He told the man inside what he wanted. The man told him it sounded as if he really ought to take a ride up to Bangor and talk to the folks at Downeast ScubaDive. Ev explained that a scuba tank was the last thing he wanted; he was interested in as much dry-land portability as he could get. He and the fellow talked a while longer, and Ev left after signing a thirty-six-hour rental agreement, with a rather specialized piece of equipment. The fellow at Maine Med Supplies stood at the door watching him go, scratching his head.
The nurse read the note by Hilly's bed.
Hilly -
I may not see you for a while now, but I just wanted to tell you I think you'll get over this bad patch, and if I can help you do it, I guess I will be just about the happiest grampa in the world. I believe David is still alive, and I don't think it's your fault that he got lost in the first place. I love you, Hilly, and I hope to see you soon.
Gramp
But he never saw Hilly Brown again.
Chapter 9
The Funeral
From nine o'clock on, out-of-towners who had known or worked with Ruth McCausland began to come into Haven Village. Soon almost every parking space along Main Street was taken. The Haven Lunch did a brisk business. Beach kept busy short-ordering eggs, bacon, sausages, and home-fries. He brewed pot after pot of coffee. Representative Brennan hadn't come, but he had sent a close aide. Should have come y'self, Joe, Beach thought with a little sunken smile. Might have got a whole slew of new ideas “bout how to run the gov'mint.
The day dawned brisk and clear, more like late September than late July. The sky was bright blue, the temperature a moderate sixty-eight degrees, the wind out of the west at about twenty miles an hour. Once more there were outsiders in Haven, and once more Haven had gotten lucky weather for them. And soon it wouldn't matter whether they were lucky or not, the townsfolk told each other without speaking; soon they would be in charge of their own luck.
A good day, you would have said; the best kind of New England summer's day, the sort the tourists come for. A day to prick the appetite fully alive. Those who came to Haven from out of town ordered hearty breakfasts, as people with lively appetites are apt to do, but Beach noted that most of those breakfasts came back only half-eaten. The newcomers lost their appetites quickly; the light went out of their eyes, and they began to look, for the most part, sallow and a little sick.
The Lunch was crowded, but conversation lagged.
Must be that the air here in our little town don't quite agree with you folks, Beach thought. He imagined going into the storeroom, where the device he had used to get rid of the two nosy cops was hidden under a pile of tablecloths. He imagined bringing it out here, a great big deadly bazooka, and just washing his lunchroom clean of all these outsiders with a purifying blast of green fire.
No; not now. Not yet. Soon it wouldn't matter. Next month. But for now…
He looked down at the plate he was scraping and saw a tooth in someone's scrambled eggs.
Tommyknockers coming, my friends, Beach thought. Only when they finally get here, I don't think they'll even bother knocking; I think they'll just blow the fucking door right down.
Beach's grin widened. He scraped the tooth off the plate with the rest of the garbage.
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 AlbionHaven 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 No. 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 Ill: 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 only attracted 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.
