Homecoming Page 5

  “Sometimes what?”

  “Sometimes so drifty and moony she could drive you crazy.”

  “I don’t think that’s why. I don’t know why he left. I remember when he did and Momma trying to explain something and crying.” But she remembered more than that, she remembered that Momma was pregnant with Sammy and that made her father angry. Then, sometime, after he’d gone but before Sammy was born, two policemen had come into their house and didn’t sit down but asked Momma questions, and Momma just said, “I don’t know, I didn’t know,” over and over, when they asked her. One of them had knelt down to ask Dicey something, but Dicey wouldn’t talk to him, just looked up at Momma and held her hand tight. So, the older Dicey reasoned, her father had probably broken the law. What law? How could she know? And then he’d run away.

  “I never had a father,” Sammy declared.

  “You did so,” James answered. “Everybody has a mother and father.”

  “Not me,” Sammy said. “I never want to have one.”

  “Well, you can’t do anything about it,” James answered.

  “We all have the same father,” Maybeth said.

  “And I don’t even know his name,” James said. “Dicey, do you remember his name?”

  “No.”

  “But it wasn’t Tillerman,” James said. “That’s Momma’s own name, not his. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “We’re bastards.”

  “I am not!” Sammy cried, leaping to his feet. “I’ll fight you if you say that. I’ll make your nose bleed.”

  “Don’t you remember?” Dicey asked James, who held Sammy at arm’s length.

  “Remember what?”

  “When Maybeth was little, still a baby. There was a big party at our house. Momma wore her yellow dress with the flounces, and she had flowers in her hair. They got married, right outside. There was a man in a blue suit, and they stood together in front of him and said the words. Don’t you remember?”

  James struggled to find the memory in his mind. “No, no I don’t.”

  How could he, Dicey thought, since she was making it up.

  “Somebody had a guitar and Momma danced with you and everybody watched and applauded.”

  “Maybe,” James said. His eyebrows were squeezed together with the effort. “But why do we still have Momma’s name and not his?”

  “Because it’s the best name,” Dicey said. “It’s a good, strong name. Momma said.”

  “Is that real?” Sammy asked. Dicey nodded. “And we can let the fire burn all night?”

  “Sure. It’ll be safe here.”

  Sammy lay down and put his head on his forearms. “I’m going to sleep now,” he announced.

  Soon Maybeth too was asleep, her head in Dicey’s lap.

  James emerged from a reverie. “I didn’t know they got married,” he said.

  “You never asked.”

  “I won’t say it again in front of Sammy, but I don’t blame him for going. Now I won’t mind as much.”

  “What does it matter?” Dicey asked.

  “It wouldn’t matter to you. You always knew how to fight. You’d fight anyone who said anything to you—like Sammy does. But I can’t fight. And the kids—said things about Momma, bad things, about not being married.”

  “Nobody ever did to me.”

  “They wouldn’t dare.”

  That was true, and the thought made Dicey proud.

  “Would they say things to Sammy?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Especially after Maybeth. I think Sammy really got it at school.”

  Dicey fell asleep before the fire that evening, thinking of Sammy and how he must have hated to go to school every morning and then come home, and if Momma was there she would talk to him—but less and less like a mother, and if she wasn’t there he would wonder. That could change a person.

  CHAPTER 4

  Sometime during the night the rain stopped. They awoke to a sun already risen in the sky. They awoke to the last traces of mist floating above the water. They awoke to thirst. “It’s still true,” James said.

  One by one, the little ones first, they went off behind the dunes to go to the bathroom. Waiting her turn, Dicey stared at the water. It seemed to stretch off endlessly, in shallow blue wavelets. The waves here didn’t crash on the shore with a steady sound like muted thunder the way they did in Provincetown. Here, the little waves murmured and gurgled, like contented children. A light breeze came off the water, smelling of salt and marshlands.

  They set off eagerly, to find something to drink, and in the knowledge that they would have to walk only a few miles to the park. They could wait to eat, after last night’s dinner.

  “What’s the name of this park?” James asked.

  “Rockland,” Dicey said. They were walking abreast on the untraveled road.

  “Why?” asked James. “What do you think? Named after somebody called Rockland? Or because the land is rocky there?”

  “How should I know?” Dicey said.

  “Most of the land so far has been flat down by the water,” James continued. Dicey stopped listening.

  They drank from a water hose at a gas station. The attendant, busy and incurious, barely looked at them, so they walked off, Dicey turning to look over her shoulder.

  “He’s not watching us,” Maybeth said to Dicey.

  “I don’t want anyone to know who we are, or that we’re alone.”

  “We’re not alone,” Maybeth answered.

  “She means without adults,” James said.

  “But he let us drink the water. He didn’t seem to notice us much.”

  “You can’t tell,” Dicey said. “You can’t tell who to trust.”

  “Yes I can,” Maybeth said, but not to quarrel. She said it simply, as if it was her name.

  Dicey smiled at her and took her hand. “Well I can’t,” she said.

  The road wound between occasional houses. It was hedged in low stone fences and went up hills and down hills and around hills. They saw few cars and no stores. Trees were in full leaf, the bright green of early summer. The sun warmed them, the shadows of trees cooled them. The houses they passed had smooth green lawns and long white stone driveways. Just before the road into the park, there was a small general store, its one plate glass window cluttered with signs for circuses, garage sales, and church suppers. Dicey went in alone.

  Inside was a young man with red hair that sprang up all over his head in spurts. He had freckles and wore overalls over a plaid shirt. Dicey wandered over to the fresh produce counter. He came to watch her.

  She picked out four potatoes and a bag of apples. She put these down on the counter by the cash register. Then, she got a half-gallon of milk. She went to the hardware shelves and looked at the knives, pans, fishing rods and nets.

  “Can I get you something?” the young man asked.

  “How much are hooks?” Dicey asked.

  “You going fishing?”

  Dicey nodded.

  “There’s not much to catch around here. The clamming’s better. You ever been clamming?”

  Dicey shook her head.

  “You take one of these”—he pulled down a long-handled, claw-fingered rake—“and drag in the sandbars for clams. The clams dig in, just below the sand, and you can see their air holes. Or you can dig for them with your fingers. The rake is more efficient.”

  “But how much are hooks?”

  “Ten cents each.”

  “I’ll take one please. Do you have any fishing line?”

  He offered her a spool, for $1.50. Dicey shook her head. They’d unravel some clothes, or something.

  “What’re you doing, anyway?” he asked as he rang up her purchases.

  “We’re going to the park, my brothers and sister and me. We’re going to cook out. And fish. And maybe dig some clams.”

  “Your folks with you?”

  “Naw. We’re going on our own.”

  He looked at her. “So
unds like fun. Look”—he unrolled a long piece of fishing line from the spool, cut it off, wound it around three fingers to make a tight coil—“you’ll need this if you want to try fishing. You got a map of the park?”

  “Is there one? We just found the park on a state map and decided to come over and see what it’s like.”

  He reached under the counter and pulled out a small folded brown map. “You’ll have it pretty much to yourselves. People only come on weekends, this time of year. Take care now,” he said, ringing up her money.

  “We will. Thanks an awful lot.”

  “If you like the service, you come back.” He smiled. Dicey hefted the bag and left quickly. They had twenty-six cents left. Not enough for anything.

  Just inside the entrance to the park, the road turned to dirt. Woods grew up on both sides, pines and hardwoods, with none of the stone fences the children had come to expect. They walked down the entrance road a way, then Dicey led them off into the trees, out of sight of the road. They sat down and she gave each an apple to munch while she studied the map of the park.

  Rockland State Park was the same general shape as the state of Connecticut, except in miniature. The two long sides of the rectangle were a little over three miles. The short sides measured a mile and a half. The eastern length ran along the Sound in an uneven line. One large cove made what the map called LONG BEACH. There was also a small cove further north, called just BEACH. The rest of the shore front seemed to be headlands and rocky promontories. The high land began at the southwest corner of the park and ran down to the water, which it met up with about halfway along the length of waterfront. In the southeast section the map showed marshlands, labeled BIRD SANCTUARY.

  “It’s four and a half square miles,” James said. “Can I have another apple? Is this all there is for lunch?”

  “I thought we’d fish,” Dicey said.

  The road they were on led through the center of the park until it branched apart about halfway through and went as two roads to the two different beaches. The map showed picnic areas and a playground off to the left, near the inland border. Opposite that, a small campground lay in the highlands on a path that branched off to the right. A larger campground, with six camping sites marked on it, was on a road that turned off the left fork. This campground lay on the headlands that overlooked the water, near the small beach. The picnic area had “Facilities” marked on it. “What do you think that means?” Dicey asked, pointing.

  “Toilets I guess,” James answered. “Do you think they have showers too?”

  Dicey had been hoping for a kitchen house of some sort, with pans and a stove. Where you could make a soup. James didn’t think that was likely.

  “Okay,” Dicey announced. “I say we walk down to here”—she pointed to the large campground—“and put our stuff at this site.” The site nearest to the water. That would feel more like their own home. “Then we better get down to the shore and see if we can find some clams. When we’ve solved the food problem for the day, we can take it easy.”

  Once again they set off, walking four abreast. Perhaps it was the deep silence around them, perhaps the salty wind off the water, perhaps the sense of forest and solitude; for whatever reason, this walk was a pleasure. Dicey’s legs swung out and she began to sing the song about pretty Peggy-O. The others joined in. They sang softly, though, so that their music would contribute to the quiet, not destroy it.

  They passed the playground area to their left. It had tennis courts, parking lots and a children’s section with swings and slide and sandbox and seesaws.

  They continued past to the campsites, which had fireplaces, water faucets and flat dirt spaces, where a tent could be pitched or a car pulled in. They put the two bags down and looked about them. It was high land, and trees soared above them. Hulking gray rocks broke through the earth at irregular intervals, some so large you could climb to the top and sit looking down. A faint path led off to the east. One behind the other, they followed the path. Soon they were standing on top of a rocky bluff, looking down to shallow water. The path ran on for several more yards along the front of the bluff, then descended to a small beach. The children ran down that section of path, slipping, tumbling, jumping from rock to rock.

  The beach was nestled into the rocks, as if after hundreds of years of work the waves had succeeded in making themselves a little room to rest in. It was high tide. Dicey knew that by the closeness of the waves to the line of seaweed that etched the sand. There would be no clams for lunch—you clammed at low tide, on the sandbars. There would be no lunch then, and they’d just have to stand it. They could drink some milk.

  She explained this to the others and they did not complain. Sammy took off his sneakers and waded in the water, which he reported as cold. “Not as cold as ours, but too cold for swimming.” Maybeth gathered the fragments of shells that nestled among the grassy seaweed. James went off to climb the rocks at the water’s edge. Dicey stood, looking out over the water.

  You could see no land across the Sound, just unending, restless dark water. A couple of white sails skimmed along in the distance, bellied out in the wind. The sun toasted her face. She breathed deeply.

  Somehow, they had to get some more money. Maybe she could go back to that store and offer to work. She could sweep and straighten out shelves. She could fetch things. But then she’d have to think up stories to tell the young red-headed man, and she was tired of making up stories, tired.

  James called out, then came running back. “Dicey? There’re mussels on the rocks.” He held out two of the black, bearded mollusks. “You can eat mussels, can’t you?”

  “We sure can,” Dicey said. “We can eat them right here.”

  Dicey and James pulled mussels from the rocks and washed them off in the water, while Maybeth and Sammy climbed back up the hill for twigs and larger pieces of wood. Soon they had a large mound of mussels waiting beside a crackling fire. Dicey gathered an armload of damp seaweed from the water’s edge. When the fire was ready, she placed a layer of wet seaweed right on top of it. Steam hissed its way up through to the air. Quickly, Sammy dropped the mussels onto this bed, and Dicey covered them with another layer of seaweed.

  “It’s like a pie,” she said.

  “Or a sandwich,” James said.

  “It looks awful,” Sammy said, poking at the fire with a stick.

  “But they’ll taste good,” James answered. “Anything would taste good. It’s funny, you know? When I thought there wasn’t anything for lunch I wasn’t that hungry. But now—”

  “Now I’m staaaarr-ving!” Sammy shrieked. He jumped up, did two cartwheels, which took him to the water’s edge, and landed on his feet with his arms out. “And we’re gonna eat!”

  They ate the rich, meaty mussels for lunch. That evening, when the tide was low and the muddy sandbars appeared among puddles of water, as far as a hundred yards out, they gathered clams. These they steamed as they had the mussels. With supper, they drank part of the milk and had an apple apiece. They buried the fire in sand and tossed the shells into the water. Then they climbed back up the steep hill, to hurl apple cores into the woods and go to bed.

  They slept behind the campsite rather than in it, in the woods nearer the water. Dicey couldn’t relax. When she saw that the others were all soundly sleeping, she quietly got up and went back down to the little beach. For a while she just sat in the sand, hearing and seeing the dark waters. Then she walked back and forth along the water’s edge. The stars burned high overhead. Silence and solitude: she might have been alone in the world.

  If she had been sitting when the voices approached, she would have kept still and tried to remain unnoticed. But she was standing by the water, clearly silhouetted there, and she could hear a woman’s voice saying, “There’s someone here.”

  Two figures approached, descending the hill cautiously, hand in hand.

  “Hey, man,” the man called.

  Warily, Dicey nodded to him.

  “Don’t be afraid
of us, we’re harmless,” the woman said. Only she was a girl, really. They were both young, in their teens.

  “So am I,” Dicey answered.

  “Are your folks camping here?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Dicey said.

  “We are,” the girl said. She looked up at the boy’s face. “We’ve been here for two weeks already, haven’t we? Was that your fire we saw earlier?”

  “Probably,” Dicey said. “I had some clams.”

  “You live near here?” the boy asked.

  “Yeah,” Dicey said. Well, right now they were living about fifty yards from where she stood.

  “We always come to this beach,” the girl said. “It feels like our own private beach by now. Doesn’t it, Lou? It does to me. Except for weekends, it’s empty. You’re the first person we’ve met on it during the week.”

  Dicey made a grunting noise in answer.

  “What’s your name, kid?” the boy asked.

  “Danny.”

  “Danny what?”

  “Don’t pry, Lou. Leave him be,” the girl interrupted. “I’m Edie. This is Lou, short for Louis. You’ll scare him,” she said to the boy.

  “Naw I won’t. Will I?”

  “I dunno,” Dicey said.

  “I know about him and it’s okay,” Lou said. Dicey looked up in alarm. She couldn’t see his face clearly. “You ran away, didn’t you? It all got to be too much for you, and you cut out. Isn’t that about it?”

  “So what?” Dicey asked.

  “So we’re in the same boat, on the same trip. So you haven’t got any reason to worry about us squealing on you, or laying a heavy go-home message on you. So, relax.”

  Dicey grinned. “Okay,” she said.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That’s relaxed? I’ve seen people who thought they were about to be mugged more relaxed. Okay, I won’t bug you. We’ll all enjoy the scenery together here and talk about cabbages and kings.”

  “I gotta go now.”

  “If you stick around here,” the girl said, “we’ll see you again. I’d like that, Danny. We’re easy to find, at the small campground. We’ll be there, or at the playground, or down here.”