A Crossword to Die For

by Nero Blanc

  “I’m not … I’m just … I was just … talking.”

  The aide cocked her head to one side. In the ten years she’d worked at the nursing home, she’d learned that almost all the patients had secret worries and sorrows they’d hidden away. The older the residents grew, the more anxious they became to unburden themselves. Mostly the stories were commonplace tales: long-forgotten sibling rivalries, family arguments needlessly begun and never resolved, estranged children, unforgiving mates. Once in a while, though, the situation was worse.

  “There’s the priest who comes to—”

  “I’m not talking to any priest!”

  The wet rag was folded with a noisy slap; a chair was yanked back against the wall. “I’ll fill your water pitcher and bring in some more straws … He’s an Episcopal priest … The religious preference you indicated on your—”

  “I don’t want any priests in here.”

  “But your admission card says—”

  “I won’t see him!”

  “Okay, okay. You needn’t bite my head off.”

  “And I don’t want anyone else coming into my room …”

  “I know—”

  “No one!”

  The aide’s expansive chest released a weary sigh. “I’ll be bringing your supper in about half an hour. You want I should put one of your books beside the bed before I go?”

  “No one else—”

  “I said, I heard you.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “‘The way of transgressors is hard.’ Proverbs 13:15.” The voice of the man making this pronouncement was stony, a no-nonsense tone that brooked no equivocation—or argument. As he spoke he thumped calloused fingers on the long Formica table while his aging yet wiry physique and bristly white hair quivered with outrage and indignation. “‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.’ Proverbs again … Well? I’m still waiting for an answer. Are we going to make them cease this reprehensible activity?”

  It was Curtis Plano who answered. Unlike the first speaker, his fingers were not visible on the tabletop. The reason being that Plano had lost his left hand in the early days of the Vietnam War, where he’d served as a medic. And although his prosthetic hook had long been accepted by his peers, he wielded it with discretion; the rest of the time it remained out of sight: in a jacket pocket, under a table; in church, the hymnal or prayer book rested upon it. “Wars are better off forgotten,” Curtis liked to repeat, with a been-there-done-that shrug. “The past is the past, and nothing’s going to change it.” Now his speech was equally pragmatic. “I agree with Warden Stark, something needs to be done—”

  “Something needs to be done, and right quick, Curtis,” was the fiery retort. “The damage is already—”

  “Potential damage, John; it’s only potential,” Milton Hoffmeyer interjected. Like Stark, he was in his early seventies, but where John was a dictatorial bantam rooster, Milt was yielding and placid, a bear-shaped man with a tranquil and shambling air. “Because like it or not … and I admit, I don’t like this situation any better than you … I cannot, at this point, say that they’re—”

  John Stark snorted. “So you’re advising we just let them get away with murder up there—?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. And murder isn’t a word I’d—”

  “It’s the term I’m using! Unlike you and all the other nervous Nellies who live around here … closing your eyes to every problem that comes down the pike. But then, you always have—even when you were a kid.” Stark rocked rapidly back in his folding chair while Hoffmeyer’s tall body bent forward, precipitating another stalemate among the two top-ranking vestry members of Trinity Episcopal Church in the hamlet of Taneysville, Massachusetts.

  Senior Warden Stark and Junior Warden Hoffmeyer, lifelong neighbors and polar opposites. Month after month, year after year, decade upon decade: allies one moment, adversaries the next. Before his retirement, John had spent a life out of doors, first as a house painter, then as a self-employed general contractor. He held little truck with those whose trade consisted of “punching cash register keys.” This dictum naturally included Milt, who still worked “six days a week, sunup to sunset” at Hoffmeyer’s General Store, an emporium established by his father during the late 1930s; and little had altered since that bygone era.

  “I take ‘nervous Nellies’ amiss, John. I have to tell you that.”

  “Well, I take it amiss that you’re waffling on this issue.”

  “I’m not waffling. I’m merely suggesting that your approach is extreme—”

  Curtis Plano stepped into the breach. “It’s more than ‘potential damage,’ Milt. Like John says: Every time those damn—” He checked his speech, scowling with the habitual frown that raced across his square, sixty-year-old face every time he—or a neighbor—stepped beyond what he considered the “bounds of decency.” Now the owner and proprietor of the village pharmacy, Plano felt it his duty to maintain a conscientious and ethical attitude in all dealings—whether at the shop or at home. “Sorry, Father,” he muttered to the priest at the table’s far end. “But you know what I think about those machines. And working all hours on Sunday, too! It’s simply not right. We’re a law-abiding community. A good community. We’ve worked hard all our lives, and we’ve earned the right to have our share of peace and quiet.”

  As if awaiting their cue, the machines in question, the relentless earthmoving apparatus that the vestry was now discussing, increased their thunderous rumblings; and the meeting room in the church’s undercroft vibrated with the din. Cooling coffee danced in the mugs; the steam radiator in the room’s far corner hiccoughed and hissed while the waning late October light that filtered down through the basement windows jumped and shivered as though it had also been affected by the noise.

  “You’re forgiven,” said Father Matthew with a quick and grateful smile. He was a young man, just out of seminary and so eager and helpful as to seem hopelessly naive. He preferred to be called plain “Matt”—had tried from his first day at Trinity to be on a relaxed, first-name basis—but the vestry members, all older, all fastidious about church “niceties,” insisted on time-trusted honorifics. “Father” he was, or “Father Matthew”; and on the rarest occasions “Father Matt.”

  John Stark cleared his throat and prepared to speak again. “My fellow members of the vestry,” he began, using the magisterial mode he employed for reading Scripture lessons on Sunday mornings. “It’s our building I’m worried about … Now, we all know that backhoe shakes the living daylights out of the hillside every time it bites up another scoop of dirt; and I’m telling you right now, I think it’s damaging Trinity’s foundation. We can hardly afford minor repairs. What are we going to do with major ones? We’d have to shut down. And I mean that. We’d have to find another space in which to worship.”

  A murmur of dismay buzzed around the table.

  “But we’ve got a good, strong structure here, John,” Hoffmeyer countered. “It’s stood in this spot a long while … almost as long as Taneysville has been a community. Besides, unless we hire ourselves a lawyer, I don’t see how we can—”

  “Money, money … that’s all it is with you, Milt … Well, believe it or not, that’s what I’m talking about. Trinity may be strong enough to withstand Massachusetts winters. And it may be strong enough to cope with the occasional ‘big blow’ that moves up or down the coast, but I guarantee this place can’t take all that infernal shaking and shimmying every time one of those monsters starts tearing up the landscape. What we’ve got here is stone and wood construction and, as you pointed out, old construction. We’re not talking steel beams and reinforced concrete. So, if you’re trying to tell us that—”

  “No one’s questioning your expertise when it comes to foundation work, John,” Curtis Plano interjected.

  “More coffee anyone?” This was Sylvia Meigs speaking up at last. She was the town’s librarian, a normally loquacious librarian as well as the newest member of the ve
stry. Fifty-seven, plumper than she wished, Sylvia was also the vestry’s youngest member—as well as the only woman present at this emergency meeting. An awareness of her gender, age, and role had conspired to keep her cheery demeanor in abeyance, but such constraints couldn’t last for long. “I made enough, and it’s still hot. And there are some doughnut holes left from Social Hour … I fried them up myself so I can promise you they’re tasty. That is, if you didn’t sample them already … Which most of you did …” She stood and smoothed her skirt over amply padded hips. “Well? I’m awaiting your orders, gentlemen.”

  Sylvia’s sunny offer failed to alleviate the standoff between the senior and junior wardens; and she repeated her question, adding a chirpy: “How about you, Father? Care for a refill?”

  Matt didn’t want more coffee; his stomach was jumpy enough—just as it was every Sunday since he’d come to Taneysville. He wasn’t comfortable with preaching yet, let alone with the nail-biting anxiety of producing sermons that sounded both relevant and innovative. But following every service was Social Hour, and close on its heels on this particular Sunday, an emergency meeting of the vestry. “Thank you, Sylvia. That would be nice.”

  “And a couple of doughnut holes, too, Father?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “He won’t be so free and easy in twenty years’ time, will he, Curtis?” Sylvia laughed.

  Curtis smiled; Matt smiled; Sylvia continued to chuckle; but John Stark and Milton Hoffmeyer remained unmoved by the levity surrounding them.

  At length, another member of the vestry weighed in. It was Gus Waterwick, the church treasurer. Gus was approaching Stark’s and Hoffmeyer’s age, and his hair—or what few strands remained—was a pale and watery gray. Gus stood for Gustavus; Waterwick was anyone’s guess. When his grandfather had arrived from Poland to work in the paper mills of New England he’d been too young to argue with immigration officials who couldn’t understand his native tongue. “Waterwick” had been the name hand-printed on his entry card; Waterwick the new-minted American became. Gus inclined his nearly bald head. When he spoke his words wrapped themselves around the remnants of an accent that still turned “w” into “v.” “What are you proposing we do, John?”

  “Simple enough; get them to stop.”

  “And how do we do that? The man bought the entire property fair and square. Fifteen acres …” Gus paused, his demeanor that of a presiding judge rather than the former owner of Taneysville’s filling station and auto repair. “… He has the right to build an addition—”

  “You’re correct,” interrupted Curtis. “However, to my way of thinking—and John’s—that addition is—”

  Gus shook his head. “We can’t just march up there and shout, ‘Stop it right there!’ Why, we’d be laughed right off the property. Taneysville should have considered new zoning years ago. Now it’s—”

  “Which brings us back to the issue of hiring ourselves a good lawyer—” interjected Hoffmeyer, but Stark paid no heed.

  “Addition?” he demanded. “What about the proposed horse barn, the guest house, the Olympic-sized swimming pool? They’re probably planning some kind of fancy beach cabana, too—”

  “There aren’t no beaches in our little sector of the state, John,” Sylvia soothed.

  “You know what I mean,” Stark grumbled. “And didn’t you say you were getting us coffee?”

  “Testy, testy … It won’t do your heart any good to talk on so, John.”

  “Mrs. S tells him the very same thing,” offered Father Matt with a peaceable grin.

  The senior warden glowered him into silence.

  “John, let me repeat my question,” protested Gus in his old-world accent. “How do you propose to halt this construction? From what I hear, the owner’s got more money than G—than is good for any man. Something to do with making magnets, I’ve heard, although how that would—”

  Stark interrupted. “He doesn’t need to build on the hill above our—”

  “Yes, but that’s where the old Quigley place is,” was Hoffmeyer’s reasoned response. “The house and the—”

  “Well, why did he buy Quigley’s property in the first place? Why start there if all he wanted to do was gut the original home and ‘remodel’ it into a make-believe castle? Five thousand square feet! That’s what the addition’s going to be. Five thousand square feet! Do you know how much bigger that is than the old house?”

  “That’s the way it is nowadays, John,” Hoffmeyer said as he bowed his large and shaggy head. “People want bigger, better … These farmhouses that you and me grew up in, that we’ve lived in all our lives … They’re—what’s the word …? They’re stylish all of a sudden. Summer homes, winter homes, weekend homes … Folks like our new neighbor—”

  Stark waved an impatient hand, but Milt continued on his course. “Folks like our new neighbor buy up these homes because they admire that old-timey look—and then they change them around because they want all the modern conveniences. Nothing wrong with liking comfort, John—”

  “They don’t even bother using local builders,” Stark argued hotly.

  Hoffmeyer regarded him, recognizing that the importation of outside laborers irked Stark as much as anything else did. “You and me can’t stem the tide, John. All we can do is try to welcome the newcomers in, try to make them—”

  “Try to sell them fancy bottled water, is more like it! I can hear your cash drawer now; ka-ching … ka-ching …”

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Sylvia murmured, but Trinity’s senior warden ignored her.

  “What’s the fellow planning to do up there anyway? Sit in his fancy glass palace and stare down his nose at us when we come to worship?”

  Father Matthew raised four tentative fingers. “If that’s one of your concerns, John, why don’t you and I simply invite the new owner to join—”

  “I want to know why the man can’t take his damned fortress and put it on the other side of his land!” was the outraged response. “Why can’t he leave us in peace before our roof caves in and the foundation cracks—”

  “But you don’t know for certain we’re sustaining any damage—” Hoffmeyer tried to interpose, but the incipient argument was drowned by the sudden wail of the backhoe, and the tumultuous crash of a tree pitching into the ravine that separated church property from what had once been the Quigley homestead. Sylvia Meigs screamed. A wooden cross hanging on the wall leapt from its nail and fell while a coffee mug jittered off the table and shattered on the linoleum floor.

  “Hell and damnation,” John Stark roared. “I’m going up there right this very minute. I won’t see us threatened like this!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Despite his outburst, John Stark wasn’t a violent man, and his strong reaction had stunned the others into a sheepish and embarrassed silence. One by one they filed up the basement steps and into the encroaching autumnal dusk. The scarlet and gold-hued foliage for which New England was famed had vanished into the fallen, dead leaves of the days approaching November while the air carried the chill and dank of a not-too-distant winter. Except for the steady drone of the earthmoving equipment working the hillside, the fading Sunday afternoon would have provided a perfect time for introspection and reflection, a few quiet moments in which to think back on the past year—or years—of rural existence in the sleepy community of Taneysville.

  Instead, the noise increased the group’s consternation; and, locking the church door behind them, they began scattering across the parking area like loose marbles.

  “Can I give you a ride, Sylvia?” Curtis Plano asked.

  Both widowed, it was generally accepted by the locals that the two were “keeping company” although neither had as yet admitted to a relationship.

  “Why, thank you, Curtis.” Sylvia sounded duly surprised and grateful. “Going to be a cold winter, according to the Almanac,” she sang out to the other vestry members as she approached Plano’s car. With a polite flourish, he opened the door with his right hand whi
le the left remained buried in his coat pocket.

  “And early,” was Milton Hoffmeyer’s agreeable response.

  “We’ve had ’em before,” Gus Waterwick added.

  “And doubtless we’ll see many more.” This was Father Matt’s offering, and it was greeted—like many of his ruminations—with the kindly benevolence of a grandparent patting a child on the head.

  “You will, Father,” Sylvia chortled, “but I don’t know how many decades the rest of us old-timers have—”

  “One … maybe two, if I’m real lucky,” Curtis interposed with a good-natured laugh.

  “Then you’ll have to make the most of them,” she rejoined.

  John Stark didn’t speak through the entire leave-taking. Instead he eased himself into his station wagon in silence and drove up the lane toward what had been the Quigley place.

  “I hope he don’t get himself in trouble,” Gus observed in a worried tone.

  “Or us,” was Milton Hoffmeyer’s pensive reply.

  Stark’s car climbed the tree-lined and twisting village lane toward the dirt drive that had once been the approach to Hiram Quigley’s farm; a home that had remained an unobtrusive neighbor to Trinity Church through generations of Quigleys and generations of parishioners. The modest wood-frame house with its low-slung doorway, introspective windows, single chimney, and antiquated kitchen covered by a sagging rear roof had been such an accepted part of the Taneysville landscape that no one could have imagined it wouldn’t always be so.

  “Old-timey,” Stark muttered, “stylish …” His lips were pinched white and his chest pounded with feelings he couldn’t quite name. Without intending to, he remembered Sylvia Meigs’s warning about his heart, and thumped a hand against his breastbone as if willpower alone could calm him.

  He stopped the car and climbed out. The rutted drive was jammed with vehicles: workmen’s pickup trucks, a bulldozer, a chipper, a stump grinder. Numerous felled trees littered what had once been a kitchen garden.

  “Hell and damnation,” Stark swore. Normally, he wasn’t a swearing man any more than he was a violent one, but the circumstances were working powerful changes on his psyche.