Closer All the Time Read online

  “What are we doing?” Johnny Lunden said.

  “Ain’t doing nothing,” I said. “She just died.”

  “Perfect,” he said.

  We could hear the clam cops swerving back and forth in the channel in case we might try to sit still in the fog and let them go by. Which was good, because it gave us some extra time. I told Johnny to dump the steamers while I went to work on the motor. I’d been hoping to save our payday, but it didn’t make sense anymore.

  “You sure?” he said.

  I didn’t even bother answering, and he got to work on it.

  Sometimes those Johnsons when you ran them hard would vacuum-lock, and I was hoping that was the case. Meanwhile, we were still riding the current toward the bridge, swinging sideways like a piece of driftwood. The clam cops were roaring along after us, tacking back and forth. I took my gloves off and loosened the vent screw to let some air in. Then I pumped the primer bulb fast as I could until it was hard as a rock. I looked at Johnny and said, “Here goes nothing,” and pulled the cord.

  Nothing is exactly what happened, and he said, “Uh-oh.”

  But I went through the routine again, and then the third time she coughed and started.

  “Praise the Lord!” Johnny Lunden said.

  I straightened us out and ran it full bore. We could hear the other boat gaining, but I’d got us going in time, and we shot under the bridge and over to Baxter Landing.

  We had tied up at the float and run up on the pier by the time they came by. We sat with our backs to somebody’s pickup while they swung over to check out the landing and throttled back enough so we could hear them talking.

  “I bet that’s them right there,” one of them said. “That one, full of rollers.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised,” the other one said.

  “Want me to check the motor, see if it’s warm?”

  “Naw, they’re long gone. It would just make me feel bad.”

  The first one laughed and they throttled up again and peeled away from the float and turned upriver, I guess to make sure they hadn’t missed us on the way down. As soon as it sounded like they were on the other side of the bridge, we walked down the gangway.

  I asked Johnny if he wanted to come along and have a bite to eat—told him I’d drive him back afterward. But he said no thanks, he had to figure out how he was going to get back to pick up the truck he’d borrowed before it got impounded or something.

  I helped him carry his rollers and rake up onto the pier and we set them aside where he could leave them for the time being. He took his flask out, turned it upside down and shook it, but nothing came out. He laughed and stuck it back in his pocket.

  “Wish we hadn’t dumped everything,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “Guess we had to.”

  “No way around it.”

  He stuck out his hand and said, “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Blake,” and then he set off up the hill toward the street. I went back down to the boat and this time I let her drift a good ways before I started her up again. The fog hung like a shroud over the river all the way back, and it was quiet as a church.

  Frank Stover was sitting on the end of my dock fishing when I got home. I threw him the painter and he stood up and pulled me alongside and tied the line off. I climbed up and said, “Thank you kindly.”

  “My pleasure, Early,” he said, and looked into the boat. “I don’t see any steamers.”

  “Didn’t work out,” I said. “You catch any fish?”

  “Drowned a few worms, is all.”

  You could still hear the foghorns downriver. I left my gear in the boat and headed up the dock. Frank followed me with his fishing pole over his shoulder. We took long steps over the missing boards, then walked up the path past his Rambler. I looked in at the stuff he carted up and down the coast.

  “I was really hoping for some steamers,” Frank said.

  “Dinah will fix you a good hot lunch.”

  He made some other comment, but I didn’t hear what it was because after saying that about something hot, I remembered my vacuum bottle. I’d forgotten all about it, and didn’t have it with me. I couldn’t recall seeing it on the trip back. Of course, I’d been pretty busy, but usually it sat right up against the transom.

  I tried to remember if I’d thought to grab it when we were lifting the rollers in. Maybe I did, but Johnny or I could have knocked it overboard while we were scrambling around. Or one of those branches might have caught it somehow. It bothered me I couldn’t remember. All I had to do was look in the boat, of course, but I stood there listening to the foghorns and Frank Stover grumbling about steamers instead.

  I was pretty sure it was gone, probably still bobbing along in the Baxter. That vacuum bottle was tight, and might float all the way down to the bay. Maybe then the tide would wash it back in. I pictured it going back and forth for who knows how long, and eventually somebody finding it in the seaweed. They’d see the sun shining off it and they’d open it up and there’d be a whiff of old coffee. They’d rinse it in the surf, then take it on home. I imagine they’d feel pretty lucky.

  Tomi

  It was the Fourth of July and Tomi Lambert had gone to bed with another of her growing pains. They were mysterious and always seemed to show up at the worst times. Like today, with a parade in the offing. There was nothing to do but grin and bear it, according to her mother. They never lasted all that long and eventually would go away altogether; meanwhile, some more fun stuff would come around.

  Her mother had laughed, saying this. It was all part of becoming a woman, she’d said.

  “Then I think I’ll stay a girl!” Tomi had said.

  “Oh, honey,” her mother had said.

  Tomi turned the pillow over and laid her head back down. She could hear her father rummaging around in the attic. After a while he came down the stepladder, and she went to the door and opened it a crack. He was wearing his Navy jacket. Tugging sharply at it, he marched to the stairwell and headed down to the kitchen.

  Tomi slipped over to look. He was standing at attention in the kitchen doorway.

  “Still fits,” he said in his deep voice.

  “Does that mean we’re marching?” Tomi’s mother said from the kitchen.

  “Not if you don’t want to,” Tomi’s father said.

  “It’s just getting into all that old gear.”

  Tomi’s father went into the kitchen then, and Tomi scampered for the attic. You didn’t get chances like this all the time. She climbed the stepladder and squirmed through the hatch. The attic was lit by a bare bulb, and between the floor joists was insulation that looked like pink cotton candy. Tomi knew if you stepped on it, you’d go right through. That was one reason the attic was supposed to be off limits. There was also rat poison and exposed nails and other perils her parents had only hinted at. But a plank led across the joists to a plywood floor, and over there it didn’t look dangerous—just interesting. There were bulky shapes covered with sheets. Clothing hung from a wooden rod next to a jumbled stack of cartons.

  Tomi walked across the plank, arms out for balance.

  The first carton held only old bank statements and checkbooks. The next was full of black-and-white snapshots of people she didn’t know. Then she tried a shoe box and inside found a small photo album. When she opened the album several folded papers fell out. She carefully opened one of them: a fragile newspaper clipping that turned out to be the obituary of one Philip Metcalf, an American RAF pilot who had been shot down over the Istrian peninsula on July 2, 1945.

  Tomi didn’t know what “RAF” meant, and she’d never heard of Philip Metcalf. She studied his grainy black-and-white picture and whispered Istrian peninsula. He’d given his all, the clipping said, and was sadly missed by mother Mary and father Henry of Portland, and by his bride, Susan O’Leary Metcalf, of Baxter. Philip and Susan had met in Portland while she was in training to become a US Army nurse, and had only been married a week before
Lieutenant Metcalf was deployed overseas.

  Wait a minute, Tomi thought: Susan O’Leary was her mother!

  She dug into the rest of the loose material, found more wartime newspaper stories, several notes from the Red Cross, and a letter from His Majesty, King George VI, extending the Crown’s sympathy for the enormous loss Mrs. Metcalf had suffered for the cause of liberty and freedom.

  A king had written to her mother!

  Tomi kept digging. The album contained wedding pictures of Philip Metcalf and Tomi’s mother in their military uniforms. They were feeding each other cake; they were part of a group of others in uniform, holding drinks and laughing. They were waltzing cheek to cheek, then dancing fast.

  Cutting a rug, Tomi thought. She knew you could call it that because she’d been hiding under the kitchen table one morning when her mother had grabbed her father’s hands and had said, “Come on, old man, let’s cut a rug!” But Tomi’s father wouldn’t cooperate and finally she’d let go. He didn’t like to dance anymore because of his leg, Tomi’s mother told her later. Men were sensitive like that sometimes. Philip Metcalf liked to dance, though; the pictures showed him in such lively poses—crouched and corkscrewed, grinning widely—that Tomi could tell he was enjoying every moment.

  Tomi heard her father start back up the stairs. He always made them creak, and didn’t move very fast, so there was plenty of time to hotfoot it back to the hatch and pose innocently on the stepladder, as if she’d only been thinking about sneaking into the attic.

  “Get down from there, Tomasina,” her father said.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Tomi said in her good-girl voice.

  She backed down the stepladder. “What are all those boxes, anyway?”

  “That’s your mother’s stuff.”

  He started up the ladder, still wearing his Navy jacket.

  Tomi knew he’d been in the war, too; that’s what had happened to his leg. He’d been through a lot, her mother had said. His ship had been torpedoed, and he’d hidden in the jungle and eaten grubs and worms to survive. Tomi sort of liked those stories even if they were disgusting. The only one she didn’t like was how he was finally caught and locked in a big, dark box and mistreated horribly, but that one led to her all-time favorite: how he’d met up with her mother in the hospital after he was rescued. Her mother had been stationed on Tinian, which is where they’d taken him to recuperate. He’d been very sick and hurt, and she’d helped to make him well. Once Tomi’s father had said that when he’d come out of his fever to see a girl from his own hometown standing there, he’d thought at first she was some kind of an angel.

  “God forbid!” Tomi’s mother had said, laughing.

  When her father went back downstairs, Tomi considered going up to the attic again. But her legs still hurt, so she went back to bed instead. She didn’t want to miss the parade because of a stupid growing pain.

  She looked at the ceiling and thought about Philip Metcalf. It was too bad he couldn’t have swum to an island. Maybe her mother could have helped him get well. Tomi imagined him in a hospital bed, looking up at her angelic mother, and suddenly the grainy newspaper image came to life in her mind and it was almost as if he were right there in the room. She could sense his tousled hair and whiskery cheeks and broad shoulders. It was a little scary, but she liked it, too, because he seemed nice, and when her father knocked on her door to say it was time for the parade, she was sorry that it made Philip Metcalf disappear.

  Tomi’s parents were quiet in the car, but they didn’t talk much anyway if she was around. She had to hide in the coat closet to hear anything good. From the closet she’d learned that Father Daley was getting a little long in the tooth—she liked imagining that—and that Alva Potter had been a draft dodger. She heard other good stuff, too, like how they might have another baby before too long, and how her Grandpa Lambert had shot a moose in his backyard and then had had to pay a fine. But other times they would lower their voices, and then Tomi would know she was missing out. Once her mother came out of the kitchen crying, and Tomi hadn’t heard enough to know any reason why.

  Mr. Lambert parked at the high school. Tomi said good-bye and skipped down to Main Street. She trotted past people on the sidewalk and sitting on folding chairs in their yards. When she passed the Mitchell family, her friend Julie waved, but Julie’s cousin Arnold was there, too, standing a little aside, and Tomi couldn’t stand Arnold, who was a bully, so she ran on. She saw old Primus Blake and his family, all sitting on the library steps. James Blake was nicer than most older kids—he’d always smile and say hi—but his mother, Dinah, was loud and scared her a little, so she didn’t stop here, either. She kept going past hot dog carts and cotton candy stands and balloon vendors. The balloons reminded her of Philip Metcalf, the way he’d sort of bobbed around in her room.

  Finally she saw Johnny Lunden standing by the monument, and thought he’d be a good one to watch with. He’d grown up with her parents and sometimes he worked for the town, sweeping or shoveling the sidewalks, picking up trash beside the roads.

  He lived over the hardware store, and when they were in town they’d see him sitting by his window, watching everybody, waving now and then, and sometimes when they were ready to leave he would come down and lean on the car and talk. He always included Tomi, and she liked that. She liked the eagle on his arm and his straw-colored mustache and the way he always joked about everything.

  When Tomi skipped up now he cocked his head and said, “Well, dog my cats, if it isn’t Miss Tomi-salami!”

  Tomi giggled. “Can I watch with you, Mr. Lunden?”

  “It would be a rare honor,” Johnny Lunden said.

  Tomi sat on the base of the statue of the soldier holding a rifle. She made sure to tuck her dress down to hide her underpants, the way her mother had taught her. Otherwise boys like Arnold Stimpson or Daryl Sleeper or that Lucas Hurd would try to look. She peered between her knees at her sneakers, then looked up at Johnny Lunden.

  “How come you’re not in the parade?”

  “Oh, goodness.” He lowered a small, flat bottle.

  Tomi’s eyes narrowed. “Wouldn’t they let you?”

  “Good grief,” he said. “They practically begged me.”

  “Why didn’t you, then?”

  “If I did, then who would you watch with?” he said with a grin.

  Tomi frowned, thinking that one over. Then she heard the high school band start up. She couldn’t see them yet. It sounded like the instruments weren’t quite in tune. She took clarinet lessons, and she could tell. The drums were good, though, rattling and thumping. She liked the bass drum especially, its deep boom as much a feeling as a sound.

  “Mr. Lunden?” Tomi was still watching for the parade. “Do you know who Philip Metcalf was? He was married to my mom. They were only married a week before he went away.”

  “Where did you hear that, honey?”

  “I found out by myself.”

  “Well,” Johnny Lunden said, “it was a long time ago.”

  “They used to cut a rug!” Tomi said.

  “Oh, yes,” he smiled. “They most certainly did.”

  “Then they shot him down in the war.”

  Johnny Lunden frowned and raised the flat bottle. Tomi watched him closely. She knew he was a drinker. Her parents had talked about him in the kitchen. Her father had said, “I don’t know why you give him the time of day,” and her mother had said, “Because we were friends, Roger,” and her father had said, “Ancient history.” But Johnny Lunden still seemed like a friend to Tomi. He was always so nice. When Grandpa Lambert fell down the steps at their house, he was one of the men who came in the ambulance. Johnny Lunden saw her looking and lowered the bottle.

  “Old Tomi-salami,” he said.

  The parade came steadily into range. Two fire trucks were first, lights blinking and sirens so loud that Tomi had to plug her ears. Then the high school band, led by a man walking backwards. Next the veterans, with Tomi’s mother striding smoothly and To
mi’s father limping hard to keep up. Tomi waved, but knew they weren’t allowed to wave back.

  Behind the veterans were floats, with kids self-importantly slinging candy, then the town band, sitting in folding chairs on a flatbed trailer. When the trailer pulled abreast, Tomi said good-bye to Johnny Lunden.

  “Good-bye, honey,” he said back.

  She hurried to catch up to her parents and stayed alongside them past the town hall and through iron gates into the town cemetery, where there were little American flags on many of the graves. The parade stopped there and Father Daley said a prayer for the sons and daughters of Baxter who had made the ultimate sacrifice. He read a list of names, and Philip Metcalf wasn’t on it because he was from Portland, but Earl Blake Jr. was.

  After the prayer someone played “Taps,” and three of the veterans wearing bright white gloves raised rifles and fired into the air toward the river. Tomi could look down the hill behind the cemetery and see the boats sitting there. After the rifle shots the boats started their motors and rode away.

  Everyone in the cemetery walked back to the town lawn, where there were horseshoe pits, pony rides, and barbecued chicken lunches served at long tables. Tomi and her parents didn’t stay to eat, because they were going to the AMVETS supper later on, but as they wandered through the crowd she saw Johnny Lunden, sitting with three women and three men. He was laughing and waving a drumstick, and there was a balloon dancing from the back of his chair. Tomi stared until her mother said, “Don’t be rude.”

  A little later they went home and she took a nap while her father drove to the airstrip that he’d cleared in the woods out by the old Captain Lambert cabin. He’d decided to go back to being a pilot a few years after he’d come home from the war, and had bought an airplane with a GI loan and started up the air taxi there. Today he had a trip to do, but it was just over to Portland, and he was sure he’d be back in time for the supper.