Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work

by Jason Brown

  Andrew pushed open the door to her bedroom. Everything inside, the pile of clothes on the bed, the towel on the chair, even the records fanned across the carpet, remained unchanged from the morning before she died, when he had stood above her until she sighed and looked up at him. He had only wanted her to say one word, but she wouldn’t. Her brown hair had loosened from the bandanna and fallen over her sweater.

  Andrew walked downtown, where the fire hall committee had decorated Water Street with banners and ribbons and set up booths for raffles and hot dogs. Some of the people living above the shops had hung red, white, and blue banners or Christmas lights out of their windows. The high school band warmed up at the edge of town, and eventually the fire truck passed with the volunteer firemen sitting stolid under the sun in their full gear. The American Legion followed, gray faces held level as they marched. 4H came next: a number of girls Andrew knew from school led a cow from old man Vaughn’s farm. Finally, Andrew’s father and the rest of the lawn mower brigade appeared, dressed this year as Zulu warriors in grass skirts and straw hats, their faces and bellies black with shoe polish. The Vaughn High marching band, bringing up the rear, couldn’t drown out the lawn mower brigade’s ritualistic grunts as they pushed their mowers and pumped their fists in the air.

  Andrew watched until the parade had passed and the people had followed in its wake, the dull racket dissipating farther down Water Street. Then he followed the street up the hill to the tracks. His friends Chris and Tom came out from behind the library, and he waited for them to crest the hill and disappear. After his sister died, they had stopped by once and stood in his bedroom for ten minutes looking at their shoes. When he came back to school, they kept to the other side of the lunchroom, glancing at him over their milk, never crossing over to say anything. Even teachers backed away, as if they might catch something from him. Eventually Chris and Tom started coming around again, talking about getting a softball game together, as if nothing had happened.

  Andrew walked along the tracks, balancing on one of the rails with his arms out. At the edge of town the tracks passed through a tunnel of maples and came out into a field overlooking the river. The sun had slipped lower, and in the distance the musicians for the Old Vaughn Day street dance started to warm up on Water Street. The strum of an electric guitar humming along the rails reminded him of what August had once been to him: long clear afternoons sitting in the grass waiting for his mother to finish working in the garden and take them to the pond. The sun blinked below the tree line and the feeling fled just as quickly as it had arrived. The empty rail line curved into the shadows. He wanted to say Stephanie’s name, but the twilight seemed made of glass, and lately his mother had been telling him when he left the house that he should be careful. “Please be careful, Andrew.”

  The sky darkened as he watched the river. After a while, he made his way back to the middle of town and walked along Second Street as the tinny voice of the singer for the street dance skipped over the buildings and cobblestones, coming up behind him off the face of the Methodist Church and drifting with him down the alley between Slate’s Diner and Boyton’s Market. They had blocked off Water Street and set up a stage overlooking the river. Most of the town was there, Andrew saw, dancing and milling about under the band’s work lights. The three members of the local band—the owner of the Wharf Pub, the gym teacher, and the gym teacher’s wife—strummed their guitars. People’s faces passed in and out of the glare from the lights, their eyes flickering. Three kids who must have been from a nearby town, or from as far away as Augusta (he had seen them at basketball games), ducked into the alley just two feet in front of him and pulled out a bottle, which they passed between them.

  “I don’t see her,” one of them said.

  “Over there. Over there by Dom’s.”

  They shot into the crowd, trailing the scent of stale cigarettes. It was humid, the air heavy and still above the dancers. The men up front had taken off their shirts and tied them around their waists or just let them drop to the curb as they closed their eyes and swung their arms over their heads. Many of them were friends of his father. A small, braless woman, so skinny that she might have been a twelve-year-old but for the deep creases in her sweaty face, kept lowering to her knees and rising again, as if preparing to jump off a dock. On the other side of the street, Alice Stewart raised her face to the yellow glow of the light. Her eyes were wide and blank. She had been a friend of Stephanie’s and used to come over for dinner and chat with his mother about the First Baptist fund-raisers.

  A dark shape appeared in the crowd, a black face with white eyes flashing in the work lights. Andrew bolted forward, calling for his father to wait, but by the time he had pushed through the sweaty bellies and armpits, his father was gone. Andrew headed toward the back of the crowd, through layers of glazed faces all turned downriver in the direction of the music, their eyes half-closed but shifting. He knew each one of them—Mr. Dawson from Dawson’s Variety; Mr. Nason; Mrs. Mills, Sara Mills’s mother; and Andrew’s two uncles from Monmouth, both with their wives—but tonight their faces were relaxed and blissful, as if they were half-asleep. He tried to look away but couldn’t; they were distant cousins of the people they were in the daylight. Not even the three-story brick buildings looked the same in the band’s work lights. Shadows from lampposts lay back against empty windows.

  His father bent over, heaving, near the entrance to Rexall Drugs. Andrew called to him and he whirled around. His eyes were flushed and wide, and vomit dripped from his chin. Stumbling backward, he seemed to focus briefly on Andrew’s face. “Go!” he slurred. “Leave me alone!”

  Andrew tripped, reeling against someone he recognized from the summer softball games, when people from the Wharf played teams from other towns. He had never seen his father drunk before. When he looked around, his father was already gone, and Andrew felt himself about to cry. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the rising din of the electric guitar made it too hard to concentrate on not crying; he thought about his mother sleeping in their unbearably quiet house.

  When he opened his eyes he saw, at the back of the crowd, just inside the band lights, the kid from the pond standing with his hands in his pockets. There was a sudden break in the music, and the silence seemed to draw them closer together. He wore a blue mechanic’s jacket with EDDIE written on the chest.

  “Come on,” the kid said and started walking away from the music. Andrew rushed to catch up. “You don’t know my brother, I don’t think. When he lived here, I would come over from my grandma’s in Monmouth and we’d throw the Frisbee down at the landing.” He stopped suddenly and looked over his shoulder in the direction of the band. The music had started up again.

  “Where we going?” Andrew asked. He looked around for his father again but still didn’t see him.

  “To the mouth of God,” Eddie said, and started running. “Hurry.”

  They ran along Water Street, turned up Union, and Eddie stopped where the small steel train bridge spanned high over Second Street. Eddie pulled himself up by the thick grass and crawled into a close space eroded out where the bridge met the riverbank. Andrew climbed up after him, and they sat facing each other beneath a grated metal roof that separated them from the tracks above. Eddie tossed a stone that rolled down the bank onto Second Street.

  “My brother got back at six-thirty tonight,” Eddie said. “Five days on the road hitching from Florida. Half a year in the pen down there.” Eddie’s voice quickened without rising, as if he were in a hurry to say everything before it was too late. “You know what he said when the judge sent him up? Best feeling he ever had. The one thing about my brother is he never lied, never once. How many people around here can say that?” Eddie rested his chin on his chest.

  “What did he go to jail for?” Andrew asked.

  “Beating this guy almost to death down in Florida. Twice his size.”

  “Over what?”

  The ground vibrated. Andrew couldn’t tell how far away the train wa
s until all at once the air shook tears from his eyes and a metal roar rammed through his thoughts. Eddie opened his mouth, and even in the dim light, Andrew could see all the way to the back of his throat.

  The train passed and the air hummed around them. Andrew felt far away, even though he was less than a mile from home.

  Eddie climbed out into the night, scrambled down to the street, and started kicking pebbles. “I want you to meet my brother. I wish I could tell you what time, but I don’t know. I could say noon down at the landing, but then that might not be when, either. I have to clean out the Thunderbird tonight,” he said. “Tiny’s been keeping chicken feed in there. He’s not gonna like that. I gotta do that now. I gotta clean it out.” He slouched away in the direction of the concert, leaning forward with his hands in his pockets and his head slumped. He stopped to look back at Andrew and run his hands through his hair. “If we’re not outside your house, I guess you’ll know.”

  The next morning Andrew looked out his bedroom window, but there was no sign of Eddie. The church bells sounded, and cars full of people passed by on their way to Sunday morning services. Usually his mother would be at the First Baptist; usually Andrew and his sister would be with her, but in June, several months after the accident, his mother had stopped going, and so had Andrew.

  Downstairs, she called out that breakfast was ready, but he didn’t move, and she didn’t call again. He sat on his bed looking out the window. Nothing stirred for an hour, and then cars headed back up the hill and north along Second Street. Andrew went downstairs and outside to the backyard, where he saw the door was open to the shed: his father was working on stained glass. His latest idea for making money.

  Andrew saw Pastor MacInnis appear on the road, walking up the hill with his shoulders square in his black jacket and his head lowered, his Bible in hand. Before the pastor looked up, Andrew rushed to open the door of the station wagon in the driveway and lay down on his back along the cool vinyl seat to hide. He listened to the pastor’s leather heels crunch over last winter’s sand and snap over the bricks his father had lain as a path to the door. The pastor went in through the kitchen.

  Half an hour passed as Andrew stared at dead bugs caught in the dome light above his head. The heat accumulated in the car and a layer of sweat formed on his brow. He didn’t want the fresh air, he didn’t want to be discovered. Pastor MacInnis had been the pastor of the First Baptist Church when Andrew’s mother was young, and he still was. The pastor was in there telling his mother they all had to go back—to church, to the way they were before. They couldn’t, though. Eventually, the pastor shut the door firmly and walked along the bricks. Andrew held his breath, but it was no good. The pastor stopped, turned around, and came back to the car. After a pause, he opened the door. Andrew sat up as the pastor bent down in front of him. Andrew sensed the pastor’s defeat, and not just in bringing his mother back. His milky eyes passed over Andrew’s face while his hand squeezed the leather Bible. It could be that his mother was right: after so many years, the pastor was tired. That’s the reason she had given for not going to service anymore: the pastor was tired, and she was tired.

  The pastor studied the backs of his own hands and shook his head. “How are you, son?”

  Andrew said he guessed he was fine.

  “It’s not just herself your mother has to think of. There’s you. We turn our backs on many of the things God calls evil, and pretend they don’t exist, or that we don’t know about them. Look what your sister did.”

  “What do you mean?” Andrew said. “It was an accident.” He didn’t know if it was, though. No one had said what it was, not to him.

  The pastor smiled and shook his head. “Yes, well,” he said in a much lower voice. “If the Lord could be fooled by the Devil’s charm, what chance did your poor sister have against him?” The pastor reached out to squeeze Andrew’s hand. “Something that appears glamorous or forbidden excites our curiosity, and we want more of it. But the people who do evil know that, and they use these things to attract those who are weak in their faith. They cannot sleep till they do evil; they are robbed of slumber till they make someone fall.” The pastor let go of Andrew’s hand and rose to leave. “She got caught up with the wrong people down in Portland.”

  Inside, his mother sat with the shades drawn and her hands folded on the kitchen table. The lamp from the next room dimly lit the side of her face.

  “What did he say?” Andrew asked. She didn’t stir, and in the silence a drop fell from the sink tap into a bowl of water. She was farther away now than she ever had been, farther away than her bedroom or her job or her mother’s place up the hill.

  “Don’t you remember, we were going to cut your hair today,” she said, standing suddenly and going to the drawer for the comb and scissors.

  She forgot so much lately, he was surprised she remembered.

  “I have to meet someone, though,” he said.

  “Who?” she said, setting the chair up and then dipping a comb in the sink. She looked at him. “That Small kid?”

  “His name is Eddie,” Andrew said.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? There is something wrong with that kid—with all of them.”

  Andrew sealed his mouth shut. He wasn’t going to answer her.

  “Now that his grandma drank herself into the hospital for the last time, I guess he’ll be living here in Vaughn.”

  “Is she dead?” Andrew asked.

  She paused before answering. “She won’t live. The postman found her facedown in her driveway—she was there the whole weekend. They found Eddie in the house watching TV. He didn’t call anyone or do anything, just sat there.”

  She straightened his bangs flat. The dull edge of the scissors pressed on his forehead and with a slow grinding snip his bangs flecked into his lap. She ran her hand over his brow, smoothed the hair against the back of his neck, and rested her hand briefly on top of his head. The weight of her fingers made him tired and he closed his eyes as she continued cutting.

  “There’s someone at the door,” she said, even though no one had knocked.

  It was Eddie, Andrew knew, before he even looked out the kitchen window. His mother opened the door and Eddie came into the dark room. He stood by the counter with his hands at his sides and his lower lip clamped over his upper. He brushed the hair out of his face, but it fell back in place again.

  “Please sit down,” Andrew’s mother said and put the comb and scissors back in the drawer, her hands fumbling.

  Eddie did as he was told, burying his hands so far under the table that his back curved over his lap.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she asked as she folded the dish towel.

  “No, ma’am. I ate before.”

  His mother stiffened with her back turned, as if Eddie had cursed at her. Eddie raised his head and looked around as he tapped his heels slowly and quietly.

  “My grandmother was born in this house,” he said. “But I never was inside it.”

  Andrew’s mother turned around and opened her mouth several times but couldn’t get started. “My father bought the place in 1950,” she finally said.

  “I know,” Eddie said without looking up. “He bought it from my grandpa.”

  “The one who owned the garage.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and raised his face, his eyes flashing faster than a cat’s tongue.

  Andrew’s mother stared at Eddie for a full minute. Andrew got up and moved around the kitchen, trying to get his mother to look away, and finally she did, walking into the next room where she simply stood half-turned in front of the window, her hands on her hips and her eyes opening and shutting.

  “We’re gonna go out for a while,” Andrew called.

  His mother looked at him, and he thought her eyes defied him to leave; he stared straight back at her until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and then he walked out the door.

  Eddie left, too, and with his head lowered he walked down the hill. Andrew followed five s
teps behind until they reached the landing, a green the size of a playing field, on the bank of the river where people launched their boats. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. A faded green T-Bird was parked on the street. Eddie kicked a stone across the grass, and on the far side of the field the brother stood up. His eyes were copper, reflecting the light in the current of the river, and wet, as if they had been cut with a cold wind. His blond hair was parted carefully in the middle and it curled in delicate wisps. Instead of going over, Eddie stood in front of the dock and wrapped his arm around one of the tarred posts. The brother was naked above his cutoffs, and so skinny that every bone and ridge flexed as he moved. He shook his hair and pulled a yellow Frisbee from under his elbow. Without bending his body, he twisted his arm and flicked the Frisbee, which sailed across the brown backdrop of the ebb tide where seagulls picked in the mud. The Frisbee hovered and dropped gently into Andrew’s hands. He didn’t know if he was supposed to throw it back or hold onto it. The brother had turned away with his hands in his pockets and his elbows angled out. His pale shoulder blades twitched like nervous eyelids.

  Eddie held out his hands and Andrew threw him the Frisbee, which Eddie then tossed to the brother. It was a perfect throw, soaring through the air to land in the brother’s bony hands. For several minutes, the brothers continued tossing it between themselves, as if they had forgotten Andrew. The brother caught the Frisbee with one hand, turned it over, and tossed it back with the other hand. He had a way of setting the Frisbee aloft so that it lingered and spun in the liquid air.

  The brother just sat down and leaned back. He called something to Eddie without turning away from the river, and the wind swallowed all but the flat tone of his voice. Eddie threw the Frisbee to Andrew and walked along the edge of the bank to see what his brother wanted. Andrew ran his fingers over the faded gold lettering on the rounded edge of the Frisbee and felt a warm buzzing in his head, as he did when he woke from a dream. Eddie and his brother talked about something and then crossed over to the curb. Andrew followed them and looked down at the T-Bird, with its ripped seats and sun-cracked dash.