Martha Calhoun

by Richard Babcock

  We circled around the square, cutting over on Mabel Street, past the telephone company, and then hitting North Emerson and coming back down. Wally’s Record Emporium was empty, except for Wally himself, who was sitting at a raised checkout counter watching a baseball game on an old television.

  Mary Sue found the song she was looking for in the little section of records that were available for customers to listen to, and she led me back to the sound booth, a cubicle equipped with a phonograph. There was barely room for two of us in there. Mary Sue sat in the lone chair, and I stood beside her. The walls were made of white posterboard that had been scribbled on and dirtied and pealed away in spots. In a corner, I saw “T.C. 11–16–54,” and I knew Tom had been there. Mary Sue closed the door, shutting in a sudden strong odor of stale cigarette smoke.

  “You’re gonna love this,” she said. She slipped the 45 out of its cardboard sheath and put it on the phonograph. The sound booth suddenly exploded with noise. Little Richard came on with a kind of squawk, and he sounded panicky to get all the words out. Mary Sue swayed and bobbed her head back and forth, completely out of time to the music.

  “What’d you think?” she asked when it was over and my ears were vibrating in the silence.

  “It’s awfully loud, isn’t it?”

  “That’s the new sound. I think it’s fantastic. And the words. What did you think about the words?”

  “They seemed kind of simple to me.”

  “I mean the chorus.” Mary Sue sang and snapped her fingers, reciting a string of nonsense syllables that were approximately what Little Richard had sung.

  “How can you understand what he’s saying there?”

  “I listened to it. I probably listened to it five hundred times. We wore out Jimmy’s record. Here.” Mary Sue put the needle in the outer groove and started the phonograph again.

  When Little Richard had finished, I said, “Once more.” The song was pretty catchy. Mary Sue played it through four more times. I closed my eyes. I was tingling all over. I wondered if this was what Reverend Vaughn meant when he said that organ music filled him up. After a while, with my eyes closed, it started to seem as if the normal sound of the world was Little Richard screaming “Tutti-Frutti.” Everything that went on—people talking, cars screeching around corners, birds singing and dogs barking—went on over and above that.

  When Mary Sue finally put aside the arm of the phonograph, her face was red, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “What is it?” I asked. She was always getting emotional.

  “Jimmy,” she said in a squeaky voice. “The song makes me think of Jimmy.”

  She’d turned so bright red and feverish that I couldn’t help laughing. “Mary Sue, that’s the most unromantic song I’ve ever heard,” I said. “It’s all loud noises.”

  Her eyes brimmed over, and the tears cascaded down her cheeks. “It’s our song,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Don’t get upset.” I knew it was useless, but I tried to explain myself. “I just meant the song didn’t sound very romantic. Think of ‘Autumn Leaves’ or ‘Sentimental Journey.’ Those are nice, soft, romantic songs.”

  She stood up and slammed the record into its cardboard sheath. “How would you know?” she said. “You don’t know anything about romance.” Brushing past me, she returned the record and hurried out of the store. I caught up to her on the sidewalk. “Why do you have to make fun of everything,” she said bitterly. “Why can’t you take me seriously?”

  “I do take you seriously,” I protested. “I loved ‘Tutti-Frutti.’ Maybe I’ll buy it.”

  Dwayne came ambling up the sidewalk, pushing his bicycle. “That’s retarded,” he said and spit at Mary Sue’s feet.

  “Dwaa-yenn,” she said, drawing out his name.

  He uttered a choking laugh and moved on. When he was about fifteen feet away, he stopped and turned and watched us.

  “He’s always around now,” I said.

  Mary Sue wasn’t interested in Dwayne. “You always have to spoil everything by picking it apart,” she said. In her anger, she made her arms stick-like at her sides. “It’s ’cause you think you’re better than me. Even now.”

  “Mary Sue! I can’t believe you said that.” I reached over and took her hand. “You’re my best friend.”

  Her lower lip pushed out from her face and trembled slightly. “No, I’m not. Bunny’s your best friend.”

  “She’s my mother.”

  “Even still.”

  We looked at each other for several seconds. Then she pulled her hand away and took a few steps down the sidewalk toward the square. “I’ve got to get home,” she said.

  “Well, come this way.” I nodded up the street, the way we’d come.

  “I’m in a hurry,” she said, backing away. “I’m going this way.”

  “But that’s past the square.”

  “I don’t care. I told Jimmy I’d call, so I’ve got to get home.” She gave me a stiff-armed wave. “Well, bye,” she said. She took another step back, then turned and hurried off down the sidewalk. I watched her go. She was moving at about half again her normal pace, and the effort made her body sway from side to side. She reached the end of the block, crossed against the light, and continued down the next block, without looking back.

  Finally, I turned and started for the Vernons’ alone, going the long way around, away from the square. Dwayne followed the entire distance, always staying about half a block behind.

  SIXTEEN

  Bunny and I got permission to spend Sunday together, away from the Vernons’ house. She had agreed to take me to church, and then we were going on a picnic at Mason’s Farm. Bunny had arranged it all with Mrs. O’Brien. The idea was for us to spend time figuring out how we were going to pull ourselves together as a family.

  On Sunday morning, Bunny was late, as usual. The church service starts at eleven, and it was already a few minutes after by the time I heard her Pontiac rattling down Oak Street. She had her excuse all ready. “I had to iron my skirt,” she said, after I’d run down the walk and hopped into the car. She was wearing her tight, black skirt and a white blouse with ruffles around the neck. She also had on high heels.

  “Everything else was dirty,” she explained when she saw the disapproval in my eyes. “Besides, the Congo’s hardly like church.” She stepped on the accelerator, and the car zoomed past the KTD, heading toward the square. She didn’t ask me how I was or comment on my outfit. She was frowning, and I could see a muscle twitching in her jaw, as if her head had its own tiny heartbeat. After we’d driven a few blocks in silence, she started going on about how I was always criticizing her, how I didn’t treat her like my mother anymore. She’d obviously been thinking about it, and the words and ideas just tumbled out of her mouth, without any real order. Meanwhile, she had her foot planted on the accelerator, and she wasn’t paying attention to the street. We hit the railroad tracks and bounced so hard that I bumped my head on the top of the car. “Watch your head,” Bunny snapped.

  The square was quiet, with everyone off at church. A couple of solitary hoods were hanging around the water fountain, smoking cigarettes. Bunny found a parking spot in front of the drugstore, and we hurried along the sidewalk to the Congregational Church on a side street a couple of blocks away. With its squat thick walls of red stone, the Congo suggests a fort more than a house of worship. Outside, the only religious sign is a small cross hanging above the main door. Inside, a big wooden cross stands behind the altar, and the high, white walls are broken by vaulted windows of stained glass. Over the years, the walls have become crisscrossed with dark, wandering cracks, like the veins in an old person’s hand.

  The congregation was singing the first hymn when we arrived. There were only thirty or forty people, families gathered in bunches, and they were all scattered in the first six or seven pews. Bunny and I walked down the center aisle, past row after empty row, and slipped into a pew just behind everyone else. Reverend Vaughn stood in front at a pulpit
made of dull, brown wood. He saw us and smiled at me. I thought we’d entered quietly, but when the hymn ended and everyone sat again, several heads turned to see who’d arrived late.

  In the rustling, I whispered to Bunny. “Isn’t he handsome?” Standing on the raised platform, draped in a billowy black robe, Reverend Vaughn was larger than life, even a bit frightening. The robe gave imaginary bulk to his body and exaggerated his height. He seemed all out of balance with the inside of the church, like a man standing in a rowboat. Too big, too controlling, he could rock and spill us all into the water.

  Bunny just shrugged. She smoothed her skirt and folded her hands in her lap. Viewed sitting down, with her skirt and heels safely out of sight, she looked perfectly proper, perhaps even a little old-fashioned in her ruffled blouse. As Reverend Vaughn shuffled the papers in front of him and paused for the congregation to settle, his gaze flickered across the pews and rested for a moment on Bunny. I thought I saw a spot of pleasure in his face. I imagined he was surprised at Bunny’s radiance—she startles and stands out so when you’re not expecting her. I even thought that, in his eyes, a touch of her radiance might have passed to me.

  The mimeographed programs that we’d picked up on the way in announced that the sermon was titled “Abundance Lake: The Life and Death of a Small Town.” Reverend Vaughn waited until the congregation had focused on him and then began, speaking in a tone that was confident and relaxed. “I need to start by making a couple of apologies,” he said, smiling out across his audience. “I think I’ve mentioned before that some sermons are twenty-hour efforts—that is, they represent twenty hours of research and writing over the previous week or so—and some are more in the nature of ninety-minute jobs. I’m sure you’ve learned to distinguish one from the other.” A smattering of laughter passed among the congregation. “Well, I’m afraid this sermon belongs in the ninety-minute category, as you’ll soon discover.” Again, a few people laughed. “In my defense, though, let me say that it’s not because I was panicked and preoccupied trying to cook a noodle casserole for the potluck dinner Friday, or tied down by any of the other crises that normally divert me. The fact of the matter is that I had trouble with this one, and I knew that no amount of research or reading could pull me out of it. So, although what you get today represents ninety minutes of writing and rewriting, there’s a good deal more undocumented thinking behind it. You’ll just have to take my word on that.” He leaned across the pulpit and wagged his head, luring laughs from the same few people who’d been amused all along.

  “The second thing I want to apologize for,” he went on, “is oversimplifying. The issue that I’m going to deal with is very complicated, and it’s one that touches all of our lives. I realize that what I’m about to say lacks much of the nuance of the subject—and I’m well aware that many of you know far more about it than I do. Nonetheless, to make a point, you sometimes have to whittle down a large mass of facts. I guess it’s up to each of you to decide whether I’ve whittled the facts in this instance beyond recognition.”

  He paused and looked down for a moment, then lifted his head solemnly. “Well, enough disclaimers. What I want to do today is tell a story. It’s not a story you’ll find in the Bible or in any other book. It’s not even a true story. It’s one I made up myself.

  “Once, not long ago, in a certain country, there was a small town. The town was situated on a fertile plain that sat among a range of low, green mountains. A single stream of icy, clear water came down out of the mountains and ran through the town. Indeed, that stream was the lifeblood of the town. People came to the stream to get water to drink and to cook with, to give their animals, to use in the countless ways people use water in their daily lives. The stream was small, but it was steady: It didn’t have to be big, since this was, as I said, a small town. There were a few farms, a few stores, a cluster of houses, nothing more.

  “Then one day, a rich man arrived with a new idea. He wanted to buy a parcel of land, just outside of town. The stream flowed through the parcel, and the rich man’s plan was to dam the stream and build a lake. With an entire lake of water to tap, the town would be able to grow. The farms could get bigger, the businesses more elaborate. More people would come to the town, and there’d be more money to make. Of course, the rich man would charge something for his water—after all, he was building the lake and it was on his property. But his rates would be fair. He even agreed to sign a contract assuring that.

  “Now, to the people of the town, this seemed like a reasonable plan. More than that, it seemed like a good one. Everyone wanted to get bigger; everyone wanted to get richer. The idea of building a lake seemed progressive, the way things were supposed to be. So the rich man bought the land, dammed the stream, and created a lake; he called it Abundance Lake, for all the good it was going to bring. Soon the town started to grow. The farms expanded and spread up into the foothills of the mountains. New granaries opened to accommodate the farmers. Other businesses arrived as people moved in to work on the farms and in the stores. Soon, the town had filled the entire plain. After a while, the beautiful green mountains were dotted with homes. People were pleased with what was happening, particularly the original residents. Now there were many more opportunities. The rich man who’d built the lake had got much richer, of course, but other people had made more money, too. Indeed, things were going so well that one day the town fathers decided to rename the town. From then on, it too was known as Abundance Lake.”

  Reverend Vaughn paused and surveyed his audience. The congregation was listening in complete silence. No one coughed. No one squirmed. Even the children had been caught up by the sermon and were staring intently at the tall, robed figure rising above them. Beside me, Bunny sat stiffly erect, wound to a fine tautness by the minister’s words. For some reason, I suddenly remembered his tattoo. It pleased me to think that of all these people, only I knew.

  “Well, of course, time passed,” he continued. “New people came to the town, and old people died. Eventually, the rich man died, and his property, including the lake, passed to his son. Now the son wasn’t like the father. The son hadn’t had to work for his money; he hadn’t been part of building something up. He was spoiled, and he was used to getting what he wanted. And one thing he wanted was a house beside a clear mountain stream. There used to be such a stream on his property, but now it was part of the lake. So the son had a simple solution: He’d tear down the dam and empty the lake. Why not? He didn’t need to sell water anymore. He already had more money than he could ever spend in his lifetime. What he wanted was to enjoy his money—and to do it in exactly the manner that pleased him.

  “When the people of Abundance Lake heard what he planned to do, they of course were distraught. The town fathers went to him and tried to talk him out of it, but he remained adamant. Indeed, their entreaties may actually have stiffened his resolve; after all, he reasoned, it’s a free country. Who were they to tell him how to use his property? The original contract with the rich man was pulled out and studied. It said clearly enough that the water rates would always be reasonable, but it said nothing about keeping the lake there forever. By now, the people who’d drawn up the contract were long dead. There was no one to explain the oversight. There wasn’t even anyone to blame, really, except for the son, and he didn’t care whether people blamed him or not.

  “There was a lot of talk in the town of what the people could do. Some said they should petition the government, though the government never seemed to care much about people as unimportant as the farmers and shopkeepers of Abundance Lake. Others said they should sue the son, though lawyers warned that the law wasn’t really on their side. The angriest citizens of Abundance Lake said they should storm the son’s property and kick him out, but that talk never got much beyond the barrooms of the town. Most people just shook their heads and worried and figured that it was somehow in the nature of things that the lives they’d built for themselves could get ruined on a whim.

  “So the rich man’
s son took down the dam, and Abundance Lake drained and shriveled to the original stream. Of course, without the water to support it, the town of Abundance Lake started to shrivel, too. The farms got smaller, people left the houses on the mountainsides. The businesses in town lost customers and had to close up. Within a few years, most people had moved away. The population returned to about what it had first been—only now the setting was far less lovely. The rich man’s son had his mansion beside the stream, of course. But as for the rest of the town, Abundance Lake was nothing more than the shabby husk of something that had once been large and vibrant.” The minister looked around, pausing for his audience to absorb the image. “For all practical purposes,” he said, clipping his words to signal the end of the story, “the town was dead.”

  Around the church, there was an easing, a slight relaxation. Reverend Vaughn waited patiently for it to pass. After a few seconds, he took a breath, then started again. “Now, obviously, this story is designed to provoke a comparison between Abundance Lake and Katydid. Just as obviously, the comparison is a bit farfetched. As I said at the beginning, I’ve whittled a very complex subject down. For the most part, I’ll let you people decide whether I’ve done that fairly.”

  He brushed a few strands of yellow hair off his forehead. “I don’t think the story needs much elaboration,” he continued, “but I do want to make two points. The first is that sometimes, in the hurly-burly of everyday life, we don’t stop to look ahead by a week or a month or a year. Predicting the future is a most imperfect science, of course, but occasionally it has to be done. Just think of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Would Scrooge really have changed his ways if the ghost of Christmas future hadn’t demonstrated what lay ahead for the old man? In our case, I sense that no one is really thinking about what lies ahead for Katydid if the KTD closes. How can this town survive? Think of the people living on your block. How many of them would still be here in a year, or two years, if the town’s largest employer suddenly packed up? Do we want to see Katydid wither away?