"That's the Superintendent." Annabelle Sarka interjected needlessly. They all recognized him from his nervous throat clearing.
Huh, thought Ellie. The Reverintendent was apparently as tired as she was of having his name ground through the rumor mill. Maybe he's getting a dose of his own medicine. Ellie still suspected the Reverintendent was largely to blame for the rumors surrounding her and Julien.
"Oh now, c'mon, Reverend." A female voice said. "There is no need for former federal investigators. No one thinks you have drugs in your house. As for your niece, I'm sure she can explain her behavior. Let's not take this outside the school grounds, I beg you. If we open it up to the local police, it will start something that can't be stopped."
"That is Allison Wesley." Mrs. Sarka narrated. Everyone was too busy concentrating on listening to shush her.
"You, sir, had no right to call in the feds without consulting the board of education!" An angry male voice proclaimed. "Board of Education policy dictates that we should have a special called meeting before any legal matters are made public!"
"That is the president of the board of education – Mr. Thomas Wellham." Mrs. Sarka was fully in charge of the narration now. Her eyes sparkled with uncontained glee at the mayhem drifting down from the intercom.
"Let's not jump to any conclusions, people." Mrs. Wesley tried to reason with the group. "What if we offer the teens of this town some good, clean fun? Then they won't have to resort to partying out in the woods. How about a dance, for instance?"
"Oh," an angry huff interrupted. "Aren't you the perfect little parent, volunteering a dance for the teenagers." Mrs. Wellham's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Well, just because we don't host parties for teenagers doesn't mean we aren't every bit as good as you are! You think you're so high and mighty because all your kids graduated with honors. You sit on your pedestal and judge me for Farrah's one mistake! For your information, after rehab she has been one hundred percent clean! So, don't you dare act like you're superior to us!"
"Um," Ellie interjected. "Shouldn't somebody tell the office that their conversation is being transmitted to the teachers' lounge and possibly the whole school?" Ellie had heard enough to know that this conversation should be private.
"Oh." The mood evaporated quickly, and several teachers looked abashed.
"I'll go!" Mrs. Sarka declared and left the lounge at a lively trot. The conversation over the intercom continued as she made her way to the office, and Mr. Wellham joined in to support his wife's criticism of the Wesleys before Mrs. Sarka could get to the office to warn them.
"That's right, Mr. Wesley!" Mr. Wellham said. "Reverend Peters, I have changed my mind! I fully support you in your attempt to clear your name once and for all! It's too bad we couldn't do the same! Go ahead and bring the cops." He pronounced.
"Now wait just a minute." Another voice added. It sounded like Mayor Goodwin. "We all have a say in this matter. You're not the boss here, Wellham. We don't blindly obey the BOE president, and we certainly don't cow to the wealthy – even though you think that makes you the most important person in the room! I happen to be the mayor of th--"
Click. Mrs. Sarka must have finally gotten to the office. The intercom went silent. When she came back to the teacher's lounge, her enthusiasm had not diminished. She was breathless with excitement, and her eyes sparkled in a way that could only mean one thing – more gossip.
"Well, well, well." She shut the door to the lounge behind her and leaned back against it with a gleam in her eyes. "Wasn't that a right nasty piece of business!" She gloated. Ellie could tell she was just bursting with news and dying for someone to ask her for it.
"If you only knew the rest of what I overheard as I tried to get their attention. They were behind locked doors, you know." She cajoled. No one took the bait.
"I found out that our good reverend is positioning to get the parsonage signed over to him." She looked from person to person. "Well, do you want to know or not!" Mrs. Sarka stomped her foot, hands on hips.
"Go on, then. Tell us what you overheard." Mr. Grant sighed in feigned exasperation. Ellie was pretty sure he wanted to know what Mrs. Sarka had to say. Everyone must have wanted to know because nobody left the lounge. Mrs. Sarka was nearly beside herself. She trembled with excitement.
"Well, as you heard – there are several people in the principal's office. Ellie, I'll explain since you don't know all these community leaders." Mrs. Sarka geared up. She took a deep breath and lifted her shoulders as if preparing to deliver a well-rehearsed speech.
"The arguing parties include Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Wellham - Board of Education president and his wife who together own about two-thirds of the county; Mr. and Mrs. Gary Wesley - founders of the church-based home school group from First Baptist and staunch church members of the same; the superintendent - current preacher of First Baptist who has been here serving his dual roles for about three years; Principal Danvers - newly appointed principal to our school just last year; Lydia Bennet and Louella Baxter - co-presidents of the Parent Teacher Association; and Mayor Goodwin." She paused to catch her breath and revved back up again.
"You heard them arguing with the superintendent. He called in Remuel Hardy, a retired DEA agent, to investigate drug charges about his niece, Tai, and some of her friends. At first, the Wellhams were against it. I imagine Thomas felt the superintendent should have consulted him before making any decisions as he is the president of the Board of Education."
"Well, after Mrs. Wesley made Mrs. Wellham mad - she is extremely sensitive about their daughter Farrah - the Wellhams turned against the Wesleys in support of the superintendent. Then, the mayor decided to add his two cents' worth and told the Wellhams that they weren't in charge just because they are wealthy."
Ellie was just barely following the argument and its participants; she was getting a little dizzy at the tit-for-tat back and forth, trying to picture the scene in her mind. She didn't volunteer that she'd done a little eavesdropping herself and already knew about Mr. Hardy's investigation.
"So, Mr. Wellham fired back that the mayor had no business deciding what was right or wrong since he rarely attends church. Oh, that made Mayor Goodwin good and angry. He defended himself by saying that it was true – he never goes to church anymore because all the reverend preaches about is hellfire and damnation!"
This drew an audible gasp from Mrs. Sarka's audience. They hardly ever heard words like that in the teacher's lounge. "I know, right?" Mrs. Sarka continued, happy to be the bearer of such inflammatory news. "Well, you can imagine that made the reverend madder than a hornet. He rounded on Wellham and said that it was an unfounded accusation.
"So, then Mrs. Holy Roller - that's Mrs. Wesley to you, Ellie - gets on board and defends the mayor, saying it's true for many people, not just the mayor. Several people in her home-school group are afraid to take their children to church services because all he does is threaten them with hell, and it frightens the children."
Ellie squirmed in her seat. She was beginning to feel guilty about having sidestepped the principal's orders to take down the fiery adverts her students created earlier in the semester. If religion, sermons, and politics were such a hot topic in Stusa, maybe she needed to go ahead and put them away. She'd not had the faintest idea when she created the assignment. She resisted the urge to run straight to her room and take down the posters in order to hear the rest of the argument narrated so eagerly by Mrs. Sarka.
"Then the reverend mutters that it's not the children who need to hear his sermons. At this, Mrs. Wesley asks him pointedly if he thinks there are really so many sinners in this small town."
"Well, I guess this is just what the superintendent was waiting for," said Mrs. Sarka, "because he unloaded every complaint he must have been holding in for three years. He said that the whole town needs to hear his sermons. The church members also need to respect him and pay him what he's worth. He's not some uneducated backwoods preacher; he graduated from Harvard School of Divinity and left a thrivi
ng church near Boston to come to this podunk little town. He can't believe how difficult everyone here is. He says he can't even make one suggestion or change without starting a riot. Then he says that it must be the work of the devil!"
As a few teachers gasped again at the insinuation, Ellie tried to decipher the little alarm bells that had begun to chime in the back of her mind. Tiny and faint, they were signaling a déjà vu moment. Where had she heard this before? What did this remind her of? But Mrs. Sarka wasn't finished yet. She continued recounting what she had heard.
"That infuriated Lydia and Louella as their husbands are both preachers. The mayor stepped in and said that if the reverend is pointing out the devil's work, then why is he the first preacher who has ever wanted the deed to the parsonage?
"So, the reverend asked didn't he deserve a house of his own?"
"The mayor said, 'to live in, not to own.'"
"Then the reverend said that all he really wants is some reassurance from the town. He doesn't want to be kicked out without warning like the last two preachers. He reminded them that he's the third preacher in five years. Someone had to take on the burden of saving this godforsaken little town. Then he added that if the church doesn't get right with God, it will burn."
A third gasp emanated from Mrs. Sarka's captive audience. Ellie's alarm bells chimed madly in unison with the gasps. Mrs. Sarka picked back up, satisfied with the group's reaction.
"Well, with that comment, Lydia and Louella gathered their pocketbooks and marched out without a word. The mayor asked if the reverend could talk about anything else except Hell. He's disgusted by it all."
"The Reverend responded by saying that the mayor can't dictate the preacher's messages."
"Then the mayor said he still has freedom of speech."
"Then the Reverend responded by accusing the mayor of being the leader of the opposition against him."
"So, Mayor Goodwin asked, 'Oh, there's an opposition against you? Where can I sign up? I'll be sure and let Lydia and Louella know, too.'"
The group of teachers emitted a few chuckles this time. Ellie guessed that the mayor wasn't the only one who would like to oppose the Reverend. Mrs. Sarka continued.
"Well, after a second or two, the arguing picked back up. The mayor tells Wellham, 'Let's get out of here. I've got some trees to clear.'"
Thomas said, 'Which trees are those?'"
"The mayor responded that they're the trees on his property inside his fence by the branch."
"Thomas said, 'You must be crazy. Those are my trees, fence or no fence. My grandfather left them to me in his will!'"
"The mayor said, 'Yeah, he left a lot of stuff to people in his will – stuff he didn't own in the first place.'"
"Then Mr. Wesley decided he'd held his tongue long enough and added, 'Yeah, your grandfather didn't dare do that to me because he knew I had the means to crush him. Let's go clear some land, mayor.'" Mrs. Sarka paused for a breath.
"And then I had to run to get out of the way." Mrs. Sarka added. "They came storming out of that office madder than wet hens. They didn't even see me they were so angry. But Thomas Wellham yelled, 'If you haul off one single tree of mine, I'll take you to court!' He shouted it at them as they were leaving."
"Naturally, I came straight here to tell it all before I forgot a single word." She looked proud of herself. Indeed, it was a convoluted conversation to retell.
Ellie only followed about half of it. At that moment, she was more concerned about the chiming in her head urging her to remember where she'd heard it all before. She felt like she was in a haze. She couldn't make the connection that was right there in front of her.
The lunch bell rang, breaking up the little group, and teachers headed back to classrooms. Ellie shook her head to clear the chiming in her head. Maybe she could look around in the anthology to find the nagging connection.
Once she reviewed it all in her mind and managed to decipher most of the political in-fighting, she congratulated herself. Wheels within wheels, she thought. Part of her was tempted to laugh at the pettiness of it all, but then again, wasn't that what always drove politics - no matter the number of constituents?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CRUCIBLE CONNECTION
After the overheard argument, Ellie went home and searched the anthology, convinced that it was there that she had read something similar. After hours of fruitless searching, she took a break and checked her blog. And there it was. A reader had posted a comment about the small-town politics sounding like a plot for a movie. It hit Ellie immediately with a resounding clang! Why hadn't she seen it sooner?
Because it was the plot of a movie. A movie based on a play. A play Ellie had read half a dozen times since becoming an English teacher -- The Crucible. When she realized the connection, Ellie's mind exploded with possibilities. The argument among Stusa's town leaders was eerily like the argument in Miller's play – an argument that was factual, based on historical records.
So many ideas hit Ellie at once that she felt dizzy. It wasn't a slow dawning of comprehension; it was a tsunami that came crashing down and drowned everything else.
All those little coincidences that Ellie had chuckled about - the small-town setting, the town leaders, the teenagers partying in the forest, the theocracy. The coincidences were uncanny, sinister even. They taunted Ellie, urging her to find more similarities despite the logical part of her mind denying everything.
Ellie's students had picked up on the similarities almost immediately. They had jumped in and started aligning Stusa residents to their Crucible counterparts. Even though she'd been proud of their analytical skills, Ellie knew she had to shut them down before they caused real trouble. The Reverintendent and the principal would be none too pleased to be compared to Reverend Parris and Judge Danforth, no matter how apt the description.
Alarm bells still sounding, Ellie ransacked her home office until she found her copy of Arthur Miller's play. Like the Reverintendent, Ellie wanted proof. Proof that she wasn't certifiably insane. This was simply too much to be a mere coincidence.
As Ellie held the play in her hands, a shudder of panic raced down her spine. If she opened the play and saw what she suspected was inside, there could be no turning back. She would somehow have crossed over into a blend of fiction and reality that no one would ever believe.
Was she ready? Was she brave enough? Was she sure she wanted to explore this possibility? She absent-mindedly rubbed her left wrist. It tingled with nerves.
She inhaled deeply and plunged into her obsession. She flipped past the note on historical accuracy, past the overture describing the characters, past the opening scene of Parris praying over Betty - and there it was.
Near the end of Act One, Reverend Hale listens to the adults describe the conditions surrounding Betty's illness. In between accusing Reverend Parris of having both a slave and a niece involved in witchcraft, they argue about land rights, ownership of the parsonage, and church attendance. It was spookily similar.
But there are characters missing, Ellie's rational mind argued. Where is Rebecca Nurse? Where is Reverend Hale?
But the essence of the argument was the same. Her intuition countered. Who is more powerful than whom? Who has the right to call in specialists to investigate crime? Who is to blame for stirring up trouble? Who holds past grudges based on land ownership and the like?
The sensation in Ellie's gut made her simultaneously want to vomit and to laugh. It wasn't just in her head. There was some connection here. Was that crazy? Yes! Could Arthur Miller have known anything about Stusa in the twenty-first century? No! But he knew human nature, her instinct prompted.
Part of Ellie wanted to laugh at it all and forget about her inner struggle for sanity. But another part of her wanted time to think about it, so she put her head between her knees and inhaled deeply through her nose to try to stave off the darkness clouding her peripheral vision. Bending over still made her ribcage hurt, and the pain helped her regain control.
"Mon cœur, you are working too hard. C'est ne pas possible! How can you expect to maintain balance if all you do is work? It is well after midnight." He tut-tutted Ellie as he set the play on the desk.
"Let's get you to bed where you belong." He pulled Ellie up and steered her to the stairs. They were about halfway up when they heard a scream from the girls' room followed by a cry of "Maman! Papa!"
Both instantly alert, they scrambled up to the girls' room as fast as they could. Méline was sitting straight up, wide-eyed and crying. Ellie rushed to her side while Julien turned on the lights. Relieved that nothing visible was amiss, Ellie guessed that it was a nightmare.
"We are here. You are perfectly safe." Ellie folded Méline into her arms. "Tell maman what happened."
Méline's little chest heaved as she tried to explain. "I was in a dark place. It was very scary. I heard a crackling and saw an orange light. Then I was surrounded by fire, and I could not find my way out. Orange heat was burning me everywhere!" She leaned in for a hug from both her parents and buried her head in Julien's chest.
"It was très horrible. I could not find any of you – not my sister, not maman, not papa. Only Dedé. And she ran off before I could follow her. She squeezed through places that were too little for me. It was so hot!" She looked up at Ellie with a tear-stained face. Ellie grabbed both of her hands.
"It was just a dream, ma petite. You are in your own room. See your stuffed animals? And look who came to check on you." Dedé jumped in bed with Méline and licked her face.
Ellie soothed, "It is not dark or scary now. There is no fire. You probably got hot in your sleep with all these blankets, so your mind created something to wake you. See how you have kicked off all the covers? Let me get a cold bath cloth to wipe your face. It will cool you down, and you'll feel better."
Crucible Crisis Page 14