Dicey’s Song

MINA AND DICEY walked down the hall together at the end of the school day. A few people greeted Dicey, who hurried to keep up with Mina. “Hey, Dicey,” they said. “Hey,” she answered. “Hey, Mina,” they said, passing by.

As they stepped out into the biting air, Mina asked, “How’s it feel to be a folk hero?”

Dicey stopped and stared up at her companion. She didn’t answer, except to say, “Most of them I don’t even know their names.”

“Hey, Dicey,” Jeff called. He had a case for his guitar, probably to protect the wood from the cold air. Dicey was kind of sorry. She had gotten used to hearing a song or two at the end of the day. “I hear you put Chappelle into his place.”

“That wasn’t me, that was Mina,” Dicey told him. “Do you know Mina?”

“Everybody knows Mina,” Jeff said.

“Yeah,” Mina answered. “Everybody knows you, too, friend.”

“That’s what they think,” Jeff said. Mina chuckled.

“So, was this essay as good as everybody says?” Jeff asked Dicey. He sat on the wall, squinting up at her.

Now how was Dicey supposed to answer that? “No, of course not,” she said. That was probably the truth. “But it was pretty good,” she admitted.

Dicey went over to her bike. “Where are you going now?” Mina asked. She put her books down to wrap a long scarf around her head and tuck it inside her coat.

“To work,” Dicey said.

“You’ve got a job? Where? Doing what?”

“At Millie Tydings’s store,” Dicey said. “I clean the place.”

Mina bent over to pick up her armload of books. “OK, if I walk with you? I live downtown.”

“Sure,” Dicey said.

They went down the winding road that led from the school and out onto the main road into town. “How did you get work papers?” Mina asked. “You’re not older than we are, are you? If you are,” she said, “you sure don’t look it.”

“Millie never asked about them,” Dicey said. “I guess she doesn’t know about them. And she’s known my grandmother all her life, so I guess she was doing Gram a favor.”

“I never met your grandmother. I heard about her,” Mina said.

Cars hurried past them. Dicey considered what to say.

“What you heard probably isn’t true,” she finally said.

“How come you live with her? And there are more of you, aren’t there? Somebody told me — maybe my little brother. How come —” She stopped talking and stopped walking. “Dicey, was that your mother you were writing about?” Dicey looked up into Mina’s face. She felt her mouth trying to find out what to answer. “No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask, I shouldn’t say. Me and my big mouth. Pretend I never said that, will you? Let’s forget it. Let’s talk about the weather. Cold, isn’t it?”

Dicey grinned. You didn’t hold your hand out with it clenched up. Gram had said. “No, it’s OK. It was Momma.” She started walking again, and Mina walked with her. A fuel truck roared past them, heading east, inland. “That’s how come we’re here with Gram. There are four of us, I’m the oldest.”

“I’m the second youngest,” Mina said. She was offering Dicey a way out, but Dicey declined to take it.

“The funny thing is, we didn’t know until this summer we even had a grandmother. Momma never said. And Gram didn’t know about us, either, until just before we all showed up.”

“Really?” Mina thought. “Do you get along OK? Are you going to stay long with her?”

“She’s going to adopt us.”

“But what about your mother?”

“The doctors don’t think she’ll ever get better.” They were at the store by then, to Dicey’s relief. “Come on in and get warm,” Dicey said.

Inside, Sammy waited for her. He waited right by the door, watching. He was watching for her to come, but he didn’t say anything when she said hello. Dicey introduced him to Mina. Sammy’s forehead had a cut on it, and his cheek had been scraped. Somebody had painted his face with mercurochrome. Millie started to come out from behind the meat counter.

“Sammy?” Dicey asked him.

“Did you ever play marbles?” he asked. Dicey shook her head. She guessed he didn’t want to talk to her. But she wanted to know what happened.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I can’t ride the bus for a week. That’s two days next week too.”

“Why?”

“It’s Thanksgiving this week,” he told her. Dicey had forgotten.

“I forgot,” she said. She introduced Mina to Millie. They shook hands and Millie told Mina to call her Millie, not Mrs. Tydings.

“Do you play marbles?” Sammy asked Mina.

“I used to,” Millie said. “We all did, marbles and jacks. Jacks for the girls and marbles for the boys. Only the girls all wanted to play marbles too. I guess to show we could. I don’t remember the boys ever wanting to play jacks with us. Kids still play jacks, don’t they?”

Dicey never had.

“I did,” Mina said. “Remember pig-in-a-poke?” she asked Millie.

“I sure do,” Millie said.

“Everybody has them now,” Sammy said. “I got some last week. I’ve lost about half of them,” he said. “I’m coming home with you after work,” he told Dicey. “I called Gram so she won’t worry.”

“Sammy, could you show me how to shoot marbles?” Mina asked. “Dicey’s got to work, but I always wondered.”

“In here?”

“No, outside — unless it’s too cold for you.”

“It’s not cold around here,” Sammy said. They went outside.

Dicey got to work. She was checking the sale dates on the canned and boxed goods. She did this once a month. Millie kept an eye on the dairy products and bread, but she forgot that other things also had limited shelf life.

“You won’t be working on Thursday,” Millie observed. “I had to remind Ab to get herself a turkey.”

“We don’t need a turkey,” Dicey said. They hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving in Provincetown, except for the days off from school. “I could come in on Friday, if you wanted.”

“I guess that’s all right. I go up to Salisbury. I know a widow lady up there, she makes the dinner and I bring the turkey.”

“I could come in Friday morning, if you’d rather,” Dicey offered.

“Doesn’t matter to me, the afternoon is fine. He looks like he was in a fight.”

Dicey nodded agreement, but didn’t say anything.

She tried, without success, to get Sammy to tell her what he’d fought about. All he would say was that Millie had washed him off. “She knew Gram when Gram was little. Do you think Gram knows how to shoot marbles?”

“Why would she know that?” Dicey asked.

“She might,” Sammy insisted. “I gotta learn how or I’ll lose them all and it’s a dollar a bag.”

“What about the bus?” Dicey demanded. It was hard trying to talk to him with the cold wind and without being able to see his face.

“It’s my punishment for fighting on the bus,” Sammy said. “It’s OK. Do you mind?”

“I suppose I’m going to be riding you in, too,” Dicey realized.

“If it stays cold, we’ll have to put off playing until spring, and I’ll have time to practice. The barn would be a good place,” Sammy said.

Dicey gave up.

Gram grilled Sammy when they got home, but learned nothing. She didn’t seem to mind the punishment of not being able to ride the school bus for a week; she agreed with Sammy that that was fair. “Except to Dicey,” she added.

“It’s OK,” Dicey said quickly.

Gram dropped the subject until they had finished dinner and were loitering around the table. All during dinner they had talked about the Thanksgiving meal, and what they would eat, and whether they would ask Mr. Lingerle. Gram said she’d call him that evening, to see if he’d like to come out and eat with them. “But why none of you told me Thanksgiving was coming — what’s the good of having children around if they don’t keep you up to date?” she’d asked. But she was teasing them, so nobody answered.

Then, “What about these fights?” she asked. Sammy wouldn’t meet her eyes. James looked a question at Dicey, and she shook her head to say she didn’t know any more than he did.

When it became clear that Sammy wasn’t about to say anything, Gram looked at Dicey and James for help.

“Who’d you fight with?” James asked. He got up to clear their plates away. Dicey realized he’d done that so Sammy would think he didn’t care much about the answer. She thought that was pretty smart.

“Ernie,” Sammy said.

“He that big kid?” James asked.

“Yeah. You never played marbles, did you?”

“I don’t like him,” Maybeth volunteered.

“Why not?” asked Gram.

“He picks on kids,” she said.

“Does he pick on you?” Gram asked. Dicey knew what she was thinking.

“No. I keep away from him. He picks on them — in a mean way,” Maybeth said.

“What did you and Ernie fight about?” Gram asked.

“Nothing,” Sammy said. “Hey, Gram, did you used to play marbles when you were little? Millie said she did. So maybe you did. Could you play with me sometime, if you did? I bet you were good at it. So you could help me practice.”

“Stick to the point,” Gram said. “You fought with Ernie. Is he in your class?”

Sammy nodded.

“Do you like him?”

“I dunno,” Sammy said. “He’s my only friend.”

“Was it just Ernie you fought with?”

Sammy shook his head.

“So you fought with Ernie and some of his friends,” Gram asked. She sounded like she would never run out of patience. Sammy looked around the room.

“Yeah,” he said. “They don’t ride the bus.”

“Was there anybody on your side?” Gram asked.

Sammy shook his head. “Custer tried to stop us. We weren’t on school grounds,” he pointed out. “And anyway, if I could get enough to win all Ernie’s marbles, that would show him.”

“Show him what?” Gram demanded.

Sammy looked around at all their faces. He was wondering if he had fallen into a trap, Dicey knew.

“Show him I’m better at marbles than he is,” Sammy announced triumphantly.

“But Sammy, you ought to tell us what you’re fighting about,” Gram said.

Sammy shook his head. Dicey had to admire the way he stuck to himself. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then why are you fighting?”

“It doesn’t matter to you. It just matters to me.” His jaw was thrust out and he changed the subject again. “You didn’t answer if you’ll play marbles with me.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I can’t even remember —” Gram started. Then she smiled at Sammy, smiled slow. “I will, if you’ll tell me what you’re fighting about. And I was pretty good when I was a girl. Not even the boys could beat me.”

Sammy was tempted. He wriggled in his chair and refused to smile back at Gram.

“Got you now,” Gram said.

“No, you don’t,” Sammy told her, but smiling himself now.

“OK. I give up. I’ll play with you anyway, and I’ll teach you everything I know, if I remember any of it. But I surely wish you’d tell us.”

Sammy shook his head apologetically.

“Then I wish you’d stop.”

“I try. I’ll try harder,” Sammy said. “Honest.”

“All right. You’re excused,” Gram said. He burst out of the room. She sat looking after him.

“He wouldn’t say anything to me, either,” Dicey said, before Gram could ask.

“Well, I don’t know,” Gram said.

Neither did anyone else.

• • •

“IT MIGHT SNOW!” Sammy greeted Dicey as she walked into Millie’s the next afternoon. Certainly the sky had that heavy, leaden look to it.

“Not before we get home, I hope,” Dicey answered. “I hope Gram can find us coats in the attic. Think we’ll ever be allowed up in that attic?”

“Sure,” Sammy said. “James said maybe there’s a dead body up there. But I don’t believe him.”

“Neither do I,” Dicey agreed. Although the old clothes, the old toys, the past, that might be kind of like a dead body to Gram. “How was your day?”

“I didn’t fight,” Sammy announced. Dicey stood in front of him, rubbing her hands to warm them, studying his round face. He looked up at her. His eyes were set far apart, the way Momma’s and Maybeth’s were, and his yellow hair straggled over onto his forehead. In his jeans and the big, old baggy sweater, he looked comical, and Dicey smiled at him. “Good for you,” she said, suspecting that it wasn’t for lack of temptation that he hadn’t fought. “Ernie again?”

Sammy nodded and pushed his hands down into his pocket. He squared his shoulders.

“You need a haircut. I’ll give you one tonight, a Dicey special. Why don’t you play with Custer, he sounds OK.”

Sammy shrugged. “He’s got lots of people who want to play with him. You ought to get to work, Dicey. Gram said we have stuff to do when we get home, for tomorrow. What do you think Mr. Lingerle will bring for dessert?”

“Something sweet and gooey,” Dicey guessed.

“Maybe chocolate?” Sammy asked hopefully. “Can I help you?”

“Better not,” Dicey said.

She had washed the inside of the windows and the whole meat case (moving meat and chicken and fish away from each section before she cleaned it) before Jeff appeared. Millie was at the front with Sammy, talking about something. They had just the ordering left to do before Dicey was through.

Jeff had come in, he said, to try out Millie’s beef. Millie came back to serve him. He picked out a steak and pot roast and then added a couple of pounds of ground chuck.

“What do you want the chuck for?” Millie asked.

“Spaghetti sauce,” he told her. She advised him to get regular ground beef for that. Hers had better flavor and less fat than the supermarket ground beef, she told him; it was just as good as chuck for spaghetti. He went along with her suggestion.

Dicey stood back watching him. He made his choices as if he knew what he was doing, pointing out the pieces of meat he wanted, selecting them from the display. He bent down to peer into the display counter, then studied what Millie brought up. He was really too thin, Dicey decided, seeing him clearly for what felt like the first time. His face was oval and tapered down to a small chin. He had a nose that was perfectly straight and eyebrows with almost no arch in them. His skin was pale, as if he didn’t get outside much. His hair had as much black as brown in it, and his hands looked too big for his arms.

Dicey thought he was concentrating on his purchases, but he turned to her and said, “I wish you’d stop staring at me. It makes me nervous.”

Dicey was embarrassed. “I’m sorry.” Then she laughed and went down to the front of the store where Sammy waited patiently. She set out the distributor’s order sheets and sharpened two pencils. “It won’t be long now,” she told Sammy.

Jeff paid for his purchases, then lingered awkwardly. “I wondered if you’d like a lift home. I’ve got the car, and we could put your bike in the back. It’s pretty cold.”

“I’ve still got work to do,” Dicey said. “But thanks, anyway.”

“I’m going home with Dicey,” Sammy announced.

“Are you? Who are you?”

“I’m her brother.”

“Meet Sammy,” Dicey said. “Sammy, meet Jeff.”

“We could fit you in the car,” Jeff told Sammy. “You don’t take up much room.”

Jeff was teasing, but Sammy wasn’t in the mood to be teased. “I don’t want to,” he told Jeff. “I’d rather ride on your bike,” he said to Dicey.

“You don’t look much alike,” Jeff remarked.

“So what?” Sammy said.

Sammy’s unfriendliness was making Jeff uncomfortable, and Dicey — reaching out again — wanted to make him feel better. “I’d like a ride, if you don’t mind waiting. Jeff plays the guitar,” she told Sammy.

“So what?”

“So maybe you can get him to play for you while you wait,” she said. “So maybe you could be polite when somebody offers to save me six miles of toting your great hulking body around.” This made Sammy smile.

“I’m not hulking,” he answered. “OK.”

Jeff and Sammy settled down on the seat made by the long window. Jeff fetched his guitar and showed some chords to Sammy. Millie and Dicey worked at the counter. Out of the side of her ears, Dicey heard Jeff singing a long, repetitious song. Sammy watched Jeff’s hands.

Waiting for Millie to decide whether she needed another carton of frozen peas yet, Dicey looked up to catch her employer watching the two boys. She suddenly realized that Millie might not like having them singing like that in her store. “Do you mind?” she asked Millie. “We didn’t ask you if it was all right; do you want them to stop?”

“Why should I?” She turned to Dicey. “It’s pretty,” she added. “Supermarkets have music piped in. But do you think we should order the peas? Or wait for next week?”

At Jeff’s car, Sammy argued about being asked to sit in the back seat of the station wagon. Jeff answered briefly that his father insisted that kids sit in the back, where it was safer for them.

“I’m not a kid,” Sammy said. He was jammed in with grocery bags that had been moved onto the seat to make room for Dicey’s bike in the rear.

“Yeah?” Jeff answered.

“Yeah,” Sammy answered. “Kids are goats,” he declared.

“I know that,” Jeff said.

“So what?” Sammy said. “I don’t care,” he said in response to the expression on Dicey’s face.

Dicey gave Jeff directions. When they got to the mailbox, Sammy said they could walk in from there, because they had to get the mail. Dicey looked at Jeff and shrugged. She and Sammy pulled the bike out of the back of the car. “Thanks for the ride,” Dicey said.

“Any time,” Jeff answered. “That is, any time I do the shopping, because that’s the only time I get the car. I was hoping to meet your sister who sings.”

“We’re in a hurry for dinner tomorrow,” Sammy said. “Because it’s Thanksgiving. Thank you for the ride home.” He handed the mail to Dicey, who noticed another thin envelope from Boston.

“Maybe another day,” Dicey said.

“You mean that?” he asked. He had rolled down the window and was looking seriously at her.

“Sure,” she said.

“Because I will,” he warned her.

“Good,” she answered, puzzled and amused.

She and Sammy walked up the rutted driveway together. “I don’t know what you were so unfriendly about,” she said to Sammy. He just shrugged. “It’s cold today,” Dicey said, to emphasize her point.

“It’s not bad,” Sammy said. “I can’t smell snow.”

“Not down south here. I don’t know if it every really snows here. What did he sing?”

“Something about a man and a lady. It only had three chords, the same three, over and over. But they didn’t sound boring. Do you think he’ll really come to see Maybeth?”

“No,” Dicey said. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know. I don’t know him very well.”

“I liked him OK,” Sammy told her.

“Did you? You could have fooled me.”

Sammy turned before going into the barn to take out his bike. “I can’t fool you,” he assured Dicey. “I’m going to have to hurry, aren’t I?”

“Burn up the roads,” Dicey advised him. “You’ve got enough time before dark.”

“I wonder how fast I can make it, if I really ride fast,” Sammy said.

Dicey found Gram and Maybeth in the kitchen, surrounded by different foods at different stages of preparation. James was busy carrying in logs for the fireplaces. He clattered through the kitchen, his forehead red and flushed, a heavy pea jacket buttoned up around his throat. “You like the coat?” he asked Dicey, puffing under the weight of an armload of logs. “There’s one for each of us. They’re old. They really made good jackets then.”

A fire burned in the unused dining room, to take the chill off the air. Maybeth had pleaded with Gram to serve the Thanksgiving meal in there, and Gram decided to go along with her wishes. Maybeth wanted that room because she said it was prettier than the kitchen. Gram wanted it because it meant she could spread out her preparations. “It’s been years since I put together a meal like this,” she announced. Dicey couldn’t tell whether she was wishing she wasn’t doing it now.

There surely was a lot of work that went into it. Dicey put her books away and came downstairs to help Maybeth patiently rip a couple of loaves of bread up into small pieces for stuffing. Gram chopped onions and celery. She had a pan of chestnuts roasting in the oven. “And we’ll all do them tonight after supper’s cleared away,” Gram announced. “There’s no reason one person should be stuck with that job.”

“Are they worth the trouble?” James asked.

“Tell me what you think tomorrow,” Gram answered.

• • •

WHAT DICEY THOUGHT, leaning back against her chair, her stomach stretched taut, was that the chestnuts were worth the trouble, the whole meal was worth the trouble. They sat around the dark dining room table, the five Tillermans and Mr. Lingerle. Outside, gray clouds crowded down on the land. Inside, the yellow firelight and the small electric lights on the walls made it feel like evening, instead of midafternoon.

James and Mr. Lingerle ate on, and the big bowls of sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes, of beans and corn and tomatoes, all were half-empty. The turkey, which Mr. Lingerle had carved with unexpected skill, was almost half-eaten. Dicey thought about asking for another piece of the crisp skin, but decided that if she did she wouldn’t be able to force down even a polite bite of the two pies Mr. Lingerle had waiting for them. Sammy sat beside her, moaning with contentment. Gram leaned forward, her elbows beside her plate, her curly hair brushed into order, her face — thoughtful and quiet. Maybeth’s round eyes kept looking around the table, and her hands were quiet in her lap.

Maybe it was because they never had celebrated Thanksgiving before. For a piercing instant, Dicey longed for Momma to be with them, sitting on the other side of Sammy, to complete the picture. That was the trouble with being happy, it made you remember other things. Dicey looked at Gram and wondered what Gram was thinking of. She wondered if Gram was remembering other Thanksgivings, and other faces at her table. Momma was one of those, too.

“I wish we hadn’t started yet,” Dicey said. “I wish I wasn’t full.”

Mr. Lingerle lifted his face and halted his laden fork at mid-journey to his mouth. Each of the many ounces of flesh that made up his body seemed to emanate comfort, contentment, good will. Dicey couldn’t stop herself from smiling at him: he was like Thanksgiving made into a single body.

“What we used to do, when I was a boy, was wait until later in the day to have dessert. We always made plenty of dessert, even though we knew we’d never be able to eat it. Then, at suppertime, instead of any normal meal, we would have the pies.”

“But —” James said. “What if you still had room, at dinner. Now.”

Mr. Lingerle chuckled. “You didn’t have to wait.”

“I’ve never had a chocolate pie,” James mumbled. “I was saving room for some.”

Sammy groaned quietly. Maybeth got up to clear the table. Dicey picked up the heavy platter that held the turkey, the carving tools, and a large, long-handled silver spoon that Gram called the stuffing spoon. She had pulled it out from a back drawer in the chest in the dining room.

“You know,” Mr. Lingerle remarked, reaching out to take the spoon from the platter and holding it up, “this is probably valuable. It’s old, I’d guess, and heavy.”

“I know,” Gram said. “So’s the one in the cranberry sauce. I’ve thought of selling that one, if I had to. The stuffing spoon belonged to my mother. Those were good times for Crisfield, for the bootleggers, at least.”

“You never said people in your family were bootleggers,” James protested.

“Our family,” Gram corrected him.

“Did they bootleg whiskey?”

“What else?” Gram said. “I never said so, but they were. This was way back. That other spoon now, that was left to me by my husband’s aunt. In her will. She’d have had it buried with her if she could have. She hated to give anything away. I never did like it.”

“There’s beautiful workmanship on it,” Mr. Lingerle told her, inspecting it.

Gram shrugged. “You’d know how to go about selling it,” she asked.

“I’ve got a friend in Easton who has an antique store. Up in Talbot County where the money is — But Mrs. Tillerman, you don’t need money, do you? I mean” — he became flustered and embarrassed — “I should have brought the turkey, I’m sorry. I never even thought, I was so pleased to be asked.”

Dicey cleared away plates and watched Gram enjoying Mr. Lingerle’s discomfort.

“Call me Ab,” Gram finally said, putting a stop to his apologies. “We don’t need money, but if we did it’s good to know.”

“That’s a relief,” he said. “Where’d my plate get to?”

Only Mr. Lingerle and James ate dessert. The phone rang and Maybeth answered it. It was for Sammy, who came back into the dining room to ask Gram if he could go play at Ernie’s house.

“No,” Gram said.

“Why not?” Sammy demanded.

“It’s Thanksgiving,” James reminded him. James had finished a thin slice of lattice-topped cherry pie and was about to begin on the dark chocolate sliver. “On Thanksgiving, families stay at home.”

“Aren’t they having a dinner?” Dicey asked.

“I said, no,” Gram repeated.

“I could ride my bike. If they were having a dinner he wouldn’t ask me,” Sammy said.

“I said no and that’s an end of it,” Gram said.

“But then — I won’t have any friends,” Sammy told her.

But Gram shook her head firmly.

Sammy turned abruptly and left the room. When he returned, he was smiling and didn’t mention it again. Mr. Lingerle said he would help with the washing up before he left. Gram said she had expected him to stay into the evening, if he would like to. He said he would like to and that only part of his reason was that he could have a real helping of the pies for supper. Gram snorted. He nominated James as his helper in the kitchen. The rest of the family he sent to lie down in the living room. To gather their energies for the walk, he said, the After-Thanksgiving-Dinner walk.

Late in the afternoon, everybody wrapped up in coats and walked down to the Bay. A film of ice lay over the water, going out about a hundred yards from shore. Gram recalled the times when the Bay had frozen so hard that you could walk out on it. Dicey thought of the oystermen working in this bitter weather and thought that the gray clouds reflected the gray of the water. She turned around to look back over the muted winter browns of the marsh to where the house stood, if you could see it.

As if it had been waiting to catch her full attention, the sky loosed a flurry of snowflakes. This wasn’t a real snow, but swirled down lightly, like a rain shower. It came down so few and so slowly, you could watch the descent of an individual snowflake.

The children, led by Sammy, ran back up the path to the house. Once they’d arrived there, however, there was nothing to do. So they dashed back down the path, to join the two adults, who moved more sedately.

“It’s snowing!” Sammy cried. “I don’t have mittens!”

“I’ll find some,” Gram said. “I always wondered if it was worth hoarding all those old clothes away, but now I guess it was,” she said to Mr. Lingerle.

“Makes me feel like running too,” he remarked. He had a plaid wool scarf wrapped up tight around his neck. Snowflakes lay scattered on his thin hair.

“You should,” Gram said. “You should take some exercise.”

“I know, but I don’t. I can’t really,” he told her.

“It’s not good for you,” she said. “All that extra weight.”

He agreed, but didn’t say anything. However, as they entered the warm kitchen, Dicey heard him say quietly: “If you really thought that, you’d not have invited me to dinner.”

“You know better than that, young man,” Gram snapped. Dicey grinned. Gram’s way of reaching out was sure original. Dicey herself was thinking about several things at once, about what that last letter from Boston might have said, about why Sammy wasn’t angry at being refused permission to go to Ernie’s, about James’s friend Toby, who was going to spend the night with them on Saturday for James’s birthday present. (“That’s all I want,” he’d told Gram. “Just that. And a chocolate cake, like Sammy’s. And if you’d make a crab imperial? For supper. And —” “I have just been struck deaf,” Gram announced. “I cannot hear another word you are going to say on the subject.”) And Dicey was thinking about how the ocean never froze but always smashed up the little ridges of ice that dared to form at its edge at a quiet low tide.

By the time they went to bed, a light dusting of snow glittered over everything, glistening white in the dark air. But when Dicey emerged from Millie’s the next afternoon, there was no sign of it. The cold weather had been nudged aside by an unexpectedly balmy day. Sunlight poured warm out of a cloudless sky; the breeze blew gently, wafting the warm air around. The temperature, Millie told her, had reached the sixties at midday. Dicey peeled her sweater over her head and saw Mina walking toward her, wheeling a bike.

“I brought my bike,” Mina said unnecessarily. “I thought I’d walk out with you a ways. I’ve had enough family to last me a year, and it’s gonna happen all over again at Christmas. Can you believe that?”

Dicey didn’t know what she was supposed to say. She didn’t say anything.

“So can I?” Mina asked.

“Can you what?”

“Walk with you.”

“Sure,” Dicey said. They were silent for a block, until Mina asked if Dicey had a nice Thanksgiving, and Dicey said she had.

They were silent again. After a while, Mina asked, “Was it awfully different from your other Thanksgivings?”

Dicey was watching a bright red cardinal fly across the road into an empty field. He flew with a queer, swooping motion, low to the land. He flashed red ahead of them and at eye level.

“They don’t fly high, like other birds,” Dicey observed to Mina.

“We get a lot of cardinals around here, all winter long,” Mina told her.

“We never had Thanksgiving before, with Momma,” Dicey said. She couldn’t seem to keep her mind on the conversation; she couldn’t seem to pay attention. It felt like spring fever. “We were too poor,” she explained.

“That’s no sin,” Mina declared.

“I never said it was.”

Mina turned her head and looked at Dicey. “I never said you did. I was just trying to tell you — where I stand. Your brother’s a lot like you.”

“Did you meet James?”

“Sammy.”

“Sammy isn’t. He looks like Momma.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” And suddenly Dicey’s mind was clear again, like a sudden cure from spring fever when an icy rain surprises you.

“What’s got you jumping down my throat?” Mina demanded.

Dicey looked up at her, struck by a sudden thought: “Or is this the way you talk about the other person?”

Mina chuckled. “I should have known better than to write that where you’d hear it. I should have known you’d understand it and remember.”

“Yeah, but is it?” Dicey insisted.

“Yes and no,” Mina told her. The road was almost untraveled, and they walked slowly, in no hurry to get anywhere. “Look Dicey. See, I’ve got these problems.”

That surprised Dicey.

“I mean, I’m pretty smart, and certainly smarter than most of the kids around here. I’m black. I’m a black female. Oh and — well, look at me. Tell the truth, I could be thirty years old and have kids of my own, couldn’t I? Big as I am. If you just look. See what I mean?”

Dicey grinned, and nodded.

“And I began getting these — bosoms — when I was ten; I started bleeding when I was eleven — I ask you, what are people going to think?”

“What does that matter?” Dicey asked.

“So here I am, this giant oddball — and with more personality than anybody needs — and along comes a scrawny little kid who’s at least as smart as I am and nobody’s doormat. So I said to myself, Mina Smiths, you get to know that girl. I mean, I’ve known you for two months, and you never got close to asking me if anybody ever French-kissed me.”

“Cripes,” Dicey said, “why should I want to know that?”

“That’s what I mean.”

Dicey thought about it. “It could be, I’m just immature,” she said.

“I thought of that, but that’s not the feeling I get. So I’m really interested in you, because you’re interesting. Get me?”

“Yeah,” Dicey said.

“So what is it about your brother that makes you jump down my throat?”

And Dicey told her about the fights he’d been in recently, and the fights he’d been in before, in Provincetown and in Bridgeport. “He won’t tell us why,” Dicey said. “That’s why we’re worried.”

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Gram,” Dicey said.

“Did he tell you before?”

“No, but I could figure it out.” Dicey told Mina about what it was like for them all in Provincetown and about how she had finally understood this summer how scared and angry Sammy got. “But it’s not the same here,” Dicey argued, although Mina hadn’t said anything. “It’s not at all the same for us. Even Maybeth — shows the difference.”

“Lemme think a minute,” Mina said. Dicey waited, feeling how warm the lowering sun was on the side of her face. It wasn’t as warm as a fire, but it warmed her in a deeper way. Then Mina threw her arms up into the air and clapped her hands together over her head. Her bike clattered onto the ground. She ignored it and turned a bright face to Dicey. “It’s gotta be your grandmother,” Mina declared.

“Hunh?”

“Maybe you don’t know this,” Mina continued, talking fast and eagerly, “but your grandmother’s — people around here have considered her —” As she realized what she was saying, her voice slowed down. “I mean — she’s got a reputation for weird chess. As long as I can remember.”

Dicey could feel anger mounting. “You never even met her. You don’t know anything about her, and she isn’t.” She bit at her lip.

“See what I mean?” Mina asked, ignoring Dicey’s anger. “You’re like him, you flare up — don’t try to deny it — as soon as I brought your grandmother into it. I bet you did some fighting too, when you were younger. I bet. Did you? Come on, tell me. Did you?”

Dicey had to smile, Mina was so pleased with herself. “Yes, of course, and about Momma. So you think the kids might be saying things about Gram?”

“Don’t you? Doesn’t that sound like what kids would do?”

It did. “But what can we do about it?” Dicey asked.

“I dunno. How could I know that?” Mina asked.

“What would you do?”

“Me? I’d probably go down to school and bash in a few faces. I’ve always been so big, nobody fought back against me much. But that’d be the wrong thing to do.”

“Yeah,” Dicey agreed. She could see a picture of Mina descending on Sammy’s second-grade classroom. “You wouldn’t really,” she said.

“I’m not sure,” Mina said. “What’s your grandmother like?”

Mina didn’t give you a minute to catch your breath, Dicey thought. Conversations with her were like running, running along the ocean. “Come and meet her and see for yourself.”

“Another time. Today, I’ve got to get back home. I’m only loose for a couple of hours, under strict orders to get back to help with supper. There are fifteen people eating at our house.”

“Who are they all?” Dicey asked.

“They are all — every one of them — immediate family. My parents and brothers and sisters, a couple of husbands, a couple of wives, a couple of little kids. It’s a circus, I can tell you that.” She looked west to where the sun was and said, “And now is the time for me to pedal back to it.”

“Come meet Gram sometime,” Dicey asked.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away,” Mina said. “See you.”

“See you.” Dicey mounted her own bike and rode off in the opposite direction.

She found Gram sitting on the back steps. Gram wasn’t doing anything, for a change, just sitting in the sunlight. Dicey sat down beside her. She didn’t know how to say what she was going to say.

“What if Sammy’s fighting about you?” she asked Gram.

Gram’s face swiveled around to look at Dicey. Gram’s hazel eyes were set deep into her face. Her nose was straight and proud. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. Her skin in this light showed fine lines under the fading tan.

“I’m not,” Dicey answered. Anger tightened Gram’s mouth, but Dicey sat it out.

Gram just stared at Dicey for a minute. She was sitting about where she had been sitting when Dicey first saw her, ever. She was dressed as she had been then, too, long overblouse, a long full skirt and bare feet. Then Gram stood up. “It’s too cold for bare feet anyway,” she said.

“But Gram — ”

Gram turned around.

“What about it?” Dicey asked.

Gram just turned away and went back inside. Dicey followed her into the kitchen. “It’s what you told me,” she insisted to Gram’s back. “It’s what you said, about reaching out.”

“And even if it’s true, what am I supposed to do?” Gram asked. “It’s too stupid.”

“I think you ought to find out,” Dicey said. “You could talk to Sammy.”

“It’s not as if I haven’t already done enough,” Gram declared. Her chin was high and stiff.

Well, that was true. Dicey knew that.

“It’s nobody’s business how I live my life,” Gram announced.

Dicey left the room. She went out to the barn and worked on the boat. She finished the side she had started in September. In the failing light, she saw Sammy ride his bike up to the big doors. The dim light disguised his individual features, so he could have been any seven-year-old, home and tired. He dismounted, holding the bike upright with his hands and landing lightly on his feet. He could have been a picture of his uncle, the other Samuel — Bullet — Dicey thought. She had always assumed from Gram’s reaction to Sammy that he looked like Bullet. But she didn’t know, she didn’t know anything about Gram’s children. Except Momma. She wished Gram would talk about them, so she could understand — Understand what? she asked herself. Understand why Gram wouldn’t even think about if Sammy was fighting over what people said about her, wouldn’t even talk about it. The figure in the doorway wheeled its bike inside and became Sammy himself.

“You finished one side,” he announced.

“Looks good, doesn’t it,” Dicey said. He came to stand beside her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Are you going to work tomorrow morning?” he asked.

“Sure, it’s Saturday.”

“Would it be all right if I sanded it, even if you weren’t here?” Sammy asked. “I’d do a good job.”

“I know you would,” Dicey told him. “That would be OK with me, if you wanted to.”

“Good-o,” he said. He looked earnestly at her. “I won’t try to share the boat with you, Dicey. Honest.”

Dicey looked back down at him. “You’re a goof,” she told him. Her arms slipped down behind his back until her fingers could dig into his rib cage. “A genuine goof and I’m going to call you Goofy.”

He laughed, twisted away, and ran out of the barn. Dicey followed him, crying out that she was going to get him, and tickle him until he wet his pants. Sammy laughed so hard he fell over onto the ground. Dicey pounded on him.

• • •

SATURDAY WAS as warm as Friday, and Dicey changed into her shorts and a T-shirt after lunch, to work on the boat. She preferred wearing the boys’ shirts, but they had to be ironed. She ran her hand carefully over the area Sammy had finished that morning when she had been washing down shelves at Millie’s. The wood was silky smooth under her fingers. The air was silky smooth around her body. James and Maybeth were working in the kitchen. Gram sat knitting and listening. Sammy was off delivering papers. Dicey scraped at the second side, puzzled by this strange warm weather but pleased by the chance to spend an afternoon alone with the boat.

When someone spoke her name from behind her, she swung around, startled. Jeff stood in the doorway. He had a bike, and his guitar was slung over his back. “Whatcha doing?”

“I’m the one to ask that,” Dicey snapped. What was he doing there anyway?

He stepped back and moved his head confusedly. Dicey just about decided she didn’t think much of him when he spoke again.

“Look,” he said. “I thought I’d come out and see you, and I want to meet this sister of yours. If you’re busy, I’ll go. If you don’t like the idea of me being here — you just have to say so.”

Dicey was already sorry for her anger. “No,” she said quickly. “It’s not that. Come on in. I’ve only got a little more to do here. I was just surprised to see someone. You surprised me.”

He leaned his bike against a post and came closer. She thought he might be laughing. “If that’s the way you react to surprises, I’ll be careful not to surprise you again. What are you doing?”

“Scraping it down.”

“That looks hand-made. Do you sail?”

“I have. Just once. My grandmother’s going to teach me. I like it,” she added.

“Want to hear a song while you work?”

“What about the one you played for Sammy.” That way, he’d know she was really trying to make peace.

“Ah, my twenty-minute number.” He seemed to understand that Dicey didn’t want to fight with him. He sat down on the ground and ran fingers over the strings. He adjusted the tuning of two, then ran his fingers along the chord again. For a minute, Dicey watched him. Then she went back to work.

The song was about a man and a lady, just like Sammy said. It told him about the wife of a rich man who fell in love with somebody else and took him home with her while her husband was away. The husband came back and caught them together. He challenged the other man to a fight and killed him. Then he made up to the lady, sitting her on his knee, asking her which man she preferred. But she told him she preferred the other man, even though he was dead, preferred him “to you and all your kin.” Dicey liked that. She liked the spirit of it. So the rich man took the lady where everybody could see, and he cut her throat.

Dicey had finished what she planned to get done that day, but she worked until the song was done. “But why are they all like that?” she asked Jeff. “Why are they all unhappy endings?”

He shrugged. Dicey cleaned off the scraper and put it away.

“Do you know any happy songs?”

“A couple. Not many. Tolstoy says happy marriages are all the same, but unhappy ones are each different. Maybe that’s why, maybe being unhappy is more interesting.”

“Tolstoy? Who’s that?”

“A writer. A Russian. My father told me about it.”

“Why would he tell you a thing like that?”

Jeff shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. Dicey rubbed her hands clean on her shorts. “Well, come on in and meet people. James’s friend Toby’s coming over this afternoon too, so there’ll be lots of people around.”

“What’s your sister’s name?”

“Maybeth. She’s gonna like hearing you play.”

By the time introductions were made and questions were answered, Toby had arrived. And Sammy had returned, and a whole new set of introductions and questions had to be covered. Toby was about James’s size, with light brown hair and big glasses that magnified his eyes. At first, they all stood around in the kitchen, then Gram moved them into the living room. Jeff went right to the point with Maybeth. “Dicey says you sing.”

Maybeth gripped her hands together and looked big-eyed around the room. She didn’t say anything.

“So do I,” Sammy declared.

“I wasn’t thinking of this much audience,” Dicey added.

“As a fact,” Gram announced from the doorway, “they all sing. I don’t,” she added. “Not where anybody can hear me, that is. You wouldn’t either.”

James and Toby were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Sammy stood with them, studying Toby. “You wanna go down to the dock?” he offered. Toby looked at James; they didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do. “We could ride bikes,” Sammy suggested.

Jeff sat down on the floor by the empty fireplace and spoke to Maybeth. “Dicey did tell me you could sing well,” he repeated, looking across the room at the little girl. “Actually, what happened, I told Dicey I thought she had a pretty good voice and she boasted about you.” He played a couple of chords.

James and Toby went over to look at the bookcases.

“Gram, could you make cookies?” Sammy asked.

“I think I know how,” Gram said.

“Chocolate chip?” he insisted.

“Maybe,” she agreed.

“Now?” he said. “Please?”

“In a minute,” she said, looking at him sternly.

Jeff began to sing, accompanying himself. “When first unto this country, a stranger I came —” He stopped. “Dicey?”

“OK,” she agreed.

Dicey sang with him, and after a couple of verses, Maybeth joined in. Her voice was stronger than either Dicey’s or Jeff’s, and after a bit they tapered off singing and just listened. Once she was singing, watching Jeff play the guitar, Maybeth forgot to be shy.

At the end he said, “Dicey was right,” at the same time Maybeth moved to sit in front of him and say, “I like that song.”

“But it’s wrong,” James said. “Jacob doesn’t have the coat of many colors, it’s Joseph.”

“Because that’s the one his brother put blood on,” Toby added, standing beside James. The two earnest, intelligent faces looked at Jeff. “Jacob’s the one with Esau, remember?” Toby asked.

“And the birthright and the blessing,” James said. Dicey thought there was no need for him to show off that way.

“And Joseph goes into Egypt,” Toby said, matching James. “And his brothers do all bow down to him, just like in his dream.”

Jeff’s gray eyes were dancing, Dicey saw, and he was having a hard time not smiling. “I know,” he told the two boys. James’s eyes lit up, and he glanced quickly at Dicey, and nodded at her. The two boys sat down on the floor. “I wondered about that,” Jeff went on, talking seriously to them. “If it’s Jacob because he’s a thief, the man in the song. And it can’t be Joseph — only, the man in the song is part Joseph, part Jacob, isn’t he? I mean, Joseph was a stranger in Egypt, and Jacob stole.”

James looked impressed, and if anyone had asked Dicey she would have admitted that she was, too. She didn’t know what they were talking about, except it was probably from the Bible. But everybody had relaxed and she knew that when she suggested another song, Maybeth would join in eagerly. She tried to think of all the songs she wanted to sing. They had the whole warm afternoon before them.

“You said you’d make cookies,” Sammy repeated to Gram. “I could help you,” he added, going to stand beside her.

“All right,” Gram said. They left the room. James and Toby took out the checkers set. Dicey looked at the gleaming guitar on Jeff’s lap and asked him if he’d ever heard “Who Will Sing for Me?” He hadn’t, so Dicey and Maybeth sang it. He asked them to teach it to him. He had a light, rhythmical way of playing his guitar, picking at it with his finger, not strumming it.

They were perfecting their version of “Amazing Grace,” in three-part harmony, when Gram came back into the room. Mina entered behind her, smiling broadly. “Brought you an alto,” Gram announced.

Jeff flashed a smile up at Gram. Dicey got up to say hello. “I didn’t hear you knock,” she said.

“She didn’t. Came right in the back door. Like certain other people,” Gram said, looking at Dicey who had done just that, that first day they came. “Not what you’re thinking,” Gram said quickly to Mina.

“I didn’t think it was,” Mina answered just as quickly. “It looked like — I thought, Dicey’s family weren’t the kind to use the front door and scrape shoes — so I thought I’d just be one of the gang. It is a gang here, isn’t it?”

Gram surveyed the room. She didn’t say a word, and they waited for her to say something. Sammy ran in to fetch her, because the cookies were ready to come out of the oven.

They went through “Amazing Grace” again, and Mina’s voice was a full alto. Dicey wondered how Gram knew that. “I hope you’re not sung out,” Mina said, settling into a chair. “I could spend the afternoon singing, and that’s the truth.”

“You choose the next one,” Jeff told her.

“You won’t know it,” she countered.

“I can pick up almost anything,” he said. “Can’t I, Maybeth? You tell her — you’ve been watching close enough.”

Maybeth just smiled, and said, “I think he can.”

Mina, curling her legs up under her denim skirt, challenged Jeff. “It’s a gospel tune.” She started to sing, a kind of prayer song, about a man whose only friend was God. By the time she got to the third line, Jeff had joined in, to show Mina he already knew it. They sang together: “Someone beckons me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world, any mo-ore.”

Maybeth looked at Dicey. “That’s like Stewart’s songs,” she said.

“Who’s Stewart?” Jeff asked. He was playing softly now, as if he didn’t want ever to stop.

“Somebody we met last summer,” Dicey answered. She pushed her lips together, because she wasn’t going to say any more about it.

“Because of the way you say the words,” Maybeth explained.

Mina looked at Jeff and shrugged. “Whatever they say, right?”

“Let’s do it again,” he suggested. “Maybeth, can you? Dicey?”

Maybeth could, but Dicey didn’t remember the words yet, so she hummed along. Gram brought in a plate of warm cookies and sat down to join them, listening. Sammy perched himself on the arm of Gram’s chair, like a pet watchdog, Dicey thought.