— It’s swarming with maggots.
— What are maggots.
— Little white worms, millions of them, and it smells so bad that you can smell it all the way up to the house when the wind is right.
— Do you go bathing every day, we go every day, and we have a sailboat at the Point.
— I have a dory of my own, and my uncle has a motorboat which he takes us out in. It has a real cabin with doors that lock.
The smell was so bad that we couldn’t get very near to the seal without feeling sick, but I showed her the maggots. Then Mother came down the hill walking very slowly, with Porper holding her hand. She was carrying a red silk parasol over her head.
— Porper wants to see the village. Show him how you build houses, Andy and Susan, I want to read my book. Are these your little friends? What are your names, children? Oh, you’re the little girl and boy who have just moved in next door, aren’t you.
We made houses out of rows of quartz pebbles in the sand, in between the beds of eelgrass. First they all had to buy their land from me with shells for money: scallop shells were five dollars, clam shells were one dollar, toenail shells were fifty cents. Mother had made a pile of dried eelgrass to lean against, and was reading a book under her parasol. Warren sold quartz pebbles to us for building material. Susan kept the bakery shop where we bought bread and cakes, Gay was the grocer. I built a house for Porper, and showed him how to go in and out of the imaginary door, and where the bedroom was, and how to go along the streets without stepping into the other houses by mistake. The tide was way out, all the mud flats in the bay were showing, and a little way out two men with a dory were digging clams.
— Shall we dig some clams for supper, Mother?
— Not today, Andy.
— When are we going to the Long Beach for a clambake, and to see the Gurnett. Tomorrow?
— Not till next week, I’m afraid. Now don’t bother Mother, she’s reading. And she may take a nap, she’s very tired and sleepy, so don’t disturb her.
Susan took off Porper’s sneakers so that he could go wading.
— There you are, lamb. Don’t mind about the clambake, we’ll have it next week, and you’ll see the ocean and all the dead fishes.
— What dead fishes.
— And here are some more scallop shells for you, and a horseshoe crab.
Warren and I walked along the beach toward the Point, and I showed him the hunting box, all covered deep in dried seaweed. We got into it and lay down for a while. It smelt very nice. There was an old beer bottle in the corner, with sand and water in it, and we took it out and threw stones at it until it was broken. Take that. And that. And that. And that for your old man.
When we went back, Uncle David had come, and was standing in front of Mother, with his hands in his duck trousers. He was looking down at her and laughing. The parasol had fallen on the sand, she was lying back with her hands under her head.
— Say that again.
— Why not?
— Well, say it.
They laughed together, and then he turned his head toward us and said, Hi, there: what mischief have you fellows been up to?
— Andy, why don’t you take your little friends down to the Point and show them your dory. I’m sure they’d like to see it. Wouldn’t you?
— at the Company Camp, on the edge of the other oak woods, in the late afternoon, with the long yellow sunset light coming over the stunted trees, Frank Tupper drilled us in a row, Sanford and myself and Gwendolyn and the two Peters girls, Warren sitting on the grass and watching us, because he hadn’t yet been elected. Present arms. Shoulder arms. Port arms. Ground arms. Parade rest. The wooden cannon was dragged out of the hut and loaded with a blank cartridge for the sunset salute. The Peters’ windmill, a Sunbeam, was pumping, and water was spattering down from the overflow pipe to the cement base. Frank looked at his watch, looked importantly at the sky, at the oak woods, behind which the sun might or might not have set, then gave the order to fire. Bang. The sun had set, and the cloud of blue smoke floated quickly away. Gwendolyn hadn’t said a word to me. What had she done with the box of candy. Had she shown it to any one. Was it she, or some one else, who had first found it there on the porch. Did she throw it away. Had she laughed. Was she angry. She stood next to me as we saluted the flag, which Frank was hauling down for the night, the folds winding themselves about his shoulders, but she was careful not to touch me. Did I dare to look at her. No. She was stronger than I, taller, but in the wrestling match I had got her down and held her down, with my hands hard on her shoulders. At the picnic in Pembroke woods, she and I had gone off by ourselves to look for firewood, and had gathered wood in a separate heap before taking it back to the others, but all the while we hadn’t said a word. Why was that. Was she as shy as I was, or was she annoyed with me. What was their house like, inside. I had never been into it. They had a bathing hut of their own, in the Cove, and a long narrow pier which led out across the eelgrass to deep water, with a float at the end, where their green canoe was hauled up. It was near the place where Molly and Margaret went to bathe. Once I had followed them down the road, to watch them bathe there, but when I got to the beach I saw Frank and Gwendolyn there on the float, so I had slunk away.
— Moved and seconded that Warren Walker be made a private in this Company. All those in favor say aye.
— Aye.
— in the evening, after helping the cat, Juniper, to catch grasshoppers among the hummocks of wild grass, swishing his tail against my leg, and purring, Uncle Tom and Uncle David and Aunt Norah and Mother having all gone to a dance at the McGills’, and Porper in bed, singing to himself in Mother’s room upstairs, and Susan swinging in a hammock on the porch, with one leg out so that she could push herself to and fro, I walked across the tennis court and watched the moon rise over the Long Beach. The tennis court needed hoeing again. And it needed new lines of whitewash. There were lights in the Walker house, and Mr. Walker went from the house to the barn with a pail in his hand. Then we sat at the dining table under the swinging lamp and played jackstraws.
— I heard Uncle Tom and Aunt Norah talking about Father and Mother.
— You shouldn’t have listened.
— I couldn’t help it. They were talking while I was dressing.
— What did they say.
— What do you want to know for, if you think I shouldn’t have listened.
— Oh, well, you don’t have to tell me, do you.
— They said they had quarreled.
— Who had quarreled.
— Father and Mother.
— I don’t believe it.
— You don’t have to. And they said something about Father coming down to Duxbury.
— Andy! He’s coming for the clambake! Is that it?
— How should I know. That’s all I heard, nitwit.
— Well, I’ll bet that’s what it is.
— Anyway, the clambake’s been put off again, hang it. We’ll never get to that Gurnett. I think I’ll go by myself. I’m sick and tired of waiting for them to get ready — first it’s one fool thing and then another.
— Well, go ahead, why don’t you. You could row there, couldn’t you?
— Row there! Seven miles there and seven miles back? I guess not. What about the tides. Or what about a thunderstorm. How’d you like to get caught in a thunderstorm in a dory, twit! If I go, I’ll walk.
— Well, you rowed to Clark’s Island, didn’t you?
— particularly also the sense of timelessness, the telescoping of day with day, of place with place, evening with evening, and morning with morning. The thunderstorms always coming from the southwest or west, the sky darkening first to cold gray, then to livid purple behind the Standish Monument, the wind rising to a scream across the black bay, the lightning stabbing unceasingly at the far, small figure of Miles Standish. Then the little house lashed wildly by the horizontal rain, the rush to shut the screens and doors and windows, the doors that would hardly shut against the wind, and the leaks everywhere, through walls and roof, pails and tins set out to receive the rapid pinging and clunking of drops, the struggle to get the hammocks in from the porch, take down the tennis net. Andy! Did you get the net in? The bows and arrows? Where are the rackets? Susan — Susan — where is Susan? Always the same thing. Or, at night, the splendid spectacle of the lightning across the bay, the storm advancing rapidly toward the open sea, and presently the lights of Plymouth far off across the water, like a long row of winking jewels, reappearing once more, and the lights of the Standish House, bright through the rain-washed evening air, as if nothing at all had happened.