“No, his brother Michael. Michael’s at Town Hall tonight helping with preparations for this year’s festival.”
Papa cut in: “If it takes Geritson more’n a few days to get your fuel pump, you might even get to see the festival for yourselves.”
“We’ve been to Newburyport for Yankee Homecoming,” Angela said. “Is it like that?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Papa said. “Never been. We have a parade to the seashore and a celebration on the beach. There’s food vendors, music—”
“And cotton candy!” Tommy said.
“Even if your car is fixed, you should stay just to see it,” Mama said. “We’ll give you a good rate on the stay. Won’t we, John?”
Papa nodded as he ate.
“It all sounds very nice,” Angela said. “If we didn’t have a room waiting for us in Conway.” She took a sip from her water glass and grimaced, then coughed into her napkin. Her husband patted her on the back gently. “Wrong pipe?”
She shook her head.
“It’s an acquired taste,” Papa said.
“Well water?” Mr. Braddock asked. “Sometimes well water has a sulfur taste.” He lifted the glass, sniffed it, and grimaced.
“No, it’s from the town aquifer,” Papa said. “Perfectly good water.”
“I’m sorry,” Angela said. “The food is wonderful, Mrs. Shayne.”
“Call me Sarah, dear.”
“We have lemonade, too!” Tommy chimed in. “Would you like that better?”
“If it’s not too much trouble…”
Tommy hurried off on the errand, but returning from the kitchen, pitcher in hand, he encountered Mrs. Braddock in the hallway. She gave him a sorry smile, her delicate fingers lightly touching her belly. “Thanks for fetching the lemonade, Tommy, but I’m afraid it might upset my stomach further. I think the heat has gotten the better of me today. I really should go lie down.”
While Mama cleaned up after dinner and Papa took his pipe on the porch, Tommy passed the Braddocks‘ room on the way to his own. Hushed voices infused with an urgent edge drifted under the door, and on a split-second impulse, he detoured to the attic, careful not to step heavy or creak the boards. He crouched with his ear to the vent above their room, baking in the trapped heat of the day and praying that his sweat wouldn’t drip through the grate and give him away. He wiped his face with his shirt and listened.
“But the car won’t be ready tomorrow,” Mr. Braddock said.
“Then we can take a taxi to Greenport. We should’ve gone with that man on the road. What did he say to you, anyway?”
A sigh. “You won’t believe it, but he actually said there’s something in the water in Dunbury. Oh, it’s just an expression. Said Dunbury folk are strange; they shun outsiders. But he couldn’t be more wrong about that; the Shaynes couldn’t be any kinder. It would be rude to leave now. And who knows what he thought he had to gain by taking us to Greenport.”
“Bill, I don’t want to be rude either, but something is off in this place. It’s been a scorcher of a day, but I’ve felt cold since we got here.”
“You’re just tired and stressed, dear. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“Are you even listening to me? You didn’t taste the water. You had beer.”
“What are you suggesting, Angela? That they tried to poison you?”
“Of course not. It’s nothing John or Sarah said or did. It’s just… strange things adding up to make me uneasy.”
“Well, give me an example.”
“You’ll say I’m imagining things.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
She sighed. “First it was the women at the soda fountain across the street from the garage. No one said a word to me the whole time I was there. You know me, I tried to make conversation but they just stared.”
“That’s it?”
“And I thought I saw something slimy in one of their water glasses. I tried to put it out of my mind but then when I came up here to lie down tonight, I opened the wrong door. It had to be the old woman’s room, the boarder who doesn’t take meals with them. She wasn’t in the room—thank goodness because I might’ve screamed. But there was a water glass on the bedside table with a set of dentures in it and I swear to God there was something black and slimy in the water behind the teeth like… like a baby eel or something. And I could feel it watching me. It felt like a mad dog behind a picket fence.”
“Are you sure?” Mr. Braddock’s voice was tinged with revolted fascination.
“We can make some excuse, Bill. We’ll never see these people again. Let’s just be on our way in the morning, please.”
Tommy heard the muffled sound of his mother calling for him and rubbed the grate impressions out of his cheek. Mrs. Braddock had spoken quickly like she needed to spill it all out before she changed her mind. She sounded scared and desperate. And now, as if her fear and bellyache were contagious, Tommy felt queasy. He scampered back down the ladder, wiping the sweat from his brow.
Later, lying in bed, Tommy listened for the sound of his brother’s return. Michael would make sense of it all. He’d point out the obvious and make Tommy feel stupid for not seeing it. Michael would dispel the cloying shadows clamoring for space in Tommy’s mind in the sweltering summer night. But sleep embraced him before comfort could.
—
Tommy’s next sighting of his older brother wasn’t as welcome as he’d expected it to be in the dark watches of the night. He had begun the day by leading the Braddocks—who looked neat and unperturbed, if a little stiff in the hair as if they hadn’t showered—to the train station. Their intention was to ride one stop to Beverly for lunch and window shopping while their car was fixed. But when the third train in a row rumbled past the weedy station in a rush of wailing whistle and billowing steam, Mr. Braddock kicked the gravel and asked Tommy to lead them to the best eatery in Dunbury. That was the Fishtale Diner, of course.
No sooner had the waitress clothes-pinned their order of burgers and fries to the string in the kitchen window and set their bottled Cokes on the counter than Michael Shayne pushed through the door and scanned the room, his brow darkening when his gaze settled on his younger brother. He strode across the room and clapped Tommy on the shoulder, swiveling him on his stool, away from the counter.
“There you are. I’ve been all over town lookin’ for you. ’Scuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Braddock, I’m Michael. It’s awful kind of you to feed my little brother, but Mama sent me to fetch him with apologies. He never should’ve imposed on you.”
“Oh, it’s no imposition at all,” Mr. Braddock said. “We wanted to thank him for his roadside assistance.”
“All the same, sir, Tommy has chores to do and shouldn’t have gone out before they were done. I’ll be taking him home or it’ll be my hide. Nice meeting you both.”
Michael pulled Tommy off the stool and marched him out the door into the blazing heat.
“You can’t go running off with strangers, Tommy. Pa’ll whip you.”
“They ain’t strangers. They’re staying at our house.”
“Still, you only just met ’em yesterday. They’re not from around here and the only thing bigger than your appetite is your mouth.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Michael glanced around. “It means you’re liable to go and say something that Ma and Pa wouldn’t approve of. They’ve always said it’s delicate business dealing with out-of-towners.”
“Well I don’t know why it should be. They seem awful nice. I figured if I showed them around, it might put them at ease and they’d stay longer. That’d be good for business, right?”
Michael ruffled Tommy’s hair as they walked, then pulled his hand away and theatrically shook off the sweat. “I guess your heart’s in the right place, but running out the door yelling over your shoulder doesn’t cut it. You been told a hundred times you need to check first before doing anything with guests. And what do you mean about putting them at ease, anyway? You have
some reason to think they’re not?”
They had left the center of town and were passing under the shade trees that lined Prospect Street. Tommy stepped off the sidewalk to kick a crushed can down the road. It clattered away to a satisfying distance and he sprinted after it for a follow-up.
“I’m talking to you, squirt. You kick that thing one more time and I’ll kick your keister all the way home. What are they uneasy about?”
Tommy slumped his shoulders and waited for Michael to catch up. “Someone told ’em the Dunbury water’s bad and Angela—I mean Mrs. Braddock—didn’t feel well last night. I think she has a case of nerves ’cause she’s on her honeymoon but she also thought the water tasted bad, and she was bothered about the ladies at the soda fountain giving her the silent treatment.”
“Boy, she must really confide in you. The water, huh?”
Tommy nodded. They had stopped walking at the corner of Athol and Main and Tommy’s eyes drifted up to the rusty water tower on Ward Hill.
“You ever hear those rumors?” Tommy asked.
Michael shrugged and started across the street. “Everybody has,” he said over his shoulder.
“So there’s something to it?” Tommy trotted to keep up. His brother seemed suddenly determined to get home at a brisker pace.
Tommy caught up at the next corner and tugged Michael’s shirt, turning him around.
“All the kids who play ball on the hill have heard the tower groaning. And I know you helped the men do something up there that night when it got real bad. What is it, Michael? Tell me.”
Michael looked at the tower and his eye twitched. “I can’t talk about it.”
“It’s about the women, isn’t it? How they’re different?”
“Tommy… you’ll find out when the time is right. At the festival if Pa doesn’t talk to you sooner. You can wait a day, can’t you?”
“Why at the festival?”
“You were too young last time so you probably don’t remember. Just have a little patience. You’ll find out when the time is right, like everybody does.”
“Michael?”
“Yeah, squirt?”
“I’m scared.”
—
On Saturday morning, Tommy was tasked with washing the pickup truck to get it ready for the parade. He thought his father might check in to critique his work, but Papa took Mr. Braddock to Geritson’s garage to check on the Bonneville while Mama took Mrs. Braddock to church to watch her ladies’ choir practice and pick up some things that needed polishing for the festival.
Tommy contemplated the gray soapy water in the bucket with suspicion.
It was the only water he had ever known, besides the briny ocean, and it looked to him like water always had. He’d bathed in it from infancy, been baptized in it, and quenched his thirst with it every day of his life. If it had a smell he could barely detect it.
The truck was dry and shining in the evening sun when the ladies returned home. The men had come back with the Bonneville about an hour prior and were smoking on the porch when the women walked up carrying silk hatboxes by the strings. When they reached the steps, Mr. Braddock rose from his rocking chair and swept his arm in a grand gesture toward the car parked in front of the inn. “Your chariot awaits, my dear. And the White Mountains beckon.”
Watching from the side of the house on his way to dump the bucket of suds, Tommy thought Mrs. Braddock looked pleased, but not as relieved as he’d expected.
“That’s wonderful,” she said.
“I haven’t packed our luggage yet,” Mr. Braddock said. “But with the late sunset, we still might make it before dark.”
“Don’t be foolish,” Mamma said. “You must stay for dinner.”
“Actually,” Angela said, lacing her fingers together and swiveling on her heel, “I wondered if we might stay for the festival tomorrow.”
Mr. Braddock took the hatbox from her and set it on the porch. Placing his hand at the small of her back, he led her around the other side of the house, his voice growing faint as he began: “Possibly we could, but we’ve already paid a deposit in Conway, and time is ticking…”
Tommy jogged down the corridor of shade between the house and the hedges and was concealed by the azalea bushes before the couple reached the backyard.
“…thought you wanted to leave here as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps I was jumping at shadows. It’s been an emotional week. A wonderful week, but suddenly we’d gone from being overwhelmed with friends and family to being alone in a strange town. Maybe I was overly sensitive.”
They stopped walking when they reached the crabapple tree. The fallen fruit lay scattered and decaying in a pungent pulp at their feet. Bill Braddock touched his wife’s chin and tilted it upward to look into her eyes. “What’s changed?”
“Sarah says the festival is not to be missed, and it’s only one more day. Maybe providence stranded us here so we’d have the chance to add something special to our trip. And the ladies choir, Bill—they were magnificent.”
“I thought the Dunbury women were giving you the silent treatment.”
“I was mistaken. The church is a strange denomination. Many of the women take a vow of silence later in life. It’s a peculiar custom, I know. But no more odd than how the Amish live. So you see it was nothing personal. Sarah explained it to me. And Bill, you should hear them sing. You should go to the festival just to hear them sing. It’s majestic and sublime, like all the peaks and valleys of the deep blue sea.”
He brushed a lock of golden hair from her temple, leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, lingering for a long moment.
In the bushes, Tommy held his breath.
Mr. Braddock jerked and pushed his wife away, unlocking his mouth from hers with a mangled moan. He wiped his hand across his lips and it came away bloody. “Jesus Christ!” he spat, and buckled over retching at the ground between his feet.
She watched him, her arm extended in his direction, delicate fingers splayed and reaching for but not touching him.
“What the hell is in your mouth?”
She brought her fingers to her lips, pinched her tongue and pulled it out. It had a dark gray pallor, almost blue, and it kept coming and coming, far longer than it should be able, curling around her fingers. Tommy was seized with the need to urinate, but he couldn’t look away. Bill Braddock’s back was up against the tree now, his heels grinding pulped crabapples into the earth, his face contorted with horror. Tommy had the feeling the man might scurry up into the boughs to get away from his wife, or break and run, like he should be doing right now. But both man and boy remained paralyzed in place.
Angela removed her tongue and offered it to her husband. It wriggled and pulsed on her porcelain palm. Tommy couldn’t make out the details across the yard, but it looked like an eel or a giant grub. After displaying the thing, she sucked it back in and Tommy realized that she needed it to speak.
“It’s the town’s gift,” she said. “It’s alive, Bill. At first I thought it was a canker sore, but it ate my tongue while I slept and made a nest from the roots. I was terrified at first, but it sucked the fear right out of me. And I’ll be able to sing like them soon—the oldest, most beautiful song. What a lullaby for our babies that will be.”
—
Tommy tossed and turned in the hot night. He drifted in and out of a disquieting dream in which his mother served a cauldron of wriggling creatures at the big table. He opened his mouth to scream, but what came out was a flowing stream of glossolalia like the alien syllables he’d heard a southern preacher gibbering on a radio station that crackled in and out in the sweltering Chevy when they’d taken that trip to Florida to visit his great-grandmother.
He woke glazed in sweat, heart racing, breath hitching in his chest, and ran his tongue over his teeth. He sat up and touched his tongue, shivered with relief when it didn’t bite his finger. He kicked off the tangled sheet and shuffled out of bed, following the faint aroma of tobacco to his bedroom windo
w.
The moon was almost full. By its light he could read the hands of his bedside clock: 2:40.
It was too late for his parents to be up, and apart from Mrs. Ruess the Braddocks were the only boarders in residence. He put his ear to the screen and listened, but heard no voices from the porch below. The smoke didn’t smell like Papa’s, and Tommy imagined that Bill Braddock was probably down there riding out a sleepless night. He pulled a t-shirt on over his boxer shorts and crept down the stairs, avoiding the creaky boards with a practiced step.
He opened the screen door to the porch gently and took a seat beside Bill Braddock, who gave no sign of recognizing his presence. The man reminded Tommy of the seated pose manikins he’d seen at Osgood’s, his eyes fixed on some distant point in the night, his cigarette dwindling under a long plug of ash on the arm of the chair, threatening to burn his fingers.
Tommy cleared his throat. Mr. Braddock knocked off the ash and took a drag.
“Are you okay, sir?” Tommy asked.
Braddock squinted and shook his head slowly, his eyes still fixed ahead through the thinning pall of smoke.
“You have trouble sleeping? I know I sure did. Had a nightmare wake me up.”
No reply.
“At least it’s cooler out here,” Tommy said.
Small talk wasn’t going to reach this guy. His state reminded Tommy of what they called shellshock in the movies. Tommy drew a deep breath and tried a different tack. “I saw you under the crabapple tree today. When Mrs. Braddock kissed you.”
That got his attention. His eyes swiveled and locked on Tommy. “Do you know what happened to her? Do you know what’s going on in this town?”
“No sir.”
“Bullshit. You were born and raised here. We never wanted any trouble. Never meant to pry into anyone’s secrets. Now… I can’t even lie in that bed beside her. I should have listened to the good Samaritan on the road, but you… you were so willing to help.” His voice took on a steely edge. “Did you lay a trap for us, boy?”
“No, sir. I swear I didn’t! I don’t know what happened to Mrs. Braddock. I swear to God, I don’t. But I’m ascairt of it too.”
Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2 Page 19
