A Show of Hands Read online

  “Anyway,” said Crisp, “he told me to just start walking and he’d pick me up before I got too far.”

  “Well, that’s good,” said Mostly. “That’s good.” He stopped at the edge of the cemetery. “There’s a path beats off through here up the shore to McKenniston’s,” he said. “I’ll be goin’ back that way. You be all right?”

  Mostly rarely took his eyes off the ground, but he looked up in response to his companion’s silence. He saw Crisp looking back in the direction of the grave, peering hungrily through the fog.

  “See that deer again?” he said, narrowing his eyes and squinting. He still didn’t see anything. “They don’t usually come out this time of day. Early mornin’s when they come out. Late evenin’. Can’t see anything in this fog anyway.”

  Exhaustion could do strange things to the mind. Crisp had seen strong men surrender their most deeply cherished ideals and beliefs for simple want of sleep. He felt as though his head was filled with helium and would float from his shoulders, or burst, if he moved too quickly. And now he was seeing Amanda Murphys wherever he looked. Half a second ago she’d been standing by the grave. Her own grave. A wandering breeze tugged a thick veil of mist across the scene and everything was gone.

  Mostly knew that Crisp had had a heart attack not long ago. “You sure you’re all right?”

  Chills ran down Crisp’s back. He manufactured a feeble smile. “Oh, sure. Sure. I’m fine,” he said. He patted Mostly on the shoulder. “You go on back to work.”

  “You sure look awful tired,” Mostly protested. “I can go up to the house and get the truck if you want . . . take you back to town.”

  Crisp had already started down the road. Amazing how thick the fog was. Mostly had almost lost sight of him. “Just take half an hour, if you want to wait,” he hollered, his high, nasal voice slicing cleanly through the air.

  “I’ll be okay,” called Crisp. “I’ll be up to see you tomorrow, if that’s still okay.”

  “Sure,” said Mostly to the fog. “Sure,” he said to himself. He stood staring in the direction of the road until he couldn’t hear Crisp’s footfalls on the gravel anymore. Then he turned for one last look at the cemetery.

  “What do you s’pose that is?” he said aloud. He saw something on the far side of the cemetery. For half a second he thought it might have been the deer the professor thought he saw. But it wasn’t. It was a woman, standing near the open grave. “Hey, there!” he hollered involuntarily. The woman looked at him. A fleeting window opened in the fog, allowing him to see clearly. He recognized the costume immediately. The billowing skirt of many colors, the dark bodystocking, the dazzling tangle of long red hair. All the excitement of a thousand childhood games of “ghost in the graveyard” surged over him a hundredfold. He raised a two-syllable soliloquy to heaven, turned, and fled up the path toward McKenniston’s as fast as his legs could carry his old bones and their abundance of flesh. Cold fingers of fright pursued him—ran up his back, along his shoulders, and up his neck.

  “You don’t look too good, Professor.” This observation coming from someone of Billy Pringle’s perceptions was alarming indeed. When he was no more than six or seven, Billy had fallen off a cliff and landed on his head. The experience had had a profound effect on his personality, bringing into play certain defects that would have rendered him an embarrassment in polite society. Not the least alarming of these was that he punctuated every sentence with a loud raspberry. Once old enough to leave home, he’d removed himself to a small shack at the edge of town and settled into a lifestyle that obviated the need of running water, electricity, combs, and toothbrushes. No one would ever imagine, upon sight alone, that he was related to Matty, even by so much as species. However, his gentle nature and quiet concern for and aid to others betrayed the connection and had, over time, made him the ward of a thousand hearts.

  “That seems to be the consensus, Billy,” said Crisp.

  “I don’t know that word, Mr. Crisp,” Billy replied.

  “Consensus is what most people seem to think,” Crisp explained carefully. “Several people I’ve spoken to recently have said the same thing you said.”

  “That you don’t look well?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Consensus?”

  “Consensus.”

  As a rule Billy drove very slowly. When his mind was busy with a new problem or discovery, he drove slower still. At the moment he’d slowed his ancient truck to a crawl. Crisp could almost hear him mentally knitting the word into his vocabulary. He didn’t mind that it would be a long ride back to town. He liked Billy.

  “Well,” said Billy when he’d finished thinking and sped up enough to shift into second, “if that many people say the same thing, you must really look like hell.”

  By the time Crisp realized the statement was meant not as a joke but as an observation, he’d already started to laugh. He almost choked himself trying to turn it into a cough. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, I guess. Haven’t slept well.”

  “You don’t sleep well when you have a lot of things on your mind?”

  “No,” said Crisp. “I think about them.”

  “Why don’t you not think about them ’til mornin’?”

  One had to marshal one’s thoughts carefully before speaking to Billy Pringle. “Well, they sort of think about themselves,” he said. An analogy suddenly sprang to mind. “It’s like an engine. Once you start it, it keeps running all by itself.”

  Billy considered this. “Not if you don’t put gas in.”

  Crisp opened his mouth but, realizing he didn’t have anything to say, closed it again.

  “Don’t seem things never change up this way,” said Billy after a while.

  “Do you come up here often?”

  The truck slowed down. Just a little, though. It was an easy question. “Not too often,” said Billy. “Nope. Once in a while I run up with an order from Carver’s when they got something special goin’ on. Matty sends me up to Prissy’s sometimes. Chores and things.”

  “You deliver groceries?”

  Billy downshifted into second. “Yup. Sometimes they’ll order a whole side’ve beef or a truckload’ve lobsters for picnics. They have these cookouts down on the beach, you know. I even brung a whole dead pig up here once.”

  “A whole pig! Is that a fact? They must be big parties.”

  “Sometimes,” said Billy. “Sometimes there’s just family, though. Not more’n eight or ten.”

  “But why order all that food for just eight or ten people? What do they do with the leftovers?”

  “Oh, they just stick ’em in the freezers. Eat off ’em all summer that way.” Billy laughed. “Nope. Old money up there. They don’t let nothin’ go to waste. Barbie Carver says they could survive on the leftovers of an Indian’s buffalo.” He laughed, raspberried, and laughed again.

  “It would have to be a big freezer to hold a side of beef.”

  “Or a pig, too. Gorry, I’d hate that, wouldn’t you?” said Billy. “Goin’ in there and seein’ a half-ate pig hangin’ there with his face all on and everything.” He shuddered. “That’s how they eat ’em, you know. Cook the thing up whole, head and everything. I seen pictures,” he added confidentially. “They stick apples in his mouth, then they just fall to on it. Cut big ol’ pieces right out’ve him while he’s layin’ there lookin’ at ’em.”

  “Going in? You mean they’re walk-in freezers?”

  “Sure they are,” said Billy. “Just like they got down to the stores. Most of ’em bring their own cooks. And them cooks bring their own food, seems like. Comes over by the boatload, and they salt it away in them freezers. Barbie says that’s ’cause food’s cheaper on the mainland, ’specially down to Mass’chusetts, where the gov’ment pays for it. She says she don’t hardly get any business from up that end’ve the island. ’Course, they get most’ve their regular stuff—eggs and milk and veg’tables and stuff like that—over to East Haven, I should imagine. It’s just a
cross the Thorofare. But when they got a big party on, I guess they raid most’ve the places around for one thing or another, ’cept what they got in them freezers.”

  “Do the McKenniston’s have a freezer like that?”

  Billy shrugged. “I don’t know. I never delivered nothin’ up there. They trade mostly at The Island Grocery when they’re in town, and Leeman Russell delivers for ’em, you know.”

  “Oh,” said Crisp. “Is that a fact?” After a mile’s silence, Crisp asked, “Would you mind dropping me off at The Island Grocery, Billy?”

  Billy said he wouldn’t mind at all. The regular throb and clang of the engine sewed a ragged hem on the ensuing silence. “Were you home during all the excitement up your way the other night?” Crisp asked finally.

  Billy knit his brow and thought carefully. “You mean when everyone was goin’ up to the cemetery?”

  “Yes.”

  Once again the truck slowed to a near stop. Crisp realized that, if he wanted to get back to town anytime soon, he’d have to stop asking questions of Billy. “I was,” Billy replied slowly. “Seems like the whole town come rushin’ by.”

  “Must have been quite alarming.”

  “Alarming?” said Billy with a tilt of the head that indicated another holiday in his vocabulary.

  “Surprising.”

  “Oh, yes it was,” Billy said. “I knew somethin’ was goin’ on. I was out turnin’ up my garden.”

  “In the rain?”

  “It wasn’t rainin’ yet, though the sky was lower’n a fat lady’s bladder,” said Billy. “But that wouldn’t’ve stopped me. Best time to turn’s in a new spring rain, my uncle Walt says. Wakes the soil up and gets it activated, he says, and he’s got the best garden in town, don’t he?”

  “So you watched everyone go by?”

  “Yup. I just stood and watched. Just like a parade, it was, ’cept movin’ faster. All them lights and shoutin’ and tires squealin’. ’Course, there wasn’t any music. After a little while there was just a few stragglers comin’ up the road. Then, ’bout dark, come the last two—you and that girl.”

  Crisp shuddered involuntarily. “What girl?”

  “That one come right up after you, Pr’fessor. I thought you two was together.” Then, in response to an expression on Crisp’s face, he added, “You know, that redheaded girl. I seen her in the lightnin’. She was right behind you when you was walkin’ your bike.”

  They turned off the road into the little gravel parking lot of The Island Grocery. “Here you go,” said Billy. “Say hello to Aunt Matty for me. Tell her I said thanks for that meat loaf she sent up the other day. I’m goin’ to eat it, too. One day soon.”

  Crisp made no motion toward the door. Instead he seemed posed for a portrait of bewilderment: his jaw slack, his eyes focused on something only he could see. “Professor?” said Billy. “Professor, you okay?” He laid his hand on Crisp’s shoulder and shook him slightly.

  Once again fatigue was obscuring the boundaries between the real and the unreal, forming a tiny vortex of confusion that spun through Crisp’s mind, grabbing old memories by their shirttails and tearing them out of seclusion, mixing them up with present perplexities, weaving old ghosts together with new. How is it that someone else was seeing his ghosts?

  “Professor? Want me to take you up to Matty’s?”

  Matty. There was a memory that spanned his whole life. The thought of her swept up all the ghosts, dusted them off, and put them neatly away. “Oh, no. Thank you, Billy. I’ll be fine.” He got out of the truck, closed the door, and tied it shut. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Sure thing,” said Billy. “You want me to wait?”

  Crisp hesitated. “Yes, please. That’d be nice.”

  Why had he said that? He knew Billy had offered out of concern for an old man. He’d become accustomed to offers of help in recent years. And he always refused them. Perhaps this ride had signified the turn of another page in his life. The final page. His leg had fallen asleep and he limped as he walked into the store.

  “Mornin’, Professor.” The girl at the cash register, whose smile he always enjoyed, was a Nelson, but he could never remember which one.

  “Good morning, Miss Nelson,” he said.

  “Philbrook now.” Mrs. Philbrook, nee Nelson, beamed, displaying a dazzling new wedding ring of proportions only lobstermen could afford.

  “Oh! You married young . . . ah . . . young . . . Philbrook, did you?”

  “Yup,” said Mrs. Philbrook, who didn’t seem old enough to be out of school at this hour, let alone married, to a Philbrook or anyone else. She leaned on the counter. “Did Matty send you up for somethin’?”

  “Oh, no. No,” said Crisp. It was one thing to sound like an old man when it was convenient, but he sounded like an old man now, and he hadn’t meant to. He cleared his throat. “No. I’d like to talk to Leeman for a minute. Is he in?” He still sounded like an old man.

  “Sure. He’s around. Just go up and down the aisles. You’ll run into him.”

  Crisp found Leeman working at the soda cooler. “Good morning, Leeman.”

  “Hi, Pr’fessor. How’d you get back to town?”

  “Oh, Matty’s nephew—”

  “Billy?”

  “Billy Pringle. Yes. He—”

  “He gave you a ride, did he?”

  “He gave me a ride. Yes.”

  “You’re lucky you made it back ’fore dark, then,” Leeman said with a laugh. He had opened a box of soda cans and was stamping them with a device that left the price printed in ink on the top of each can. “I’d’ve given you a ride if I thought you’d needed one.”

  “You do that awfully fast, Leeman,” said Crisp in admiration. “Don’t you ever put two prices on the same can?”

  “Not hardly ever,” Leeman replied. He stopped and leaned against a nearby tower of boxes that seemed to have been placed there for the purpose. “ ’Course, I did when I first started out in the business.” He tapped the handle of his stamper. “Been at it almost twenty years now, though.” He paused. “Even if I do make a mistake once in a while—might be some pretty summer girl comin’ down the aisle, you know, so I go a little faster to impress ’em—they know it up at the cash register. So they don’t charge ’em twice, or anything. Ain’t the end of the world.”

  Once again he turned to his work.

  Thickity-thickity-thickity. Crisp was mesmerized by the rhythm of the stamper as it bounced across the cans. He might have stood there all day if Leeman hadn’t finished the top layer and begun stacking them in the cooler.

  “Some sad that was, wasn’t it?” said Leeman.

  “Sad?”

  “That funeral.”

  “Oh,” said Crisp. He was reminded of why he’d come. He wondered if it mattered. “Yes. Not many turned out, did they?”

  “I thought half the town would be there,” said Leeman. “I guess they figure the excitement’s over.”

  Crisp didn’t share the town’s evaluation. “Billy tells me you deliver groceries to the north end of the island,” he said after sufficient silence allowed an abrupt change of topic.

  “In the summertime,” said Leeman. He had pulled the cans of soda already in the cooler to the front and was stacking the new cans behind them. “Start up again pretty soon, I guess,” he said. “Most of the families don’t come up ’til Memorial Day—sometimes the Fourth, even—but they send their help up—staff, you know—to get things ready. I guess I’ll start gettin’ calls in the next week or two. They’re usually clean out’ve most everything.”

  “You deliver to McKenniston’s?”

  “Yup. But they do most’ve their shoppin’ over to East Haven. I go up now and again, though.”

  “Would you happen to know if they have a freezer?”

  “Sure they do. Great big one in the barn.”

  “A walk-in?”

  “Yup. McKenniston’s old man had it put in. He come up in the fall to go huntin’, him and some’ve hi
s friends. If they got a deer, they’d store it in there. Not that they minded if they didn’t get one. I think they come up here mainly to get away from the women—all that high-society carryin’ on. You know? They’d come up here, tie one on for a week or ten days, let it all hang out, as the kids say. You heard ’em say that?”

  Crisp wouldn’t have been surprised at anything kids said these days. He’d lost touch with youth when they got pretty heavily into the business of burning things. Undergarments. Draft cards. A generation of pyromaniacs. It suddenly occurred to him that Amanda Murphy was a generation removed from all that. He nodded.

  “ ’Course, their freezer ain’t as big as the Ringling’s,” Leeman continued. “They got a drive-in freezer.”

  “Drive-in?”

  “Only one I ever heard of,” said Leeman. “Don’t work half the time, though. That is, the generator don’t work.”

  “It’s run by generator?”

  “Yup. I guess that was a good idea back when we had the island power plant. ’Lectricity was down half the time in them days. You know that. But since we got that cable over from Central Maine Power, we don’t have that problem no more. So most’ve the summer places went off the generators.”

  “The McKennistons’?”

  “Oh, they was one’ve the first. They still got it hooked up, just in case, but I don’t guess it’s hardly ever used.”

  Having removed all the cans from one box, Leeman tossed it aside and opened another with a razor blade he kept for the purpose in the pocket of his apron. He turned some of the little wheels in the top of the stamping device and began pricing new rows of cans.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your work,” said Crisp. “Amazing how fast you do that.” The stamper flew even faster until Crisp was out of sight.

  “You know, I think I’ll walk after all, Billy,” said Crisp through the passenger side window.

  Billy looked skeptical. “You sure?”

  Crisp stood a little taller. “Yes, thank you.” He waved as the truck drove off. “I’m much better,” he said to himself.