Barnburner, page 2
"We did," I said. Colonel Lyons jerked back and turned his head to glare up at me.
"Did what?" He did not add flatlander, but his tone made it plain.
"Did write a story," I told him, with the mindless, neutral patience every secretary worth a keyboard learns early in her career. "Two stories. Last year about this time. You were going to kick Waterville's butt. Make them lay new track along Water Street. The City Administrator talked to your lawyer. You and your lawyer went to a couple council meetings and it got tabled." That was probably enough, but my bad angel prodded me in the larynx and I added:
"Just like it has for the past seven years."
He straightened up real fast and set both fists on his hips.
"So I'm an old fool, am I, Miz Pierce? That's what's wrong with you flatlanders—no sense of what's history. In Maine, we got history and the Waterville and Wimsy Railroad's Electric Track Division is it!"
He held out one hand, hard palm pushing air at me. "Well, you and the Waterville Goddamn City Council can sit on your asses and smirk. And keep on smirking while Sawyer Wells drags the goddamn mayor and the goddamn city administrator and the whole goddamn council to court and makes them honor what's written down in black and white!" He nodded once, hard, turned on his heel and stamped out of the newsroom.
"So there," Bill muttered and looked up at me with a crooked, red-faced grin.
I grinned back. "Who's Sawyer Wells? The messiah?"
"Close enough." He pulled in tight to his computer and shook his head. "Hotshot lawyer out of Portland, charging Boston fees and working on his legend."
"Wow. And Colonel Lyons is up to that?"
"Maybe he won the lottery," Bill said and started to hit keys.
I turned toward my desk, third in a line of three set against the hall wall. Bill looked up.
"You're on the barn story?"
"Who else?"
He shrugged: editorial impatience with reportorial bitching. "How many inches?"
"How the hell do I know? Harry Pelletier says the whole town's going to be there. Might have to move it out to Turner's field and charge admission."
"Good way to supplement taxes." He reached across to his desk and pawed at a stack of sheets—the blank pages of tomorrow's newspaper. "I'll save you five on page one."
"Five?"
He gave me a sideways, evil-eyed grin. "So it jumps. You got a problem?"
"No suh, boss." I headed for my desk.
***
THE WIMSY VOICE is published three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The publishers, John and Jerry Talbot, live in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, and make three or four lightning trips to Maine every year, usually during the summer. They acquired the newspaper from Barbara and Tilden Rancourt, who had never been further south than Portland until they retired, sold the paper and moved to Miami on the proceeds.
It being October, we were now officially safe from the twins for a solid eight months and Bill Jacques would run things with dour efficiency, in between complaining about how the twins were sucking the paper to dust. The Winter Shift, Dan Skat called it, around a huge, mimed yawn.
I reached behind the bulky, old-fashioned terminal and snapped the switch up, listening to the computer grumble as it fired up the awesome computing power of a full ten megabyte hard drive. The screen flickered, then steadied. The amber letters were grainy, listing a little to the right.
Karen's Computer read the legend at the top of the four-choice menu.
Karen Hopkins had been third-desk reporter before me. She'd fled back to her native California at the end of her second Maine autumn, unable to face another Winter Shift. Desk and computer had been mine for eighteen months, but I'd never gotten around to changing the name on the menu.
I keyed in "1," for "Write" and reached for my notes while Karen's Computer gulped and stammered and finally presented a wavery processing screen.
I flipped through my pad, frowning at the jumble of half-English and shorthand that was my own special note-taking cryptography. A week ago, one Justin Veilleux, 15, had apparently taken his mother's new Escort down to the abandoned quarry at the end of the Stone Road and tried to see what she could do.
According to the skid-mark experts, she'd been doing about seventy when Justin lost his nerve and hit the brakes. God and gravity knew what she was doing just before she smashed into the jagged stone bottom of the main dig. Suffice to say that she had enough speed on her to handily finish off both Justin and the car.
Yesterday, Wimsy High School had held a Remember Justin gathering, where all the kids in the tenth grade came together and talked about Justin and how they felt about his death. The Voice, meaning Jen Pierce, had been there.
Sighing, I squared off in front of Karen's Computer, closed my eyes for a second and began to type.
For the record, in case there is one, I am not a reporter by trade. As a matter of fact, I'm not anything by trade, as a quick glance at my resume will reveal.
I'd done my time in a steno pool at the small county college where I earned my forty or so undergrad credits; got promoted to department secretary. Took a side job setting type for a weekly paper, when setting type was an IBM Selectric with a special tape drive rigged into its guts. Left the college for an ad agency, where I went from receptionist to junior copy writer in a meteoric three-year rise. When the firm was sold I freelanced PR and ad copy, sold computers, did some waitressing, worked temp when the balance dipped too low in the checkbook, and finally went back to the college, this time as assistant to the president.
I'd been back four years when I got a letter sporting a Bangor postmark, with a string of lawyers' names in the return address. The letter said that Jennifer Anne Pierce of Wimsy, Maine, had died and that I was named in her will. Please call.
It struck me funny at the time, that Jennifer Pierce had named me in her will. My father had been Aunt Jennifer's brother; I'd heard him speak of her half-a-dozen times in his life, never kindly. I'd never met her, she having moved to Maine about the time I was born. I understood she was an artist and I gathered she was the black sheep of the family—which made the joke even funnier. I wondered if Jen Pierce the Elder had somehow known that her namesake was the black sheep in her family.
I called Maine and spoke to my aunt's lawyer, fully expecting to hear that my portion came to ten dollars cash and a wheelbarrow-load of old paintings.
I heard house. I heard ten acres. I hung up the phone, wrangled an out-of-season vacation from my boss and left early next morning, driving nine hours straight, from Baltimore to Wimsy.
The phone rang. I started, then snatched it up. "Jen Pierce."
"Rand Funeral Home," the bored voice came down the line. "I have an obit."
"Just a moment," I said, hurriedly saving Remember Justin and opening a fresh file. "Go ahead."
It was a longish obituary, even though I took it down in short-type, receiver trapped precariously between chin and left shoulder.
"Phone number?" I murmured and typed it at the end of the file. "Thank you."
"I'll have another one later on," the bored voice told me and hung up without goodbye. I went to the top of the file and started filling in the missing letters.
It was the house that brought me to Maine and it was the house that kept me in Maine. When my parents died the neat little suburban Baltimore bungalow with its tidy quarter-acre yard and conventional suburban furnishings went wholly to my sister Carol, the white sheep.
My share of the estate—two thousand, five hundred dollars and forty-five cents—arrived as a bank check in a lawyer's stiff buff envelope. The evening of its arrival, I went out and put twenty-five hundred dollars down on a midnight-black Camaro with red plush interior and treated myself to a cup of coffee with the forty-five cents.
The Camaro was my joy—I love driving fast, despite the various misfortunes automobiles have visited on me and mine. It now lived in the barn attached to the house—my house—double-undercoated against the predations of road salt and waxed 'til it gave back moonlight. It was an impractical car for Maine, especially for Maine winters. I knew that. But I kept it, the same way I kept the house, though I'd intended, at first, to sell.
I'd only intended to stay a couple days—just long enough to put the house on the market. But I woke up that first morning and there were birds singing outside the window of Jen Pierce's guest room. I put on my only pair of jeans, a polyester shirt and a denim jacket I found hanging by the kitchen door and went out to walk my land.
Later that day I called my boss and negotiated a six month leave of absence, covered almost entirely by banked sick leave and unused vacation time.
Five months and fifteen days later, I called him again and tendered my resignation. Then I called my sister and asked her to turn the efficiency apartment that had been my home for the last six years back to the landlord and to ship my books, my stereo, my tapes, my files and my computer to Wimsy.
She didn't even ask me if I was okay.
"...Jen?"
I jumped, sending a line of mmmmmms along the middle of my obit, and stared up into Dan Skat's ratty face.
"What?"
"I said," he repeated, with a patented eye-roll. "Are we going to that meeting or aren't we?"
"Meeting's not 'til si—" I started, glancing involuntarily toward the newsroom clock: five fifty-five.
"Shit!" I grabbed my pad with one hand, my jacket and pocketbook with the other, pushed back from the computer and came to my feet.
"C'mon!" I snapped at Dan, running toward the door with my jacket slapping around my knees.
"Hey, I wasn't the one asleep at my terminal!" he yelled, running after.
"We'll take my car," he said, yanking open the stairwell door and stepping back for me to pass. "It's closer."
3
IT WAS STANDING ROOM only at the Wimsy Elementary School auditorium.
Dan and I split up at the door: he to creep through the crowd, grabbing shots as he saw them; I to wedge into a back corner, pad and pen at the ready, my pocketbook a dead weight dragging down my left shoulder.
I measure in at precisely six foot: tall for a woman, even in Baltimore, where they grow 'em a tad high. In Maine, I'm a gangling, gawky giant, towering a full head over most grown men. The position at the far back of the room suited me perfectly—a clear sighting across the sea of bobbing heads, down to the stage up front, where Wimsy's three selectpeople sat behind a scarred table, looking bored, serious and sleepy, respectively.
The clock above the stage read six-oh-five.
I looked over the crowd, found Harry Pelletier and Maurice DuChamp side by side in the third row. Reverend Stern sat front and center, the prime first-row chairs on either side of him vacant. If Scott and Merry were present, I didn't spot them, though Merry's white-blonde mop should have cut through that mob of peaked caps and shades of brown like Twin Rivers Light through a fog-bank.
The acoustics were about what you'd expect and nobody was really taking care to talk low. First Selectwoman Marjorie Lavoie had to pound her gavel several times—hard—against its battered block of wood to get the rumpus down to where she could be heard yelling for "Quiet!"
Quiet, of a sort, descended. The sea of heads grew still, caps pointed toward the front. There was some rustling and throat-clearing; Marjorie laid down the gavel and crossed her arms on the table.
"This meeting is called to resolve a dispute over repair of an existing barn at Johnson's Farm off the Point Road. We have a petition." She held it at arm's-length above her head—a sheaf of dog-eared papers maybe six sheets thick—and whacked it back to the table top.
"Who's here to speak for the petitioners?" she asked, just like she didn't know.
Front and center, Butchie Stern raised his hand.
"Reverend." Marjorie nodded. "This meeting will hear objections to Scott Ash's formal and legal request to the town that he be allowed to repair a barn on his property."
Reverend Stern stood—no, he rose—oil-smooth and elegant in a dark suit. He made a slight, European-looking bow toward the three selectfolks, then pivoted to face the meeting.
His shirt was white, his tie a swirl of silky blues. A gold tie bar held it firmly in place. He wore a gold band on the third finger of his left hand. It glinted when he raised his hands to the crowd.
My fingers twitched on the slick plastic barrel of my ballpoint.
"Friends," I muttered at the back of my throat.
"Friends," Butchie Stern intoned from the front of the auditorium. He lowered his hands on a slow beat of three and looked out gravely across the crowd.
"Friends," he said again. "We're hardworking folks in this town. We admire industry, we admire care for the land—and we admire privacy. There are those of you sitting out there right now saying to yourselves, 'Young fella wants to patch his barn—good for him. No business of mine.'" Butchie smiled, sad and soft.
"Nor should it be any business of yours, what a man does with his own property. But we're also a moral town—a church-going town—" He raised his right hand and pointed dramatically toward the west corner of the room. "There are three houses of God sitting cheek by jowl on Church Street. Come Sunday morning those three churches are going to be full, just like every Sunday morning." He brought his hand down and leaned toward the crowd, lowering his voice, but not so much I still couldn't hear every word, back in my corner.
"Scott Ash's barn is the business of every church-going, moral member of this community." He straightened, face showing sadness and determination.
"Scott Ash is, by his own admission, a Wiccan. His—wife—calls herself a High Priestess. In plain, everyday language, Scott and Merry Ash are witches." Butchie held up a quick hand, gold band glinting.
"It's no business of yours, what beliefs a man chooses to hold. After all, those are three very different churches downtown, and the Baptists don't always agree with the Catholics, or the Catholics with the Congregationalists. But we all read from the same Book, friends. And we all look to the same—the only—God."
It was fortunate for Reverend Stern, I thought sourly, as he paused for effect, that there was no Unitarian church in town, much less a synagogue. One Book and one God. Yep. I scrawled, the sound of pen scratching paper loud in the rapt stillness.
"There may be those of you," Butchie said gently, "who either do not believe in witches, or are ignorant of the rites of witches. Let me tell you something about the—religion—of Wicca, the religion in which Scott Ash's—wife—laims to be a High Priestess.
"Witches practice an orgiastic religion. During their sabbats—their celebrations—men and women dance naked together. They have sex with multiple partners as part of their—worship. They repudiate the true Word of the true God and offer up their lewd behavior in sacrifice to a goddess—to a female god." Butchie paused. "And also to a male god," he added, too quietly. "Who is often shown wearing—horns." He sighed.
"There is more—all well documented. But I will not offend the sensibilities of the moral people of this town by reciting the darker rites performed at these meetings. Suffice to say that privacy—the deep privacy found inside a barn on an isolated farm—is necessary for these practices. And it is the business of every person in this room—the business of every person in this town!—to ask Scott Ash what it is he intends to do with his barn."
Reverend Stern folded his hands, turned, half-bowed to the selectpeople and sat. The auditorium might have been filled with wax dollies, each pinned fatally through the heart.
There was a slight rustle from the eighth row, the last seat by the far aisle. A man came slowly to his feet: beat-up jeans jacket open over a plaid flannel shirt; clean shaven; pale brown hair combed neatly behind his ears.
"I'm Scott Ash," he said, and there was a drawling edge of bluegrass to his voice. He looked around the room, taking his time about it: southern slow and a shade puzzled-looking. A camera flashed as he turned his face toward Dan Skat's position, and he reached up to rub his neck before looking back toward the table on the stage.
"Well, now, that's a good question," he said, "what we're going to be doing with the barn. I guess I should've explained when I filled out the form." He looked around again, moved broad denim-covered shoulders in an apologetic shrug.
"See," he said earnestly, slipping his hands into his jeans pockets, "we were planning on keeping the sheep in it."
From somewhere near my corner came a half-choke of laughter. In the third row, Harry flung her hand into the air.
"Meeting sees Haroldene Pelletier," Marjorie Lavoie said, with commendable steadiness.
"I move Scott Ash be allowed to mend his barn and get his animals under roof!" Harry shouted. Reverend Stern actually turned in his chair to glare at her.
"Second!" Maurice yelled, bouncing to his feet before Marjorie had time to open her mouth.
The crowd went wild.
***
KAREN'S COMPUTER laboriously loaded its spell-checker as I leaned back in the cranky, too-short chair, rubbed my eyes and felt the vibration from the press in the basement rumble through my bones.
Marjorie had quickly snatched control of the meeting back from my two elderly reprobates, called for discussion and then a vote, all proper and parliamentary.
The hour-long discussion ranged from Johnson Farm history, to the chances of the weather holding, to the number of sheep in Scott's herd and the fact that the winter hay was already rolled and stowed, neat and workmanlike, under blue tarp in the near pasture.
Nobody mentioned witchcraft, or dancing naked. Nobody mentioned sex, except as it pertained to sheep.
Nobody mentioned abortion.
And when Marjorie Lavoie finally called for a show of hands, the meeting voted one-hundred-fifty-three to six in favor of Scott Ash being allowed to repair his barn.
Karen's Computer beeped peevishly for my attention. I pried my eyes open and okay'd the spelling of "Congregationalist." The computer hiccupped and continued its search.
