again to Mr. Parsons’ questions as they’d resounded through the crowded courtroom.
Clement’s eyes narrowed, as if against a blinding light, and I knew that he could sense the upheaval in my mind no matter how hard I labored to contain it. “I don’t guess you’ve been out that way in quite some time,” he said.
“Not in years.”
“Looks the same.”
“The same as what?”
My question appeared to throw him into doubt as to what his answer should be. “Same as it did in the old days,” he replied.
I said nothing, but I could feel myself helplessly returning to the days he meant. I saw an old car moving through the darkness, two beams of yellow light engulfing me as it came to a halt, a figure staring at me from behind the wheel, motioning now, whispering,
“Well, let me know what you find out,” Clement said, rising from his chair. “About the variance, I mean.”
“I’ll look into it right away.”
Once at the door, he turned back to face me. “You don’t have to stay out there for long, of course,” he told me, his way of lightening the load. “Just get an idea of what the town might think of somebody developing it.”
I nodded.
He seemed unsure of what he should say next, or if it should be me to whom he said it. Finally, he spoke again. “There’s one more thing, Henry. The money. From the land, I mean. I want it to go to somebody in particular.” He paused a moment, then said her name. “Alice Craddock.”
She swam into my mind, an old woman, immensely fat, her hair gray and bedraggled, her mind unhinged, the butt of a cruel school-yard poem I’d heard repeated through the years:Alice Craddock,
Locked in the paddock
Where’s your mama gone?
“It just seems right that she should get whatever the land out there brings,” Clement said. “I’m an old man. I don’t need it. And they say Alice has come on bad times.”
I saw Alice as a middle-aged woman, slack-jawed, growing fat on potato chips and candy bars, her eyes dull and lightless, a gang of boys chasing after her, pointing, laughing, until Mr. Wallace chased them away, his words trailing after them as they fled down the street:
“Not much left of what was given her,” Clement said.
“Not much, no.”
He shrugged. “Well, maybe this can help a little,” he said, then turned and walked through the door.
Once he’d gone, I went to the window and looked out. I could see him trudging toward the dusty old truck he’d parked across the street. But I could see him, too, as he’d looked years before, during the days of the trial, the way he’d stood with his cronies on the courthouse steps as Miss Channing had been rushed down them, jeering at her as she swept past, the dreadful word I’d heard drop from his mouth as he glared at her:
It was not something I’d ever expected to do, see Milford Cottage again, feel the allure I’d known there, the passions it had stirred. But once Clement’s old truck had pulled away, I felt myself drawn back to it, not in a mood of youthful reminiscence, but as someone forced to look at what he’d done, view the bodies in their mangled ruin, a criminal returning to the scene of his crime.
And so I drove out to Milford Cottage only an hour later. It was still early, the streets deserted, with only a few people having breakfast at Dalmatian’s Cafe. Driving along Main Street, it seemed to me that the village had changed very little since the days of Miss Channing’s trial, when the crowds had swirled around the courthouse or milled about in front of Quilty’s and Mayflower’s, muttering of murder and betrayal.
Once outside the village, I followed the road that led along the seashore. There were bogs and marshes on either side, just as there’d always been, and from time to time I spotted a gull circling overhead, a crow skirting just over a distant line of trees.
A mile out of the village I turned onto Plymouth Road, taking the same route my father had taken the afternoon we’d first driven down it together, Miss Channing in the front seat, I in the back with her two valises. The forest thickness pressed in upon me no less thickly than it had that day, the green vines slapping once again against both sides of the car.
As I rounded the last curve, Milford Cottage swept into view.
It looked much smaller than it had the last time I’d seen it. But that wasn’t the only change time had wrought. For the cottage had gone completely to ruin during the intervening years, the tar roof now ripped and curled, the screen door torn from its rusty hinges, the yard a field of weed and bramble, the whole structure so weathered and dilapidated that it seemed hardly able to hold its own against the changeless waters of Black Pond.
I stared at it, reviewing the story of its abandonment. I knew that no one would ever live there again, no young woman would ever rearrange the lanterns inside it or hang her father’s picture on its walls. From the trial transcripts so generously quoted in Mr. Parsons’ book, I knew what had been said in its small rooms, what had been felt as well. But I also knew that there’d been other voices, too, other feelings, things Mr. Parsons, for all his effort, had been unable to unearth. As if her lips were at my ear, I heard Miss Channing say,
For a time I peered at the front door that had barred my father’s way that first afternoon, remembering how Miss Channing had stood behind him, waiting silently in the rain as he’d struggled to unlock it. Then I walked up to it, gave a gentle push, and watched as it drifted back, revealing the emptiness inside.
I stepped into the cottage, my eyes moving along the leaf-strewn floor, settling for a moment on the old fireplace with its heap of gray ash. I heard Miss Channing say,
When I opened them again, the cottage was as empty as before, with nothing to give it sound or movement but the drama playing in my mind.
