by Tracy Kidder
Tommy O’Connor watched from a little distance. He thought the DPO gave gay people here a way of sort of getting married, a state that he approved of. “It’d be kind of nice for them,” he said. What he didn’t like about the ordinance was its licensing of unmarried heterosexuals—another assault, he felt, on the sanctity of marriage. And what he disliked much more was that this seemed like an attempt to rub new lifestyles in old-timers’ faces. This wasn’t a simple argument between newcomers and natives, between Noho and Hamp, but elections make an issue two-sided. He felt that newcomers were trying to declare that they’d taken over. He lived across the border now. He didn’t have a vote. If he had, he’d have voted against the ordinance.
The opposition, Northampton for Traditional Values, declined a grand public debate. In lieu of real public discourse, lawn signs sprouted up all over town and the papers printed hundreds of letters to the editor. The backers of the DPO said, among many other things, that the DPO would represent a start, one small stand against the scorn and persecution that gay people had forever suffered. They said their cause was civil rights. Nonsense, said the opposition. The ordinance didn’t ask for tolerance, which gay people here already had, but for official recognition, corporate approval, of gay and out-of-wedlock cohabitation. It asked the town to vote for lifestyles that many people here could tolerate but not in good conscience affirm. That seemed to be the essence of the argument at its most decorous. Both sides, of course, uttered meaner thoughts behind closed doors.
The camps held strategy sessions. They conducted phone-banking. The proponents even did some sophisticated polling. They raised far more money than the opposition, and no wonder. They had better fund-raisers: name tags, cocktails, and elevating surroundings. At one pro-DPO fund-raiser, cocktails ended with the bright sound of a bell, and the host, standing on a rug that looked like a work of art, said to the crowd, “This Tibetan bell can be heard for miles, and sometimes even in the kitchen.” Short, inspiring speeches followed.
On election day, people who listened to National Public Radio the rest of the year tuned into the 1400 Team. You could hear Ron Hall’s voice coming out of car windows and through doorways all morning. It rained that afternoon. Campaigners stood their ground, lining streets outside the polling places, holding up their competing signs: VOTE NO ON 1 and VALUE ALL FAMILIES. Many actually looked cheerful.
“This is democracy,” said one sign-holder, as waterfalls of rain spilled off his hat.
“As good as it gets,” said another.
For the first time in Northampton’s history, the votes were counted electronically, so the results came in much earlier than ever before. Against most expectations, Northampton for Traditional Values had prevailed—but by a margin so narrow that the contest looked like a dead heat.
Two religious services followed the vote. The winners held theirs on election night in the World War II Club, a smoky bar on Conz Street. When the returns were announced, someone cried, “It’s a miracle. Hallelujah!” A group of about thirty gathered in a circle, holding hands, bowing their heads, while Father Honan of St. Mary’s said a prayer. “We had a cause worth fighting for,” he said afterward. Then the father raised up a glass, thanking the electorate and, presumably, God.
The losers put on a more elaborate service. They called it “A Healing Ceremony.” It was held two weeks after the election, in the grand hall of the Unitarian church—by far the loveliest in a town full of churches. It has a vaulted ceiling, as tall as the Sistine Chapel’s. It looks like a religious place without religion’s somber side. The place is warm and bright and airy. The pews are comfortable, the architecture neoclassical, with authentic Tiffany windows fifteen feet tall and Corinthian columns. The place seems designed less for worship than for thought.
A photographic exhibit of gay and lesbian families hung on the walls, and the crowd—the majority female—filled up every pew. Victoria Safford, the Unitarian’s pastor, the local rabbi, three different Christian ministers—Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist—and several lay speakers mounted the high pulpit in turn and offered consolation. As they spoke, sounds of sniffling, now and then of weeping, came from the congregation. The hall was full of handkerchiefs. But one lesbian couple was giggling softly, and whispering loud enough to attract the attention of someone nearby.
“Shhh. You shouldn’t laugh in church.”
“She’s a recovering Catholic.”
They giggled a little more and then composed their faces. They at least seemed to have emerged from grief. Perhaps the music helped. First the assembly sang a Unitarian hymn, one that doesn’t mention God, called “We Sing Now Together”:
We sing of community in the making
In every far continent, region and land
Then Andrea Ayvazian, for many years a lecturer on racism, now a seminary student, and the owner of one of the town’s finest voices, stood near the Steinway and sang a more modern sort of song. Her lovely, deep voice filled the hall. She gestured with her arms, pulling the congregation with her, sing-along style. She could have worked a crowd in Las Vegas, but the song belonged in new Northampton. It was entitled “How Could Anyone.” It began, “How could anyone ever tell you you were anything less than beautiful?” Andrea wore an enormous smile. “Sing with me,” she called, and after another verse or two, she asked, “Is it too low for you?”
It was not. The congregation had the hang of it by then, but Andrea’s voice could still be heard, shining among the rest. “How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle?” she sang. “Now get angry!” She showed them how. “Don’t let anyone ever tell you you are anything less than beautiful. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you are less than whole.” She called for “one more don’t” and then let her voice begin to fall. Still filling up the nave, it fell toward the vocal embodiment of great calm after a storm: “How could anyone ever tell you you were anything less than beautiful …”
Of course, in a democracy, if one group of people asks the electorate questions such as “Do you agree with us?” and “Do you like us?” they ought to be prepared to hear them answer, “No.” But it would be a while before some women in Northampton stopped bursting into tears and a while before many others could look at fellow citizens without wondering, “Which way did you vote?”
Liberalism had seemed to be in season here. It had seemed like the political philosophy against which all others had to struggle, or else shut up. But now it looked as if Northampton’s current residents stood almost equally divided in their strong opinions about their town, about how people ought to conduct their private lives inside it, about the way Northampton defined tolerance, about who owned the place. Was the town destined to remain forever split in two camps, forever scowling at each other? Only if less than half of a town can be said to define it. As usual, a majority of the adult population hadn’t even bothered to vote.
Thirty thousand souls. Plato’s ideal city-state was about that size, Northampton’s size. To relieve the squalor and congestion of Renaissance Milan, Leonardo da Vinci devised a scheme for building ten new cities. Like Northampton, each was to have a population of thirty thousand. And thirty thousand was roughly the size of the famous “garden cities” dreamed up by Ebenezer Howard at the end of the nineteenth century. Howard intended his ideal towns to serve as antidotes to the overcrowding of great cities such as London, and to the growing impoverishment of the English countryside. And his utopias were most unusual in that a few approximations actually got built.
Howard’s perfect garden city was neither quite a city nor a country town. It combined the best of both. It wasn’t an American-style suburb, but a truly self-sufficient place, with farms and rural scenery, urban entertainment and variety. Northampton had become a place rather like that, where many people went for weeks without leaving because they found some of everything they needed and wanted here. But Howard’s garden city depended on a collectivist vision. The garden city itself would be the only landlord. And, Howard
figured, his new towns wouldn’t need more than a few cops, because, like Northampton, they would contain only thirty thousand people, “who, for the most part, will be of the law-abiding class.” Utopias by definition ignore some stubborn realities. If a place is big enough to provide all the variety that the law-abiding want, it’s likely to be big enough to harbor most varieties of human nature unrestrained.
Most of Northampton was asleep. Only the occasional, distant sound of a lonesome trailer truck on the interstate broke the silence outside the rooming house at 129 Pleasant Street, Northampton Lodging. The building looks like a motel, shaped like a big shoe box. You could drive by a hundred times and not notice it. Five detectives sat inside, on the floor of the second-story hallway, a long, narrow shaft lined with bedroom doors. On one end of the hall, a door led out to an exterior staircase. At the other end, a small window opened east onto Pleasant Street. The hallway looked like a tunnel now, maybe because of the hour, the bleary hour when the world feels all used up. This building once contained the classrooms of the Northampton Commercial College. Hopeful, earnest youth once horsed around in here. The place was different now. A mingled smell of tobacco and night sweats was suspended in the air. A rust-colored stain in the hallway carpet, Caribbean blue, was what remained of a former tenant named Freddie. The stain lay in front of one of the bedroom doors. It marked the site of what seemed to be Northampton’s first murder in several years.
The victim, Freddie, had been a drifter. The detectives had pieced together a detailed account of his last days. He’d spent them in Northampton with a local homeless man, who was living on the streets because his wife had thrown him out. This man didn’t know Freddie’s last name. Rooming-house Hamp had its rules of etiquette too, and one was not to ask people their last names. In their three days together, the new friends drank at least two thirty-packs of beer and a quart or two of vodka. They had “a few” in local bars. They also took a great deal of heroin. On the afternoon of the third day of the binge, Freddie was found lying in this hallway with a grave-looking wound over one eye. He had died yesterday, and the detectives hadn’t stopped working since. Right now they figured that someone beat up Freddie to get his heroin. They had come to the rooming house to search Freddie’s room, mainly to see if there was any heroin still inside it. But proper procedure required that an evidence expert examine the scene first. They sat in the hallway waiting for the expert to arrive.
The chief had taken Tommy O’Connor off patrol to help with the investigation. Tommy would go back to uniform once this case was solved. His eyes were bloodshot now, but he seemed in high spirits. He looked up and down the empty hall. “This would be hell if you suddenly fell and woke up living here,” he said cheerfully.
Birdsong came in the window at the east end of the hallway. It arrived like the tinkling of a bell. The detectives turned toward the sound. “The sun’s coming up,” said Kenny Patenaude, Northampton’s lieutenant of detectives. Abruptly, the window turned orange. Then the sound of a door opening came from the other end of the hall. They turned their eyes that way. “Oh, God,” said one of them.
A very thin man emerged, barefoot and shirtless. His chest looked concave. With an odd, tiptoeing gait, he walked to another door, knocked, waited, got no answer, then went outside and leaned on the railing on the landing of the exterior staircase.
The detectives looked at one another. “He was hoping for a solid blue-veiner from the guy in there,” said Tommy. He stood up and pushed open the door to Freddie’s tiny room. A box of breakfast food stood on the small refrigerator.
“Cereal killer.”
Lieutenant Patenaude made as if to hit Tommy.
Then another door opened. Out came another bare-chested man, with a flabby build and long black hair that reached his waist. In a moment other doorways opened. All up and down the hall men emerged—obese and skeletal bodies, weathered faces, tattooed arms. They passed by as if sleepwalking, as if they didn’t notice the cops.
“This could be a documentary,” said Tommy softly. “You know how they take a picture of a flower opening up? Good morning, thirty-nine.” He added, as if speaking to himself, “The fucking rock has been lifted, and we’re under it.”
A man in a porkpie hat with a pipe in his mouth came out, down at the end of the hall.
“Go talk to him, Tommy.”
The man’s name was Bob. He told Tommy that he’d almost been a witness to the murder. He said he’d heard a thump outside and opened up his door. Looking down the hall, he’d seen a body lying on the carpet. Then Bob had looked across the hall and seen the man who lived in the room directly opposite standing in his doorway, too. Bob had looked at him, he’d looked at Bob, and then both men had closed their doors, so as to see no more.
Finally, the evidence man showed up and did his work. Then, donning rubber gloves, Tommy and another detective went into Freddie’s room and began to search his bureau drawers. They didn’t find any heroin. “But here’s an appointment slip for a substance abuse program,” said Tommy. The slip of paper lay amid several hypodermic needles.
“He’s the number one student.”
“All druggies have pornography. Videos, magazines, pictures of girlfriends, and, if the girlfriend lives there, dildos,” said Lieutenant Patenaude.
“Bingo,” said Tommy. He held up some snapshots of a naked woman. “Here you go, dude. Airbrush. Live it.”
“Live the legend.”
A few lone figures were walking on Main Street when they drove back to the station in the dawn. They stopped at the central traffic light and Tommy and the other detectives started laughing. A colorfully dressed man walked briskly past the unmarked cruiser, talking angrily to himself. “Orange shorts, red knee-length socks, tan shoes, a lovely coat, and to top it all off, a leather chapeau,” said Tommy. “Just shoot me.” Northampton had never seemed so strange. But maybe that was because of the hour and the view through sleepless eyes.
Back at the station, two other detectives were interviewing the prime suspect, and all the detectives’ theories were beginning to fall apart.
In some big cities, cops jaded by mayhem called this kind of case “a misdemeanor homicide.” But not in Northampton, regionally renowned for its peacefulness and safety. There was no such thing as routine mayhem here. And when a nasty little mess occurred, plenty of people arrived at once to clean it up. Most of the city’s detectives and four from the state police, two of them lieutenants, worked for about forty-eight hours straight investigating Freddie’s death. The D.A.’s office sent over a lawyer to help with writing affidavits for search warrants. Tommy loved a team. This one was good. All its members were well trained and willing. The lieutenants didn’t have to tell the subalterns what to do. There was no grumbling, only voices saying, “I’ll take care of that.” But in the end, they realized that they’d never know for sure if there had even been a murder. “I think it may be a case of Fred dead from a fall in the hall,” one of the detectives said.
All their good intentions, backed up by diligence and competence, all amounting to a strong assertion about the sanctity of life—all came to nothing. A brutal drive-by murder on Main Street would have been worse, of course—a shocking event, unheard-of in this town. This death had its own small horror: the invitation to despair that comes from not knowing what has really happened and what, if anything, it means.
While investigating Freddie’s death, the detectives interviewed every resident in the rooming house, knocking on the doors, looking for potential witnesses. They came across, among others: an old classmate of Tommy’s who had fallen on hard times; Woody the blind poet who had put his own eyes out during a bad LSD trip many years ago; a father and son who were both notorious child molesters; an adolescent boy who had also been convicted of molesting children; a man who had shot himself in the stomach once, probably in an attempt to collect insurance, though that had never been proven. One of the state police lieutenants knocked on one of the rooming-house doors and when it op
ened he saw before him a man he hadn’t seen in years, not since he’d looked up at a motel balcony in another town and seen this very person aiming a rifle at him. This man had destroyed a state trooper’s house and car with a pipe bomb, he had done his time, and now he had settled in Northampton.
In the police station late at night, the detectives sit chatting, as if around a campfire. Tommy muses about the rooming-house residents they’ve interviewed. “I really enjoy dealing with these people. I don’t know why,” he says. “Maybe because I can figure them out.” He opens his filing cabinet. “All these files, all these names, all these confidential unreliable informants, drug addicts, thieves, volunteer firemen. Here’s the guy who was arrested for rape last week. He went home to his wife, raped and sodomized her, used twigs. And this guy, over twenty arrests, a frigging teacher at a college …”
Northampton was the region’s social services capital. Scattered through the town were an organization for wayward youth, dozens of big-hearted churches, a shelter for battered women, myriad counseling services. The rooming house where Freddie and his new friend had spent three days filling up on alcohol and heroin stood only half a block from the headquarters of a worthy substance abuse program. One block in the other direction was a methadone clinic, itself only a few blocks from the busy needle exchange, a concession that in many cases methadone and counseling don’t work. “The downside of the rehabilitation movement,” the assistant D.A. said during the investigation. “People come here for help, and when they fall off the wagon, they stay in town.”
This was part of the fabric of the place: rooming houses full of misery and excess and anonymity right across the street from fancy restaurants and bookstores, and just a short walk away from a famous college and from houses where cocktail parties for charity were regularly held, bartenders wrapping crystal glasses in napkins, waitresses carrying canapés on silver trays.
