Salem Falls

by Jodie Picoult

  “A disappointment.” Jack looked into his lap, and when he lifted his face again his eyes were shining-with fury or with tears-Charlie didn’t know for sure and wasn’t certain he wanted to know, either. “This little disappointment of yours . . . it’s going to ruin my life.”

  Charlie refrained from saying what he wanted: that St. Bride had ruined his life all by himself. “I’m sorry, but it’s not within my power to keep rumors from spreading.”

  “How about vandalism, Detective? Can you stop people from painting on Roy Peabody’s door charming little graffiti messages about how I ought to leave?”

  “You can le a complaint, but I’ll tell you now that the chance of anything coming of it is awfully slim.” Charlie looked the other man directly in the eye. “No one in this town can force you to move out of it. No matter what they say or do, it’s your right to stay if you want to.”

  At that, St. Bride’s shoulders relaxed just the slightest bit.

  “Unfortunately,” Charlie added, “it’s their right to say and do whatever they want to try to change your mind.”

  “And if they hurt me . . . if they send me to the hospital, or worse . . . is that what it will take to get you on my side?”

  “I’m on the side of the law. If it comes to assault, they’ll be punished.” Charlie twisted a paper clip in his hands, until the heat that came from the motion snapped it in two. “But that goes both ways, Mr. St. Bride. Because I’m going to be watching you, too. And if you so much as look at a teenage girl in Salem Falls, you’ll find yourself moving out of town as quick as a sheriff’s patrol car can take you.”

  St. Bride seemed to crumble from the inside out, like a building Charlie had once seen blown up in Boston. First the eyes closed, then the shoulders dropped, then the head bowed-until it seemed to Charlie that all he was looking at was a shell of the man who had walked in on such a rush of anger. This man is a criminal, Charlie reminded himself, although it felt as though he were staring at something with feathers and webbed feet and a bill and insisting it was a dog. “Is that clear?”

  Jack did not open his eyes. “Crystal.”

  Gilly leaned across the aisle when Mrs. Fishman’s back was turned and snatched the folded note out of Whitney’s hand.

  Tituba should have hexed them all, it read. She hid the paper between the folds of her dog-eared copy of The Crucible.

  “Why did the girls accuse the goodwives of the town of seeing the Devil?” Mrs. Fishman said. “Gillian?”

  She had read the play-it was their homework assignment. Totally lame, too. A bunch of Puritan girls saying the town biddies were witches, just so that one of them could do the nasty with a married man and not have to worry about his loser of a wife finding out. “Well, at first they didn’t want to get caught for practicing voodoo. So they tried to take the heat off themselves by telling a lie. But this lie . . . it turned out to be the one thing that brought all these other truths out into the open.”

  “Such as?”

  “Like Proctor and Abigail hiding the salami,” the jock behind her called out, and the rest of the class laughed.

  Mrs. Fishman’s lips twitched. “Thank you, Frank, for putting it so succinctly.” She began to walk through the aisles. “Rumor has it that Abigail wound up as a prostitute in Boston. Elizabeth Proctor remarried after her husband was hung. And New Age witches, of course, are no longer accused of consorting with the Devil.”

  Gilly bowed her head, so that her hair spilled forward to shield her face from view. You’d be surprised, she thought.

  It was 8 A.M., and already Addie was so tired she could barely stand. “More coffee?” she asked, holding the pot so it hovered like a bumblebee above the bloom of Stuart Hollings’s mug.

  “You know, Addie, the docs said I ought to stop drinking it because it wasn’t good for my heart.” Then he grinned. “So I said, if three cups a day got me to see the sunny side of 86, I’m just gonna keep doin’ what I’ve been doin’!”

  Smiling, Addie poured. “Let’s hope this gets you another 86 years.”

  “Christamighty, no,” Wallace groaned, beside him. “I’m hoping he’ll buy the farm before me, just so’s I can have a decade of peace and quiet.”

  At the cash register, Roy cracked a package of pennies like an egg and let the coins shimmy into the bowl of the money drawer. “Busy today,” he remarked as Addie passed by, seating more customers.

  She sighed. “We haven’t had this kind of volume since the summer we offered free blue plate specials every time the thermometer topped a hundred degrees.”

  She smiled at her father, and he smiled back, but they both knew what had caused the sudden increase in patronage. People who had never set foot inside the Do-Or-Diner had come because there was a spectacle on display in their town, a criminal who had the nerve to choose their own small hamlet as a place of residence, and they wanted to see what kind of man would be so daring, or so stupid. It seemed impossible that the news had spread so quickly from Wes to filter into this group of customers, but then Addie only had to look as far as herself to know that it had happened before. Rumor grew and morphed, until a man accused of assault might turn into a serial rapist, until a grieving mother was seen as a madwoman.

  The sad truth was, nothing was better for a small-town diner than gossip.

  So far, of course, they’d been denied a show. But even as Addie thought this, the door opened and Jack slipped inside, intent on making his way to the safety of the kitchen before anyone could speak to him. His appearance electrified the tiny room: Diners paused with their coffee mugs held in midair, their forks suspended with a bite of food while they stared at a man who had, overnight, transformed from “the dishwasher at the diner” into “the convicted rapist.” “Sorry I’m late,” Jack muttered.

  Addie planted herself directly in his path, unwilling to budge until he looked up at her. “What happened?”

  “Please, Addie. Could we just not talk about it now?”

  She nodded briskly. “Well, I need you out here to clear.”

  The thought of a task was a brass ring, and Jack grabbed on with both hands. “Just let me get my apron.” Slowly, the diner thawed into activity as Jack disappeared behind the swinging doors, the two sides snapping together in an overbite.

  Jack reappeared with an empty busing bin. She watched him approach a family that had finished eating: a mother, a father, a little boy. “Mommy,” the child said in a stage whisper, “is that the bad man?”

  Addie was at his side in a moment. “I’ll take over.” Her voice jolted Jack out of his surprise. With a nod, he crossed the room to bus the counter.

  Stuart winked. “Guess Addie sent you here because we’re safe. Not a perky set of hooters between the two of us.”

  Flushing deeply, Jack reached for their dirty silverware.

  “Don’t blame you, anyhow. You ever watch that MTV station? Heck, you’d have to be six feet under to keep from noticing that Britney Spears gal.” Stuart grinned. “Reckon she might have given me a stroke I wouldn’t have minded, if you know what I mean.”

  “Them girls,” Wallace agreed. “They’re asking for it.”

  Jack’s hands tightened on the busboy’s bin. “They don’t ask for it.”

  “You’re right,” Stuart said, and chuckled. “They see a guy like you and they beg for it.”

  It happened so quickly that later, Jack couldn’t recall the exact moment he grabbed Stuart by the parchment folds of his neck, lifting him off the stool with a single hand. Or how Roy tried to wrestle Jack off the octogenarian. The collective attention of the diner was riveted on a performance beyond their wildest dreams.

  “Jack!” Addie cried, her voice cutting to the quick. “Jack, you have to stop.”

  He let go immediately, and Stuart rolled to his side, coughing. The blood that had been pounding in Jack’s head flowed evenly again, and he stared at his hands as if they’d grown from the ends of his wrists just moments before. “Mr. Hollings,” he stammered.
“I’m so sorry.”

  “The doc was almost right,” Stuart wheezed. “It ain’t the coffee what’ll kill me, but the guy who cleans it up.” With Wallace’s support, he struggled to his feet. “Oh, you’re tough, Jack. It takes a real man to beat up a guy as old as me . . . and to fuck a child.”

  Jack’s hands twitched at his sides. “Stuart, Wallace,” Addie said. “I’m so sorry.” She took a step forward, smiling as graciously as she could. “Of course, breakfast is on the house. For everyone.”

  There was a cheer, and as Stuart and Wallace became immediate heroes again, the tension dissolved like fog. Addie turned to Jack. “Can I talk to you? In private?”

  She led him into the women’s bathroom, pretty and floral and smelling of potpourri. Jack didn’t let himself meet her eyes; he just shuffled and waited for the storm to break.

  “Thank you,” Addie said, winding her arms around his neck as delicately as ivy.

  A moment later, the taste of her still on his lips, Jack spoke. “Why aren’t you angry at me?”

  “I admit, I wish it hadn’t been Stuart. And I wish it hadn’t been in front of so many people, who came here looking for just this. But sooner or later, they’re going to wonder why a rapist would have taken the victim’s side.” She pulled him closer, so that his grateful face was buried against the curve of her neck, and his breath fell between the buttons of her blouse. “Come over tonight?” she whispered. And she felt his smile against her skin.

  In one corner of the Salem Falls High School cafeteria, a makeshift altar had been erected. It overflowed with carnation bouquets and teddy bears and handmade cards that wished Hailey McCourt a speedy recuperation following surgery to remove a brain tumor. “I heard,” Whitney said, “that it was the size of a grapefruit.”

  Gillian took a sip of her iced tea. “That’s ridiculous. It would have been pushing out the side of her head.”

  Meg shuddered. “Hailey was horrible and all, but I don’t wish that on anyone.”

  Amused, Gilly said, “You don’t wish that on anyone?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Meg, you’re the very reason it happened! Don’t you find it just the slightest bit coincidental that we cast a spell on her, and the next day she started falling down?”

  “Jesus, Gill, do you have to tell the whole school?” Meg glanced nervously at the altar, where two students were leaving an oversize spiral lollipop tied with ribbon. “Besides, we didn’t do . . . that. A person can’t grow a tumor overnight.”

  Gilly leaned forward. “That’s because it came from us.”

  Now, Meg was white as a sheet. “But we’re not supposed to do any harm. Gill, if we gave her a brain tumor, what’s going to happen to us?”

  “Maybe we ought to heal her,” Chelsea suggested. “Isn’t that what being a witch is all about?”

  Gillian dipped her spoon into her yogurt and licked it delicately. “Being a witch,” she said, “is whatever we need it to be.”

  Amos Duncan banged a hammer on the pulpit at the front of the Congregational Church. The buzzing in the filled pews stopped instantly, and attention turned to the silver-haired man. “Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  He surveyed the crowd. Most were people he’d known all his life, people born and raised in Salem Falls like himself. Many worked at his plant. All had been summoned to the town meeting with a hastily photocopied flyer, stuffed into mailboxes by enterprising young boys who had been willing to earn a few dollars.

  In the rear, Charlie Saxton leaned against a wall. To keep the peace, he had said.

  “It has come to my attention,” Amos began, “that there is a stranger among us. A stranger who slipped into our midst under false pretenses and who even now is waiting for the best moment to strike.”

  “I don’t want no rapist living here!” called a voice from the rear of the church, quickly seconded by a buzz of support.

  Amos held up his hands for silence. “Friends, I don’t want one living here, either. You all know I have a little girl. Hell, half of you do, too. So which of us is going to have to suffer before action is taken to drive this man out?”

  Tom O’Neill stood up. “We have to listen to Amos. It’s not like we don’t have proof . . . this is a man who served jail time for the assault of a minor.”

  Charlie sauntered down the aisle. “So what are you guys gonna do?” he said, all innocence. “Shoot him in front of the O.K. Corral? Challenge him to pistols at dawn? Or maybe you’re planning to just burn down his place when he’s conveniently in it?” He reached the podium and gave Amos a stern look. “It’s my job to remind you that no one’s above the law. Not St. Bride, and not any of you.”

  “We’ve got righteousness on our side,” someone yelled.

  “We’re talking about innocent children!”

  A woman in a business suit popped out of her seat. “My husband and I chose Salem Falls as a place to raise our family. We moved here from Boston precisely because there’s no crime. No threats. Because we could leave our door unlocked.” She looked around the room. “What kind of message does it send if we’re not willing to preserve that ideal?”

  “Beg pardon.” All eyes swiveled to the left side of the church, where Jordan McAfee lazed in a pew. “I recently moved here, too, to get away from it all. Got a son about the same age as most of those daughters you’re worried about.” Finally, he got to his feet and walked to the front of the church. “I support Mr. Duncan’s initiative. Why, I can’t even count the number of crimes that might have been avoided if the trouble had been nipped in the bud before it even got started.”

  Amos smiled tightly. He didn’t know McAfee from Adam. Still, if the fellow wanted to cast his support Amos’s way, he wasn’t fool enough to turn it down.

  Jordan stepped up to the podium, so that he was standing beside Amos. “What do I think we ought to do? Well, lynch him. Metaphorically . . . literally . . . it doesn’t matter which. Do whatever it takes, right?”

  There were murmurs of assent, rolling like a wave before him.

  “One thing, though. If we’re going to be honest, now, and we start taking care of business this way, we’d better get used to a few changes. For example, all you people out there with children, how many is that?” Hands crept up like blades of grass. “Well, I’d recommend you go home and start spanking, or doing a time-out, or whatever it is you do for punishment. Not because those kids have done anything wrong, mind you . . . but because they just might in the future.” Jordan smiled broadly. “For that matter, Charlie, why don’t you come up here and start cuffing, oh, every fifth person. Figure sooner or later they’re going to get into trouble. And maybe you could just do a computer check of license plates in the town and issue tickets at random, since someone’s going to be speeding eventually.”

  “Mr. McAfee,” Amos said angrily, “I believe you’ve made your point.”

  Jordan turned on him so quickly the bigger man fell back a step. “I haven’t even begun, buddy,” he said softly. “You can’t judge a man by actions he hasn’t committed. That’s the foundation of the legal system in this country. And no pissant New Hampshire village has the right to decide otherwise.”

  Amos’s eyes glittered. “I will not stand by and let my town suffer.”

  “This isn’t your town.” Yet he knew, as did everyone else, that that wasn’t true. He walked past Duncan and Charlie Saxton and 300-odd angry locals. At the back of the church, he paused. “People change,” Jordan said softly. “But only if you give them room to do it.”

  Gillian sat cross-legged on her bed in her robe, her hair still damp from a shower, as she fixed her makeshift altar and considered what she had learned that day.

  By this afternoon, the rumor had spread through the school: The dishwasher at the Do-Or-Diner had raped some girl back where he used to live. It was what her father had been talking about with her friends’ dads; it was why she’d been told she couldn’t leave the house after sundown. G
illy thought of Jack St. Bride, of his gold hair falling over his eyes, and a shiver shot down her spine. As if she would ever be afraid of him.

  It made Gilly laugh to watch the townspeople scurry like field mice before a storm, hoarding bits of safety to last them through this latest crisis. They all thought Jack St. Bride had brought evil, single-handedly, to Salem Falls, but it had been here all along. Maybe Jack was the match, setting fire to the straw, but it was unfair to lay the blame at his feet.

  More than ever, he needed a . . . friend.

  Gillian loosened her robe, and lit the wick of the candle before her. “Craft the spell in my name; weave it of this shining flame. None shall come to hurt or maim; hear these words and do the same.”

  She was warm now, so warm, and the fire was inside her. Gilly closed her eyes, smoothing her palms up from her own waist, cupping her breasts in her hands and imagining that it was Jack St. Bride touching her, heating her.

  “Gilly?” A quick knock, and then the door opened.

  As Gillian’s father walked into her bedroom, she pulled the edges of her robe together, holding it closed at the throat. He sat on the edge of the bed, inches behind her. Gilly forced herself to remain perfectly still, even as his hand touched the crown of her damp hair, like a benediction. “You and those candles. You’re going to burn this place down one day.” His hand slipped down to her shoulder. “You’ve heard by now, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice was thick with emotion. “It would kill me if anything happened to you.”

  “I know, Daddy.”

  “I’m going to keep you safe.”

  Gilly reached up, twining her fingers with his. They stayed that way for a moment, both of them mesmerized by the dancing flame of the candle. Then Amos got to his feet. “Good night, then.”

  Her breath came out in a rush. “ ’Night.”

  The door closed behind him with a soft click. Gilly imagined the fire again, consuming her. Then she lifted one foot, inspecting the sole. The cuts she had made last week were still there, a thin spiral on the arch, like the soundhole on a violin. There was one on her other foot, too. She reached into the pocket of her robe for a penknife, then traced the seam of the skin to reopen the wound. Blood welled up, and Gilly gasped at the pain and the beauty of it.