by Jane Langton
They stood back to let the ambulance turn around and drive away. Julian looked at Stu LaDue angrily. “The ambulance guys, they said he’d been dead for a while. It didn’t just happen this morning.”
Stu shrugged, Pete Harris shook his head sorrowfully, Honey Mooney wiped her eyes, and Eugene Beaver huddled down in his raincoat. Then they all drifted away. The day threatened to be sticky and hot.
Homer and Julian inspected Porter’s shiny Ford Taurus. There was nothing much to look at. It had been hoisted high on the jack again so that Porter’s body could be removed.
“Bumper jack, I see,” said Homer.
“Why didn’t he shore up the wheels with those big stones?” said Julian. “See those white rocks, there in his flower bed? Porter was a careful kind of guy. I don’t understand it.”
“Why didn’t anybody discover him sooner? It must have happened last night.”
“Real late, probably. Porter was a night owl. He used to wash his car at midnight. Sometimes he mowed his lawn by the light of the moon.”
Julian looked at Homer reproachfully, and Homer felt a stab of guilt. Somehow, some way, he should have been on hand when Porter McAdoo was jacking up his car.
“Mr. Kelly, Mr. Kelly!” Homer turned to see Honey Mooney running toward them, waving her arms. Her turquoise wrapper flapped, her slippers flip-flopped on the pavement. She was puffing and out of breath. “My curtains, somebody set fire to my curtains!”
“Jesus,” said Julian. They hurried after Honey and followed her into her big mobile home, one of the largest in the park.
“Somebody must have set fire to them while I was out just now.” Honey gestured at the pair of dripping charred curtains hanging on either side of her bay window. She had drenched the smoldering ruffles with a kettle of water. “I didn’t lock my door. I just ran out. Look at my entertainment center! It’s all wet. I’ll bet my TV won’t work anymore.” Leaning down, she turned on the switch. At once the set flickered into life, and there on the screen were Vanessa and Angelica pulling each other’s hair. “Well, at least the picture’s still nice and sharp.”
Julian recognized the curtains. They were the ones he had given to Honey after Alice’s death. “It’s strange,” he said. “Both sides are burned the same amount.”
“That’s right,” said Homer. “You’d think a fire would catch one side and burn it all the way to the top before the other side started. It looks as if somebody touched a match to one side and then the other.” He looked at Honey. “You didn’t leave a cigarette burning in an ashtray under the curtains?”
Honey looked offended. “I don’t smoke.”
“But who could have done it? All of you were there together beside the ambulance. All of you except—” Homer glanced at Julian, who looked away.
“All of us except Charlotte Harris,” said Honey in triumph.
“Why don’t I go talk to Charlotte?” mumbled Homer, excusing himself. Outside on Honey’s lawn he shook Julian’s hand and said good-bye. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, except “Watch out for yourself, be careful, you’re all in danger,” but Julian knew that perfectly well.
Homer knocked on Charlotte’s door. She opened it at once and seemed glad to see him, but she looked embarrassed as she invited him to come in and sit down. Homer guessed that her style was cramped by the presence of her husband, who sat impassively on the sofa like a toad.
“May I ask how you found Porter this morning, Mrs. Harris?”
“I went out very early to sprinkle the lawn, because there’s been so little rain lately, and I saw him right away, pinned under his car.” Charlotte’s eyes filled with tears. “He was a fine man.” She glanced at Pete, who lifted his shoulders and raised his eyebrows, as if to say “He was okay, I guess.”
“Did you happen to go into Honey Mooney’s while the others were all at the other end of the park just now?”
Charlotte looked at him blankly. “No, I was right here, looking out the window.”
“Did you see anyone else go into Mrs. Mooney’s?”
Charlotte shook her head.
“What’s the matter?” said Pete. “Somebody steal something?”
“No,” said Homer gravely. “Somebody set fire to her curtains.”
“Fire!” said Charlotte. “Not another fire?”
“I’m afraid so. Somebody around here seems to be fond of setting fires. What about last night? Did you notice any strangers around here last night?”
“No. I always step outside before going to bed, just to look at the stars. But I didn’t see anything unusual.”
Homer thanked her and went away to talk to Honey again, and to Eugene Beaver and Stu LaDue. They had all been watching the happy colors of television jiggling on the screen. They had heard nothing else, they had seen nothing.
Homer drove away and headed across Route 2, wondering why the remaining Pond View people didn’t seem more concerned for their own safety. Only Julian Snow had the sense to be afraid. As Homer pulled into the parking lot beside the fire and police station, he saw Julian’s sober face rise up against the background of the shining red fire engines parked in the open air.
“That’s two more things,” he told Police Chief Flower. “Porter McAdoo’s death and Honey Mooney’s fire. You can’t ignore it now. Somebody’s trying to eliminate everybody at Pond View.”
Chief Flower obviously felt a little guilty. He didn’t look Homer in the eye. He rocked back on his chair with his short legs off the floor and stared out the window at the little hollow where the Mill Brook ran trickling toward the center of town. “Like I said, elderly people, they have accidents all the time. Take the old folks in Peter Bulkeley Terrace. Just the other day we had a fire and a burglary there the same day. But the fire was this old woman’s hair dryer blew up, and the burglary was another old lady, she forgot where she put her pocketbook.”
“But Porter wasn’t elderly, and neither is Honey. I tell you, Jimmy, those people need protection. What about posting somebody there at night? One man, just one?”
“Jesus, Homer, where you been? I told you, we haven’t got the manpower for private security. We’ve had to cut our staff twenty percent. There’s no way I could justify taking anybody off regular duty to guard a bunch of elderly folks around the clock, people who are probably dying of accidents and natural causes. No way in this world.”
Roger Bland’s interest in the future of Pond View had blossomed since the death of Alice Snow. The termination of the trailer park was now even more desirable. Roger had been asked to help effect certain changes at whatever time in the remote future the park at last became empty of residents. The legal ramifications would be tricky, and the social uproar horrendous, but Roger was inclined to think the town should keep its options open.
“Only six of them left,” he said, reading the obituary notice for Porter McAdoo in the Concord Journal. He looked at his wife in triumph. “Four of them retired to Florida, so now it’s only six.”
“Six what, dear?”
“Never mind.”
“Oh, Roger, dear, did you remember the tickets?”
“Tickets?”
“The plane tickets. For Nantucket. Our vacation, remember?”
“Oh, the plane tickets. No, I’m sorry, Marjorie, I forgot.”
“Honestly, Roger, it just shows how badly you need a rest. Promise me, dear, you’ll call the travel agency tomorrow morning first thing.”
43
Every day or two I strolled to the village to
hear some of the gossip.…
Walden, “The Village”
The same issue of the Concord Journal that listed the death of Porter McAdoo published the warrant for the special town meeting in October.
One of the warrant articles was highly controversial—the proposed zoning change to allow a mixed-use complex on a site belonging to the high school. Jack Markey’s scenic watercolor rendering was printed on the front page. Soon everybody was talking about Walden Green
and the sacrifice of the high school land.
“I must say,” said Marjorie Bland, meeting her friend Jo-Jo Field on the Milldam, “I think the picture of Walden Green is awfully attractive, don’t you?”
Jo-Jo was shocked. “But it’s another insult to Walden Woods. When is it going to end?”
“Oh, Jo-Jo, didn’t you read the article? Grandison Enterprises has promised to finance a transfer station at the landfill. Roger says the huge hole in the ground will disappear at last. You know, where they pile all those old washing machines.”
“It’s bribery,” said Jo-Jo, frowning and folding her arms. “I don’t like being bribed to do something wrong.”
“But, Jo-Jo, dear,” said Marjorie, laughing, “Roger says that’s the way things are done these days. And anyway he thinks the pretty little square with its houses and shops will be an asset to the town. And Roger thinks”—Marjorie stepped over a recumbent form on the sidewalk—“he thinks the affordable housing will fill a need.”
“Well, of course anything Roger says is gospel truth to me,” Jo-Jo said earnestly. “We all swear by Roger.” She nodded her head significantly at the man huddled in the entrance to Hugo’s Hair Harmonies and whispered, “But what about that poor old man? Will he be able to live there?”
Marjorie looked down at the man in surprise. “Good gracious. You know,” she said, hurrying away with Jo-Jo, “one of those people keeps turning up at my house. She hides in the stable with Carmencita.”
“Carmencita?”
“Wally’s horse, Baronesa Carmencita de Granada. She’s got a Spanish name because she’s a Paso Fino. You know, the Spaniards brought them to the West Indies way back in history.”
“A Paso Fino, isn’t that the horse with the lovely smooth gait?”
“Right, but she’s too small for Wally now. And anyway she’s been so skittish lately. I’ve been thinking seriously, Jo-Jo, of having her put down.”
“Put down! Good heavens.”
“Honestly, Jo-Jo, it would be such a relief. She tried to bite me the other day.” Marjorie displayed a bruise on her arm and stepped over another sleeping person on the sidewalk.
“Listen,” said Jo-Jo, getting back to brass tacks, “what about that homeless woman in your stable? Have you called the police?”
“The police? Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps we really should.” Marjorie said good-bye to Jo-Jo and rushed away without explaining that Roger was hoping to become a Harvard overseer, and therefore he couldn’t possibly throw a homeless person out on the street. It was a perfectly good reason, but it was just so difficult to explain.
Oliver Fry’s response to the front-page picture of Walden Green was his usual choking fury. But an item on one of the inner pages distressed him even more.
It was an interview with Judy Bowman, the chairperson of the Concord School Committee. Judy was answering a question about the committee’s plan for reducing their budget by the ten percent required by the finance committee. “We hate to do it, but we’ve got to. We’re going to close the libraries in the primary schools, restrict interschool athletic competition, and reduce the teaching staffs at the high school in the departments of language and biology. It’s a shame, but I don’t know what else we can do.”
“… and reduce the teaching staffs at the high school in the departments of language and biology.” The paper slipped out of Oliver’s fingers. He was about to lose his job. Judy had warned him it might happen, but he had chosen not to think about it. “It will only be for a year or two, Oliver,” Judy had said. “If this Walden Green zoning change passes, there’ll be money to burn, and we’ll hire you back.”
It was an ironic blow from the hand of fate. It was bad enough to lose his job, but to have it restored thanks to a shopping mall in Walden Woods was inconceivably awful.
Anxieties crowded in upon Oliver. Hope had another year of college ahead of her. He had been saving for years to put her through school. If he put together all his savings and some unemployment money and a little something from his pension plan, there’d be enough to allow the girl to finish her education. But what would they live on in the meantime? What if he couldn’t find another job?
At the moment Oliver couldn’t face it. He couldn’t make himself begin looking for a new teaching position. Instead he threw himself into the race against Roger Bland for the opening on the board of selectmen.
“It’s not as if the selectman’s job paid a salary,” said Hope to Jack Markey. “All those people on the town boards work for nothing.”
Hope was sorting bottles on the back porch under the fierce scrutiny of the owl, throwing them into paper bags. Marjorie Bland’s bottle-sorting campaign had swept the town, and Hope was doing her best to cooperate. Crash went the green bottles into one bag, smash went the clear ones into another.
Jack Markey thought about the two candidates. It was easy to guess that the fire-eating Mr. Fry would be an easy victim for sober, solid Roger Bland. “I don’t suppose your father will win anyway,” he said truthfully.
Hope opened a second bag for her father’s whiskey bottles. “It’s just so embarrassing. He’s going to have bumper stickers. Did you ever hear of a candidate for a town office handing out bumper stickers? And listen to this, they won’t say ‘Vote for Oliver Fry,’ or anything sensible like that. He’s going to use a quote from Emerson.” Hope took a mock heroic stance and waved her hand at the wooden ceiling of the porch. “‘The rapt saint is the only logician,’ how do you like that?”
“What?”
“‘The rapt saint’—oh, never mind. It’s just so ridiculous.”
“I suppose your, ah … tenant is supporting your father,” said Jack, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the thought of Ananda Singh.
“Oh, well, naturally.” Hope laughed bitterly. “Those Thoreau freaks all stand together.” She felt an odd discomfort as she said it, because it was for Ananda’s sake that she was reading Walden. Passages from the book had oozed through the cracks in her defenses like slippery snakes, inserting themselves in soft passages in her brain: “I grew in those seasons like corn in the night.… The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad.… Only one in a hundred millions is awake to a poetic or divine life.”
“Hey,” said Jack, “who drinks all the booze around here? That’s a hell of a lot of whiskey bottles.”
“My father, of course. Who do you think?” Hope pushed the bags of bottles together with her foot and shrugged. Rays of afternoon sunshine were pouring through the wooden lattice of the porch, illuminating Jack’s blond curls. Hope couldn’t help thinking by contrast of Ananda’s sallow skin, his dark eyes and black hair. At the moment he seemed odd and foreign.
“You mean your father drank all this stuff? My God, what is it, a year’s supply?”
“This? Oh, no. It’s a couple of months, maybe. Less than that.” Hope took a melancholy pleasure in exaggerating her father’s indulgence in drink. Actually she couldn’t remember taking bottles to the dump since last Christmas.
A glimmer of a good idea came into Jack’s head. “I’ve got some errands to do. Why don’t I take this stuff to the landfill?”
“Oh, say, that would be great. You’ll have to use Father’s car. Yours doesn’t have a dump sticker. It’s okay, he won’t be needing it. He’s off somewhere on his bike.”
Jack and Hope carried everything out of the house and packed it in the back of Oliver’s ramshackle station wagon —the sacks of newspapers, the plastic bags of trash, the paper bags of bottles. Then Jack took off with a clash of gears because he wasn’t used to a standard shift.
On the way to the landfill the bottles rattled and jingled. Turning in at the gate, Jack followed the sign to the recycling area to drop off the newspapers and hurl the wine bottles into the glass-collecting dumpster. The three bags of whisky bottles stayed in the car, clinking against each other as he drove down the uneven dirt road to get rid of the plastic bags.
Pulling up at the dro
p-off point, he stopped beside three men who were standing next to a glittering new machine.
Jack recognized it at once. It was a compactor, the kind manufactured by one of Jefferson Grandison’s enterprises.
“Hey,” he said, getting out of the car, “where do I throw my stuff?”
“Hold it,” said one of the men. “Hey, Julian, here’s our first customer. Look,” he said to Jack, “just throw it right down there. See? Right there.” He pointed at the huge container buried in the ground, an empty bin of shining steel.
“Brand-new gadget,” said the second man as Jack hauled Hope’s plastic bags out of the car and dropped them in the bin. “New compactor. You’re the first guy to use it. Is that all you’ve got? Okay, Julian, let her go.”
The skinny man in the visor hat hesitated, then disappeared into another part of the machine high above the open container. There was a whining sound. Jack watched as one wall of the bin began moving forward, shoving the bags toward the other side. Slowly the moving wall ground them into the maw of the machine. For a moment there was a crumpling, crushing noise, and then the ram pulled back with a shriek of metal on metal.
“Holy shit,” said the first man.
“See, like it squeezes all the trash together,” said the second guy, “so the stuff don’t take up so much space.”
“Right,” said Jack.
The man called Julian came down from on high and looked at them. His face was pale. His hands were shaking. “My God,” he said, “you’ve got to watch it like a hawk. It’s dangerous, I tell you.”
“Oh, for shit’s sake, Julian, we’re just trying it out.” One of the other men grinned at Jack. “It’s just an experiment. It can’t handle all the stuff comes in here.”
“Well, thanks for letting me be your first customer,” said Jack. He backed Oliver’s car around and drove out of the landfill and headed across town to the bridge over the river at the foot of Nashawtuc Hill. There he parked the car and got out and carried the three bags of whisky bottles around the corner to the house of Roger Bland.