His look was blank. “It doesn’t have corn leaves. It’s cloth.”
“I meant the one you wore in the cornfield. Interesting show you people put on that night.” I worked to put a touch of irony in the comment.
“What show?”
“You know. Behind my house? With the music?” Using my pen, I imitated a flute. “It was you, wasn’t it? You and-someone else? Tamar, maybe? The night Mrs. Mayberry died?”
He regarded me stolidly, with no trace of a smile, and shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sophie and I went to the movies that night.”
“I see.” Clearly I was going to get no admission of complicity in the “experience” from Farmer Hooke.
When I finished my sketches of Justin, I left the farm for the village, where I found things busier than usual. Woven harvest symbols swayed in the breeze on the chimneys, and clusters of dried corncobs hung on the front doors of the houses, in preparation for Harvest Home. Cars were parked around the Common; people were hurrying to and fro with a general air of bustle. Men gathered along the street and in doorways, some peering down the street, others checking their timepieces against the church clock; women went in and out through the open doors of the Grange, bent on various errands. Two or three boys were up on the roof of the Grange porch, festooning the entrance with corn garlands, while Jim Minerva stood on a ladder, attaching to the corners bunches of unshelled Indian cobs.
Two girls came down the steps, their heads together as they spoke.
“… want to run off for, just before the play?” Betsey Cox was saying.
“He’s crazy.” Sally Pounder’s face was red with dismay as she looked up at the church steeple. “Amys,” she called over, “is the clock fast?” Amys Penrose paused in his sweeping, leaning on his broom to reply. “Hell and tarnation, no,” he snapped. Sally cast a worried look down toward the Penrose barn as she and Betsey hurried to join a gathering of women on the Common.
A wagon creaked down the roadway and pulled up in front of the Grange. Mr. Pettinger got down from it and began unloading some pumpkins, while his wife watched him from the seat. “Howdy,” he said to Ferris Ott. “Brought these for the show.”
“Don’t think we need pumpkins, do we?” Ferris Ott asked Will Jones with elaborate indifference. Mr. Pettinger glanced uncertainly at his wife. Conversation in the vicinity had come to a standstill, and backs were presented as the farmer stood with his armload of pumpkins.
“No, we got plenty of pumpkins.” Will Jones glanced at Mr. Pettinger. The pumpkins went back on the wagon, and as Mr. Pettinger took up the reins and drove off, Mrs. Pettinger stole a look back from under her bonnet.
“What was that all about?” I asked Amys, in front of the church.
“Shunned. What you might expect around here,” he replied loudly. Heads turned toward him; the bell ringer glared back defiantly. “The boy ‘e run himself off, and I say bless the day he done it. Sometimes it takes the lesser fool to do the greater thing.”
“Sweep with your broom and leave farmin’ to them as farms,” said Ferris Ott in Amys’s direction.
Just then Mrs. Zalmon’s head popped out the Grange door. “Where’s those Tatums with the rest of the decorations?”
She called inside and was quickly joined by Mrs. Brucie and Mrs. Green, and they, too, hurried to meet the group on the Common.
“There’s good luck,” exclaimed Jim Minerva on the ladder, having hung one of the woven harvest symbols over the Grange doorway. Amys paused to spit in the dust, his bushy eyebrows contracting in a scowl.
“For them’s fool enough to hope for luck around here, it should be luck aplenty. If I had my way, I’d see ‘em burned, ever’ last one.” He wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Don’t believe in luck, Amys?” I asked. The old man reflected a moment as though lost in some forgotten pocket of time. “Trouble is it don’t seem wuth all the fuss.” He drooped his head, and when he lifted it his faced sagged more and the fierce gleam in his eye had been extinguished. “No, sir, it don’t seem to me the candle’s wuth the game.”
“For shame, Amys Penrose, of course the candle’s worth the game.” Mrs. Buxley came dashing toward the hall, arms laden with costumes. She stopped in mid-flight. “‘And God said, Let there be light,’ remember?” She looked over at the harvest symbol. “Still, we mustn’t put our faith in luck alone,” she cried gaily, giving me a bright, expectant smile. “I mean, we’re not medieval, are we? We
He cast a worried look down the street. “Gosh, Mrs. Buxley, it’s almost time-”
“Gracious, it’s
“Yes,
“Tempus
Skirting the Common and the waiting women, I glanced at the steeple clock, then entered the vestibule. Mr. Buxley’s vestry room was locked, so I climbed the wooden steps leading up into the belfry. I could hear the gears of the clockworks stolidly moving as I passed the housing, and presently the great bronze dome of the bell itself hung above me. Through the arched portals of the tower, I could see out in all directions: up and down Main Street; behind me to the river, the cemetery plot-Gracie’s gravestone, solitary beyond the iron fence; and directly in front, the Common.
Mrs. Buxley came hurrying from the Grange hall to join the ladies on the grass, the group growing larger each moment; several of them cast looks up to the clock below me. When the bell ringer came out with his broom, I descended the rickety steps again, passing the rope which hung down from the bell. I walked into the church and found Amys in the vestry.
“Nice view from up there.”
“Ayuh.”
“Got a minute?”
“Got two.”
“I’d like to have a look in one of those.” I pointed to the shelf with its line of dated ledgers, which Mr. Buxley took so much pride in.
He gave me a quizzical look, then nodded. “Help yourself.” He left the room, and I brought down the volume marked 1958. Turning to the end, I worked backward from the last of November, checking every entry: births, weddings, funerals. At last, I found an entry, written in an authoritative hand, that read: “Grace Louise Everdeen, suicide, interred this day- outside church burial ground-no services.”
I closed the book, returned it to its place, and went to find Amys, who was carrying a stack of hymnals from the big oak cupboard at the back of the church. I thanked him and left.
Whatever unformed suspicions I had harbored were resolved by the Reverend Mr. Buxley’s register. The entry had proved it-the official church notice of Grace Everdeen’s interment in unhallowed ground, the immemorial resting place of suicides. I resolved to let her bones remain in peace, and dismissed the subject from my mind. The church bell began to toll.
At the firehouse, Merle Penrose, a burly man, one of those who had come with the respirator during Kate’s attack, was polishing the brass trim on the truck. As I passed, he and a helper left off work and hurried out; two others interrupted their checker game and followed, leaving the firehouse doors wide open.
In front of the drugstore was another group-some whittling, some smoking their pipes, some with hands in pockets — apparently waiting for Mr. Deming, for when he suddenly appeared they moved off in a body. Meantime the bell continued to sound, and more women were arriving from all directions to join the group waiting on the Common.
I entered the post office and found two ladies at the window, baskets on their arms. One was mailing a package. Through the grille I could see Tamar Penrose sorting letters into the initialed boxes. Her back was turned,
