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 and white 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, slyest 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 out hymns she had not heard since her Nebraska childhood charmed her with wonder.
“My God, Marty, how can a little wide-place-in-the-road town like this one 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 it was getting worse. Also, one of his gums was bleeding. Pyorrhoea 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. Christ, 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 fighter, but maybe he had 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 numbmit 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 out at the farm, 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 tiredness-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.
“I'll ask you again,” Dugan said with what he thought was extraordinary patience. “What are we looking for?”
“I don't rightly know.” The Cherokee passed the town-line marker. They had left Albion now and entered Haven. Ev had a sudden sickening premonition that in spite of all his precautions and care, he was never going to leave it again. “We'll know it when we see it.”
Dugan didn't reply, only held on for dear life and wondered again how he had gotten into this-he had to be as crazy as the old fart he was riding with, and then some. He raised one hand to his forehead and began rubbing, just above the eyebrows.
A headache was forming there.
There were sniffles, red eyes, and some sobbing as the Rev. Goohringer, his bald head gleaming mellowly and in a soft variety of colors courtesy of the summer sunshine falling through the stained-glass windows, launched into his funeral eulogy following a hymn, a prayer, another hymn, a reading of Ruth's favorite scripture (the Beatitudes), and yet another hymn. Below him, foaming around the lectern in a semi-circle, were great bunches of summer flowers.
Even with the upper windows of the church thrown open and a good breeze blowing through, their smell was suffocatingly sweet.
“We have come here to praise Ruth McCausland and to celebrate her passing,” Goohringer began.
The townsfolk sat with hands either folded or gripping handkerchiefs; their eyes -most wet-regarded Goohringer with sober, studious attention. They looked healthy, these folk-their color was good, their skin for the most part unblemished. And even someone who had never been in Haven before could have seen that the congregation here fell naturally into two groups. The outsiders didn't look healthy. They were pale. Their eyes were dazed. Twice during the eulogy, people left hurriedly, dashed around the corner of the church, and were quietly sick. For others, the nausea was a lower complaint-an uneasy rolling in the bowels not quite serious enough to cause an exit but simply going on and on.
Several outsiders would lose teeth before that day was over.
Several developed headaches which would dissolve almost as soon as they left town-the aspirin finally working, they would surmise.
And more than a few of them had the most amazing ideas as they sat on the hard pews and listened to Goohringer preach Ruth McCausland's eulogy. In some cases these ideas came so suddenly and seemed so huge, so fundamental, that the persons to whom they occurred would feel as if they had been shot in the head. Such persons had to fight
