by Jane Langton
Annie put her hands behind her back. “No, no, I won’t. Go away.”
The man grinned and tossed the envelope over her shoulder. It landed in the middle of the hall floor and slid into the big room beyond. Annie chased after it and snatched it up, meaning to throw it back, but the front door banged shut with a shivering slam. By the time she wrenched it open, he was leaping into his car. The engine was running. He zoomed away.
Reluctantly she opened the envelope and read the official language of Sprocket’s court order. Outraged, she tore it in half and called Homer. There was no answer, only the polite language of the message machine. Annie was so angry she could hardly speak. Her message was a string of obscenities, but its meaning was clear.
Homer’s first words when he called back were as wrathful as her own. “Don’t leave,” he shouted into the phone. “Whatever you do, don’t move out.”
“You bet I won’t move out. I’m here to stay. So what can they do to me, Uncle Homer?”
“God, I don’t know. I’ll find out. In the meantime, hang in there.”
Annie put down the phone and stared at her painted wall. Legally it belonged to the Gasts. Now they wanted her out. Well, she was not going to leave, she was never going to leave. How could she abandon her wall to the tender mercies of Robert and Roberta Gast, who would hide the five arches of her painted gallery under a dozen rolls of Williamsburg wallpaper? They didn’t give a damn about her wall.
“Is she gone?” said Charlene.
“Not yet,” said her father. “But she’s got to obey the court order.”
“It’s that painting of hers,” said Roberta. “She’s sentimental about that big painting on her wall.”
“But it’s not her wall anymore,” said Gast. “It’s our wall. We can do whatever the hell we want with that goddamned wall. You know what it is, that wall?” He swallowed hard, as a vision of the painted wall rose in his mind, bright with color and flowering with stories. “It’s self-indulgence. Pure self-indulgence.”
“You can knock it down, right?” said Charlene. “You’ll have to, because my swimming pool’s got to be, like, really, really big. I got this book out of the library. You’ve got to have radiant heating and automatic ventilators and a shower room and a towel closet and—”
“Oh, God, Charlene,” said Bob Gast, dropping his head in his hands, “sometimes I think we should just—”
Charlene did not wait to hear what he was going to say. Once again she moved in close and whispered in his ear.
“Oh, God, I know,” said her father. “I know, I know.”
Roberta Gast did not ask what it was that her husband knew. She knew what he knew. She leaped up and began pulling things out of the refrigerator for supper, trying not to think about the future.
“Lord Fish, Lord Fish!” shrieked the fisherman, struggling to keep his boat from foundering in the tormented sea. “My wife is not happy being emperor.”
“Perhaps,” croaked the fish, gazing up at him from the boiling whirlpool below the boat, “she would like to rule the world.”
“Oh, yes, Lord Fish! How did you know? She wants to rule the whole entire world.”
The eyes of the great fish glowed back at him. “Go home, my friend. Your wife is ruler of all the continents on earth and all the islands in the sea.”
Part Three
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down.
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.
—Mother Goose rhyme
Chapter 42
By now Bob Gast was well acquainted with Ted Hawk, proprietor of Hawk Wrecking and Demolition, owner of the big machines that were now demolishing Fred Small’s house in Southtown and grinding their way across his ninety-nine acres of burdock, uprooting hundreds of small hemlocks and white pines and crushing an entire nursery of pasture juniper and mountain laurel. Originally Bob had chosen Hawk’s outfit from an ad in the Yellow Pages—
HAWK WRECKING AND DEMOLITION
COMMERCIAL * RESIDENTIAL * INDUSTRIAL
24 HOUR EMERGENCY SERVICE
7 DAYS A WEEK
LICENSED * BONDED * INSURED
Braintree Mass
848-5555
So now he knew just where to go for this job here at home. On the phone to Hawk he explained the problem. “It’s a wing attached to my house. It’s only the wing that is to be—uh—removed. The house is to remain intact.”
“Well, sure, no problem. Why don’t I come out and take a look?”
Ted Hawk was a tall, dignified man in a business suit. He walked around the new wing with Bob Gast. As they strolled past the south side, Annie was plainly visible within, sitting on her scaffolding, twisting around to look at them.
“Somebody’s living in there now?” said Hawk.
“Oh, sure, but she’s getting out. Don’t worry.”
“You positive? She hasn’t got a lease? You’ve got a deed, says you’re the owner? We’ve got to see the deed. Like at Southtown, we don’t want any trouble. You’d be surprised the kind of things that happen.”
“Oh, everything’s fine, perfectly legal, all according to Hoyle.”
“Well, as you know, there’s paperwork. We’ve got to prep it, do utility disconnects, get all the fluorescent tubing out because of, you know, PCBs. Notarized permission letter, building inspector informed. You got any tax liens on the property? Mortgage Bank’s got to sign off too.” Again Hawk looked appraisingly at the wing of the house that no longer belonged to Anna Elizabeth Swann. “It’s a small job. Take a day, maybe two with site clearing. When will your tenant be out, all her stuff?” Hawk’s voice was loud. He was staring straight into one of Annie’s big windows.
Embarrassed, Gast drew him aside. “In two weeks. She’s got to be out by May twenty-first.”
Hawk consulted his pocket notebook. “Right. Say May twenty-third. That okay with you?”
Gast cleared his throat and stared at Hawk with bulging eyes. “How much is this going to cost me? I mean all together?”
“It’s a small job.” Hawk rubbed his chin. “Twenty thousand? Round figure.”
“Jesus Christ! Small’s house, it was only fifteen.”
“Well, this one’s tricky, separating the two parts. It’s like dividing Siamese twins, you gotta be careful.”
“Well, okay, go ahead, God!” Bob added up figures in his mind. It wasn’t just the original sum of his mounting debts, plus this extra twenty thousand, it was the accumulating interest. One hundred dollars a day, one hundred dollars a day, one hundred dollars a day.
Chapter 43
Build it up with needles and pins,
Needles and pins, needles and pins!
Build it up with needles and pins,
My fair lady!
Mother Goose rhyme
“I told you,” said Bob Gast, standing at Annie’s front door, “you’re to be out of here by the twenty-first.”
“I’m not going,” said Annie.
Gast restrained an impulse to take her by the arms and drag her out. But Annie was a big woman, taller than he was, and probably stronger. And that weird character O’Dougherty was visible outside the window, glancing in their direction. Yesterday Bob had seen him turn six handsprings on the lawn, one after another, his body making impossible contortions, springing higher with every bound.
And anyway, things were bad enough. Violence would only get him in trouble. “In that case I’ll be forced to call the police.”
“And I’ll be forced to call the newspapers.”
Gast blanched, then said sarcastically, “I don’t think an article in the Concord Journal would make much of a stir.”
“One in the Boston Globe would make a stir.” Annie pawed around in her head for the name of a famous columnist. “Gabe Garibaldi, he’d be interested.”
“Gabe Garibaldi!” In spite of himself, Gast was choked with doubt. He had read Garibaldi’s column. The man was a master of sentimenta
l hardship cases. “Mother-to-be fired without cause.” “Elderly ripped off.” “Widow robbed of life savings.”
He knew exactly what would happen. Garibaldi would write a phony column about Annie that would make her landlord look like a bastard. Bob could write it for him, every lying word. “Cruel landlord evicts famous artist. Masterpiece destroyed.”
“Goddamn you, Annie Swann,” he said, with an intensity that welled up from his bowels and sifted pathetically down from the 752 remaining hairs on the top of his head.
In Jerry Neville’s original out-of-court settlement with the Gasts, Annie was not required to pay rent. But now she was eager to pay. She produced a handful of hundred-dollar bills. “Here, this is for next month.”
He shouted at her, “You won’t be here next month.”
Annie tossed the bills at his retreating back. They flew up, then fluttered down into the pachysandra bordering the north side of the house. Some of them blew across the driveway.
She went inside and slammed the door.
It began to rain, beating down on the roof of Annie’s house and the driveway and the pachysandra, plastering the unclaimed greenbacks to the pavement, thrusting them into crevices between the shiny leaves of the ground cover. Later on, when the sun came out, Charlene discovered them and picked them up, pouncing on one after another. It was like an Easter-egg hunt, but with hundred-dollar bills instead of jelly beans. That afternoon she flipped through the catalogue from the pool company and picked out a poolside chaise and sent the money in cash. Later on, when the big box was delivered by UPS, her mother said, “Charlene, what’s this?” and Charlene said, “It’s okay, Mummy, I found the money on the driveway,” and Roberta, scandalized, said, “What?” But of course this time Charlene was telling the truth.
“They can’t knock anything down if I’m in the way, can they?”
Flimnap looked at Annie soberly. “Superior force. A couple of big cops, that’s all it would take. They’d haul you out of here.” He glanced up at the endangered wall. “Who’s that in the big chair?”
Annie looked up too and smiled. “Charles Dodgson. You know, Lewis Carroll. He’s reading to Alice Liddell.”
Flimnap stared at Dodgson. Annie waited for him to say something complimentary. Instead he began talking about moral force. “Look, Annie, it’s all you’ve got to fight with. You need publicity, a protest movement. They’ve got the law. You’ve got righteousness, justice, and truth.”
She laughed. “You sound just like my Uncle Homer. He loves big sweeping abstractions. But you’re right. I’ll write a letter to the Globe.”
“Let me take care of it,” said Flimnap. “I know somebody there.”
So it was Flimnap, not Annie, who went to the Boston Globe.
His friend at the paper just happened to be the executive editor, Harvey Broadstairs. When the editorial assistant mentioned the visitor’s name, Broadstairs summoned him at once and listened to his story sympathetically.
“Great stuff,” said Broadstairs. “Sob story. Worth its weight in gold. Sure, it’s Garibaldi’s kind of thing, but not just Garibaldi. When does the bulldozer arrive? Good. We’ll have somebody out there. Color shot.”
“Well, thanks, that’s great. Oh, say, there’s just one thing. Don’t use my name, all right?”
“Why not? I should think it would carry weight. Why don’t you capitalize on it? No? Well, all right, if you say so.”
The story in the Boston Globe did indeed create a stir. And Gabe Garibaldi’s column oozed with sympathy. Garibaldi knew nothing about the death of Eddy Gast. His outrage was directed at Eddy’s father, who was threatening the safety of a work of art.
Moral force, Flimnap said, it’s all you’ve got to fight with, but Annie couldn’t see what good his publicity was doing. Everything was in such a mess. A new unwanted face had appeared on her wall, even more savage than before, and those bastards were about to bring in their machines and knock her house down.
In despair Annie decided she would die before she’d allow them to destroy her wall. Just let them try! They’d have to destroy Annie Swann at the same time. Melodramatically Annie told herself that the people who believed in the publicity value of moral force could take a picture of her mangled body and publish that.
Then Minnie Peck, the found-object sculptor, and Trudy Tuck, the creator of artistic candles, saved the day. Together they roused the countryside.
Chapter 44
Pins and needles bend and break,
Bend and break, bend and break,
Pins and needles bend and break,
My fair lady.
Mother Goose rhyme
“I just wondered if you’ve had time to work on the sample I brought in last week,” said Sergeant Bill Kennebunk, at last connected by phone to the forensic botanist in the Bureau of Investigative Services, after jumping over a series of electronic hurdles.
“Oh, that one. You mean the sample from Southborough? You’re—uh—Patrolman Kensington?”
“Southtown, not Southborough. And my name’s Kennebunk.” Sergeant Kennebunk’s faith in the scientific accuracy of the Bureau of Investigative Services plummeted. How could he trust anything this bungler came up with?
But there were still no findings. “Sorry, Kensington, we’re still way behind. Our chief just retired, and his replacement, he’s a new broom.” A tone of bitterness crept into the botanist’s voice. Kennebunk suspected he had been passed over for promotion. “He wants us to clean out all our old files. So we’ve been throwing out stuff. Not your stuff, of course. At least I hope not.”
Kennebunk called Homer Kelly, and explained the delay.
Homer was used to bureaucratic foot-dragging, and anyway he had forgotten the point of Kennebunk’s botanizing. “Any sign of Frederick Small? Where did his furniture end up?”
“Storage warehouse in Northtown. Nobody seems to know where he is himself. McNutt just grins and won’t tell me anything, but I think he knows. Oh, say, Homer, his house has been torn down.”
“No kidding! I suppose it wasn’t elegant enough for Songsparrow Estates. The better class of buyers might turn up their noses.”
Like most construction workers, demolition expert Ted Hawk rose early. This morning he was up at four-thirty. There was always a lot to do, mobilizing a job. You had to haul the forty-ton excavator up onto the low-bed trailer with a hydraulic lift and lash it down with chains and get it out on the road by five-thirty, because, Christ, during commuting hours you couldn’t obstruct the highway with two slow-moving heavy trucks and a tractor trailer lugging a monster machine.
Therefore, it was only six-thirty when his car pulled into the Gasts’ driveway, followed by the two trucks and the tractor trailer with its colossal burden. Hawk was dismayed to find the scene of his day’s work already teeming with the friends and relatives of Annie Swann. They were carrying signs—
BARBARIAN, GO HOME!
GET LOST!
STOP THIS MADNESS!
SAVE THIS ARTISTIC TREASURE!
PRESERVE THIS WORK OF ART FOR THE NEXT
MILLENNIUM!
Flimnap O’Dougherty was nowhere in sight, but someone had braced the north side of the house with props, heavy wooden beams like flying buttresses on a church. Homer Kelly too was somewhere else, trying to wake up a judge and get an injunction.
The protestors shrieked at Hawk and jiggled their signs up and down. Minnie Peck turned on her boom box, and a chorus of thousands began roaring “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Thunderclaps of patriotic music battered Hawk’s windshield. A video camera was aimed in his direction. Somebody else was taking pictures.
Hawk dropped his hands from the steering wheel and said, “Oh, fuck.”
Hawk’s passenger, his subcontractor, said, “God almighty.”
“I told the guy we didn’t want any trouble,” said Hawk. “Look at those sons a bitches.”
Someone opened the car door. It was one of Hawk’s truck drivers. He gestured with his thumb. �
�There’s a guy inside, see?” Hawk craned his neck, and saw Bob Gast beckoning from a window. “He’s scared to come out,” said the truck driver, grinning.
They followed Gast’s pointing finger to his front door and went inside, while Annie’s friends hooted and booed.
“They’re just bluffing,” said Bob Gast, his face white. “Go ahead. Get the machine down off the truck. Start it up. They’ll disappear in a hurry.”
“No way,” said Ted Hawk. “A couple of those people, they’ve got cameras. You said there wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“There won’t be, I tell you.” Gast was frantic. “Go ahead and get started.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gast, but protesters are bad news. We’re leaving, so that’ll be two thousand dollars, okay? For our time, and tying up the equipment.”
Gast was scandalized. “What? But you haven’t done anything yet.”
“Mobilizing fee. Six guys, couple of trucks, and all this equipment, creeping down 128 thirty miles from Braintree and thirty miles back, and then three guys have to get the machine down off the flatbed again, whaddayamean, that’s not doing anything?” Hawk took a rumpled form out of his pocket, slapped it on the kitchen table, and scrawled on it with his pen. “So I’d like a check right now, if it’s all the same to you.”
After school Charlene was disappointed to see Annie’s part of the house still standing. “Hey, Daddy,” she said, “what happened? Aren’t they going to knock it down?”
Bob Gast felt driven into a corner by women. Young or old, they were all the same. Stubborn, demanding, they never let go. “Don’t worry, I’ll get her out. We’ll hire another wrecking company. She’ll have to pack up and leave.”
“Well, I wish she’d hurry up. Look, Daddy, here’s the catalogue from the swimming-pool company.” Charlene flipped it open so that he could admire the Olympic-sized indoor pool. It was full of jolly swimmers, children, mothers, and fathers. A model in a scanty suit lay on an inflated mattress. A serious swimmer clove the water with a powerful backstroke. There were ladders, slides, diving boards, track lighting, and huge windows, poolside tables and chairs, a garden with tropical plants and gigantic blossoms. The water was aquamarine.