In the Evil Day
Page 37
The balance of the Harrigan flock, another 120 head or so in all their unshorn splendor, advance from under a copse of beech trees at Josh’s approach. The sheep are escorted by Bella and Lupa, the two great Maremmas that serve as the guardians of the herd against coyotes and the rumor of wolves (Kane having died in 1998). One of the dogs—Josh thinks it’s Bella—has developed a taste for mutton herself, and John has chained an old auto tire to her collar to guarantee that the sheep can outrun her. The dog walks in march step with the herd, dragging the tire behind her like a ball and chain, but without complaint or visible discomfort. Josh intervenes when the tire snags on a moss-covered boulder.
The sheep and the dogs trail Josh across the width of the pasture. He leaves them staring after him at the second gate, the one that opens into the farm’s farthest pasture. This space is bigger, wider. No sign of John along the fences on either side. The pasture slopes up, rising in a hump like a wind-whipped swell at sea. Josh feels like he’s climbing to the sky as he labors up the hill. At its peak a grass-scented westerly breeze snaps at his sleeves and shirttail.
Josh can see almost the whole circumference of the pasture from here—can see Monadnock and the greening cattle-grazed pasturelands of Vermont and Quebec. But still no glimpse of John. Not until he spies the still form of a man down on his back in the grass on the downhill slope ahead of him.
Ten yards? Twenty? Josh covers it in a sprint, halts at the spot, breathing hard. He looks down, then looks up into the sky, still panting. At last, without a word, he falls into the grass himself, on his back against Pleistocene granite and its patina of soil, spread-eagled. He lies there goggle-eyed. The clouds wheel overhead like out-bellying sails, like billowing curtains drawn in fond blue hope against the moon and the stars and the lineaments of eternity.
“This is rough, isn’t it?” John says at last.
Josh murmurs his assent.
A few moments later the rattle of an old truck arrives faintly from the west as it winds up South Hill Road. John can hear the truck slow and make a turn just about where his driveway should be.
“That’ll be the shearers.” John stakes his elbows to the grass, rising upward, but then, sighing, thinks better of it. Instead he falls back, folding his hands across his chest and settling ever more deeply into the whispering breast of the hill.
EPILOGUE
FROM THE NEWS AND SENTINEL, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2011: “Earl ‘Bunny’ A. Bunnell, Sr., 85, of Canaan, Vermont, died on Thursday, April 14, 2011, in Concord, after a long period of declining health and with his loving family at his side. . . .
“Earl was preceded in death by his daughter, Vickie Bunnell, in 1997.”
SOURCES
1 | THE NOONDAY OWL
William H. Gifford, Colebrook: A Place Up Back of New Hampshire, News and Sentinel, Inc., 1993.
John Harrigan, “Newsprint Through the Press, Thoughts Through the Mind,” News and Sentinel, October 28, 1999.
John Harrigan untitled North Country Notebook column, News and Sentinel, December 11, 2008.
2 | THE SWEET SMELL OF NEWSPRINT
John Harrigan, “You Never Knew in Changing Times What Was Coming Down the Road,” News and Sentinel, May 11, 2010.
Albert Barker, editorial, Northern Sentinel, April 26, 1872.
Alma Cummings, Northern Sentinel, September 1, 1910.
Details about Merle Wright and the Sentinel fire from Granvyl G. Hulse, Jr., The News and Sentinel: The Evolution of a Country Weekly, News and Sentinel, Inc., 2011, page 97.
John Harrigan, “A Nation of Cooks Morphs Into a Nation of Watchers,” News and Sentinel, August 13, 2009.
Carl Drega letter to Fred Harrigan from incident police file volume 5, page 1663.
John Harrigan, “Now Even ‘Motor Drive’ Is Antiquated,” News and Sentinel, December 19, 2012.
Details about the Duplex web press from Hulse, Jr., The News and Sentinel, page 105.
John Harrigan, “A Reader Sends a Reminder About the History of Print,” News and Sentinel, September 22, 2010.
Fred Harrigan, editorial, News and Sentinel, July 20, 1960.
3 | DEATH OR HIGH WATER
Kenneth Parkhurst in the Union Leader, August 20, 1997.
5 | THE REST IS BLANK
Jason Sorens, “What Can 20,000 Liberty Activists Accomplish in New Hampshire?” www.freestateproject.org, April 12, 2004.
John Harrigan, “It Appears as Though Life Is Getting Easier for Pedestrians,” Meredith News, September 28, 2006.
Details about Carl Drega in jail from the Maine Sunday Telegram, August 24, 1997.
George E. Tetrault in the New Hampshire Sunday News, August 28, 1997.
Details about Carl Drega’s cover letter to Jeffrey R. Howard from Union Leader, September 28, 1997.
6 | THE REASONS OF THE HEART
Scott Stepanian, New Hampshire Trooper magazine, winter/spring 1998.
Details about Scott Phillips in News and Sentinel, August 27, 1997.
John Barthelmes, New Hampshire Trooper magazine, winter/spring 1998.
13 | NO INKLING OF CAT AND MOUSE
Philip McLaughlin, New Hampshire Trooper magazine, winter/spring 1998.
14 | LIKE THE BRUSH OF A WING
Joseph A. Citro, Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls & Unsolved Mysteries, Mariner Books, 1994.
“New Brunswick Springs House a Total Loss on the Verge of Its Opening,” Coös County Democrat, May 15, 1930.
17 | THE ARMOR OF GOD
John Harrigan in “A Grieving Little Town Unites, and Moves On,” the New York Times, October 17, 1997.
18 | TIME IS THE FIRE
John Harrigan in the New Hampshire Sunday News, May 5, 2002.
Carl Drega neighbor in the Maine Sunday Telegram, August 24, 1997.
Bill Bromage in “N.H. Town Struggles to Live Free After 4 Die in Rampage,” the Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1997.
John Harrigan in Life magazine, August 1998.
“A Grieving Little Town Unites, and Moves On,” the New York Times, October 17, 1997.
Karen Harrigan Ladd, editorial, News and Sentinel, November 10, 2010.