Chapter Thirteen
Among the records of the Dry Falls emergency, our file on the events of June 24 is one of the largest. Some of the relevant documents came from the police files, copied by permission of resident state trooper Mark Centrella. Among those he interviewed, the school handyman, Helen’s candidate, was sixty miles away at a revival meeting, a monthly all-nighter run by Brother Caleb Mercer of the Hallelujah Fellowship in South Fryeburg. As for the three suspicious-looking young men, one of them was Lally Ellsworth’s brother. The other two were his roommates at Bowdoin. “We went swimming with the girls,” said Bud Ellsworth. “O.K., I did try to duck Mercy but four of them jumped me and held me under. Then they made us leave because they heard one of the teachers calling. We were out of there by four o’clock anyway.”
The owner of the riding stable, John Crowley, had spent a blameless night helping a Morgan horse to foal, in the company of Charlie Gerstel, our local large-animal veterinarian. John was questioned only because he was a single male and a newcomer. I hoped we were not approaching a time when people’s names would be picked by whim or malice for persecution. There were no vagrants or escaped convicts in the area, nor any townspeople with a record of assault. Trooper Centrella had no need to call for reinforcements from the barracks at Windham. All the leads began at the school and ended at the school. Within twenty-four hours he had declared that the incidents were not a police, but a medical, matter.
What were Henry and I doing that night, when we might have been of help? After supper I walked Henry over to church, carrying a freshly starched and ironed surplice on a hanger. I hung it in the vestiary and waved goodbye to Henry, who was standing on the chancel steps. Henry claimed he was going to weed out any battered hymnals or prayer books, but I knew he wanted to be alone to think. He did some of his best thinking stretched out in a pew with a kneeler under his head. The soaring lines of the columns carried his eye upward to the vaulted ceiling painted dark blue with gold stars, like the sky at night. He found it beneficial to stare at the ceiling, letting his mind go as blank as a lobotomy patient’s. On the evening of June 23 he was not as much thoughtful as preoccupied, wondering how to tell Bishop Hollins he wanted a break from parish life, and how to get out of the Bishop’s office before he suggested they pray together. He also wondered if resigning from the parish was just a childish way of paying God back for his near thirty-year silence.
Usually I felt lowered in spirits myself when Henry was dejected or in conflict. That night I gave myself over to ignoble cravings and paltry pastimes. Henry was doing his worrying in a building made of stone, which locked in the cool. I had no way of keeping cool except to sit in the garden in my slip finishing off a pint and a half of vanilla ice cream with flecks of the bean in it. I ate very slowly, using a silver demitasse spoon I had chosen for the purpose. Except for man-made sounds (a car going by with the radio playing), it was a noiseless night, like all the nights during the heat wave—no crickets, no owls, no raccoons at the garbage, no creatures hunting or being hunted. All the dogs in the neighborhood were quiet, and so was Harold Schwartz’s German shepherd across the road.
I might have sat brooding on the unnatural silence, but instead I went back to the screened-in porch, angled a lamp toward my feet and spent an excessive amount of time clipping and filing my toenails. I noted that my right big toenail was in danger of ingrowing and my little toenails were too thin and lacked several protective horny layers. When I was done, I leaned against the back of my chair and stared through the screen at the shapes of plants in the garden, until my vision became imprinted with the pattern of the fine wire mesh. Mentally, I was operating below subsistence level. Part of me yearned for absolute stasis; another part knew, far away and dimly, that I must gather myself to combat this lethargy, which properly belonged to the realms of sleep and death.
Nothing would have roused me before the sun rose if Henry hadn’t come in banging the kitchen door, grumbling that the lights had gone off at church and he was damned if he was going to break a leg groping his way down to the crypt to find the fuse box. I said it might be an answer from God. If the church needed rewiring, Henry could leave once he’d raised the money to cover the cost. He said God was far more likely to be using electrical failure as a metaphor for his, Henry’s, spiritual darkness. We went up to bed and slept soundly until we were awakened at six-thirty in the morning by a call from Myra Littlefield, asking for Henry.
All twenty members of the class of ’74 at Burridge Academy graduated in good standing, but only fourteen put on long white dresses to receive their diplomas. The other six, all residents of West Dorm, had been confined to the school infirmary on graduation morning. Miss Littlefield told their relatives and friends they had eaten bad food, the blame being cast on a supply of canned smoked oysters, consumed on saltines and washed down with root beer. Myra Littlefield and Nurse Shufelt conspired so successfully to prevent suspicion from arising that none of the parents became alarmed and none insisted on visiting the infirmary. The graduation guests assumed that state troopers were present at the festivities because they were directing traffic. I don’t know how they kept the lid on Jean Leatherbee, who “found the bodies,” as Myra put it.
Reading the June 24 file fills me with pity for Jean, who was unsuited to play a role in any crisis. Like so many boarding-school teachers, she needed to be near young people in order to recapture the lost glow of youth. Adulthood, with its burdens and its muddles, was uncongenial to her. In spite of her prematurely white hair, long earlobes, and creased brow, she had kept some of the look and mannerisms of a schoolgirl into her late forties. She was apt to laugh suddenly and too loudly; bound forward to greet people like a large untrained puppy; play with a strand of her hair during assemblies, dreamily twisting it around one finger. At graduation Myra Littlefield kept Jean as close to her side as she could without using physical restraint. Instead, she used Betty Barnes, the gym teacher, who coached games and supervised any young woman who wanted to increase her strength and develop her muscles through weight training. Myra and Betty were able to rein Jean in until the ceremonies were over, but not very much longer. Jean left Dry Falls on graduation day without giving notice. Several months later Myra heard through the prep-school grapevine that she had joined the faculty of the Berwick Rise School in Lisbon, Connecticut.
As far as we can make out from Jean Leatherbee’s hiccuped narration to Mark Centrella, it started with a howling dog. The howling woke Jean at six-thirty a.m. on the twenty-fourth, half an hour before the alarm clock was set to ring. There was no school dog at Burridge Academy, although there was a fat, affectionate school cat. Jean stumbled to her feet and put on her bathrobe and slippers. She dreaded coming to the aid of an animal in distress. It took all the courage she could muster to overcome her fear of finding a half-severed paw, a gouged eye, emaciated ribs. Every lost or hurt animal was a testimonial to human cruelty. She must be forgiven for dawdling a little, putting off the confrontation while she combed her hair, debated whether to brush her teeth, started making the bed. Her room was at the rear of West Dorm, one flight above the fire exit. She went down the back stairs slowly, gripping the handrail, wishing she could go back to bed and cover her ears with a pillow to shut out the howling.
Jean opened the fire door and poked her head out. The noise had stopped. Made bolder by the fact that there was no dog in sight, she ventured along the brick walk as far as the tennis courts. The howling had come from that direction. Relief at being spared the necessity of caring for a maimed animal warred in her breast with the obligation to search the bushes surrounding the court in case he had collapsed of his wounds and was lying there, weakened and voiceless. Cowardice got the better of her. She stood where she was for several long minutes listening for the smallest sound—labored breathing, a whimper. She headed back to the house, taking care not to hurry, expecting the howling to break out again. The dog was quiescent, so she darted inside. Instead of going upstairs the back way, she wandere
d through the sitting room, straightening cushions, putting newspapers and magazines into a basket provided for the purpose, making sure the house was fit to be seen by visiting relatives. She went up the front stairs this time, noticing by her wristwatch that it was almost time to ring the wake-up gong.
There were four rooms on the second floor—three doubles and Helen Akers’s single. Wouldn’t it be nicer, she thought, to waken the occupants individually? A gentle tap on the door instead of an ear-splitting bong? A gesture in honor of the day, person to person instead of warden to inmate? On the way down the hall to her own room, crisscrossing from right to left, she knocked four times and called each of the occupants’ names liltingly. Ten juniors lived on the third floor, but they were all going to Barcelona with the American Friends Service Committee and had been given permission to leave before graduation. She went up anyway, opening all five doors to check for forgotten belongings, books, stuffed toys, and mateless sneakers. On the bathroom floor she noticed a puddle of pink acne medicine, identifiable by its sulphurous smell, and in room number five she discovered Helen Akers. Helen had slept in her shorts and tee shirt on top of Connie Jessup’s bare mattress. The bed was next to the window, which was open to its full height. Helen was curled on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest, but her eyes were open.
“What are you doing here, Helen?” asked Miss Leatherbee, forgetting her democratic impulses of a moment before. She was so unsure of herself that she saw any behavior not strictly by the book as an attempt to undermine her authority. “It was too hot in my room,” said Helen. “Heat rises,” said Miss Leatherbee, ready to pounce at the least sign of mendacity. “It would be cooler on the second floor.” By this time Helen was standing at attention, tucking her grubby white tee shirt into her waistband. “I don’t like my room,” said Helen. “The ceiling is too low.” “Come on, Helen,” Miss Leatherbee insisted. “That makes two different reasons you’ve given me.” Helen slid her feet into a pair of unstable-looking clogs. “I like being alone on the floor. I’d rather be by myself, anyway.” “You’re being very evasive, Helen,” Miss Leatherbee retorted, “and I can only say I hope you’ll be more straightforward in your dealings with people at Hampden College.”
Jean Leatherbee had entered her own room and closed the door behind her before she realized there should have been some signs of life from the seniors. On graduation morning they often woke up rowdy. In years past she had been required to break up toothpaste fights. Always one to borrow trouble, she had a fleeting vision of smuggled liquor and six girls with hangovers, for which Miss Littlefield would hold her responsible. She marched up the hall to the first door on the left (on the right was the bathroom), rapped first with her knuckles, then banged with her open palm. Without waiting for a response, she opened the door and said loudly, “Everybody downstairs in five minutes.”
When there was no answer, she advanced several feet into the room and found Mercy Locke lying on her back with no clothes on, sleeping or unconscious. Face upward on the other bed, one arm dangling over the side, hand trailing on the rug, Pickle Raines was lying motionless and as naked as a newborn. By this time Helen had joined Miss Leatherbee, and together they opened the two remaining doors to find four more versions of the same incomprehensible scene. Jean told Trooper Centrella that at first she thought they were dead and of course it would be her fault. When the trooper pressed her for a full description, she became extremely agitated and accused him of wanting to use her as a camera. She supposed he thought a “visual person” like herself would be able to provide more “grisly details.” Myra Littlefield, who stayed with her while she was being interviewed, asked the trooper to come back later when Jean was calmer. After he left, Jean kept begging Myra Littlefield not to “make her go near them.”
Jane Shufelt, R.N., the school nurse, was fifty-six years old, gray-haired, blunt-featured, and blunt-spoken. Nothing stopped her from speaking her mind and nothing embarrassed her. It goes without saying that she was capable of embarrassing others. When Nurse Shufelt stood up in assembly to announce revised infirmary hours or the availability of flu shots, she also congratulated any girl who had had her first menstrual period. Her lack of delicacy extended to her description of the six students, whom she examined in their beds at West Dorm before taking them to the infirmary.
Jane Shufelt had been director of patient care at Penobscot General Hospital in Bangor. She had taken postgraduate specialties in pediatrics and gynecology. She maintained she was in retirement, but she supplemented her work at Burridge with two voluntary duty periods a week at Portland General. She was a dedicated, highly trained practitioner, but she seemed to view the incident at West Dorm—at least in some aspects—as a kind of Rabelaisian joke. Jane gave a statement to the state police and a much more unbuttoned account to Henry, who had already begun keeping notes on curious occurrences. What relish she took in Jean Leatherbee’s discomfort! “You can imagine old Jean,” she told Henry. “All of them lying there naked with their legs open and everything showing. She didn’t know where to look. I’ll bet she doesn’t even know she has one and she sure as hell doesn’t want to think these kids do. I asked her to stand by while I took some samples. She lit out so fast it made your head spin.”
When Henry saw the girls, they’d been covered with sheets right up to the chin. He was not sure why Myra had summoned him, except to be a reassuring clerical presence. When he got to West Dorm, Myra was talking to Trooper Centrella on the telephone. Jane Shufelt was wrapping a package to be delivered to the pathology lab in Portland. Jean Leatherbee had started defrosting the refrigerator, and Helen was sitting on the front stoop hugging the school cat, a tortoiseshell torn, ignoring his struggles for freedom. None of them talked to Henry, although they thanked him profusely for being there. He knew only one way to make himself useful. He went upstairs and paused by each girl’s bedside, repeating the first blessing that came to his mind: “Almighty God, be our strong defense against our enemies; grant that this child may be purified and cleansed by your abiding grace.”
Looking down into their faces, he saw that they were deeply asleep, breathing almost imperceptibly, deaf to his words. It was only on the way home, after promising Myra he would show up for graduation an hour early, that he remembered the origin of those words. Instead of taking them from the service for the visitation of the sick, the most logical source, he had borrowed most of the language from a prayer for the reconsecration of churches and objects inside churches. It was surprising that that prayer should have sprung to his lips so readily. He had performed the service just once in his career, when the baptismal font at All Souls had been profaned by teenage vandals in the predictable fashion. The rest of the prayer began to come back to him: “that whatsoever has been stained or defiled may be purged from all pollution to the glory of your name.” At the time Henry believed that such language was too strong to fit the circumstances.
What exactly were the circumstances? The day after the Burridge graduation there was still no general agreement, and no explanation. By the simplest reckoning, six girls had been discovered prostrate on their dormitory beds, naked and stupefied. The blood and vaginal samples analyzed on a rush basis at Portland General as a favor to Jane Shufelt revealed no traces of alcohol, drugs, or semen. The law, in the person of Trooper Centrella, was satisfied that the young women had not been molested sexually. As an added precaution, the bloods had also been tested for less obvious substances like poisons and viruses. Whatever the narcotic agent had been, it had kept six teenagers in various stages of lethargy for nearly sixteen hours.
The first to snap out of it was Mercy Locke, whose system needed very little rest under normal conditions; and the last was Abigail Hardy, a big, soft girl who happened to suffer from a mild thyroid deficiency. Once the girls were awake, they were not in the least groggy or upset. In fact, they were bubbling with high spirits and ready for a little postponed carousing. When they heard they’d missed graduation, they cheered and whist
led, all except Pickle, who had wanted to show off her custom-made white dress. In a gesture rare to headmistresses, Myra Littlefield brought two bottles of French champagne over to West Dorm and poured everyone a glass to drink while they packed their belongings. Miss Littlefield was so eager to see them gone and the winds of scandal dispersed that she helped fold their clothes, hunted up extra cartons, and carried many of their boxes and suitcases downstairs herself to groups of parents waiting on the lawn, chatting in the sunshine.
All of us hoped the girls themselves could explain their long sleep. Of course, they were questioned delicately, in order not to alarm them or dampen their spirits, but they were as unconcerned and forgetful as hypnosis subjects obeying some kind of post-trance suggestion. Since Henry was a pastoral counselor, Myra asked him to be present while she and Jane went from bed to bed in the Burridge infirmary. Each of the six, in more or less the same words, said she hadn’t worn anything to bed since the heat wave began; she had fallen asleep pretty early for graduation eve; she had slept straight through without even getting up to go to the bathroom.
Only Mercy Locke and Jill Bloom had anything different to add. They had fallen asleep smelling meat or had dreamed about smelling meat. Jill said the meat smelled “slightly rotten,” whereas Mercy remembered wondering where the meat had come from. She and Helen had gone down to raid the icebox around eleven p.m., while Miss Leatherbee was in the shower. There was nothing to eat except yogurt, bran cereal, a jar of tahini, and a few rinds of cheese. Jill added that she had dreamed the meat was in the room with her and she was afraid she might be forced to touch it. When Henry pressed Mercy further, she said maybe one of the kids next door to her had brought some cold cuts home from the pick-up supper before the bonfire and the heat had made them go bad very quickly. “I don’t see how I could have dreamed it,” said Mercy. “I never heard of dreaming about a smell.”
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