Saturday afternoon beer with him m the Valley Inn bar. The knot in his chest tightened again, and he felt now every one of his sixty-six years; he felt incredibly tired and used-up and incompetent.
Tribucci asked, “Do you know about Matt Hughes?”
“He’s… dead,” Donnelly answered, purse-lipped.
“We were hit with that much, but not where or how or why.”
Markham and Donnelly exchanged silent glances.
“Have you got any idea how it happened?”
“I guess we do,” Donnelly said.
“How, then?”
“Better if we don’t talk about it,” Markham said.
“We’ve got to know, Sid.”
“There’s enough on everybody’s mind as it is.”
Doris Markham-a thin, shrewish woman whose hands jumped and fluttered as if wired to invisible electrodes-swung around to look at her husband. She said stridulously, “Oh for Lord’s sake, Sid, what’s the use of trying to hide the truth? They’ll find it out anyway, sooner or later. Tell them and have done with it.”
“Doris-”
“All right then, I will. Matt was killed at the Taggart cabin. He was with Peggy and the crazy found them together and shot Matt and then brought her to Martin’s and tied her up with the rest of us. She saw Matt killed; that’s why she’s the way she is now. There-it’s all out in the open.”
Audible intakes of breath, murmurs. A gaseous sourness bubbled in Coopersmith’s stomach.
Maude Fredericks said, “You can’t mean they were-I don’t believe it! Matt… Matt wouldn’t have…”
“Well I couldn’t believe it either at first, but it’s true. The crazy told us how he found them”-her mouth twisted-“and told us exactly what they’d been doing. He laughed about it. He stood there and laughed-”
“He was lying!” Agnes Tyler, on her feet now, stared at the other woman saucer-eyed. “Not Peggy… Peggy’s a good girl, Matt was a good man… no!”
Doris looked away. Markham started to say something to her, changed his mind, and spread his hands toward Agnes in a gesture of mute deprecation.
“No, no, no, no,” she said and began to sob, one hand fisted against her mouth. The sound of her weeping and the susurration of voices grated corrosively at Coopersmith’s nerves; he turned on legs that, always strong, now felt enervated and frail-boned, and returned to the forward pew and sank onto it and stared at his liver-spotted hands.
Matt Hughes: paragon of virtue, energetic and benevolent community leader, the man everyone looked up to and wanted their sons to emulate. Matt Hughes: unfaithful husband, hypocrite-and dead because of it. The Reverend Mr. Keyes was still unconscious, but he would learn the harsh truth about the murdered head of his flock eventually. And so would poor Rebecca. Everything seemed to be crumbling around them on this cataclysmic day- secrets revealed, illusions shattered, beliefs shaken, and no one spared in the least. All for the Greater Good? Could they still believe in that now and in their collective salvation?
Coopersmith looked up again at the crucifix above the altar. And a passage from Proverbs in the Old Testament flickered into his mind: Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.
“All right,” he murmured aloud. “All right.”
Peggy Tyler lay quiescent on the hard wooden pew bench, tangled blond hair swept away from her face. A small part of her was aware that she was inside the church, that her mother and Dr. Edwards were beside her, but a much larger part was still in the Taggart cabin at Mule Deer Lake. It was as if she were coexisting in two separate realities, two separate time streams. Jumbled voices from both seemed to whisper distantly, hollowly in her ears, images from both were strangely superimposed on one another.
Shivering, she said, “I’m cold, I’m cold.”
Mrs. Tyler tucked the heavy fur coat tighter beneath Peggy’s chin; then, tears still trickling along her cheeks, she leaned down and said imploringly, “It’s not true, is it, baby? You weren’t sinning with Matt Hughes, tell me you weren’t…”
“Stop it, Agnes,” Edwards said. “I told you, she doesn’t seem to be able to comprehend anything we say to her. You’re not doing either of you any good.”
Matt? Peggy thought. Matt-Matt? You killed him! You shot him in the face, his face is gone, oh the blood the blood
… no, don’t touch me! Don’t touch me, don’t you touch me!
“Mother?” she said.
“I’m here, baby, I’m here.” Mrs. Tyler lifted her entreating gaze to Edwards. “Can’t you do something for her?”
“If they bring me my bag, I’ll give her a sedative. There’s nothing else I can do, Agnes, I’m only a village doctor. She needs hospitalization. And, the way it looks, psychiatric care.”
“ Psychiatric care?”
Edwards said gently, “What she saw last night seems to have had an unbalancing effect on her mind. It may only be temporary, but-”
“I won’t listen to that kind of talk. There’s nothing wrong with her mind, she didn’t see Matt Hughes killed, she wasn’t with him at the Taggart cabin or anywhere else.”
“Agnes…”
“No. She was captured by those murderers and had a terrible experience and she’s in shock, that’s all, just simple shock. She’ll be fine in a little while-won’t you, baby? Won’t you?”
He took my money, Peggy thought, he took my thousand dollars. Give it back, it’s mine. I earned it, I need it, I almost have enough to leave now. Leave these mountains forever, go to Europe, lie under a hot sun by a bright blue ocean. Warm places, snowless places. Soon. Matt? Soon.
“I’m so cold,” she said.
The next two and a half hours passed in grim cycle.
“Stand back in there!” the voice outside would shout, and talk would instantly fade, and eyes would fasten on the entrance; the lock would click, the door would open Frank McNeil, sweating, shaking, face and eyes like those of a woman on the brink of hysteria; in sharp contrast, Sandy and Larry McNeil following as if narcotized.
— and the door would close, the lock would click; vocalization and constrained activity would commence again, questions would be asked, questions would be answered; the waiting tension would mount; and then it would all begin anew:
“Stand back in there!”
Walt Halliday, rubber-legged, sniffling and coughing into a mucus-spotted handkerchief; Lil Halliday, lower jaw paroxysmic, hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer.
“Stand back!”
Joe Garvey, face bloody, clothing bloody, staggering slightly but waving away the proffered assistance and attention of Webb Edwards; Pat Garvey, lachrymose and looking as if she were near collapse.
“All right, stand back in there!”
The Stallings family.
“Stand back!”
Bert Younger, Enid Styles, Jerry Cornelius.
“You people stand back in there!”
Greg Novak, more dazed than frightened, immediately enfolded in the tearful embrace of his father and mother.
Through it all John Tribucci was in constant prowling motion, like a panther in a zoo cage. He paced from back to front, from side to side, pausing only to make sure Ann was still all right or to exchange brief dialogue with his brother or Lew Coopersmith or one of the new arrivals. Veins pulsed along his forehead, on one temple; impotent frustration was toxic within him. Trapped, trapped, no way out, nothing any of them could do, no way out Abruptly, near the lectern on the left side of the pulpit, he came to a standstill. His head snapped up, and he stared at and mentally beyond the high, wood-raftered ceiling.
The belfry, he thought; the belfry.
