What Came From the Stars (13 page)

Tommy, Patty, and their father were there.

Mrs. Lumpkin was there too—and her associates, and her lawyers, and her lieutenant governor husband, who all rose to give their reports to the Plymouth Planning Commission.

Reports that cited the approval of almost all the neighbors whose property abutted the proposed easement.

Reports that said that Lumpkin and Associates Realtors would be glad to bear the cost of the new infrastructure to carry any additional traffic.

Reports that said that the building and maintenance of PilgrimWay Condominiums would bring a substantial number of both immediate and long-term jobs to Plymouth.

Reports that promised cutting-edge, environmentally friendly building techniques.

Reports that promised increased income for local businesses.

Reports, reports, reports.

Then the Planning Commission asked if Mr. Pepper had anything to say.

He stood. But he couldn’t even speak. Tommy saw him searching, searching for words, but what could he say against the tidal wave of reports sweeping over them all, leaving Mrs. Lumpkin grinning? He shook his head.

Tommy’s chain warmed.

His father was about to sit down.

Mrs. Lumpkin was really grinning.

And Tommy stood and took his father’s hand.

The chain was hot.

His father did not sit down.

Tommy’s father talked about Plymouth. He talked about a cold, bleak, gray November day when people who had suffered a long ocean voyage came to the shore to find a new way of life. He talked about what they saw when they stood on that coast and looked out to sea, and then looked inland. And he talked about how maybe, just maybe, some part of that shore should be kept as it once was, as those early Plymouth settlers first saw it, as Native American tribes had seen it for uncounted generations before that. Maybe, just maybe, not every single bit of it needed to be sold off and built up.

He talked about the shoreline, about the clean ocean smell, about families walking along the ocean’s edge and picking up what the waves were tossing to them. He talked about loading pockets with perfect white stones. He talked about seagulls tussling on the wind, about the sound of the tide coming in, about the moon on the tips of the waves, about the sun lighting the horizon. He talked about what it felt like to stand on the coast and feel all America behind him.

Then he sat down.

Tommy watched the Planning Commission when his father had finished, and he knew they had all gone back to some day when they too had walked along a beach, filling their pockets with white stones while the tide ran out.

If they had taken the vote right then, Tommy was sure the PilgrimWay Condominiums would have blown away in the sea breeze.

But they didn’t.

Mrs. Lumpkin stood up. She had never heard such claptrap in all her life, she said. Not in all her life. Her family went back to the
Mayflower,
for heaven’s sakes. To the
Mayflower
! Who was Peter Pepper to lecture a
Mayflower
descendant?

But she had one or two more reports that she would like to present to the Planning Commission. Would they mind terribly a one-month delay? Just four weeks?

The Planning Commission, still in their dream of the shoreline, nodded approval of the delay, and Mrs. Lumpkin and her lieutenant governor husband—not very satisfied—left.

The Peppers walked home, Tommy and Patty holding their father’s hands.

“Another month,” said their father, “is another month.”

That night, the waves rumbled, broken and shattered, high up the shoreline by the Peppers’ house. Tommy lay awake listening to them, wondering if they would wash away the yellow flags—again. And by the sound of them, they might. They crashed one after another, and Tommy imagined their fierce falls into each other and the terrible drag of them as they pulled back into the seabed. One after another, after another, after another, the wind sweeping up their backs.

Tommy got up and went out into the hall, where the table lamp flickered with sudden gusts. His mother’s image on the pale yellow wall moved beside him in the glow.

By the front door, Patty was already waiting for him, holding both their coats.

“You should be asleep,” Tommy said.

She put on her coat.

He took her hand and they went out and sat down on the stoop, the wind fierce in their faces.

Never had Tommy or Patty seen the waves in such agony. They wrenched themselves out of the sea, they smashed, they battered. Meanwhile, the wind scudded the dark clouds barely overhead, and the moon—which should have been full—was blotted out.

“Patty,” said Tommy after a long time, “you really should go back to bed.”

She scrunched in closer to him.

He held her and they watched together. They watched until their father came out, went back in, and came out again with the wool blankets, which he draped around the three of them. They watched side by side until the wind dropped a sudden icy rain.

It was late, but they decided to build a fire in the fireplace anyway to drive away the chill. And the flames came up quickly, the crackling of the pine kindling louder even than the falling rain, and Patty and Tommy sat close in with the woolen blankets still around them—while their father went down to the cellar to fetch some bigger oak splits.

And suddenly, with a lurch, Tommy felt the chain pull at him. He was sure of it. It pulled at him, back away from the fire. “Patty,” Tommy said.

She looked up. The wind rising again. The rain louder, again, than the fire.

“Patty, let’s get up on the couch.”

They did, and they had not even put the blankets over their legs when a new gust of wind swept, battered, bolted its way down the chimney and, as if it knew what it was doing, scattered the red-glowing embers out into the room where they had been a moment before, and blew the fire into oblivion.

A scream—maybe the wind—came from the beach.

Tommy jumped off the couch and grabbed the shovel by the hearth. Quickly he scooped up the bright embers and threw them back into the fireplace, but the smell told him that they would find some burns in the rug come morning. He scraped across the braids with the shovel once more, then felt for any hot spots.

Patty held out both her hands.

“It’s only the wind,” Tommy said. “It’s nothing to be...”

She shook her hands at him.

Tommy put the shovel back on the hearth and sat down next to her. She scooted to him as close as she could and buried her face against his side. He wrapped the blankets around them.

Another scream from the beach—Patty shuddered—and the still glowing embers burned brighter with the wind that swept down through the chimney.

Finally, finally, their father came back in. “That wind is really strong tonight,” he said, holding the new splits. “And the sound of it! It’s almost as if something is out there.”

Then something pushed at the front door.

Tommy’s chain pulled again. And again.

Another push at the front door.

Their father looked at them.
“Is
something out there?”

“Don’t open it,” said Tommy.

Patty shook her head.

Their father looked back at the door.

Another push. And again, the wind so loud that the sound itself seemed to be wrenching the old clapboards from the house.

The chain was hot.

Quickly Tommy got down by the hearth—the embers were still glowing. He grabbed two sticks of pine kindling and three of the splits and shoved the embers close together—another push at the door—and then he gathered the thinnest of the kindling around the glow. He knelt low and blew. And blew. And blew.

His father went to the door and listened, his hand on the knob.

Patty came and knelt beside Tommy, the blanket over her shoulders.

The door pushed again.

Tommy gripped the chain, hot as it was. Then he and Patty blew together. And blew.

A tiny flame. A tiny red flame along the underside of the kindling. Tommy blew against it carefully.

The wind shrieked down the chimney again.

The tiny flame went out.

Another push at the door, but this time, the wind—was it the wind?—pounded against it, pounded and pounded.

Tommy’s father came back into the living room and gathered Patty to him. “What in the world is happening?” he whispered.

The fah smell of rotten seaweed.

Tommy felt the chain pull him down, down, down to the hearth. And then, he felt it leap.

And the pine kindling burst into hot blue flames.

The wind shrieked down the chimney again, but Tommy added more and more pine, and more, and then the oak splits.

Another push at the door.

More dry splits, and the flames higher. Then higher.

Quiet.

Then more quiet. The fire glowed brightly.

Silence at the door.

The storm blew on and on into the night, and sometimes the wind still rose to a terrible, terrible scream, as if the air were ripping, so that their father said, “It sounds like something dying.”

But Tommy shook his head. “Something angry,” he said.

They watched the fire for a long time. And when Patty had fallen asleep, Tommy’s father said, “Tommy, tell me again about the O’Mondims.”

“There’s only one,” he said. “And I think he’s out there.”

They stayed together in the living room that night. They never let the fire die down.

On Friday, their father drove Tommy and Patty to William Bradford Elementary School, and when they got there, it seemed that everything was pretty much the way it had been—except Officer Goodspeed was stationed outside the sixth grade door. They stopped in the main office to let Mr. Zwerger know they were back, and then Tommy headed to his locker. Everyone he passed watched him as though something was about to happen.

Tommy thought they might be right.

While Tommy had been away, Mr. Zwerger had gone downstairs to the school basement—where no one ever went—and brought up a huge, sprawling desk for Mr. Burroughs that was only missing one drawer. And he had found old desks for everyone else—old enough to have cut-out circles for inkwells in their corners. The desks still smelled of school basement, and even though all the windows were pushed up and there was new paint and a warm breeze and the classroom door was open because there was no new classroom door yet, the room still had the tang of rotten seaweed.

Other than that, everything else was pretty much the way it had been.

Tommy sat down. James Sullivan thumped him on the back with his not-Tom Brady-signed football. Alice Winslow told him that he was a cad for missing four days. (“A cad?” said Tommy.) Patrick Belknap reminded him that he still had his black cowboy hat. And Tommy told him he should come over to his house after school and maybe they could all come and they could play some football on the beach, because how many more warm days were there going to be? Then Mr. Burroughs came in and he asked Tommy how he was doing. Tommy said he was fine. When Mr. Burroughs said he looked tired, Tommy almost said that Mr. Burroughs would look tired too if he was up watching for an O’Mondim all night—but he didn’t.

The warm breeze held through school and on into the afternoon, and the warm breeze was still blowing when James Sullivan and Patrick Belknap and Alice Winslow got to Tommy’s house, and Patrick Belknap put on his black cowboy hat again and Mr. Pepper fed them chips and salsa. And the warm breeze was still blowing when they headed down toward the beach.

“Pepper!”

James Sullivan could only wait so long before he needed to throw his not-Tom Brady-signed football.

“Go long. Way long.”

Tommy did. He ran up the beach and caught the way long pass—on his fingertips, again! Punted it to Sullivan. Then he caught another that James Sullivan threw hard into his gut because Patrick Belknap was guarding him. Punted it to Sullivan. Then another that Tommy had to stop and go back for, since Patrick Belknap was in James Sullivan’s face. Punted it to Sullivan.

Then “Try this,” and James Sullivan reared back and launched a pass that looked like it was going into the end zone. And Tommy ran, and then sprinted, and finally threw himself toward the ball, flat out over the sand—caught it with one outstretched hand—pulled it into his chest.

“Pep-per! Pep-per! Pep-per!” Patrick Belknap chanted.

Tommy stood up, mostly covered with damp sand.

James Sullivan was clapping. “Not bad,” he was saying.

Then a sharp pang, and Tommy felt his chain twist and tighten. The football flew out of his hands and into the high waves.

“Hey,” hollered James Sullivan. “Hey, that’s my...”

The first white water slapped over the football and shoved it up toward the beach. Tommy ran down to catch it—it really wasn’t so far out—but he wanted to keep his sneakers dry, so he looked up to see when the next wave was coming.

This is what he saw.

Twenty-five, thirty feet out, like a stone pier beneath the water, the O’Mondim stood, facing him.

Tommy reached for the halin at his belt, but it wasn’t there.

“Get it, you jerk,” called James Sullivan.

The retreating wave pulled the football farther out.

Tommy reached for the limnae behind his back. It wasn’t there either.

“Pepper, what are you doing?”

Tommy watched the O’Mondim. Beneath the waves, the water and sand rushed and heaved, but the O’Mondim did not move. Even his faceless head did not move.

And Tommy Pepper was filled with a white hot hate. The O’Mondim, who had betrayed Hengel at Bawn and slaughtered the gentle Elil. The O’Mondim, who had overrun the battlements at Brogum Sorg Cynna to destroy what had taken the Valorim a thousand years to build. The O’Mondim, who...

“Pepper, thanks for nothing.”

James Sullivan had rolled his jeans up to his knees.

“No!” Tommy hollered. “No! Eteth threafta!”

James Sullivan looked at him. “What?”

“Stay out of the water!”

James Sullivan shook his head. “That’s my football in there.”

Tommy grabbed him by the arm. He pointed to the waves. “Are you blind?”