The Tommyknockers (58 page)

Dugan could be silent when he wanted, and this morning that was what he wanted. Apparently it was what the old man wanted, too. Dugan had gotten to Ev Hillman's apartment building on Lower Main promptly at eight, and had found a Jeep Cherokee standing at the curb behind the old party's Valiant. There was a big gunnysack in the back, its top tied with hayrope.

“Did you rent this in Bangor?”

“Leased it at Derry AMC,” Ev said.

“Must have been expensive.”

“ 'Twasn't too dear.”

That ended the conversation. They arrived somewhere near the Albion-Haven town line an hour and forty minutes later.
We'll be doing a bit of backroading,
the old man had said, and if that wasn't a classic understatement, Butch didn't know what was. He had been driving in this part of Maine for almost twenty years, and before today had thought he knew it like the back of his hand. Now he knew better.
Hillman
knew it like the back of his hand;
by comparison, Butch Dugan had a general working knowledge of the area, no more.

They went from the turnpike to Route 69; from 69 to two-lane blacktop; then to gravel in western Troy; then to hardpan; then to rutted dirt with grass growing up the middle; finally to an overgrown logging track that looked as if it might have last been seriously used around 1950.

“Do you know where the fuck you're going?” Butch shouted as the Cherokee crashed through rotted corduroy, then hauled itself out, engine howling, all four wheels spinning up mud and chewed splinters.

Ev only nodded. He clung to the Cherokee's big wheel like an old balding monkey.

One woods road led into another, and finally they crashed out of a scree of foliage and onto a dirt road Butch recognized as Albion Town Road # 5. Butch had thought it impossible, but the old man had done exactly what he promised: brought them all the way around Haven without ever once going in.

Now Ev brought the Cherokee to a stop just a hundred feet short of the marker announcing the Haven town line. He turned off the engine and unrolled his window. There was no sound but the tick of the engine. There was no birdsong, and Butch thought this odd.

“What's in that gunnysack back there?” Butch asked.

“All kinds of things. No need to worry about it now.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“Churchbells,” Ev said.

It was not the Methodist churchbells that Ev had grown up with and expected which rang out at a quarter to ten, calling Ruth's mourners—both the real ones and those prepared to shed copious floods of crocodile tears—to the Methodist church, where the first act of the three-act festivities was to be played out (Act II: Graveside Ceremonies; Act III: Refreshments in the Town Library).

Reverend Goohringer, a shy man who usually had not the fortitude to say boo to a goose, had gone around town a few weeks ago telling people he was getting damned tired of all that gonging.

“Then why don't you do something about it, Gooey?” Pamela Sargent asked him.

Rev. Lester Goohringer had never been called “Gooey” in his entire life, but in his current state of rancor he barely noticed.

“Maybe I will,” he said, looking at her through his thick glasses grimly. “Just maybe I will.”

“Got any ideas?”

“I might,” he said slyly. “Time'll tell, won't it?”

“It always does, Gooey,” she said. “Always does.”

The Reverend Goohringer in fact had a fine idea about those bells—he could hardly believe it had never occurred to him before, it was so simple and beautiful. And the best thing about it was that he wouldn't have to take it up with the deacons, or with the Ladies' Aid (an organization which apparently attracted only two types of women—fat slobs with boobs the size of barrels and skinny-assed, flat-chested sluts like Pamela Sargent, with her fake ivory cigarette holder and her raspy smoker's cough), or with the few well-to-do members of his congregation . . . going to them always gave him a week's worth of acid indigestion. He did not like to beg. No, this was something the Rev. Lester Goohringer could do all by himself, and so he did it. Fuck 'em all if they couldn't take a joke.

“And if you ever call me Gooey again, Pam,” he had whispered as he rewired the fuse box in the church basement so it could handle the heavy voltage his idea would require, “I'll jam the plumber's friend in the parsonage
pissoir
up your twat and plunge out your brains . . . if you haven't pissed 'em all away.”

He cackled and went on rewiring. Rev. Lester Goohringer had never had such blunt thoughts or said such blunt things in his life, and he found the experience liberating and exhilarating. He was, in fact, prepared to tell anyone in Haven who didn't like his new carillon that they could take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

But everyone in town had thought the change nothing short of magnificent. It was, too. And today the Rev. Goohringer felt a real heart swell of pride as he flicked the new switch in the vestry and the sound of the bells floated out over Haven, playing a medley of hymns. The carillon was programmable, and today Lester Goohringer plugged in the hymns which had been particular favorites of Ruth's. They included such old Methodist and Baptist
standbys as “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “This Is My Father's World.”

The Rev. Goohringer stood back, rubbing his hands together, and watched as people began to move toward the church in groups and twos and threes, drawn by the bells, the bells, the calling of the bells.

“Hot damn!” the Rev. Goohringer exclaimed. He had never felt better in his life, and he meant to send Ruth McCausland off in style. He intended to preach one
pie-cutter
of a eulogy.

After all, they had all loved her.

The bells.

Dave Rutledge, Haven's oldest citizen, tipped an ear toward them and smiled toothlessly—even if the bells had jangled discordantly he would have smiled, because he could
hear
them. Until early July, Dave had been almost completely deaf, and his lower limbs were always cold as his circulation steadily failed. He was, after all, ninety, and that made him an old dog. But this month, his hearing and circulation had magically improved. People told him he looked ten years younger, and by Christ, he felt
twenty
years younger. And my, wasn't the sound of those bells playing just the sweetest thing? Dave got up and started toward the church.

The calling of the bells.

In January, the aide U.S. Representative Brennan had sent to Haven had been in D.C., and there he had met a beautiful young woman named Annabelle. This summer she had come to Maine to be with him, and had come to Haven with him this morning to keep him company. He had promised her they would overnight in Bar Harbor before going back to Augusta. At first she thought it had been a bad idea, because she began to feel a little nauseated in the restaurant and hadn't been able to finish
her breakfast. For one thing, the short-order cook looked like an older, fatter version of Charles Manson. He kept smiling the strangest little smile when he thought no one was looking—it was enough to make you wonder if he had powdered the scrambled eggs with arsenic. But the sound of the bells chiming hymns she hadn't heard since her Nebraska childhood charmed her with wonder.

“My God, Marty, how can a little wide-place-in-the-road town like this afford a
gorgeous
carillon like that?”

“Maybe some rich summer tourist died and left it to them,” Marty said vaguely. He had no interest in the carillon. He'd had a headache ever since they got here, and was getting worse. Also, one of his gums was bleeding. Pyorrhea ran in his family; he hoped to God it wasn't that. “Come on, let's go over to the church.”
So we can get it done and go up to Bar Harbor and screw our brains out,
he thought.
This is one creepy little town.

They started across the street together, she in a black suit (but, she had told him archly on their way up, her underwear was all white silk . . . what little of it there was), he in a governmental charcoal gray. The people of Haven, dressed in their soberest finery, walked with them. Marty saw a surprising number of powder-blue state police uniforms.

“Look, Marty! The clock!”

She was pointing at the tower of the town hall. It was good solid red brick, but for a moment it seemed to swim and waver before Marty's eyes. His headache was instantly worse. Maybe it was eyestrain. He'd had a checkup three months ago and the guy had said his vision was good enough to fly a jet, but maybe he'd been wrong. Half the professional people in America were on coke these days. He had read all about it in
Time . . .
and why was his mind wandering like this, anyway? It was the bells. They seemed to be echoing and multiplying in his head. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million, all playing “When We Meet at Jesus' Feet.”

“What about the clock?” he asked irritably.

“The hands are funny,” she said. “They look almost . . . drawn on.”

The calling of the bells.

Eddie Stampnell of the Derry barracks crossed the street with Andy Rideout from Orono—both of them had known Ruth, liked her.

“Pretty, ain't it?” Eddie asked dubiously.

“Maybe,” Andy said. “I just keep thinking of Bent and Jingles getting blown away by a couple of numbnut rubes out here, probably buried in some farmer's potato field, and it just sounds like a bone-phone to me. Seems like Haven's bad luck now. I know that's stupid, but that's how I feel.”

“It's bad luck for my head,” Eddie replied. “It aches like a bastard.”

“Well, let's get it over and get out,” Andy said. “She was a good woman, but she's gone. And between you and me, I don't care if I never spend another fifteen minutes in Haven now that she is.”

They stepped into the Methodist church together, neither of them looking at Rev. Lester Goohringer, who stood beside the switch which controlled his lovely carillon, smiling and rubbing his dry hands together and accepting the compliments of all and sundry.

The crying of the bells.

Bobbi Anderson got out of her blue Chevrolet truck, slamming the door, smoothing her dark blue dress over her hips, and checking her makeup in the truck's outside mirror before walking slowly down the sidewalk to the church. She walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped. She was trying hard to get the rest she needed to go on, and Gard had helped to put a brake on her obsession

(and that's what it is, an obsession, no use kidding yourself)

but Gard was a brake that was slowly wearing out. He wasn't at the funeral because he was sleeping off a monumental drunk, his grizzled, worn face pillowed on
one arm, his breath a sour cloud around him. Anderson was tired, all right, but it was more than just that—a great unfocused grief seemed to fill her this morning. It was partly for Ruth, partly for David Brown, partly for the whole town. Yet mostly, she suspected, it was for herself. The “becoming” continued—for everyone in Haven except Gard, that was—and it was good, but she mourned her own unique identity, which was now fading like a morning mist. She knew now that
The Buffalo Soldiers
was her last book . . . and the irony was that she now suspected the Tommyknockers had written most of that, as well.

The bells, bells, bells.

Haven answered them. It was Act I of a charade titled
The Burial of Ruth McCausland
, or,
How We Loved That Woman.
Nancy Voss had closed the post office to come. The government would not have approved, but what the government didn't know wouldn't hurt them. They would know
plenty
soon enough, she thought. They would get a big old express-mail delivery from Haven very soon. Them and every other government on this flying mudball.

Frank Spruce, Haven's biggest dairy farmer, answered the bells. John Mumphry, whose father had run against Ruth for the position of town constable, answered them. Ashley Ruvall, who had passed her out by the town line two days before her death, answered them with his parents. Ashley was crying. Doc Warwick was there, and Jud Tarkington; Adley McKeen came with Hazel McCready on his arm; Newt Berringer and Dick Allison answered them, walking slowly and supporting Ruth's predecessor, John Harley, between them. John was feeble and nearly transparent. Maggie, his wife, was not well enough to attend.

They came, answering the summons of the bells—Tremains and Thurlows, Applegates and Goldmans, Duplisseys and Archinbourgs. Good Maine people, you would have said, drawn from a healthy stockpot that was mostly French, Irish, Scots, and Canadian. But they were different now; as they drew together at the church, so did
their minds draw together and become one mind, watching the outsiders, listening for the slightest wrong note in their thoughts . . . they came together, they listened, and the bells rang in their strange blood.

Ev Hillman sat up behind the wheel of the Cherokee, eyes opening wide at the dim sound of the carillon. “What in the
hell—
”

“Churchbells, what else?” Butch Dugan said. “It sounds very pretty. They're getting ready to start the funeral, I suppose.”
They're burying Ruth over in the village
 . . .
what in God's name am I doing out here by the town line with this crazy old man?

He wasn't sure, but it was too late to change his course now.

“The bells in the Methodist church never made a sound like that before in
my
time,” Ev said. “Someone's changed them over.”

“So what?”

“So nothing. So
everything.
I dunno. Come on, Trooper Dugan.” He turned the key, and the Cherokee's engine roared.