The Glass Village (3 page)

“Oh.” The Hackett boy turned away.

“Aren't you up kind of early, Joel, for a summer's morning?” asked Judge Shinn pleasantly. “Or was the thought of today's excitement too much for you?”

“That corn.” Joel Hackett kicked the sagging picket gate. “I'd a lot rather take my twenty-two and go huntin' with Eddie Pangman. But Pop made me go over and ask Orville for a job. I'm startin' tomorrow—strippin' his darn-fool cows.”

He went into the Hackett house and banged the door.

“You'll have to make quite a speech today to impress that boy,” remarked Johnny. “What's that sign?”

The house next to Burney Hackett's was a red-painted clapboard with drawn white blinds, sitting primly in the sun. A sign on a wrought-iron stand in the front yead read
PRUE PLUMMER-ANTIQUES AND OLD BUTTONS.
Everything needed paint.

“Well, there's enterprise,” said Johnny.

“Prue makes out. Sells an occasional piece in summer, when there's some traffic between Cudbury and Comfort, but mainly she does a small year-round mail order business in antique buttons. Prue's our intellectual, has some arty Cape Cod friends. She's tried to interest Aunt Fanny Adams in 'em with no luck. Aunt Fanny says she wouldn't know what to say to them, 'cause she doesn't know anything about art. It's just about killed Prue,” chuckled the Judge, “having a national art celebrity as a lifelong neighbor and not being able to turn her into a profit. There's Orville Pangman.”

“Judge, don't introduce me as Major Shinn.”

“All right, Johnny,” said the Judge quietly.

They had rounded the stone fence separating the Plummer lot from the Pangman farm and were trudging past the small farmhouse toward the big red barns. A huge perspiring man in bib overalls was in the barn doorway, wiping his face.

“'Scuse my not shakin' hands,” he said when the Judge introduced Johnny. “Been cleanin' out the manure troughs. Millie feedin' ye all right, is she, Judge?”

“Fine, fine, Orville,” said the Judge. “What do you hear from Merritt?”

“Seems to like the Navy a lot more than he ever did farmin',” said Orville Pangman. “Raise two sons, one of 'em enlists in the Navy and the other's too lazy to scratch.” He shouted, “Eddie, come 'ere!”

A tall skinny boy of seventeen with great red hands appeared from the interior of the barn.

“Eddie, this is the Judge's kin from N'York, Mr. Shinn.”

Johnny said hello.

“Hello,” said Eddie Pangman. He kept looking sullenly at the ground.

“What are you going to do when you graduate next year, Eddie?” asked Judge Shinn.

“Dunno,” said the Pangman boy, still studying the ground.

“Great talker, ain't he?” said his father. “He don't know. All he knows is he's unhappy. You finish cleanin' those milkin' machines, Eddie. I'll be right along.”

“Hear we're due for a rain tomorrow, Orville,” said the Judge as Eddie Pangman disappeared without a word.

“Aya. But the forecast for the summer's dry.” The big farmer scowled at the cloudless sky. “Another dry summer'll just about finish us off. Last September we lost practic'ly the whole stand of feed corn; rains came too late. And there wasn't enough hay in the second cuttin' to see us through Christmas. Hay's been awful scarce. If it happens again …”

“Don't ever be a farmer, Johnny,” said the Judge as they walked back toward Shinn Road. “Here's Orville, with the best farm around if you recognize degrees of indigence, good herd of Brown Swiss, Guernseys, and Holsteins, makes almost ten cans, and it's a question if he can hang on another year. Things are even sorrier for Hube Hemus, Mert Isbel, and the Scotts. We're withering on the vine, Johnny.”

“You're really setting me up, Judge,” complained Johnny. “For a time there I thought you had designs on me.”

“Designs?” asked the Judge innocently.

“You know, getting me up here so you could talk to me like a Yank uncle, pump some blood into my veins. But you're worse than I am.”

“Am I?” murmured the Judge.

“You almost make me revert to my ancient chauvinism. I want to twist your arm and tell you to look at that flag flying up there. That's not going to wither away, no matter what happens to you and me. Droughts are temporary—”

“Old age and wickedness,” retorted Judge Shinn, “are permanent.”

Millie Pangman was waddling across Shinn Road. She was almost as large as her husband, formidably featherbedded fore and aft. The sun bounced off her goldrimmed eyeglasses as she waved a powerful arm. “Made you some jiffy oatmeal bread, Judge,” she called in passing. “I'll be back to fix your supper. … Deb-
bie
? Where are you?”

The Judge waved back at the farmer's wife with tenderness. But he repeated, “Permanent.”

“You're a fraud,” said Johnny.

“No, I mean it,” said the Judge. “Oh, I make sma't rema'ks on and off, but that's only because a Yankee'd rather vote Democratic than make a public parade of his feelings. The fact is, Johnny, you're meandering along the main street of a hopeless case.”

“And here I was, laboring under the delusion that you're a gentleman of great spiritual substance,” grinned Johnny.

“Oh, I have faith,” said Judge Shinn. “A lot more faith than you'll ever have, Johnny. I have faith in God, for instance, and in the Constitution of these United States, for another instance, and in the statutes of my sovereign state, and in the future of our country—Communism, hydrogen bombs, nerve gas, McCarthyism, and ex-majors of Army Intelligence to the contrary notwithstanding. But Johnny, I know Shinn Corners, too. As we get poorer, we get more frightened; the more frightened we get, the narrower and meaner and bitterer and less secure we are. … This is a fine preparation for a Fourth of July speech, I must say! Let's drop in on Peter Berry, cheeriest man in Shinn Corners.”

The village's only store occupied the east corner of the intersection. A ramshackle building painted dirty tan, it was evidently a holdover from the nineteenth century. The entrance straddled the corner. A pyramid of creaking wooden steps led to a small porch cluttered with garden tools, baskets, pails, brooms, potted geraniums, and a hundred other items. Above the porch ran a faded red sign:
BERRY
'
S VARIETY STORE
.

As Johnny pulled back the screen door for the Judge, an old-fashioned bell tinkled and a rich whiff of vinegar, rubber, coffee, kerosense, and cheese surged up his nose.

“I could have used this smell once or five times,” said Johnny, “in those stinking paddies.”

“Too bad Peter didn't know that,” said the Judge. “He'd have bottled it and sold it.”

There was almost as much stock in midair as on the floor and shelves. They made their way through a forest of dangling merchandise, crowding past kegs of nails, barrels of potatoes and flour, sacks of onions, oil stoves, tractor parts, counters of housewares, drygoods, and sundries, cheap shoes, a wire-enclosed cubicle labeled
U.S
.
POST OFFICE SUB-STATION
—there was even a display rack of paper-backed books and comic books. Signs advertised charcoal and ice, developing and printing, laundry and dry cleaning—there was no service, it seemed, that Peter Berry was not prepared to render.

“Is Berry's Garage next door on Shinn Road his, too?” asked Johnny, impressed.

“Yes,” said the Judge.

“How does he take care of it all?”

“Well, Peter tries to do most of his car-tinkering nights, after he closes the store. Em helps out when she can. Dickie—he's ten—is big enough to handle the gas pump and run errands, and Calvin Waters makes deliveries in Peter's truck.”

They edged along a narrow aisle toward the main counter of the grocery department, where the cash register stood. A large fat man with a head like William Jennings Bryan was stacking loaves of bread on the counter as he talked to a lanky teenage boy in jeans. There was something tense about the set of the boy's head, and Judge Shinn touched Johnny on the arm. “Let's wait,” he said.

The boy at the counter said something at last in a low voice. Peter Berry smiled, shaking his head. He was about forty-five, with a jowly face that kept changing shape as its curves merged and dissolved. It was the kind of face that should have been rosy; instead, it was a disappointing gray. And where the blue eyes should have twinkled, they were lumpy and cold.

“Who's the boy?” murmured Johnny.

“Drakeley Scott, Earl and Mathilda Scott's eldest. He's seventeen.”

“He seems distressed about something.”

“Well, Drake's got his row to hoe. With Earl and Seth helpless, it's his farm to run. It's cut into his schooling.” The Judge shrugged. “He's a full year behind. Don't suppose he'll ever finish. … Good morning, Drake.”

Drakeley Scott shuffled toward them, eyes lowered. They were beautiful eyes with great welts under them. His thin face was pimpled and sore-looking.

“Mornin', Judge.”

“Want you to meet a relative of mine.”

The boy raised his eyes unseeingly. “How do,” he said. “Judge, I got to get back to the barn—”

“Getting any help these days, Drakeley?” asked the Judge.

“Some. Old man Lemmon right now. Jed Willet from over Comfort—he's promised to cut the south lot and help me get the hay in, but Jed can't come till next week.” The Scott boy pushed by them suddenly.

“See you at the exercises?”

“Dunno, Judge. Ma'll be there with Judy.” Drakeley Scott shuffled out rapidly, his meager shoulders drawn in as if he expected a blow from behind.

“Mornin',” boomed Peter Berry. He was all overlapping smiles. “Real fine day, Judge! Lookin' forward to your speech today …” He kept glancing from Judge Shinn to Johnny, his gray face shifting and changing as if it were composed of seawater.

“Thank you, Peter.” The Judge introduced Johnny.

“Real glad to meet you, Mr. Shinn! Judge's kin, hey? Ever visited before?”

“No.”

“That's too bad. How d'ye like our little community?”

“Nice solid sort of town,” said Johnny tactfully. “Settled. Peaceful.”

“That's a fact.” Johnny wished that Berry's face would stand still for a moment, “Visitin' long?”

“A week or so, Mr. Berry.”

“Well, now, that's fine. Oh, Judge, Millie Pangman was in t'other day chargin' some groceries to your account. Is it all right?”

“Of course it's all right, Peter,” said the Judge a bit sharply.

“Darn fine woman, Millie. Credit to Shinn Corners—”

“We won't keep you, Peter,” said the Judge. “I know you're open only for a few hours this morning—”

“Judge.”

“Yes?”

Peter Berry was leaning over his counter in a confidential way.

“Had it in my mind to talk to you for quite a while now …”

Johnny delicately drifted off to the book rack. But Berry seemed to have forgotten him, and the booming voice carried.

“It's about the Scotts.”

“Oh?” said Judge Shinn. “What about the Scotts?”

“Well, now, you know I been carryin' the Scotts right along …”

“Owe you a big bill, do they, Peter?”

“Well, yes. I was wonderin' what I could do about it. You bein' a lawyer and a judge—”

Judge Shinn's voice grew shrill. “You mean you want to take the Scotts to court?”

“Can't carry 'em forever, Judge. I like to oblige my neighbors, but—”

“Haven't they paid you anything?”

“Dribs and drabs.”

“But they have been trying to pay.”

“Well, yes, but the balance keeps gettin' bigger.”

“Have you talked to Earl, Peter?”

“No use talkin' to
Earl
.”

“No, I s'pose not,” said the Judge, “Earl being tied down to that wheelchair.”

“I've talked to Drakeley, but shucks! Drakeley's not half a man yet. Lettin' a boy run a farm! Seems to me what Earl ought to do is sell out—”

“What does Drakeley say, Peter?”

“He says he'll pay first chance he gets. I don't want to be hard on them, Judge—”

“But you're contemplating legal measures. Well, Peter, I'll tell you,” said Judge Shinn. “I remember—a long time ago—when Nathan Berry was so deep in a hole he had the Sheriff peering down over the edge. You remember it, too—it was during the depression. Old Seth Scott was a man then, standing on his two feet, not a bag of mumbling lard whose legs won't support him, the way he is today. And between Seth and his son Earl, they'd weathered the storm. And your father, Nathan Berry, went to Seth and Earl Scott for help, and they saved his neck, Peter—yes, and yours, too. You wouldn't be standing behind this counter today if not for the Scotts!” And Judge Shinn's voice came to Johnny in a long thin line, like charging infantry. “If you had to carry those people for five years, Peter Berry, you ought to do it and be thankful for the chance! And while I'm riled up, Peter, I'm going to tell you what I think of your prices. I think you're a highway robber, that's what I think. Taking advantage of these folks you grew up with, who can't deal anywhere else 'cause there's nowhere else to deal! Sure you work hard. So did Ebenezer Scrooge. And so do they, only they haven't got anything to show for it, the way you have!”

“No call gettin' het up, Judge,” said the other voice, still smily-boomy. “It was just a question.”

“Oh, I'll answer your damned question! If the Scotts owe you less than a hundred dollars, you can file your claim in the Small Claims Court. If it's anything above that up to five hundred, you can go to the Court of Common Pleas—”

“It's a hundred ninety-one sixty-three,” said Peter Berry.