Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy by Schmidt Gary D

Author:Schmidt, Gary D. [Schmidt, Gary D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Young Adult, Childrens
ISBN: 9780553494952
Amazon: 0553494953
Goodreads: 165856
Publisher: Yearling
Published: 2004-05-24T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

A round and golden moon rolled low along the horizon for the next few days, too huge and weighty to rise up any higher into the sky. When it finally began to shed its weight and loft higher, it lost its golden hue, and the light became grayer. The air began to frost every night, and the stars to glitter more coldly, and so October came upon Phippsburg and Malaga Island. The cold snapped the tethers of the last leaves, and they fell straight down onto Phippsburg’s roads and over the gravesites of Malaga. Even the pine trees down to Thayer’s haymeadow put on their darker green and hunched their branches closer as the mornings came in colder and colder. It would not have surprised anyone to see the first flakes of snow.

Turner ran to the shore every day now, the forbidden having been silently lifted—or at least not imposed. From the granite ledges he could count twenty, sometimes more, plumes of white woodsmoke rising from the houses on the island, but each time he went, there seemed to be fewer, though the days grew colder. Slowly, little by little, souls were drifting away from the island, their own tethers snapped. And the houses, left soulless, died—windows glassless, doors hanging on single hinges, some of the clapboard already pruned.

Usually, Lizzie would be watching for him. He would wave from the top of the ledges with both his hands over his head, and she would run down to the dory, push off, and be across by the time he had climbed down. Once over on Malaga, they would go up to her house to see her granddaddy—he was always propped up on his elbows and waiting for Turner—and then they would go down to the shore until the sea breeze turned too cold for them to sit by the waves. They’d walk across the island, through the quiet green cemetery, past the foundation of the Tripp house, and then around the whole island, hardly talking, hardly needing to. Everything was as quiet as quiet could be.

If Lizzie wasn’t there waiting for him by the shore, Turner would figure her granddaddy needed her, and he would wait, hoping she might come around the turn. If she didn’t, he would walk home with his coat wrapped about him, a tang of salt in his mouth.

Back at First Congregational, folks were quiet around Turner, though Deacon Hurd had stopped him outside church the Sunday after the game. “Still can’t get a hit off my Willis’s pitching, can you, Turner?” He had laughed, then stopped suddenly and stared at Turner. “What’s that on the tip of your ear, boy?”

“On the tip of my ear?”

“Looks like yellow paint. Have you been painting anything yellow the last few days?”

“Nothing around my house needs painting,” Turner said, which was not a lie at all—sort of.

“Then what’s that on your ear?”

“It’s an old family disease that keeps coming back, no matter what I do.”

“Old family disease?”

“My grandfather got it from missionary work.

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