Peyton Place

by Grace Metalious

  “Mr. Moderator, I move that this question be stricken from the warrant.”

  Then would come: “Second the motion,” from whichever of his workers Leslie had picked for this yearly honor.

  And then Dexter would say: “A motion to strike this item from the warrant has been made and seconded. What is your wish in this matter? All those in favor?”

  The “Ayes” would shake the rafters, while Seth Buswell and a few others would utter the only “Nays.”

  Dexter Humphrey coughed. “What is your wish in this matter?” he demanded frantically, refusing to put the question to a vote until someone spoke.

  Leslie Harrington continued to sit still, staring thoughtfully out of a window in the courthouse meeting room. Dexter's eyes sought the room, trying to locate Seth Buswell. The newspaper owner sat with Matthew Swain and Tomas Makris in a seat toward the rear of the room. Seth studied his fingernails with a deep concentration, but he did not rise to speak.

  Fool! thought Dexter Humphrey angrily. Damned fool! He's been shooting his mouth off for years about zoning, and now when he has a chance to see the bloody question come to a vote, he does not rise to press his advantage.

  The tension in the room mounted to an almost unbearable degree while Dexter waited. When a farmer finally stood up and cleared his throat preparatory to speaking, the gathering let out its breath as if in one gigantic sigh.

  “Does this here zonin’ business mean that if I wanna put up a new chicken house, I gotta go and ask somebody?” asked the farmer.

  “A pertinent question indeed, Walt,” said Dexter, who prided himself on knowing every citizen with his name on the check list. “Jared, would you mind answering Walt's question?”

  Jared Clarke stood up. “No, Walt,” he said, “it don't. This Article XIV affects only dwellings for human habitation. That is, a place where people are gonna live. For instance, if you wanted to put up a house here in town, you'd have to get a permit from the board of selectmen. The board, of course, is permitted to restrict the type of dwelling to be erected.”

  “What you mean to say, Jared,” said the farmer named Walt, “is that you and Ben Davis and George Caswell kin tell a man what kind of a house he's gonna build. That right?”

  “Not exactly,” said Jared carefully, realizing that he was treading on dangerous ground here. “The idea of zoning,” he said, turnding to face the crowd, “is to protect property values in a town. That is its only purpose.”

  “Yeah, but that ain't what I asked you, Jared,” said Walt. “What I asked was, how come you and Ben and George are gonna have a right to tell a man what kind of a house to build?”

  “The type of house,” said Jared, feeling warm, “doesn't enter into it at all.”

  “You mean to say then, that if I wanted to put up a tar paper shack on Elm Street, I could?”

  “The way things stand now,” said Jared acidly, “you certainly could.”

  “But I couldn't if we had zoning.”

  “No,” replied Jared flatly. “The minute a shack goes up in a decent neighborhood, the values on all the rest of the property go down. It isn't right, and it isn't sensible. Zoning would be an asset to this community. Perhaps we could do away with chicken houses within a block of Elm Street, if we had zoning.”

  “What?” It was a scream of outrage from the rear of the room, uttered by a crafty old man who had noticed Jared's contradiction of himself. “What's wrong with a man keepin’ a few chickens?” demanded Marvin Potter, who was one of the old men who hung around Tuttle's. “What's wrong with a man tryin’ to do a little something to make extra money?” demanded Marvin. “Something like keepin’ a few chickens?”

  Marvin did not keep a few chickens in the back yard of his house on Laurel Street. He kept a few minks, and in summer the stench from Marvin's few minks wafted gently over Elm Street when the wind was right, so that the townspeople shrugged and rolled their eyes heavenward, while strangers looked around suspiciously.

  “Chickens is one thing,” said Jared, looking sharply at Marvin, “and minks is something else.”

  “And I say,” roared Marvin, “that being a selectman is one thing, and tryin’ to be a dictator is something else again.” As was the way with the townspeople, Marvin pronounced “selectman” as if it had been three words: “See-leck-man.”

  “Mr. Clarke?” It was the poised, low voice of Selena Cross speaking. “Mr. Clarke, since the house where I live with my brother is well within the limits known to all of us as The Village, would zoning mean that I would have to remove my brother's sheep pen from our premises?”

  Jared hemmed and smiled and coughed, but there was only one answer and he knew it. “Yes,” he said.

  “Now ain't that a helluva thing,” said someone who did not rise to identify himself.

  Dexter Humphrey pounded with his gavel to restore order, and Seth Buswell looked narrowly at Selena Cross. As far as he knew, Selena had always been in favor of zoning in years past, and he wondered what had happened to change her mind.

  “I move,” said Selena Cross, “that this item be stricken from the warrant.”

  “Second the motion,” cried Marvin Potter.

  “All those in favor?”

  There were perhaps six voices who agreed with Selena's firm “Aye.”

  Dexter Humphrey wiped his hands with a handkerchief. He picked up his copy of the warrant and read the twenty-first item again. After he had asked his regular question, he put the matter to a vote at once, and for the first time in history, the town of Peyton Place voluntarily gave new powers to its selectmen in the matter of zoning.

  When the meeting was over, Peter Drake stood in the lobby of the courthouse and lit a cigarette. Tomas Makris joined him, not by any previous arrangement, but because they both happened to be in the lobby at the same moment. Together, Tom and Drake stood and watched Leslie Harrington leave the courthouse. When the millowner walked out, he was flanked on either side by Seth and Dr. Swain, and Jared Clarke and Dexter Humphrey.

  “Isn't it odd,” remarked Drake with a little smile, “that while they stood divided against one another, each of them stood strong, while today, when they stood together in silence, one of them fell. I always thought Seth hated Leslie's guts. He'll never have another chance to beat Leslie the way he could have done today.”

  Tom looked at the tip of his cigarette. “Harrington has lost his son,” he said. “That's why none of them spoke but Jared. And Jared would not have spoken, if he had not been asked direct questions.”

  “Someone's losing a son would never have stopped Harrington in the old days,” said Drake viciously. “How come everyone's gone soft on that sonofabitch all of a sudden?”

  Tom looked sharply at the lawyer. “Where are you from, Drake?” he asked, and it was a full minute before he realized the suspiciousness of the tone he had used.

  By Jesus! he thought, I'll have to watch it. I'm beginning to sound like a true shellback. He threw back his head and began to laugh.

  “From New Jersey,” said Drake, eying the laughing Tom. “You?”

  “From Peyton Place,” said Tom, “via New York, Pittsburgh, and other points to the south.”

  Outside, the men of Chestnut Street stepped into Leslie Harrington's car.

  “I wonder where Charlie Partridge was today?” asked Drake.

  “Home in bed with the grippe,” said Tom. “If he weren't, he would have been here, and he would be riding back to Chestnut Street with the others right now, in Leslie's car.”

  “All the same,” said Drake, dropping his cigarette and stepping on it, “the old order changeth. The backbone of Chestnut Street is broken for fair.”

  “Maybe,” said Tom, and walked out of the courthouse.

  ♦ 8 ♦

  It was one sunny, fresh-scented May morning when Buck McCracken first realized the meaning of words to which he had listened for years.

  “It's a small world,” people said, but Buck always disagreed silently and violently.
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  It was an enormous world, thought Buck, millions of miles tall, and deep, and wide. Let one of those who always spoke of a small world set out to walk from Peyton Place to Boston some fine day. Maybe then they'd quit their gab about a small world and realize what a damned big place the world really was.

  Buck was sitting at the counter in Hyde's Diner on this particular morning. He always sat in the end seat, if he could, which was not too often, for this was regarded by practically everyone as “Clayton Frazier's seat.” No matter who was sitting in the end seat, if Clayton came in, he always stood up and moved somewhere else. Buck liked to sit in the end seat because it was next to a window which overlooked Elm Street, and from it he could look out at his black sheriff's car parked at the curb. The red blinker on the car's roof gleamed in the sunlight this morning, and the sharp, pointed antenna of the two-way radio rose like a shaft in the bright morning. Buck was proud of his official car. He kept it washed and polished and looked at it often and fondly. With a contented smile, Buck turned away from the window as a stranger came into the diner.

  Salesman. Buck's mind ticketed the stranger at once, although the sheriff pretended not to stare at the stranger. He sipped his coffee and seemed to be lost in thought when the stranger spoke.

  “This place looks a lot different than it did the last time I was through here,” he said.

  Buck looked up disinterestedly. “Oh? Come this way often?”

  “No, thank God, although as I say, the place looks pretty good this morning. The last time I was here, it was in the dead of winter. Snowing and blowing like the hounds of hell. That was a night, I'm telling you. I couldn't make it beyond White River, and had to spend the night there. I brought a fellow up with me that night, all the way from Boston. Ask him. He'll tell you what a night it was.”

  “Feller from here?” asked Buck, trying to remember who had been out of town last winter during the big blizzard.

  “Sure,” said the salesman. “Navy man. Can't remember his name right now, but he told me what it was. God, how he told me! Drank like a fish, all the way from Boston.”

  “Navy man, you say?” asked Buck, standing up as Clayton Frazier came into the diner. Clayton sat down in his accustomed seat, and the sheriff moved to the stranger's other side. “I can't remember nobody from here was in the Navy last winter. Can you, Clayton?”

  “Nope,” said Clayton, picking up the cup of coffee which Corey Hyde had put down in front of him. “You, Corey?”

  “Nope. Nobody I know.”

  “Listen,” said the stranger, becoming flustered by all the opposition to his simple statement, “this man came from here all right. He told me so. And he was in the Navy. I picked him up right outside Boston and gave him a lift all the way to here. He said he was coming home to visit his children, and that he hadn't been home since 1939.”

  Buck, Corey and Clayton looked at one another. Lucas Cross, they thought, as if with one mind, but they would not give the stranger the satisfaction of knowing he had stumped them momentarily.

  “What'd the feller look like?” asked Buck, fixing the stranger with a suspicious eye.

  “Well, I can't remember exactly,” said the stranger uncomfortably. “He was big.”

  “So am I,” said Buck. “Was it me?”

  “No. No, of course not. This fellow drank quite a lot. I remember that.”

  “Well, that could make him just about anybody in town,” said Corey Hyde. “Is that all you can remember?”

  The stranger scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “There was something else,” he said. “Something about the way this man smiled. I never saw anybody else smile in quite that way. When this man smiled, his forehead moved. Craziest looking thing I ever saw. I never forgot it. I'd know that smile if I ever saw it again.”

  “Listen, mister,” said Buck softly, “I think you musta been the one drinkin’ that night. I've lived in Peyton Place all my life, and I never yet seen a feller who smiled with his forehead. You musta been the one drinkin’, and I don't take kindly to fellers drivin’ drunk through my town.”

  “Now listen here,” said the stranger, and looked at the faces of Buck, Clayton, and Corey. He did not say anything else. He finished his coffee and walked quickly out of the diner.

  For a few minutes, neither of the three men in Hyde's spoke. Then Clayton Frazier set his cup down in his saucer.

  “Seems funny,” he said, “that Lucas'd come home and nobody'd know about it.”

  There was another long pause before Buck said: “Selena and Joey didn't see him if he did come. I was over to their place when them Navy men was here lookin’ for Lucas. Selena and Joey both said they hadn't seen him.”

  Corey Hyde refilled the coffee cups. “Selena is no liar,” he said. “Neither's the boy.”

  “Nope, they ain't,” agreed Buck and Clayton. “Still, seems funny the way that stranger could describe Lucas so good. I never seen another man smiled like Lucas, either. No more than that salesman ever done.”

  “Of course,” said Buck, quoting as nearly as he could remember from a policeman's manual of long ago, “We have to consider the possibility of foul play.”

  “Whaddya mean, foul play?” demanded Corey.

  “Oh, you know,” said Buck. “Somebody hittin’ a guy over the head and takin’ his money, and like that.”

  “Who'd hit Lucas over the head?” asked Clayton. “Here in Peyton Place.”

  “I dunno,” said Buck. “I didn't say somebody did. I just said we had to consider the possibility.”

  “That's one possibility seems highly improbable to me,” snorted Clayton. “The idea of one of Lucas’ neighbors hittin’ him over the head for his money. Lucas never had no money.”

  “I never said one of his neighbors,” said Buck defensively. “It coulda been somebody else, couldn't it? What about that salesman feller. How do we know he didn't do it?”

  “Yeah,” said Corey disgustedly. “He'd be sure to come right back to Peyton Place and start talkin’ about Lucas if he'd hit him over the head.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” said Buck, in a superior tone. “Criminals often return to the scene of the crime.”

  “Wonder who that salesman worked for?” said Clayton.

  “S. S. Pierce, out of Boston,” said Buck, in a snappy tone. “I seen it on that brief case he was carryin’.”

  “Maybe you oughta go after him and ask him if he hit Lucas over the head,” said Clayton derisively.

  “No, I won't do that,” said Buck thoughtfully. “First, I'll get in touch with them Navy fellers and see if Lucas ever went back to his ship in Boston. If he didn't, then I'll begin to do some wonderin’.”

  “Ain't it a small world,” said Corey. “A stranger passin’ through town on his way north, stops for coffee in my diner and sits down right next to the sheriff and tells him that he's seen a man nobody in town has seen since ’39. Ain't it a small world?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Buck McCracken thoughtfully, and walked out of the diner to the shiny sheriff's car parked at the curb.

  It did not take long for Buck to receive a reply to the inquiries he had made of the Navy Department. Within three days the same two men who had been searching for Lucas Cross during the winter were back in Peyton Place. They contacted the Boston office of the S. S. Pierce Company and located the salesman who had passed through Peyton Place. His name was Gerald Gage, and the Boston office of his company said that he was, at the moment, making business calls on stores in Montpelier, Vermont. Mr. Gage was contacted at Montpelier, and requested to return with all speed to Peyton Place, which he did. He eyed Buck McCracken warily as the two men from the Navy Department questioned him. Yes, he had on the night of, let's see—the twelfth of December, he'd guess, because it was his last trip north until after the holidays, and he was due in Burlington on the thirteenth, picked up a hitch-hiker who wore the uniform of the United States Navy. No, he had not asked the sailor if he was on leave. Why the hell should he? The guy wanted a ride, and he, G
erry Gage, being a good sort, had offered him one. He wished to hell he'd never done it now. But that was his trouble, too goodhearted. He could never pass a fellow up on the road, especially on a night like that one had been last December. Snow? He guessed to hell it was snowing. And windy. Oh, about half-past twelve, he'd guess. He'd noticed the time on account of he was worried about finding a room in Burlington at that hour. As it turned out, he never did make Burlington that night. Got hung up in White River and couldn't drive another yard. That's how hard it had been snowing. Sure, he guessed that he'd recognize the fellow again, all right. Of course, it had been dark when he picked him up, and dark in the car, but they had stopped for coffee down below Nashua someplace, and he'd got a close look at the guy then. Big fellow, and tight as a tick. Drank whisky all the way up from Boston. He'd recognize him again, all right. In his business, it didn't do to forget a face, or a name, either. He'd remembered the name the hitch-hiker had given him a couple of days ago. Lucas Cross, that was the name the guy had given him. Lucas Cross. He was coming home to visit his kids. Said he hadn't been home since ’39. And what was all this anyway? What had the sailor done? What did they want with him, Gerry Gage? There was no law against picking up hitch-hikers that he knew of, so how about if they let him go back to work, huh? What? Why, he'd let him off right on Elm Street. What did they want from him? That he take the guy right to his door and see him in? No, the sailor hadn't said where he lived except that it was a long walk on a cold night. Tough, that was what Gerry Gage had told him. He had plenty of liquor inside of him to keep him warm all the way to White River, if need be.

  A short while later, on the same day, the two men from the Navy Department went to the Thrifty Corner Apparel Shoppe to see Selena. They told her that a salesman from Boston had positively identified her father from a batch of Navy photographs, as the man whom he had picked up in Boston and set down in Peyton Place.

  “I can't understand it,” said Selena levelly. “If Pa came home on leave, why didn't he come to the house?”

  Less than an hour later, Joey Cross, protected by Miss Elsie Thornton, was giving the same answer in the office of the grade school.