Death Watch (64 page)

A
MOS UMBER’S BODY HAD LAIN
in a shallow grave in an overgrown corner of the old Temple Cemetery since the night he had disappeared. These circumstances would not allow Amos’s body to be displayed at home as was still the preferred custom in Lichport, and Mother Peale and Mrs. Bowe thought it best that Silas not look on the body, all things considered. So Amos’s remains, wrapped in good linen, had been kept in an icehouse overnight with Mother Peale sitting the vigil, and then put right into the coffin. Even though the body would not be brought into the house, no one in town would be denied the wake, and as if by instinct, people began arriving at Silas’s house that afternoon, many of them walking up just behind the cart that was carrying Amos’s coffin to the Beacon. Joan Peale was driving the horse-drawn cart that had been hung with black crepe and ropes of ivy.

That morning Silas had walked to his mother’s house on Temple Street to fetch her. She would wait with the folks making preparations. Silas and most of the others waited quietly outside to follow the cart from the house where Amos had lived in Lichport, to the ground where his body would rest. As Silas climbed into the cart, a wail rose up from Mrs. Bowe, who had been standing with him on the porch. That wild strain rang in the cold air, piercing every heart that heard it. To its sound, Silas rode off with Joan Peale to the Beacon to bury his dad, a company of mourners
trailing behind them. No one asked why Silas had preferred the Beacon to the old Umber plot on the other side of town. They all knew, as Silas did, that Amos would prefer the communal Beacon to the formal family plot, for the view over the sea if nothing else.

They carried the coffin up the hill, feeling its weight with their hearts and hardly at all in their arms and backs. With the sexton looking on from the long shadows of the trees, and with his father’s own spade, Silas and some of the men of the Narrows dug a grave near the top of the Beacon. Then, with little ceremony, they lowered the cedar coffin into the waiting earth. Silas knelt by the grave, but offered no words. Not yet.

After the burial, most of the mourners returned directly to Silas’s house to begin the funeral revels, but Silas went to the little chapel of the Narrows with Mother Peale before going home to the comfort of his friends and neighbors. He’d insisted that the Passing Bell should be rung for his father only after his body had been laid to rest, and he wanted to ring it himself. At the chapel, Mother Peale unlocked the heavy door with a large iron key and lit a lantern as they entered, for the windows were small and the day was nearly spent.

“You go on up,” she told Silas, putting her hand to the side of his face and handing him the lantern so he could see his way up the ladder. “Go up into the tower and ring the bell by hand. Put your hand to the bronze and give it a push to send it swinging. That is the old way.”

So Silas climbed awkwardly up the ladder with the lantern. The walls of the tower were close in about him as he ascended, a small orb of light moving up and up through the clutching darkness. At the top of the ladder, he stepped off into a small room with four unglazed windows that looked out over the town. Just in front of him, the bell hung from a short, thick beam that spanned
the small chamber. Silas held up the lantern to better see the tarnished surface of the bell. He could see there was an inscription commemorating its installation here in Lichport, for the bell had been brought from across the sea hundreds of years ago. The inscription was deeply and ornately carved and still clear, even in the low lantern light.

Lichport’s bell rings o’er the tide,

And to its call the dead abide.

They hear its chime and dream of home,

And leave behind this bed of loam.

Come Young or Old, your time is past—

Here is thy final song at last!

Silas set the lantern on the floor. He put his hands on the bell and pushed against it, briefly feeling the cold metal on his skin. The bell swung away from him, then came back, its hinge creaking and the clapper striking its first note. As it swung toward him again, he moved in rhythm with the bell, leaning back, then forward, pushing it, gracefully, with only a finger now, as it made its way out and back, out and back, its song ringing across the Narrows, out over the water and along the lanes into the upper part of Lichport.

The sky was deep azure, and the little room was lit only with the light of Mother Peale’s lantern, for the moon had not risen. The Passing Bell had been ringing for some time when Silas turned and saw his father standing in front of him. As the song of the bell grew softer and softer, as its are slowed, Amos and Silas spoke to each other. It was nearly time to go.

Silas was crying.

Amos stood looking tenderly at Silas, as if wanting to
remember everything he could about his son; his face, the way his hair hung a little in his eyes. Then Amos leaned in close and whispered into Silas’s ear before becoming indiscernible from the air and leaving Silas alone in the bell tower.

The ghost’s voice wasn’t loud enough to be heard below, and Silas Umber never told anyone what his father said to him that night. And when, many years later, he went to his own grave, he took those quiet words with him out of this world.

Silas went back down the ladder and walked with Mother Peale from the chapel back to his house, where the revels would be well underway. Mrs. Bowe and his mother would be waiting. All day, people had been arriving, bringing flowers and food. Silas could see the room in his mind, filled with the people of the town, and he longed to be with them. While there would be no waking of the ghost, the rest of the traditions would be upheld. And Silas knew people simply wanted to be with him, wanted to share their sadness at his loss and share their memories of his father in his house, surrounded by Amos’s things. Good words needed to be spoken, then all would be well done.

The wake lasted for three days, with people drinking night and morning and sleeping all over the house whenever sleep took them before getting back up to join the company again. Late in the afternoon of the third day after Amos’s burial, Mrs. Bowe and Mother Peale began putting things away and packing food into the refrigerator. With only a little help, even the drowsiest of the company began making their weary way home. At ten o’clock, Mother Peale rode home to the Narrows in the cart with her daughter and a few friends, and Mrs. Bowe had left Silas to the quiet of his thoughts.

Midnight found Silas so tired he couldn’t sleep. He sat in the
study among his father’s things. The evenings had turned cold. He built up the fire on the hearth, took his dad’s jacket from the back of the chair, and put it on, pulling it tight about him. In the house next door, he could hear the music through the wall and knew that Mrs. Bowe and her man were beginning their nightly dance.

Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low;

And the flick’ring shadows softly come and go.

Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long,

Still to us at twilight comes love’s old song,

Comes love’s old sweet song.

Before him on the desk, the town’s death ledger lay open to the beginning. Silas read down the list of names of Lichport’s dead, and their death dates, many of the departed now as familiar as his ancestors and kin. At the bottom of the list, he saw again where his dad had written his own incomplete entry: “Amos Umber, d. __________.” Silas took up a pen and inscribed the date of his father’s funeral in place of the death date. On the next line, he wrote his own name in the ledger before laying down the pen and closing the book.

And away toward the marshes, a single small flame hung in the air over the cold water of the millpond. It flashed, but only for an instant, then wavered and went out.

A book takes on a life of its own and if anything at all is to become of it, a book (not to mention its author) needs friends. I have been very fortunate in this regard, for even before
Death Watch
had a title, it was befriended by exceptional people, and to them I am exceptionally grateful …

Eddie Gamarra, friend, manager, ship’s rudder, and guardian of my writing career, offered always sage and sober guidance. Were it not for his confidence in me, this book would never have been written.

Tony and Angela DiTerlizzi have walked with me through the landscape of this book, offering suggestions, critique, and the kind of support that is a rare thing in this world, even from dear friends. I owe them such a debt of gratitude. GD.

Holly Black has given me more encouragement and help than I suspect I am entitled to. Her comments on the first complete draft were timely and challenging.

Navah Wolfe, my editor, always had smart questions and suggestions, and was Silas Umber’s best friend from the beginning of this adventure. This book is so much the better for her good work. The rest of my Simon & Schuster family: especially Justin Chanda, Laurent Linn, Katrina Groover, and Michelle Kratz, who have in various ways helped this book find its place in the world. Drew Willis made the excellent map of Lichport. And I thank Valerie Shea, my copyeditor, for her meticulous work and hawk-like eyes. The book you’re holding simply would not be here if not for the Simon & Schuster team.

A few brave souls read very early drafts of this book; their help, suggestions, and conversations helped shape it in innumerable ways. Tracy Ford read it more times than anyone and his friendship, insight and support were always there when I needed them. Nancy Berman
provided elegant comments and delicate corrections early on. Maggie Secara found some hidden trouble spots and also told me what she loved. Matthew Roberson and Gretchen Papazian were more encouraging than they know. Anne Alton smiled at just the right time. And Larissa Niec and Honora Foah gifted me with their ideas and initial thoughts when the book was in a highly metamorphic state. Erin Parker’s thoughts after reading this book have earned her a fine supper and my thanks. Deb Shapiro gave excellent advice as well as drafting the excellent reading group guide.

My colleagues at CMU have always been surprisingly supportive of my strange “other” work, Marcy Taylor and Pam Gates especially so. For the priceless gift of camaraderie, I am so very grateful to Mark Freed, Brooke Harrison and Jacob Harrison-Freed, the Weinstock family, and Talat Halman.

John and Caitlin Matthews, my brother and sister in Art, have since I was twenty been incredibly supportive of me as a writer and in most other ways too. They are there at every turn, and our many adventures together—both philosophical and topographical—have inspired this and other books of mine besides. I thank them too for those golden days, surrounded by sea and stones, upon the northern rim of the world. We’ll always have Orkney. This book really took shape on those trips and in their excellent company.

Adam Barrett, explorer and chronicler of ruins, has allowed me to use his excellent photographs of urban decay for inspiration. Lichport would be far paler in its descriptions but for his fine eye for the abandoned.

For my own selfish purposes, I convinced Jim Ryan Gregory to become a medievalist. His Latin is excellent, and because of that, so is mine.

I thank Stacy Burnette for the marvelous distraction of his friendship, and for showing me time and time again the wonders of the rural.

The dead have also played their part in the making of
Death Watch
,
lending me ideas, encouragement, inspiration, and occasionally their own words to light my way through the labyrinth of ghostly lore. John Donne, Robert Burton, Thomas Browne, George Herbert, Emmanuel Swedenborg, William Shakespeare, Lewes Lavater—to them and so many others: my undying respect and gratitude.

But above all who have helped and befriended this book, both living and dead, it is my family to whom I owe the greatest debt. My parents, Susan and Mike Berk, put books in my hands from an early age, many of which became the bedrock upon which this novel has been written. They knew I would write this book long before I did. My brother Jeremy, sister-in-law Rebecca, and their children, Madeleine and Spencer, added laughter to my writing days in the West. My aunt Joan introduced me to the gothic when I was very young and this, it appears, has stuck. My grandparents, all dead, were much in my thoughts and often at my side while writing this book. Suzanne McDermott, my beloved mother-in-law, taught me anything I know about graciousness. Her death, which occurred while this book was being written, showed me that a good life and a good death go hand in hand and can be a blessing to everyone. I think about her every day.

Robin, my son, you show me day after day how wonderful life can be if we look to small things for joy. I love you with my whole heart. This is your book.

And my dear Kris: there are not words. You are my rock in everything I do. You is my darlin’ girl, and I loves ya.