“I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘work.’ ‘Farted around in’ might be a better way to describe it. Apparently he thought he’d strike it rich in here. From what Brad said, Whipple was crazy as a bedbug.”
“I know,” Charlie said. “His drinking didn’t help things.”
“Was Whipple right?”
“About what?”
“Gold.”
“Let’s just say”—Charlie smiled—”that the Quidneck was not above a little practical joke or two when the white man first settled the area. Now come on. Let’s go inside.”
Thomasine was not eager, but she followed him. Instinctively Charlie went in, inching toward the side shaft that Whipple had opened but not resealed months ago. He moved slowly, deliberately; it had been a week since the ordeal of pniese, and he still had not fully recovered. It would be another week, he guessed, before he had his strength back. At least he no longer was nauseated and diarrheic, as he’d been the first three days.
Charlie was drawn toward the rock pile. “Someone’s been digging through here recently,” he said after examining it.
“Whipple?”
“I assume so.”
Charlie started climbing toward the top of the heap.
“Be careful,” Thomasine cautioned, training her flashlight on him.
“I am,” he said, feeling carefully with each step before placing his full weight into it. His caution was rewarded. He got to the top without falling or dislodging any of the larger rocks, some of which were big enough to crush a person. Charlie found a rock that would support him and sat down, out of breath. With his flashlight he explored the void in front of him.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed. “Holy shit.”
“What?” Thomasine said, her words bouncing and clanging off rock.
“A cave.”
“Is it big?”
“Huge. My light won’t penetrate to the end.”
“You’re not going in, are you?” she said worriedly.
“Are you crazy?” He spit back. Thomasine remembered a conversation they’d had about the Quidnecks’ natural aversion to caves—an aversion, Charlie’d explained, stemming from their belief in Hobbamock.
“Please don’t,” she begged.
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. The bottom must be a seventy-five-foot drop. No way.”
Suddenly, a rumbling like late-summer thunder. They could feel the vibration through their feet. Dust showered down on them, powdering their hair. The thunder crescendoed, then slowly subsided, as if a subway had just rumbled through beneath them.
“The noises?” Thomasine asked. She had never heard them.
“Yes.” Charlie nodded.
“I didn’t think they were that loud.”
“They’re usually not.”
They were still contemplating what they had heard when there was another sound, distinct from the first. A cackling. A crowlike cackling, full of mockery and scorn. Like the thunder, it rose in intensity, then faded away.
“Hear that?” Charlie said, as if to reassure himself it wasn’t only in his head. Ever since the pniese, his head had been filled with sounds—rustlings and whispers punctuated by occasional outbursts, like a baseball crowd overheard from afar. Echoes of the experience, he supposed, trickling back somehow from the Land of the Dead. He’d been helpless to ward them off.
“Yes,” Thomasine replied nervously. “I heard it. Is that the noises, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“It sounds like . . . laughter.”
“I know.”
“You don’t think there’s someone here, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Charlie said, backing down, “except I’ve seen and heard more than I want to. Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Monday, November 17
The Monday, November 17, Transcript had an unusual feature—an editorial signed by the publisher, Paul Dexter. It appeared on the front page, signaling real urgency:
Will someone have to die before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts finally is convinced it has a public health problem of crisis proportion in Morgantown?
That would seem to be the case, wouldn’t it, Department of Health? Because for a month you have known about our children being sick. You have received urgent calls from our local physicians—competent, compassionate healers who simply do not have the expertise to handle this situation any longer. You have seen copies of several stories this newspaper has written about a concern that is coming to dominate all talk here. You know that three children have been hospitalized. You know that two dozen have been sick to one degree or another. You must know—and if you do not, you should not be entrusted with the public’s health—that the numbers are growing steadily.
And yet you have done nothing.
Unfair, you will howl. Strictly speaking, you are right.
Some preliminary testing has indeed been done, but you might as well have spent your time and money golfing for what the results are worth. One month after it was reported to you, Department of Health, the origin and treatment of this disease—if, in fact, it is a disease and not some form of poisoning, or something else entirely—remain unknown. You cannot tell us what it is, only a few things that it is not. This is a form of deliberate neglect that borders on the criminal.
People living at this end of the state traditionally complain that they are ignored by state government, the center of which is situated 120 miles away in Boston, and we candidly admit there sometimes is precious little substance to such complaints. This is not one of these times. This is a medical crisis. The lives of young children are at stake. We, the parents and citizens of Morgantown, demand answers, and we demand them now.
Will it take a lawsuit—or, unthinkably, the death of an innocent child—before we have them?
We sincerely hope not.
—Paul Dexter, Publisher
Bostwick, whose call had prompted Dexter, read the editorial at Berkshire Medical Center, where Maureen McDonald had just been readmitted.
He had not wanted to bring her back. Her initial stay had been three days, and she not only had stabilized during that time but had improved to the point where Bostwick thought she’d be better off at home. At home her improvement had continued, and just four days ago there had been the first renewed talk of maybe letting her try school again.
Last weekend was a repeat of two weeks ago.
By this morning he’d had no choice but to readmit her.
Now there were four children hospitalized.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Tuesday, November 18
After the cave experience, Thomasine had insisted Brad listen again to Charlie. That’s why the three of them were having lunch at Paul’s Diner.
It was not going well. Thomasine had suspected it might not.
She and Brad had already been through one minor little tiff over Charlie. It was the morning after he’d come to dinner and they’d been recounting the events of the evening before. Yes, Charlie was a likable enough sort, if highly opinionated, Brad had agreed. Yes, he was intelligent, and well spoken, and a real hit with Abbie, and nothing to scoff at in the looks department, as Thomasine seemed to have taken pains to point out. So what was the caveat? Thomasine had wanted to know, sensing the skepticism in Brad’s voice. That story about that alleged Indian god, Brad had finally admitted. Didn’t she think it crossed the line into fantasy? Just the slightest bit? And wasn’t he, Brad Gale, being a “cultural chauvinist” for so readily dismissing Charlie’s ancestry? Thomasine had countered. Was he really so closed-minded? That was when Brad had good-naturedly suggested that maybe Thomasine was “a bit naive, like most grad students.” The exchange had ended there, but not Thomasine’s suspicion that Brad was jealous. It was an insane notion that Brad saw Charlie as a threat, but the irrational, Thomasine had learned the hard way, was the worm in the center of all jealousy.
Now, as the three of them picked at the re
mnants of their meal, there was silence. Charlie had just finished retelling the legend of Hobbamock, this time emphasizing those details that corresponded to contemporary Morgantown. He’d told for the first time two chapters of the legend he’d remembered only recently: a spear which had finally turned the tide in the initial battle against Hobbamock, and Hobbamock’s brief escape more than a hundred years ago, an incident about which his father had been sketchy. Together he and Thomasine had recounted their visit to the cave. Thomasine still wasn’t sure what had happened there. She only knew that in the aftermath Charlie’s legend had taken a troubling step closer to believability. As biased as it would be, she wanted Brad’s opinion. Maybe secretly she wanted a dose of his skepticism to balance this disturbing new feeling she couldn’t shake on her own.
Brad had listened, and now he was expected to speak.
“Very interesting” was his response.
Charlie looked coldly at him and then, somewhat less coldly, at Thomasine. He should have heeded his instincts when she’d asked him to come today. The last thing he’d needed was another exposure to Brad Gale’s skepticism. But Thomasine had begged.
Thomasine shot Brad a dark glance of her own.
“I mean,” he added, “it’s certainly something to ponder.”
“You think you have all the answers, don’t you?”
Brad was caught off guard. “No,” he said clumsily.
“Most of them. You think you have most of them.”
“They don’t pay me to be stupid, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
“What I’m driving at is kids. There are some very sick kids out there.”
“Thank you for letting me know.”
Charlie ignored the sarcasm. “More and more sick kids and not one of your doctors and public health people knows what’s causing it.”
“If you’d been reading the paper—”
“I have. Some of us Indians are literate, believe it or not.”
“Then you know that there’s a question of gross incompetence here. Off the record, I’d say it’s not stretching it to think there’s potential for some kind of class-action lawsuit.”
“Off the record, I’d be very worried if I were you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you have a kid.”
Brad was well aware of that. He and Thomasine had discussed the risk to Abbie more than once, and he was keeping an eagle eye on his daughter’s health, trying desperately not to succumb to hypochondria. Abbie added urgency to the Transcript’s daily coverage.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of scare tactic?” Brad said, his voice moving toward anger.
“Let me answer that with another question,” Charlie said. “You’ve heard of David Berkowitz?”
“Of course. Son of Sam.”
“Do you know what made him kill all those people?”
“He was mentally ill. A paranoid schizophrenic with criminally dangerous delusions, if you want to get clinical about it.” He remembered Berkowitz well. For more than a year he’d called in all sorts of favors in an unsuccessful bid to get permission from the authorities to interview him. During his reporting career at The New York Times he’d been fascinated by Berkowitz. He still was.
“What if I told you I believed he was possessed?”
“I’d respect your opinion. But it wouldn’t be mine.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no such thing as possession.”
“Can you prove it?”
“That’s like asking me to prove there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”
Charlie was nonplussed. “How would you explain Hitler?” he continued.
“I wouldn’t try to.”
“You don’t think he was crazy?”
“It depends on how you define crazy. To the Jews he was a monster. To the Nazis he was a military and political genius. At least for a few years.”
“You’ve never believed he was Satan, to use the Christian word?”
“I’ve never thought of him in that light, no.”
“Maybe he and Son of Sam were both Satan.”
“Sure, and I’m the Easter Bunny.” Thomasine shot Brad a look.
“Just kidding,” he added lamely.
“Let me ask you another question.” Charlie continued. “Can you tell me what guides salmon back to the place of their birth after swimming through so many thousands of miles of ocean? Or how birds can migrate from one continent to another, returning the next spring to the same nest in the same tree where they had last year’s brood?”
“What’s the point, Charlie?”
“The point is your culture. It’s like you—so smug and self-satisfied, thinking science and medicine and technology have all the answers.”
“On that count, at least, I think we’ve done a better job than your people,” Brad said gently. “For an awful lot of the questions, we have found the answers. Your people have benefited, too. Not in every way, not that there hasn’t been great injustice, but there’s been some good, too. Surely you see that.”
“I don’t think there’s any need to continue this,” Charlie said.
“Fine. I make a point, and you want to end the discussion. Have it your way.”
Charlie stood, reached into his wallet, and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. He slapped it onto the table. “This will cover everything,” he said.
“Charlie . . .” Thomasine said.
“Look at him,” Charlie said, gesturing toward Brad, slumped back into his chair, as if cosmically bored. “He thinks I’m crazy.”
“I think your stories are interesting,” Brad said.
“You think they’re bullshit,” Charlie said, spitting the word out. “Bullshit your lady friend made you sit and listen to.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. I can read it on your face: ‘Dumb Indian,’ it says. Something like that.” He was standing behind Brad now, his bulk towering over him.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’ve seen it too many times not to recognize it when I see it.”
“Well, what do you expect me to say? That I believe in the big bad god Hobbamock? This isn’t your everyday story, you know. Even you have to concede that.”
“And you’re not your everyday mortal, are you?”
“If not automatically believing some fruitcake story puts me a cut above, then, no, I guess I’d have to say I’m not.”
All of a sudden Charlie was at the flash point. Thomasine could feel the tension, heavy in the air.
“Charlie . . .” she pleaded. “Brad . . .”
“Brad?” he said incredulously. “Speak to your friend here!”
“No, you speak to me,” Charlie thundered.
“I have nothing more to say.”
“What?” Charlie mimicked. “The Great White Father is speechless? No more advice, Mighty One?”
“Yeah. Trade the loincloth for a pair of Levi’s,” Brad snapped, so snidely he surprised himself. “It’s the twentieth century out here.”
“You arrogant son of a bitch.”
Unknowingly Brad had pressed the wrong button.
A man named Jason Donahue—Charlie would never forget him—had been the assistant DA for Massachusetts in the land claim suit, and for three days he had cross-examined Charlie. Donahue was not a brilliant litigator, but he did have one talent: baiting witnesses. John Freeman, the Quidnecks’ attorney, had warned his clients about him. The best strategy, he said, was to stay cool. A jury might appreciate coolness, it might not. But it definitely would not award points for temper.
For two days on the stand Charlie had been unflappable. Donahue simply couldn’t rattle him, no matter how big an asshole he became, and he’d been out there on the frontiers of assholeism.
The third day was different. By now Charlie’d had just about enough of Donahue’s insinuation that the Quidnecks were nothing but cultural charlatans made suddenly greedy by a strin
g of successful suits in other states. It really wasn’t anything as subtle as insinuation. For two days he’d peppered his questions with references to “firewater,” “high-stakes bingo,” “unemployment,” “massacres of Puritans,” “scalping,” “warpath.” He’d even managed to mention John Wayne, a comment that elicited an open chuckle from one potbellied member of the jury. The judge, despite a string of objections from Freeman, had allowed Donahue to continue merrily on. Taunting, waiting.
Now Donahue was questioning him on the Quidnecks’ animist beliefs. No one living in the twentieth century could possibly believe there actually were spirits living in rocks and plants, could they, he’d taunted, unless it was one of those weird little tribes the National Geographic turns up from time to time in the Amazon? You know, Donahue said, the ones where the women don’t cover their breasts and the men stick twigs through their noses.
Charlie was at last getting flustered. He was still astounded by the fact that only the lawyers could ask the questions. According to the rules, you had to sit there politely while some arrogant bastard pulled down your pants and lit into your bare hide with a rod. You were not allowed to defend yourself. You could not fire back. To think they called this justice . . .
Charlie felt the anger building, the greatest he had ever known. “Got the loincloth on?” Donahue quipped. He slipped it in quickly, before the judge could rule him out of order.
That was it. Charlie snapped. Bellowing, he rose from the witness stand and went for Donahue, who’d been parading like a rooster before the jury. Charlie would have gotten to him if the bailiffs hadn’t been agile, hadn’t seen Charlie tensing in the moment before he exploded. He was hauled from the courtroom in handcuffs. A picture of him had wound up in The New York Times.
Charlie looked down on Brad, still sitting. Their eyes locked.
For one crazy moment Brad’s mind was flooded with jealousy. He wondered if Charlie had ever lusted after Thomasine. For the very first time he wondered insanely if the two of them had slept together, if that’s what they’d really been doing, holed up in the Indian’s cabin up there in the woods of Thunder Rise.
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