsided, because she knew why Maybeth hadn’t said anything.

“What does it feel like?” their grandmother asked.

“It hurts. It feels burny and achy. When I close my hand and try to hold something,
it’s like a fire going up around my elbow.” Maybeth swallowed. “It’s getting worse,
not better.”

Their grandmother stormed up from the table and out of the room. The Tillermans looked
at one another, surprised. “Maybe she doesn’t like people being sick,” Dicey said.

But the woman returned with a jar of ointment and a broad roll of gauze bandaging.
She rubbed the ointment into Maybeth’s elbow and down her forearm. Then she made a
tight bracelet around Maybeth’s wrist, ripping off the gauze with her teeth and tying
it into a knot. She made another such bandage above the little girl’s elbow.

“Probably a tendon,” she announced. “Does that help?”
Maybeth nodded. “It sounds like you’ve pulled a tendon in your arm. Pulling down that
honeysuckle—it doesn’t surprise me. You’ll have to take it easy with that arm for
weeks. The bandages will ease the strain on the muscle.”

“Thank you,” Maybeth said.

“You should have spoken up sooner,” her grandmother answered. “No need to bear pain
unless you have to.”

Maybeth nodded. “I was afraid it wouldn’t ever feel better,” she said.

“Tendons can be pretty bad,” their grandmother answered. “What are your plans for
the day?” she asked Dicey. There was a challenge in her words.

“Clean out the barn,” Dicey said.

“Not without sunlight. It’s dark as the tomb in there,” the woman answered. She waited,
her eyes snapping.

“We’ll wash windows,” Dicey said.

“In the rain?”

“It’s not raining inside.”

Her grandmother nodded. “I could use some help in the kitchen.”

Dicey washed off the tomatoes. James cut them up and Maybeth ladled them awkwardly
into jars with her left hand. Sammy got down some old towels and ripped them into
cloths. Their grandmother put the tops on the jars and set them into the canning pot.

“You know those old houses in town,” James said. “Who owned them?”

“Rich people. There was a time when Crisfield was a boom town,” their grandmother
said. “People made fortunes in oysters and crabs and built big houses.”

“What happened?” James asked.

“The usual,” his grandmother said. “There was a lot of
money and a lot of crime—gambling and drinking and people killing one another one
way or another. So the town tried to clean itself up. They passed a law against whiskey
and that had the usual result.”

“Bootlegging? Moonshining?” James asked. She nodded.

“And the oysters had a few bad seasons. So there were no more big fortunes to be made
here, legally or illegally. So people left. The trains stopped running. When I was
a girl, this was quite a town. Not like it is now.”

“Did you know any bootleggers?” James asked. “On the water, with boats, there must
have been a lot of it around here.”

“I suppose I did,” their grandmother said. “But, they’d been doing it for so long—”

“Prohibition didn’t last that long,” James said.

“Around here it did. It started in 1875—and that was before my time, long before,
in case you think of asking. There were families that had been bootlegging for two
or three generations.”

“Why did it start so early?” James asked. His eyes began to gleam and Dicey knew that
he would pick information from the woman’s brain as long as she would answer his questions.
Dicey filled a bucket with water and ammonia and took Sammy upstairs with her to wash
windows. They soaped the glass down with sponges and dried it with the pieces of towels.
By midafternoon, Sammy’s restlessness had grown too large for the house to contain
him. Dicey had worked slowly, dragging out the chore, but Sammy didn’t see any sense
in this.

At two o’clock, by the clock that ticked on the mantel in the living room, he was
ready to quit. Dicey told him he couldn’t, he had to be useful.

Sammy thought for a minute, then ran down the hallway to the kitchen. Dicey had polished
dry all the windows before she wondered where he was.

He’d been gone an hour. He wasn’t in the kitchen. He wasn’t upstairs. Dicey ran out
to the barn, but he wasn’t in the gloom there, either.

She came inside again. Only her grandmother was in the kitchen, sitting with a cup
of tea at the table, while two canning pots rattled on the stove. A huge bowl of cut
squashes stood ready to be canned next. “Did you see Sammy?” Dicey asked.

“He ran through a while back, more than an hour. The other two are in the living room.”
Dicey heard the faint notes of the piano.

“I’m going down to the dock to look for him,” Dicey said. “He’s been gone too long.”

“Didn’t he say where he was going?” her grandmother asked. Dicey shook her head. “That
boy needs some controlling, doesn’t he? Your cousin said that.”

“She didn’t approve of us,” Dicey said. “She—she wanted Sammy to be like James, only
James isn’t like what she thought, either. She just liked him because people praised
her about him. And Maybeth—she wanted her to be a doll, a dressed-up doll to take
places. Sammy wasn’t easy enough for her, that’s why she said that.”

“What about you?” her grandmother asked.

“I dunno,” Dicey said. “I never thought about it. I was busy.”

“Busy sneaking out to earn money and never saying a thing about it to her.”

Dicey bit back her anger. “She thinks we’re not grateful enough, doesn’t she?”

“Something like that. She says it’s her duty, though, to take care of you. I’ve never
seen such a foolish letter. She wrote me another one when her mother died.”

“You didn’t answer it.”

“I couldn’t answer such silliness. I’ll have to write her now.”

Dicey stared at her grandmother. She wasn’t going to ask any questions. Her grandmother
looked tired. “You were awake during the storm,” Dicey said.

“So were you and Maybeth. Were you scared?”

Dicey shook her head. “Maybeth’s arm hurt and it woke her up. Were you scared?”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of in a thunderstorm. I was thinking. With four
children in the house, the only time you can feel alone is at night.”

Sammy burst into the kitchen. His hair was plastered down over his forehead. His shirt
and shorts were sodden. He dripped onto the floor.

“Where have you been!” Dicey demanded. Before he could answer, she ran to get towels.

When she returned, her grandmother was in the middle of a lecture. “—running off without
telling anyone where you’re going. Your sister was worried.”

“You weren’t, were you?” Sammy said. His grandmother shook her head. “Then why are
you yelling at me about it?”

His grandmother stared at him. Sammy’s jaw stuck out and he stared right back at her.

Dicey handed him a towel. “Don’t be rude, Sammy,” she said.

“But it’s the truth,” he protested. She dried his hair for him, and his voice came
out muffled from beneath the terrycloth. “I’m sorry, Dicey—I thought I’d break something
if I stayed inside. I was down at the dock. I bailed out the boat, so the motor won’t
get covered with water. Then I checked the crab pots. The water doesn’t have any waves.”

“Because there’s no wind,” Dicey said. “Next time, tell me where you’re going, okay?”

“Okay,” Sammy answered.

Dicey knew Sammy. He wouldn’t do things for politeness or
because he was told. He would obey if he loved you and knew you loved him. You could
trust Sammy.

“Go get into dry clothes. And hang up the towels,” she said.

Her grandmother was looking at her. “Doesn’t he get punished?” she asked.

Dicey wanted to go along with her, so that she would like the Tillermans and let them
stay on her farm. She wanted to agree so badly that she had trouble saying the words
to argue. But she had given Sammy her word, and Maybeth. She had said she’d stand
up for them. And she had learned that she had to do what she thought was right for
her family, not what someone else thought.

“No,” Dicey said. She made her voice as pleasant and unquarrelsome as she could. “Why
should he? It was a mistake.”

“You’ll ruin him. He’s willful and needs to learn.”

“No,” Dicey said again. “He doesn’t need to learn to give in and give up. That’s what
you mean, isn’t it? The way Sammy is—he’s not perfect, but he’s all right. Stubbornness
isn’t bad.”

“He fights,” she said.

“So do I,” Dicey answered. “And I’m glad he knows how to.”

That was the end of the conversation, but not of the battle, for this was a battle,
not a skirmish. Dicey knew it. She wondered if she won that battle, would she lose
the whole war?

T
he next day, the fifth day, it rained again. Their grandmother continued with her
canning. Dicey thought that the children should be out of the house (although James
protested that he wanted to read and he wouldn’t get into any trouble), so she made
them all go into the barn. It was dark and gloomy in there, but after a while their
eyes grew accustomed, and they could knock down the big spider webs and polish the
tools with the tack rags and put the pieces of lumber into neat piles.

The rain splattered on the tin roof of the barn, like a drummer who was just learning
how to play, uneven and off-beat. Dicey examined the places in the barn wall where
the wood had been torn away, or had fallen awry. She and James worked on figuring
out how to make patches. There was a tall extension ladder in the barn, so they could
reach all the damaged places.

Late in the morning they heard the sudden, sharp call of a car horn.

At first, Dicey couldn’t think of what it was, but when it sounded again she realized
that there must be a car outside. You couldn’t hear anything from the road this far
back.

Dicey and her family went to the door of the barn. They couldn’t see anything, so
they went around the house to the front yard.

Claire’s white station wagon, with two people in it, was stopped under the paper mulberry
tree.

“We figured you were still here since we didn’t hear from you,” Will said, climbing
out. “This sure is the boonies.”

Claire had come with him. She wore her same high-heeled sandals and blue jeans, and
a yellow rain jacket. She had tied a clear plastic scarf around her hair. “How is
everything?” she asked. “Are you doing okay?”

Dicey nodded. “Okay,” she said to Will, “but not terrific.”

“Are you going to introduce us?” Will asked.

“I guess so,” Dicey said. How could she introduce them when she never called her grandmother
anything but
Umm-ah
?

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing’s decided,” Dicey said. “For us, I mean. She says we can’t stay. But she
hasn’t made us go.”

“Invite us in, okay, Dicey?” Will said. He and Claire looked at each other.

“Your feet’ll get wet,” Dicey said to Claire.