Free Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Gary D. Schmidt Page A

nose.
    It was, Turner figured, as good as a baseball game on Boston Common. Even better.
    They carried all the bowls back inside the house. It was dark and warm and cozy. A shelf with pitchers was tacked to one wall, and underneath was another with a line of books, worn but serviceable. A small potbellied stove took up one corner, and next to it was a dry sink under a window that looked out to the sea. Lizzie's granddaddy took the bowls and stacked them in the sink—"Time enough for that later on"—and he pointed to a line of sepia photographs tacked to the doorway. "Those are our begats," he said, and he touched each one in turn: his grandfather, his own father, himself as a boy with his mama, Lizzie's mama, and another of her mama and daddy holding on to her as if she were a first-place prize they had just won.
    "Where are they now?"
    "You saw Mama before," said Lizzie. "Down to the graveyard." They were all three quiet for a time, and they could hear the screeching of the Tripps, or maybe it was the gulls.

    Turner and Lizzie spent most of the afternoon skipping rocks into the waves—he was better than Lizzie—and climbing up to sway in pines—she could go higher. And only reluctantly did they find themselves going back to the dory, getting in, and each taking an oar. They had trouble figuring how to work them together, and they circled and got slapped in the side by a wave that might have swamped them if it had been even a little bit bigger, but they straightened out and sat side by side, their shoulders working together as they crossed the New Meadows and landed the dory on the shore.
    "You come around again, Turner Ernest Buckminster."
    "I'll be around, Lizzie Bright Griffin."
    She smiled at him as he shoved the dory off, and he waved as she oared her way easily to Malaga and when she landed, she waved once, twice, at him, then ran back up around the point. Turner blew his breath out slow and even. He did not know that Lizzie was doing the same.
    Neither did Turner know that up in town, his father was blowing his breath out, too.
    He got home in good time, and since he wasn't wearing his white shirt, the dirt showed no more than it should. He had run all the way and, truth to tell, skipped some as well, though he had stopped when he came to Parker Head to become the Minister's Son again, stared at from every parlor window. He had walked quietly and calmly, with only a skip now and then when he couldn't help himself. He figured he was smiling like a loon, but probably no one would fuss too much about that—probably.
    The late afternoon was colder as he drew closer to home. The clouds had mottled, and high winds had started to shred their undersides. He wondered how Lizzie and her granddaddy got along on the island come winter, wondered if the New Meadows might ice over so that he could walk out there, wondered if Lizzie ever came into town. He figured she didn't, or at least not much. He thought for a moment of Willis Hurd, and he didn't need to worry any longer about keeping his skipping to a bare minimum.

    He didn't need to worry about it at all when he got home.
    He opened the front door and thought he had walked into a prayer meeting. The parlor was stuffed with his father, Deacon Hurd, Sheriff Elwell, Mr. Stonecrop, and any other rich man who owned a house up to Phippsburg's Quality Ridge. The furniture seemed too small for them—the room seemed too small for them—and they scented the air with old cigars, starch, and sweat. Mr. Stonecrop stood like an actor posing onstage, one hand set carefully in a pocket and the other gesturing toward the ceiling, or maybe to heaven.
    "... Your duty to the town, Reverend. Your duty to the town, I say."
    Even though Turner tried to close the door slowly and quietly, it shrieked out his presence like a guilty accomplice, and they all turned to look at him. Mr. Stonecrop took advantage of the moment.
    "Good Lord, Buckminster, think of your own son here." He gestured toward