Trouble (12 page)

"I'm sorry for what's happened to you," said the bigger policeman. "Nobody deserves that kind of trouble."

"Thank you," said Henry's mother.

"That coffee sure does smell good," said the less bigger policeman.

Henry's mother nodded.

"Since we're here," said the bigger policeman, "do you mind if we go down to see the ship? I've been reading about it in the papers and I'm something of a history buff."

Henry's mother hesitated, then nodded again. Slowly.

"You want to show it to us, kid?"

Henry's mother started to speak.

"I promise, no questions about arson cases."

She looked at him, then at Henry. "Only for a minute or so," she said. She let go of Black Dog.

So Henry took them both down to Salvage Cove, along with Black Dog, and the bigger policeman whistled low and rubbed his hands along the boat's ribs. He paced off the length and width of the wreck and wrote down the figures in his notebook. He stepped inside and stood on the ship's exposed backbone, and Henry could see him imagining the ship as a living thing, twisting to let cold currents slide beneath her chin.

"Quite a sight," said the bigger policeman.

"I'd rather have the whole beach back," said Henry.

"I guess I would have, too, when I was your age. But now I look at this, and it reminds me that some things are made to last—like this boat. Look at that keel. You could imagine her still sailing after three hundred years."

"Not after it's been burned."

The policeman shook his head. "No, not after it's been burned. This shore has had trouble before, Henry. Lots of it. A boat that catches fire doesn't get washed up. It comes apart and sinks. This boat was beached and then set on fire. It probably started up by the bow." He pointed. "You can see how the damage is more extensive there than down to the stern." He looked up and down the ship again. "Someone wanted it destroyed."

"Maybe it was an accident," said Henry.

"Or maybe it was someone who was angry."

"Maybe," Henry said, "but you weren't going to ask any questions about arson."

The bigger policeman put his hands in his pockets and studied Henry. "No," he finally said, "I guess I wasn't." He looked at the wreck again. "It's quite a ship, Henry. I wonder if you'll ever find out what really happened to her." He studied Henry again. "She deserves to have someone find out what really happened to her." He held his hand out, and Henry shook it. The less bigger policeman nodded. Then they climbed back out of Salvage Cove, and the policemen got in their car and drove away.

Henry and his mother left for Whittier not long after—but long enough for Mrs. Smith to call Mr. Churchill, and for Mr. Churchill to issue stern warnings against saying anything to any policeman—any policeman at all—about the Merton arson case without him being present.

But the news of the arson had already reached Whittier, so when Henry got there, it was all anyone wanted to talk about.

Even his teachers.

There was Mr. DiSalva in American History.

"You've all heard about the fire in Merton?" he asked Henry's class.

Nods.

"Burned the place down like it was made of cheap match-sticks. That's what comes of not having strict building codes. Sometimes fires have changed the face of an entire city and affected the course of human events. So today we're going to take a break from Lewis and Clark and look at the burning of Chicago. Who can tell me under what president that occurred?"

And there was Mrs. Delderfield in Language Arts.

"Have you heard about the fire?" she asked.

Nods.

"Have you heard that the policemen in Merton are saying that it might well be a case of deliberate arson?"

Nods.

"What an awful thing," said Mrs. Delderfield. "Do you all know the poem by François Villon?"

Henry looked at Sanborn, who was rolling his eyes.

"Prince, n'enquerrez de semaine
Où elles sont, ni de cet an,
Qu'à ce refrain ne vous ramène:
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?"

The class was pretty much silent.

"Isn't that a pretty poem?" said Mrs. Delderfield. "'Where are the snows of yesteryear?' Doesn't your heart thrill to Villon?"

"Oui,"
said Sanborn.

And there was even Coach Santori in PE.

"If you don't pick up the pace on these laps, I'm going to light a fire under you hotter than anything they had to put out in Merton. Hear that, Brigham?"

"I think he's asking you a question," said Henry.

"PE teachers don't ask questions," said Sanford. "They holler out whatever comes into their pea-sized brains inside their thick-boned heads."

"Did you hear what I said, Brigham?"

Sanford picked up the pace. Henry stayed with him to urge him along, until Coach Santori yelled at him, too, wondering if he'd like to do sprints up and down the bleachers when he'd finished.

But by the end of the day, no one at Whittier—at least, no one that Henry heard—had said what everyone was thinking, and what everyone knew everyone else was thinking: That someone from Blythbury-by-the-Sea had burned down Merton Masonry and Stonework, that it was probably someone from Longfellow Prep, and that whoever did it should somehow, in secret, be declared a Blythbury-by-the-Sea hero, since he—or they—had done what the courts wouldn't do with a Cambodian immigrant. Justice had been served, after all.

But when Henry thought about the fire, or heard someone talk about the fire, the wound in his palm began to throb, and the deep heat that hid down in his guts—the heat to get to Katahdin—began to roil, so that he could hardly sit still through the burning of Chicago, or even François Villon.

The only place where Henry could ease the burning was at crew practice, and there he rowed as if it were Katahdin itself he was rowing to, stretching his legs and pulling back with all his might—even if it did make his palm scream for mercy. He passed his heat on to everyone else in the boat—even Brandon Sheringham—and they, too, rowed beyond what they had ever rowed before, so that Coach Santori began to smile—really—and he started to make grand predictions in the Whittier Academy newsletter about the great success that he was anticipating in the Cape Ann Coastal Invitational, where they would host crews from up and down Cape Ann, including, for the first time, a crew from Merton. After that, there were Regionals, and then maybe State. And who knew? Perhaps even Nationals!

"A crew from Merton?" said Henry's mother, when she read the newsletter in the afternoon.

"A crew from Merton?" said Henry's father, when he read the newsletter that night.

"A crew from Merton?" said Henry to Sanborn the next day. "They've never had a crew before. How can they have a crew?"

"Oh, I don't know, Henry. You get a boat, you put it in the water, you get eight guys into the boat, they row, you've got a crew. What's so impressive about that?"

"First off, it's a shell, not a boat. And second, that's not all a crew is, you jerk. There's coaching, and all the training, and learning how to row together as a squad. Crew isn't something you just start up. You have to have a long tradition behind you."

Sanborn looked behind Henry.

"I don't see anything behind you."

Henry looked behind Sanborn.

"I see a big butt behind you."

Which was why Sanborn was crushing Henry's face into the grass out in front of Whittier when Henry's mother came to pick them up that afternoon.

After they dropped Sanborn off, Henry's mother asked if he wanted to go to the hospital. But he didn't. In fact, Henry was going to see Franklin less and less, even though his mother asked him every afternoon if he wanted her to take him over. But what was there to go for? Franklin didn't even know that they were there. And every time Henry saw him, Franklin was whiter and stiller. And he would think of his brother, the great Franklin, of his rugby records, his powerful legs, his powerful arms. He would remember him laughing after a match, easy, strong, his hands bloody, maybe, his face gritty with sweat and dirt, but still laughing, like a champion who had condescended to play hard at a game he knew he could not lose.

But now he was white and still. And now, when Henry looked at his own legs, his own arms, his own face after a crew practice, he knew that he was the stronger one. And something deep and tiny within him was ... glad. It took all of his strength to crush the thought.

But it didn't matter, because Franklin didn't even know they were there.

Except maybe once.

It was late afternoon, on a day that God couldn't have made any better if He had set out to try. The sun was yellow, the skies blue, the new leaves gold and green. His mother had driven to the hospital after school without asking Henry if he wanted to come. While she went to the nurses' station to see if there was anything at all to report—there never was—Henry went to his brother's clean room and looked out the window. Bright green everywhere, the canvas on which all the other colors showed off. The grass was growing full and every tree had begun to dress itself. He could see pink and white blossoms in nearby orchards, and farther away, the brief yellow of the daffodils, so bright, they looked as if Van Gogh had just come from them with his paintbrush still wet in his hand. And everywhere, the branches, supple with their new juices, bowed and dipped and thrust upward with the sea breeze that had come far enough inland to whisper up the red brick sides of the hospital.

Henry reached up, unlocked the window, and opened it to let the breeze in—probably breaking all sorts of rules about germ infiltration and hygiene that the hospital had ever conceived. But he didn't care. The breeze came in immediately and filled the room with its cool breath. Henry pulled it down into his lungs. Deep. Then he thought he heard the sheets on his brother's bed rustle, and he turned.

The light over Franklin's bed was off and the long curtain that hung beside him shadowed his pale face. But Franklin's eyes were open. He was looking past Henry, out the window. His eyes were open. Henry was as sure, as certain as the tide. He watched.

Then Franklin's eyes closed. It was as if a ghost had flickered into Franklin's body and, with all the elusive ways of ghosts, had chosen to ignore him.

"Franklin," Henry whispered. He walked to the bed on his strong legs. "Franklin." He lifted his brother's right arm with his strong hand.

Nothing. His brother's skin was baggy and wrinkled and dry to the touch.

Henry did not tell his mother that Franklin had opened his eyes when she came back in. He wasn't sure why he didn't. Maybe because she wouldn't have believed him. Maybe because he might have been wrong. (He wasn't.) Maybe because he wanted to hold this one piece of his brother to himself. But for whatever reason, he insisted that they keep the window open that afternoon, even when the nurse on duty came in to fuss.

His brother had opened his eyes.

But it was the only time, and as the days—then weeks—went by, and May started to think about letting June have her way, Henry grew less sure, after all.

What he
was
sure of was that the Whittier Academy crew team was going to dominate the Cape Ann Coastal Invitational. The thought of the Merton shell stoked their practices. And every dual meet on every Saturday morning brought them a new victory—by three, sometimes four, boat lengths. Each meet led to another
Blythbury-by-the-Sea Chronicle
front-page article about how this crew was the finest that Whittier Academy had seen in decades, how it didn't look as if any regional crew could hope to touch it, how when these rowers had graduated and moved up to Longfellow Prep, state high school records would fall. Quickly.

Henry knew they were right. He knew they'd see the unlikely happen.

How could anyone have ever guessed that the cost would be knowing? Once and for all, knowing. Knowing finally why there were tears and laughter for the younger brother. And knowing finally why there were no tears and no laughter for him.

Knowing finally why he was never touched, why he was never held. Why there was disgust and blame. And when he knew the terrible story for the first time, it was as if mountains had slammed shut forever.

Knowing meant there was nothing for him. Not the past he had believed, which was a lie. Not the future he had hoped for, which he had hoped for in those moments when hope can stir against all reality.

In the cold morning of the nothing, there was first shame, and then loneliness.

And in the loneliness, another terrible knowledge grew: He had to leave home, because it was no longer home. Maybe it had never been home.

He would leave home, fade far away, dissolve.

W
HEN THE DAY
for the Cape Ann Coastal Invitational finally came—the last Saturday in May—most of Blythbury-by-the-Sea turned out. Its cheerful citizens arranged themselves along the banks of the Charles River, where the invitational was being held since so many teams were competing. They stood dressed in red and white, holding traditional Whittier Academy banners—a lion and unicorn rampant—and singing the school song while the Whittier Pep Band played loudly.

Whittier, Whittier,
All hail to thee!
In thee our past is bright,
Forever red and white.
Whittier, Whittier,
Hail, Victory!

They clapped and cheered loudly at the end of each rendition—and started up again whenever the pep band blared its brassy tones into the blue sky, over the blue river, and onto the blue-clothed crowd from Merton, who stood together, sort of quiet and huddled, watching events on the river that they really didn't understand. But nevertheless, every so often they shouted encouragement in words Henry did not recognize, calls that were answered by flashing smiles and waves from the Merton crew manhandling their shell into the Charles.

The Whittier team slid their shell in and watched it bob merrily on the water before climbing into their places. The wind cutting in from Boston Harbor made the river a little choppy—there were even some whitecaps—but Henry settled down into the shell and felt his body sway easily to meet the low waves. They pulled out into the river for warm-ups, and Henry felt the good familiar pull of muscle against water; still, when they got out onto the water, the wind struck his back, and he knew that this was going to be a hard row.