The Monsters of Templeton (40 page)

I say his name now with sorrow; Temple was once like a brother to me. For, when I arrived in Templeton in late 1786, I was young and adventurous, ripe for a revolution in my life. I had been for five years a newspaperman and desired greatly to become a man of the land. I had been enflamed by the writings of the Philosophers, and believed the only authentic life was the life of the good farmer with dirt under his fingernails. Odd as it seems to me now, in my late mid-age, the owner of the largest printing company in New York State and this newspaper, in those days I was eager to dig into the loam and extract my living with sweat and blood. Young men are often foolhardy. When I went into the ramshackle office that he used during those hard first years, Temple gave one look at me and raised his great guffaw. I am, admittedly, very small, and one can see most bones in my body even through my clothes.

"Thou?" he said. "Thou thinkest thou art farming stock? With thy white hands and university pronouncements?" This only enflamed me, this man of my age scorning my abilities. I drew myself up as straight as I could and gave a fiery yes.

To his credit, the landlord liked my spirit and sold me a patch beside the river, which one settler had already cleared for potash and returned to Temple at a higher price. "If thou findest thyself wanting a different profession, Phinney, I should be glad to help thee with its establishment. We need educated men in the village proper," said he, not unkindly.

I wish I could say I lasted a year or even six months on my lot. It took me two months to drag myself back to his office, filthy and ill with a catarrh caught from the leak in my ill-fitting roof. Temple took me to the pub and bought me a few mugs of flip. Over the night, I let it emerge that I had been a newspaperman in Philadelphia, and the next day, as I nursed my illness in the comfort of a rented room, Duke burst in, blazing with excitement, and announced that he had ordered me a printing-press, and had exchanged my lot of land for a storefront beside the General Store. I would produce a newspaper, he said. He wanted it called the Templeton Times. I named it the Freeman's Journal.

In those years I did admire the landlord. He did a great deal for the common man, though now it is apparent it was only for his own profit. Where so many other men who tried to conquer and settle the wilderness had failed, he succeeded because he, too, had come from nothing, and he knew what would draw men to stay. Slowly, however, Temple grew ill with the brain fever that arises from contact with money, and began believing himself to be the natural nobility of our land. He built Temple Manor, an enormous, stone monstrosity with its sunbright yellow roof. "No man needs such space," I argued. "Spend your money on improving the town." He simply winked at me. Over time, I began hearing rumors of other, darker deeds. Soon, Marmaduke Temple was courting rich men to do other business deals with him, and as he was moving in the circles of the richest men in our new country, he took on their politics. It was a horrid day when I learned he'd been out all afternoon canvassing for the Federalist candidate for governor. That day I knew that Temple's pretensions had overwhelmed his sense and I could no longer support him.

Templetonians, Marmaduke Temple and I haven't spoken in a year, and in that year I have become certain of one thing. And it is this: that I believe that Temple has so changed from the kind, sensible man he once was that he would cheat and lie to secure his candidates their positions. For he is the judge of this county, the man with the power to take the locked boxes to Albany. Though it pains me to suggest it against an elected official, I do believe Marmaduke Temple would cheat the people, for I have heard, more insidiously, of his bad ways, his shady dealings that are not befitting of a moral man, a man of faith. And in these political times, he should take careful note: so many men hate Marmaduke Temple that there have been brawls in the street, even cane fights among mild-mannered attorneys, and I have heard such oaths against the landlord that his ears should be ringing. If he would listen, I would say for the sake of old friendship that Marmaduke Temple should take great precautions against sudden, unbidden violence.

My friends, one last word: I will be scrutinizing the election like a hawk. If I weren't, if the newspapers weren't being vigilant against the corrupt men of the world, we would be lost. Ours wouldn't be a democracy. And let us only hope for the peace of our beloved village that propriety in this election, and all future elections, will be observed.

Templetonians, be secure in one thing: the Freeman's Journal shall be watching.

--Elihu Phinney, Editor and Publisher

I looked at Hazel, whose eyes were bright and whose dentures were truffled with nuts. "Holy crap," I said. "Did Phinney kill Marmaduke, do you think?"

"Maybe," she said. "Either that or this election business served as a foil for, maybe, a more personal sin. Look, he says, 'I have heard, more insidiously, of his bad ways, his shady dealings that are not befitting of a moral man, a man of faith.' See? There's something bad there, personal venom. Maybe even why the murder--and it was a murder, I'm sure of that--was hushed up."

"So you're saying," I said slowly, "maybe old Marmaduke got sneaky with Phinney's wife?"

"Or daughter," said Hazel. "Rosamond Phinney was a great beauty, you know, a great flirt. There was a bit of a scandal about her flirtations, a quick marriage to some distant cousin," and Hazel looked at me now, her eyes dancing. "Remember when I said you were in the right ballpark? Well, Rosamond was the mother of Adah Phinney, the poor girl who had been lost in the woods, you know," she said.

"And Adah was--we think--the mother of Simon Phinney," I said. "Huh. Phinney," I repeated.

I blinked, now thinking of the only Phinney I knew who could possibly have been my father: the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of Elihu, short, bald, and acerbic Frank Phinney, who owned the struggling little Freeman's Journal. Frank Phinney! Oh, hell, I thought, and with the next heartbeat I smiled a little. I had fetched Frank coffee from Stagecoach Coffee when I interned at the paper in college, and I'd once fallen out of a chair, laughing until I wept at a stupid joke he'd told: What goes clip-clop-clip-clop BANG! clip-clop-clip-clop? he'd said, and before I could say What?, he'd said, his pink face flushed with glee, An Amish drive-by shooting. Frank wasn't so bad--at least he had a sense of humor, and he liked me because I was one of the only people who laughed at every one of his jokes, good or bad. And then, I thought: Siblings! with a thrill: I'd babysat his two little hellions, Joshua and Tilly, on family trips to Hilton Head and Scotland, and I'd always known there was a reason why I hadn't murdered them then.

"My God," I said, standing. "I think I have to go talk to Vi," and without thinking, I swooped down to kiss Hazel's prickly little cheek. She blushed violently and started, and only from my bent position did I see poking up from the garbage the ninety-nine-cent box of grocery store brownies from which the old dear had taken her treats.

OUTSIDE, EXUBERANT, I steamed up River Street. The Susquehanna rippled on my right, and Kingfisher Tower was outlined in the mist on the lake like some elfin castle that flickered to nothing when you fixed your eyes on it. My head was light, and great bolts of adrenaline made my limbs sing: I imagined throwing my arms around Frank Phinney, saying Dad!, even picturing a sweet little picnic on the manicured Opera grounds, with Vi and Frank and champagne and black-bottom cupcakes and all of us laughing together as the late-afternoon light grew gold and stretched long around us. Great rolls of relief swept over me: I was done, at last, with my endless quest; I already loved Frank Phinney, he was a Bud, and I knew he would make a fun father; I could go back to Clarissa, pick up my life again in San Francisco, begin afresh.

Soon, though, with every step I took, a flower of doubt bloomed within me, and by the time I reached the top of the stairs leading down to Council Rock, I stopped walking completely. I was able to make my way to the bottom of the steps, to sit, before the joy seeped entirely from my joints. Before me, the lake in its mist lapped gently at the bank. I hung my head over my knees, watching the ripples. It was wrong, all of it.

Wrong: squat Frank Phinney, with his fat thumbs and teacup ears, in whose reflection I could see none of myself, save a slight resemblance around the chin. And even if he were my father, it was equally wrong to throw this stick of dynamite--me--into his life. His wife, Linda, already sharp-tongued, would whet it against him more, I would confuse his young children, I would make this poor man, his daily existence already eaten by guilt, feel endlessly guiltier. I'd add more complication to his life. It would make our friendship strained, ruin something that was so simple and sweet.

Where I had been elated just minutes before, now I only felt empty, a brown paper bag kicked around by the wind. I tossed a stick into the lake, and it only bobbed once before sinking. I was sick. I couldn't go home.

I had been there for maybe five minutes, stewing, when I caught sight of a pair of big brown boots sidling closer to me on my left-hand side. It wasn't until they were six inches away that I recognized them and, startled, looked up the dark jeans, the leather belt cinched to its last hole, the blue-jay blue shirt. My eyes rested for a moment on the book in the large, worn hand, a glossy paperback of The Complete Spinoza. For a long moment I watched the book until I forced myself to look up past the top button, up that throbbing neck, to that jaw, that face.

"Zeke," I said, a slow warmth spreading through me, banishing, for a moment, the new sadness. "Nice to see you."

"I," he said. "Um," and he seemed, for the moment, unable to go on. At last, he flushed, pushed the book into his back pocket, and said, sitting beside me, "I really, really like that dress, Willie. Yellow. Nice. It's my day off. I saw you leave your house an hour ago, and was waiting for you to come back."

"Really," I said, trying to smile, my teeth feeling too-electric in the air. "For what?"

"Lunch?" he said, and his flush deepened. He looked away.

"Hm," I said, and let the seconds collect and puddle between us. The world trickled in: the gulls circling a buoy, traffic behind us on Main Street, the Susquehanna brushing its mossy boulders. And suddenly the day that had become so glum had turned, by means of a luminous yellow dress and Zeke before me, into something lighter, hungrier. A car horn honked; I startled, and flushed hot, and Zeke smiled, his dimple emerging. Watching it, I found myself saying, "Follow me."

In retrospect, I knew what I was doing. At the time, I only watched myself doing it. I took Zeke's hand, and holding it made me send everything else back into the shadows, made me forget everything but his skin's hard calluses, its warmth.

Like this, Ezekiel and I crossed back over Main Street, over the river, went around the gate by the wild riverbank between town and the hospital. There were some late flowers, white and yellow stalks on the bushes, that had a musky scent, and I felt each hair of my skin against my clothes as I walked, I felt each crack in the mud beneath the pads of my feet. We rounded a corner to see the antique stone bridge over the Susquehanna, the Victorian footpath, with its crenellations, blocked off by an iron chain stretched across its mouth.

I stepped over the chain. Zeke followed. I could hear his breath soft in his mouth behind me. We went over the mossy bridge and into the woods on the far side. From one drunken night in high school, I had remembered, vividly, a small cup in the trees, filled with ferns, visible to anyone walking on the path we'd just left and who knew where to look. When we found it, the ferns bobbed and dipped in a small wind. I turned to Zeke, who had closed the gap between us as I watched the ferns, and whose hands were now on my waist, shaking a little.

"Wait," I said. "Are you perhaps the most inappropriate person to do this with at this moment? Is this probably the dumbest idea I've had yet?"

He winced and took his hands away. "Probably," he said and kicked the ground with his big brown boot.

"Great," I said, and reached up. His lips were warm and minty.

AFTERWARD, ZEKE'S BACK cooling beneath my palms, his breath softening into sleep, I watched a blackbird wheel in the sky and felt darkness settle over me again. My imagination over the past month had made this moment with Zeke into something smooth and silky. But it had been all misplaced lips and pine sap, Zeke whispering worriedly in one ear, a fly wailing in the other until I smacked it in midthroe. A pinecone now pushed awkwardly between my shoulder blades. And yet, deeper, beneath my back, I also felt a hundred small shiftings of the plants, the worms, I felt the ground exert its hungry pull on my bones. Inch by inch I slid out from under Zeke's good weight, and dressed. He slept, openmouthed like a boy, blissfully naked, his smooth rear exposed trustfully to the sky. As I crept back across the bridge, I imagined him awakening in an hour to the rustling bowing of the ferns, looking up, a frond pressed to his cheek, seeing himself alone, wondering if he'd dreamed the whole thing. He'd dress and stand, sorrowfully. And then he'd reach into his back pocket to find my hostage, old Spinoza, gone, and, I hoped, understand its absence.

BACK AT AVERELL Cottage, I went back into the entrance hall and shook my head mournfully at great, fleshy Marmaduke in the copy of his portrait.

"You rapscallion," I said. "I think we know your little secret, my old friend." Perhaps I saw the corner of his mouth twitch a little at me; perhaps not. But I was suddenly tired again, my mother's cinnamon bun still unrestful in my belly, and thought of the great white welcome of my bed. I climbed the stairs to my room.