Underburn by Bill Gaythwaite

Author:Bill Gaythwaite
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

As the plane was making its final descent into Portland, Logan looked out the window and saw the Old Port and the city’s business district sprawled out before him like markers on a board game. And then, at the edge of his line of sight, he spotted a stately lighthouse perched above the craggy coastline. Logan experienced an involuntary jolt as he remembered a book he had loved as a child that was set in New England. It was a meticulously illustrated book about a boy who was sent to live with his grandmother for the summer on the coast of Maine. The boy was not happy to be sent away from his friends or his Midwestern habits, but his parents were going on a trip or one of them was ill or there was some other reason. Logan couldn’t remember that part now. The grandmother lived in a big, shingle-style house that gave the impression of a colossal cruise ship.

The house sat on a bluff that overlooked a rocky beach and a small, enclosed harbor, where fishing boats bobbed on the waves. The grandmother took the boy on various adventures every day of his visit. One time they took a long, dangerous hike along a cliff to an old lighthouse and then climbed its spiral staircase to the very top. As they gazed out to sea, the grandmother entertained the boy with tales of hurricanes and shipwrecks and miraculous rescues.

Another time the grandmother took the boy clamming. She had him look for small holes in the mud at low tide, no bigger than the tip of your index finger. That’s where the clams were hidden. She used an ordinary (new) bathroom plunger to fish them out, which passed for humor in the story, though it was not exactly a comic romp.

Then there was the day when the grandmother and the boy walked in the opposite direction, away from the sea, until they came to a long row of blueberry bushes which sat at the edge of some dark woods. Here they gathered big, fat blueberries in gallon jugs, which they took back to the grandmother’s enormous country-style kitchen. They made pies and muffins from scratch to sell to the tourists, which they did from card tables that they set up along the main road out of town. With the blueberry proceeds, the boy bought some materials to make a bamboo raft, which he took to a narrow channel near the harbor. The boy used an old sheet that he tied to a makeshift mast and in this way he was able to sail along the channel, until the wind picked up and the boy and the raft were swept out to sea. This was when the boy had to rely on all his grandmother’s lessons of the summer (which Logan remembered as amounting to patience, perseverance, and an upbeat attitude) as he navigated the raft to safety. The raft came to shore near the old lighthouse, where the

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