Homecoming (6 page)

“Where’ll we sleep?”

“How should I know, James? We’ll just have to worry about that when we come to it.”

Dicey put her hand in her pocket and took out her money. She asked Sammy to give her
the money he’d shown her. He didn’t want to but she insisted, and he retreated to
a sulky silence. They had one dollar and fifty-six cents left now. Still enough.

Dicey folded up the map and put it on top of a table. She went down to the water’s
edge and came back with a heavy rock, which she dried on her shirt and then placed
on top of the map. Over the water, the air turned purple with twilight. She rejoined
the others before the fire, sitting between Maybeth and Sammy. Maybeth moved closer
to her and began to hum.

“I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” Dicey sang.

“I don’t know why she swallowed a fly,” James answered her.

Dicey leaned over toward Sammy. She pointed her finger at him.

“Perhaps she’ll die,” he sang out, his eyes lighting up.

They sang the whole song through until Dicey spoke the last line. She waited, just
long enough, before saying, in a solemn voice, “She died, of course.”

Contentment blanketed them. Full bellies, the warm crackling fire, the rain pattering
on the roof and falling gently on the sand pulled them together and held them close.

“Sometimes,” Dicey remarked, “I feel as if we could do just about anything. Because
we’re the Tillermans.”

“And I am too,” Sammy said.

“Yes, you are,” Dicey answered.

James spoke quietly. “Dicey? Do you know where Momma is? For sure?”

“No.”

“Why did she go?”

Maybeth spoke when Dicey didn’t. “Momma’s gotten lost. That’s what I think.”

“How could she get lost?” Sammy asked. “She knew where we were.”

“Not lost from us,” Maybeth said.

“Lost from who?” Sammy asked.

“Not lost from anyone,” Maybeth said. “Just lost. But we have Dicey to take care of
us.”

“Dicey’s not our momma,” Sammy said.

“Lucky for us she isn’t,” James remarked.

Sammy turned on him. “Don’t you say that. That’s not nice.”

“But it’s true,” James insisted. “Dicey wouldn’t ever go off and leave us. You wouldn’t,
would you, Dicey?”

“No,” Dicey said.

“See?” James asked Sammy.

“Momma loves me,” Sammy said.

“You know what?” James asked. “We’re the kind that people go off from. First our father
and now Momma. I never thought of that before. Whadda you think, Dicey? Is there something
wrong about us?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“No, but think about it. We were always alone out there in our house; nobody came
to see us. And Momma talked different from other people, sort of more slow. I can’t
think of anybody else like us in Provincetown. Did Momma ever talk to you about our
father? Did she say where he went?”

“No,” Dicey said.

“Do you remember him?” James insisted.

“A little.”

“Tell,” Maybeth asked.

Dicey gathered together her few memories, like scattered marbles. “He was tall and
dark-haired, with hazel eyes like Momma’s. We all have eyes like theirs. James reminds
me of him, and I guess I do too. You little ones look more like Momma. He had a skinny
head, like James and me. He had a big, loud laugh. He built our beds for us.”

“I know that,” James said.

“I remember him picking me up and sitting me on his shoulders. He’d call me his little
only. I don’t know why.” This was vivid to her, the masculine voice crooning,
“the little only, only in the world, only only.”
“He could pick Momma up too, when he was excited, and swing her around in a circle.
They’d sing, sometimes, when just the two of them were home. But most of the time
he had friends who’d come to see him, and Momma would take us to the beach—me and
James and Maybeth. Once he bought Momma a bright red sweater and I saw her kiss him.”

Dicey stared into the fire, trying to piece together something whole from her few
vague memories.

“He knew about cars. During the summer, he’d work as a bartender. They had fights
sometimes. Real fights.”

“Is that why he left us?” James asked. “I don’t blame him if it was, because Momma
sometimes was—you know.”

“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.

S
ometime 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. “Sounds 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.