The Tommyknockers (44 page)

In the week between the fire at the Paulsons' and Hilly's
SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW,
things began to go wrong for Ruth.

The mail, now. That was one thing.

She kept on getting bills and circulars and catalogues, but there were no letters. No personal mail of
any
kind. After three days of this, she took a stroll down to the post office. Nancy Voss only stood behind the counter like a lump, looking at her expressionlessly. By the time Ruth finished speaking, she thought she could actually feel the
weight
of the Voss woman's stare. It felt like two small dusty stones were lying on her face.

In the silence, she could hear something in the office humming and making spiderlike scritching noises. She had no idea what it

(except it sorts the mail for her)

might be but she didn't like the sound of it. And she didn't like being here with this woman, because she had been sleeping with Joe Paulson, and she had hated 'Becka, and—

Hot outside. Hotter still in here. Ruth felt sweat break out over her body.

“Have to fill out a mail complaint form,” Nancy Voss said in a slow, inflectionless voice. She slid a white card across the counter. “Here you go, Ruth.” Her lips pulled back in a cheerless grin.

Ruth saw half the woman's teeth were gone.

From behind them, in the silence:
Scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch, scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch.

Ruth began to fill out the form. Sweat darkened big circles around the armpits of her dress. Outside, the sun beat steadily down on the post-office parking lot. It was ninety in the shade, had to be, and not a breath of wind stirring, and Ruth knew the paving in that lot would be so soft that you could tear off a chunk with your fingers if you wanted and begin to chew it. . . .

State the Nature of Your Problem
, the form read.

I'm going crazy,
she thought,
that is the nature of my problem. Also, I am having my first menstrual period in three years.

In a firm hand she began to write that she had gotten
no first-class mail for a week and wished for the matter to be looked into.

Scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch.

“What's that noise?” she asked, without looking up from the form. She was afraid to look up.

“Mail-sorting gadget,” Nancy droned. “I thought it up.” She paused. “But you know that, don't you, Ruth?”

“How could I know a thing like that unless you told me?” Ruth asked, and with a tremendous effort she made her voice pleasant. The pen she was using trembled and blotted the form—not that it mattered; her mail wasn't coming because Nancy Voss was throwing it out. That was part of the knowing, too. But Ruth was tough; her face remained clear and firm. She met Nancy's eyes directly, although she was afraid of that dusty black gaze, afraid of its weight.

Go on and speak up
, Ruth's gaze said.
I am not afraid of the likes of you. Speak up . . . but if you expect me to scutter away, squeaking like a mouse, get ready for a surprise.

Nancy's gaze wavered and dropped. She turned away. “Call me when you get the card filled out,” she said. “I've got too much work to do to just stand around shooting the breeze. Since Joe died, the work's piled up out of all season. That's probably why your mail isn't

(GET OUT OF TOWN YOU BITCH GET OUT WHILE WE'LL STILL LET YOU GO)

coming just on time, Missus McCausland.”

“Do you think so?” Keeping her voice light and pleasant now required a superhuman effort. Nancy's last thought had slammed into her like an uppercut. It had been as bright and clear as a lightning stroke. She looked down at the complaint form and saw a large black

(tumor)

blot spreading over it. She crumpled it and threw it away.

Scritch-scritch-scratch.

The door opened behind her. She turned and saw Bobbi Anderson come in.

“Hello, Bobbi,” she said.

“Hello, Ruth.”

(go on she's right get out while you still can while you're still allowed please Ruth I we most of us bear you no ill will)

“Are you working on a new novel, Bobbi?” Ruth could now barely keep the tremor out of her voice. Hearing thoughts was bad—it made you think you were insane and hallucinating it. Hearing such a thing from Bobbi Anderson

(while you're still allowed)

of all people, Bobbi Anderson who was just about the
kindest
—

I didn't hear anything like that,
she thought, and grasped the idea with a sort of tired eagerness.
I was mistaken, that's all.

Bobbi opened her post-box and took out a bundle of mail. She looked at her and smiled. Ruth saw she had lost a molar on the bottom left and a canine on the top right. “Better go now, Ruth,” she said gently. “Just get in your car and go. Don't you think so?”

Then she felt herself steady—in spite of her fear and her throbbing head, she steadied.

“Never,” she said. “This is my town. And if you know what's going on, tell the others that know what's going on not to push me. I have friends outside of Haven, friends that will listen to me seriously no matter how crazy what I'm saying might sound. They would listen for my late husband's sake, if not for my own. As for you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is your town too. It
used
to be, anyway.”

For a moment she thought Bobbi looked confused and a little ashamed. Then she smiled sunnily, and there was something in that girlish, gap-toothed grin that scared Ruth more than anything else. It was no more human than a trout's grin. She saw Bobbi in this woman's eyes, and had certainly felt her in her thoughts . . . but there was nothing of Bobbi in the grin.

“Whatever you want, Ruth,” she said. “Everyone in Haven loves you, you know. I think in a week or two . . . three, at the outside . . . you'll stop fighting. I just thought I'd offer you the option. If you decide to stay, though, that's fine. In a little while you'll be . . . just fine.”

She stopped in Cooder's for Tampax. There were none. No Tampax, no Modess, no Stayfree maxis or minis, no generic pads or tampons.

A hand-lettered sign read:
NEW SHIPMENT ARRIVES TOMORROW, SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

On July 15th, a Friday, she began having problems with her office phone.

In the morning it was just an annoyingly loud hum which she and the person she was talking to had to shout over. By noon a crackling noise had been added. By two
P.M.
it had gotten so bad that the phone was useless.

When she got home she found that the phone there wasn't noisy at all. It was just smoothly and completely dead. She went next door to the Fannins' to call the phone company's repair number. Wendy Fannin was making bread in her kitchen, kneading one batch of dough while her mixer worked a second batch.

Ruth saw with a weary lack of surprise that the mixer wasn't plugged into the wall but into what looked like an electronic game with its cover off. It was generating a strong glow as Wendy mixed her bread.

“Sure, go ahead and use the phone,” Wendy said. “You know

(get out Ruth get out of Haven)

where it is, don't you?”

“Yes,” she said. She started toward the hall, then paused. “I stopped at Cooder's market. I needed sanitary napkins, but they're all out.”

“I know.” Wendy smiled, showing three gaps in a smile which had been flawless a week before. “I got the second-to-last box. It will be over soon. We'll ‘become' a little more and that part will end.”

“Is that so?” Ruth said.

“Oh, yes,” Wendy said, and turned back to her bread.

The Fannins' phone was working just fine. Ruth was not surprised. The office girl at New England Contel said
they would send a man right out. Ruth thanked her, and on her way out she thanked Wendy Fannin.

“Sure,” Wendy said, smiling. “Whatever you want, Ruth. Everyone in Haven loves you, you know.”

Ruth shuddered in spite of the heat.

The telephone repair crew came and did something to the connection on the side of Ruth's house. Then they ran a test. The phone worked perfectly. They drove away. An hour later, the phone stopped working again.

On the street that evening, she felt a rising whisper of voices in her brain—thoughts as light as leaves kicked into a momentary rustle by a breath of October wind.

(our Ruth we love you all Haven loves)

(but go if you go or change)

(if you stay no one wants to hurt you Ruth so get out or stay)

(yes get out or stay but leave us)

(yes leave us alone Ruth don't interfere let us be let us)

(be be “become” yes let us “become” let us alone to “become”)

She walked slowly, head throbbing with voices.

She glanced into the Haven Lunch. Beach Jernigan, the short-order cook, raised a hand to her. Ruth raised one in return. She saw Beach's mouth move, clearly forming the words
There she goes.
Several men at the counter turned around and waved. They smiled. She saw empty gaps where teeth had been not long ago. She passed Cooder's market. She passed the United Methodist Church. Ahead of her now was the town hall with its square brick clock tower. The hands of the clock stood at 7:15—7:15 of a summer night, and all over Haven men would be opening cold beers and turning radios to the voice of Ned Martin and the sound of
Red Sox Warmup.
She could see Bobby Tremain and Stephanie Colson walking slowly toward the edge of town along Route 9, hand in hand. They had been going together for four years and it really was a wonder Stephanie wasn't pregnant yet, Ruth thought.

Just a July evening with twilight coming on—everything normal.

Nothing
was normal.

Hilly Brown and Barney Applegate came out of the library, Hilly's little brother David trailing behind them like the tail of a kite. She asked to see what books the
boys had gotten and they showed her readily enough. Only in little David Brown's eyes had she seen a hesitant acknowledgment of the panic she felt . . . and felt it in his mind. That she felt his fear and did nothing about it was the main reason she drove herself so hard when the little boy disappeared two days later. Someone else might have justified it, might have said:
Look, I had enough on my own plate without worrying about what was dished onto David Brown's.
But she wasn't the sort of woman who could find any comfort in such loud defensiveness. She had felt that boy's low terror. Worse, she had felt his resignation—his sureness that nothing could stop events—that they would simply wind along their preordained course from bad to worse. And as if to prove him right, hey, presto! David was gone. And like the boy's grandfather, Ruth shouldered her share of the guilt.

At the town hall she turned and walked back to her house, keeping her face pleasant in spite of her drilling headache, in spite of her dismay. The thoughts swirled and rustled and danced.

(love you Ruth)

(we can wait Ruth)

(shhhh shhhh go to sleep)

(yes go to sleep and dream)

(dream of things dream of ways)

(to “become” ways to “become” ways to)

She went into her house and locked the door behind her and went upstairs and pressed her face into her pillow.

Dream of ways to “become.”

Oh God she wished she knew exactly what that meant.

If you go you go if you stay you change.

She wished she knew because, whatever it meant, whether she wanted it or not, it
was
happening to her. No matter how much she resisted, she was also “becoming.”

(yes Ruth yes)

(sleep . . . dream . . . think . . . “become”)

(yes Ruth yes)

These thoughts, rustling and alien, followed her down into sleep and then funneled away into darkness. She lay crosswise on the big bed, fully dressed, and slept deeply.

When she woke, her body was stiff but her mind felt clear and refreshed. Her headache had blown away like smoke. Her period, so oddly undignified and shameful
after she had thought
that
was finally over for good, had stopped. For the first time in almost two weeks she felt herself. She would have a long cool shower and then set about getting to the bottom of this. If what it took was outside help, okay. If she had to spend a few days or a few weeks with people thinking she was off her rocker, so be it. She had spent her life building a reputation for sanity and trustworthiness. And what good would such a reputation be if it couldn't convince people to take you seriously when you sounded nuts?

As she began to take off her sleep-rumpled dress, her fingers suddenly froze on the buttons.

Her tongue had found an empty place in the line of her bottom teeth—there was a dull, distant pain there. Her eyes dropped to the coverlet of the bed. On it, where her head had been, she saw the tooth that had fallen out in the night. Suddenly nothing seemed simple anymore—nothing at all.

Ruth was aware that her headache had returned.

There was even hotter weather in store for Haven—in August there would be a week when temperatures would crack the hundred-degree mark every single day—but in the meantime, the July stretch of hot-and-muggy which ran from the twelfth through the nineteenth was more than enough for everyone in town, thank you very much.

The streets shimmered. The leaves on the trees hung limp and dusty. Sounds carried in the still air; Bobbi Anderson's old truck, now rebuilt into a digging machine, could be heard clearly in Haven Village for most of that eight-day hot spell. People knew something important was going on out there at the old Frank Garrick place—important for the whole town—but no one mentioned it out loud, any more than they mentioned the fact that it had driven Justin Hurd, Bobbi's nearest neighbor, quite mad. Justin was building things—it was part of his “becoming”—but because he had gone crazy, some of the stuff he built was potentially dangerous. One of them was a thing that set up harmonic waves in the earth's crust—waves which could possibly trigger an earthquake
big enough to tear the state wide open and send the eastern half sliding into the Atlantic.