Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  It was after one. Beanie had said the three o'clock train. He was already late for his appointment at the Tea Shoppe. If he went, he'd miss Beanie. The practical thing to do would be to eat in Argyle, then meet his wife at the train station. In the parking lot, Abernathy stood irresolutely at the door of his son's Audi. Then he located the keys, got into the car, and drove back to Dingley Falls.

  Judith Haig was still there in the Tea Shoppe. She sat in a corner table alone, her arms resting on the rose cloth, her hands folded.

  Sat in a black dress, iconic and alien, bordered by the white wall. He walked back to her table, and Judith raised her head.

  "Mrs. Haig? I'm late, I'm afraid. My apologies. I hope I haven't inconvenienced you too much?"

  "Not at all. Miss Lattice and I have been talking with Chin Lam.

  Mrs. Henry."

  "May I?"

  "I'm sorry. Please." Abernathy took the seat he had gestured toward. She lowered her eyes again and withdrew her hands from the table.

  Then she looked back up at him, startled. "I'm sorry. It's just that I've been sitting here thinking about that girl's life. She's only nineteen. The things she—"

  "I spoke with Mr. Henry, that's why I'm late." What should he tell her about that interview? That he felt strangely enlivened by it, thirty years younger? That he felt grateful to her, and to Henry, whom, in fact, he liked, strange as that thought was to him? Could he tell her all that? Yes. Strange that he thought he could.

  "I wanted to call you," she was saying. "To tell you that, well, in fact, I called his brother in Massachusetts."

  "Ah. I see." So she had done it.

  "He said he has a lawyer."

  "Indeed, he does, an efficient one. I'll speak with him tomorrow."

  "I didn't realize I'd be putting you to so much trouble."

  "No trouble. In fact, it's good for me; I've been away much too long. Honestly, I'm fascinated. I think Henry may refuse to deal with a lawyer hired by his brother. At any rate, you and I should certainly keep in touch about it. More coffee? Can you stay a bit longer?"

  Miss Lattice, wiping her hands on a rose-ruffled apron, hurried to their table with a menu. "Winslow, hello, any news for us?"

  "A little. Is Mrs. Henry free?"

  "I'll just run and get her. Have you eaten? Chin's made, all on her own, a cabbage roll dish with pork and crab. I tried it myself and it's really very good, wasn't it, Mrs. Haig? It's called bajr cai nhor or bajr nai kor, I think, or, well, never mind, but it is good."

  Abernathy smiled. "All right, Pru. I'll try it…with a cup of coffee."

  "Oh, Winslow, you should drink tea with it. Chin says."

  He looked up at his hostess, her careful morning's hairdo now steamed into white wisps. "Fine, Pru. Tea then. And, Mrs. Haig, please stay for a cup of tea, won't you?"

  "All right. Yes. Another cup, please. Thank you."

  Walking past the windows of the Tea Shoppe on his way to his own store, Limus Barnum paused to see who was in there. His hands to the sides of his face to blind the sun, he watched the postmistress and the lawyer waiting silently for Miss Lattice to return. As he watched, a strand of Judith's hair came loose from its gold pin. She brushed it back behind her ear, but it fell forward again.

  chapter 39

  Polly Hedgerow had biked to town from her private throne on the bank of the Rampage, where she'd left Anna Karenina in tears.

  Miss Dingley was to meet her and Luke Packer at the pharmacy.

  Next door, Mr. Smalter was having his regular three o'clock coffee at the Tea Shoppe. "Wait outside," Luke said. "I'll just go tell him I'm leaving."

  His thin circle of yellow hair bent over a book he had propped up against the edge of his table, the druggist sat alone across the room from where in a back corner Mrs. Haig, all in black, sat with Mr. Abernathy. From the window Polly watched Smalter look up, as if relieved, to see Luke. He began talking to him. Then, quickly finishing his coffee, he took his check to Miss Lattice. He hesitated, Polly noticed, before waving at Mrs. Haig, who nodded in return. Mr. Abernathy twisted around in his chair, smiled, then leaned back toward the postmistress. As Mrs. Haig listened to the lawyer, her fingers moved slowly over a leaf fallen from a vase on their table. She had beautiful hands. Polly put her own in her jeans pockets. Not wanting Mr. Smalter to know she had seen him trying to get Mrs. Haig's attention, the girl stepped away from the window and into the street, where she bent down to check the new chain on her bike.

  Through her wheel she saw the motorcycle speed toward her from the end of Dingley Circle. She saw, even from that distance, that Limus Barnum's eyes stared straight into hers. Polly backed farther into the street. She couldn't move away, she couldn't stop looking at his eyes rushing at her. Suddenly she was jerked up on the curb.

  Her glasses flew off. Then, with a quick pat, Sammy Smalter let go of Polly's arm. He stepped out in front of the motorbike and twisted the handle. The throttle cut off.

  "What the hell! You almost ran her down!" Smalter snapped, while Barnum sputtered back at him, "That stupid kid! Did you see that? Stepping in front of me! Hey, what do you think you're doing?

  Leave that alone!"

  Luke picked up Polly's glasses from the street. "What happened?"

  She flushed. "I don't know."

  Smalter kept his hand on the throttle. "I said, you almost ran into this girl, Limus! The least you can do is apologize. For Christ's sake, what's the matter with you?"

  Barnum's face was bloated with indignation, his scalp wet beneath the thick coat of hair spray. "Get out of here!" he snarled, and with a jerk pried Smalter's hand off the handlebar. Then, open-palmed, he struck the pharmacist in the chest, knocking him down into the street. Smalter's head hit the curb.

  "Hey!" Luke lunged at Barnum, who'd already slammed down on the starter pedal. The cycle jumped away.

  "Luke. Never mind, come back!" Smalter scrambled to his feet, red-faced. The elbow of his suit jacket was ripped and his hand bloody. "Yes, yes, I'm okay," he said impatiently, pulling away from Luke's hand and turning to Polly. "Are you all right? Polly?"

  "Oh, I'm sorry, thank you, yes. I guess I'm okay. I mean, I didn't get hurt." Her cheeks and neck burned with shame, for both herself and Mr. Smalter. She felt close to tears.

  The unfinished highway connector ran in glittering asphalt straight into a wilderness of underbrush, where it ended in weeds and dank, rotting leaves. The red Firebird blistered there in the sun.

  Beside it, Ramona Dingley sat in her wheelchair. She drank ale from a bottle, stared into the dark forest, and thought about the past.

  Nearby, under the shade of an oak, Orchid O'Neal reclined, surrounded by her nephews' socks, which she was darning to keep herself occupied. Thursday was her free afternoon, and while she'd been happy to oblige by driving Miss Dingley and the two youngsters off to look for something in the woods, she had to keep busy. She couldn't sit and think, hour after hour, as her employer seemed content to do.

  For a while Ramona, by mentally tracing memories sixty years old, had followed Polly and Luke west through the forest into the marshes, where often with her aunt Camilla (Beanie's grandmother), she had gone exploring She had hunted for rocks and snakeskins, birds' nests, fossils, Indian arrowheads, dead beetles, deer tracks, minnows, beaver dams, and all other treasure that forgotten land keeps safe. Before her Dingley marriage, Ramona's aunt had been Lady Camilla Upton. Wooed and won in that popular alliance of the Edwardian Age, British breeding and Yankee dollars, the athletic Camilla had come married to Connecticut and had brought her favorite mount, Big White, with her. At seventy she still had been riding one of his descendants. Ramona recalled that when Beanie Dingley shot up half a foot in the fifth grade, everyone said Camilla's granddaughter had inherited the Englishwoman's physicality and her robust good looks. They'd been passed down to Beanie through her father, Chuck, who had distinguished himself in the great game against Army his last year at Annapolis. God knows, thought Ramona as she sipped h
er ale, God knows Beanie inherited nothing from her mother, May Rose, a Baltimore belle in despair at the unlikelihood of a marriage between Beatrice and young Ernest Ransom, whom the girl persisted in defeating on the golf links despite her mother's predictions of spinsterhood. How relieved May Rose had been when Winslow Abernathy asked her (her husband, Chuck, having died at Pearl Harbor) for Beanie's hand. So polite. How fond she'd become of Ernest's quiet roommate. Even if he had allowed Beanie to talk him into an elopement.

  Well, Ramona now thought, nodding to herself with a smile, May Rose had died in peace; news of Beanie's bolting would never reach her up there in the cemetery. And now it appeared that Camilla's genes were still vaulting about with random energy in that idiot Lance. Ppht! Miss Dingley pushed her wheelchair to the very edge of the asphalt strip to follow the retreating sun. Waste, waste. What had all that absurd to-do about the highway come to? She vaguely remembered Democratic editorials in the Dingley Day heralding a new economic future for the town. She remembered being bored by a long speech of Tracy Canopy's at a meeting of the Republican Ladies or the Historical Society or the Conservation Committee, where a petition was signed to preserve Dingley Falls from the horror of a new economic future. Then had come a spate of muckraking and mudslinging which no doubt everyone involved had enjoyed immensely. One day she'd asked Ernest Ransom what had ever happened to the connector, but his answer, as usual, was no answer. Hard to believe, though, that a man who still worked at his grandfather's desk, who ate off his great-great-grandmother's dishes, who kept solvent St. Andrew's Church, the academy, the library, and the Historical Society, that Ernest Bredforet Ransom would sell his family's land to the government. True, Ernie had always been a little mentally ossified, a truckler to anything established, indeed a man with no more ethical imagination than a park statue, but all the less likely that he'd leave himself open to criticism by allowing a bunch of Washington idiots to sneak in and set up a missile site or anything else that might be destroying the ecological balance or causing cancer or pushing Dingley Falls way up on the Russians' hit list, not right next door to the man's hometown. Of course, it was possible that Polly Hedgerow was deluded, or lying, or could have her head filled with thrillers, and that they'd find nothing out there but an abandoned hunter's shack.

  The sun balanced on top of Wild Oat Ridge, then slid behind it in a trail of orange and red streamers. Miss Dingley glanced up at the scurrying colors. She wheeled herself over to Mrs. O'Neal, who had now finished all the socks and was letting out the cuffs on a pair of boy's trousers. "Getting hungry, Orchid? Famished myself. Let's open the hamper."

  Mrs. O'Neal rubbed a numb ankle. She did not in the slightest believe there was anything to be found beyond the marshes except Bredforet Pond and was very worried that the two teenagers might accidentally drown in that. She was in most matters intimidated by her employer, but about children, and how best to look after their welfare, Mrs. O'Neal, mother of six, considered herself a far better judge than Miss Dingley, mother of none. "Well, maybe something's out there, and maybe something's not. Children are great talkers. I don't mean lying. But adding on."

  "Oh, it's there," said the invalid firmly. "I knew this girl's grandmother."

  In Polly's previous, solitary explorations she had entered the woods from the south and had hiked directly north. Now, following Miss Dingley's instructions, she and Luke found the old Indian path running west toward the marsh, the path Ernest Ransom had learned about from his father and his great-uncle William Bredforet. The path still left its impress on the land, but with each generation it yielded more footage back to the dark forest. Luke and Polly slipped in the damp undergrowth and had to crawl over fallen trees. They had talked only at the outset. Both exhilarating and hard work, the hike took their full concentration.

  Finally, Luke asked if Polly hadn't invited Joy to come along. He had just been theorizing to himself that his fascination with Joy Strummer was no more personal than his fascination with the movies, and that his physical attraction to her was not even one particular to him, but a response publicly shared by all his male friends.

  Out of these thoughts, and his desire to push through the silence, and curiosity about what Polly felt regarding Joy, Luke had asked the question. But Polly was pained by an immediate assumption that Luke had accepted her invitation only in order to be with Joy. She didn't realize why she was pained, she just felt it.

  Brushing past cobwebs that stuck to her hands, she shoved quickly through the low, leaf-heavy branches until Luke fell behind.

  She fantasized the three of them hiking in the dimness of the woods, Luke and Joy hurrying ahead of her, leaving her behind. She imagined coming upon them crouched at the base of a tree. She imagined them kissing and looking up at her. She thought of Sidney Blossom and Kate Ransom. She saw Limus Barnum's eyes, coming toward her, forcing her to share the knowledge that he had written the horrible letter. She began to run along the path; the compass hung around her neck kept knocking against her chest.

  Seeing her running, Luke, excited, ran after her until he caught her by the arm. They both stopped, suddenly. He let go. Muttering, "Not much of a path, is it?" he unsnagged his pants leg from brambles, then held up a branch of briars for her to walk under. She had to pass under his arm, close by, brushing against him, pressed against a body alien in its male youth (thinner, harder than her father's body) and alien in its odor (like a secret escaped, objectionable and compelling).

  She became very aware of her own sweat, sticking her shirt back to her skin. The feeling had always been a clean, pleasant sensation.

  Now she worried that her sweat might have an odor, or might look "gross," as she would have said, and meant by it too unfeminine, too physical, too symptomatic of sex, that natural force overrunning reason, which she had said would never have such power over her.

  Luke had been startled by the physical shock that shot from where she pressed against him down his chest to his groin. It was her breast that had touched him. She had breasts beneath that baggy shirt. Her hair smelled like lemons. She walked on, he ducked and let the branch swing out. They went without speaking farther into the woods.

  In the shadow of a rotted tree trunk they came upon the cigarette butt that Ernest Ransom had dropped there on Tuesday. And then finally they came upon the black strip of strange charred earth.

  Polly at first thought they had already reached the site of the government compound she was trying to find again, concluding that its buildings somehow had been incinerated. Luke at first thought of napalm. Neither thought of anything besides fire, not of blight and pestilence, of shallow beds beneath the strip in which were buried the discarded experiments of scientific research, lethal wastes working their way through the earth, leaving their impress on it. The boy focused his camera on the dead land.

  For over an hour they trekked in the wet sedge beyond the end of the path. Marsh grass was sometimes as high as their waists, and Polly feared a snake might slither out at her unseen.

  "Are we lost? How much farther?" Luke's tennis shoes were sodden and his jeans heavy with mud.

  "I don't know," she confessed.

  But then suddenly her discovery was there, just within the woods' edge, as if deliberately hidden from sight. The chain fence, the aluminum buildings, even the Coke machine, exactly as she had remembered them. Sunlight ricocheted off all the bright new metal like a hundred hurried messages reflected in Morse code. Luke shoved Polly down by the shoulder.

  "I told you," she whispered. "What did I tell you?" They stared at the secret base. Nothing moved there except the sun.

  Polly could hear Luke's breath as they passed Miss Dingley's binoculars back and forth. "It's too quiet," he said. "I don't think anybody's around anymore. But keep down, okay?" He pushed on her shoulder.

  "What do you think, they're going to shoot us?" she sneered, annoyed at his assumption of command.

  "I thought you said they had guns."

  "I did. But there's no reason why th
ey should use them on us."

  Luke had a distrust of his government bred of his generation, and a style bred of movies. "Listen," he told her, "they just shoot. They don't ask questions."

  "We don't even know who 'they' is."

  "Listen, this place could be completely on the up and up, and you cross that trespassing sign there, and they could still shoot. They don't need a reason. This government's so paranoid, they have to make a big deal out of everything to puff themselves up."

  "Oh, you got all that from Ms. Rideout in history."

  She led him in a low crouch, stalking along the perimeter of the compound. She stopped, stood, pointed at a gray mound in the packed dirt clearing. A large German shepherd lay stiffly among spears of tree clubs. With the binoculars she could see that the dog's eyes were open and the tongue was swollen and bloody. Flies crawled on it. She felt fear like a rush of heat.

  "Look at that window in the big building! It looks like it's all smashed to bits."

  "This is crazy. I don't like it. They must have closed down."

  "And just left all those new supplies sitting there in the dirt to rot? No way. Jesus, look. Look over there, no, by the door. It's another dog."

  Polly took the binoculars. "Oh, jeez. It's dead too, isn't it?"

  If Ramona Dingley had given the two young people not only the binoculars made by Dingley Optical Instruments, but one of the company's periscopes as well, so that they might have seen around the corner of the laboratory, they would have noticed Dr. Thomas Svatopluk sprawled beneath a tree. But, of course, their perspective was limited, and so they did no more than squat there, behind a hillock, and take pictures and wait for something else to happen.

  Nothing did. The few sounds of birds, leaves fluttering, the quick shudder of dried leaves as a squirrel raced over them, the whine of insects, sounds that had seemed so safe and full along the path here seemed sinister in their quietness. Buildings and motors required more noise to make sense.