Everville (10 page)

The Nordhoff bequest had begun a small avalanche of gifts. Seventeen watercolors of local scenes, prettily if some what blandly painted by the wife of Everville's first dentist, were now framed and hung in the walls of the schoolhouse

(the renovation of which had been paid for by H. Nordhoff).

A collection of walking sticks topped with the heads of fantastical animals, carved by one of the city's great eccentrics, Milius Biggs, was displayed in a glass case in what had been the principal's office.

But far outnumbering these aesthetic bequests were more mundane offerings, most of them from ordinary Evervillians. School reports, wedding announcements, obituaries, family albums, a collection of cuttings from The Oregonian, all of which mentioned the town (this assembled by the librarian Stanley Tharp, who had stammered traumatically for sixty-one years but on his deathbed had recited Milton's Paradise Lost without a stumble), and of course family letters in their hundreds.

The labor of organizing such a large body of material was slow, given that all the Society's workers were volunteers. Two of the schoolhouse's five rooms were still piled high with boxes of unsorted gifts, but for those visitors interested in Everville's past, the remaining three rooms offered a pleasant, if somewhat over-tidy, glimpse of the early days.

It was highly selective of course, but then so were most history lessons. There was no place in this celebration of the Evervillian spirit for the darker side; for images of destitution, or suicide, or worse. No room, either, for any individual who didn't fit the official version of how things had come to be. There were pictures of the city in its infancy, and accounts of how its roads were laid and its fine houses built. But of Maeve O'Connell, who had ventured to the shores of another world, and returned to make her father's dream real, there was no sign. And in that disinheritance lay the seeds of Everville's undoing.

Phoebe was a little late coming for Erwin, but he was all politeness. He was soriy to be inconveniencing her this way, he said, but it really was urgent business. No, he couldn't really tell her what it was about, but it would be public knowledge before very long, and he'd be certain to thank her for her kindness in print. There was no need, she insisted; but she'd be very grateful if after the weekend she could come and pick his brains in a legal matter. He readily agreed. was she planning to make a will?

No, she said, I'm planning to divorce my husband. to which he replied divorce was not really his area of expertise but he'd be happy to chat with her about it In confidence, she said. Of course, he told her. She should drop by his offices on Monday morning.

The schoolhouse was still baking hot, even though it was now close to six, and while Phoebe went around raising the blinds and opening the windows, Erwin wandered from room to stifling room, peering at the pictures. "Can you tell me what you're looking for?" Phoebe asked him.

"I mean, vaguely."

"Back issues of the Tribune, for one thing," Erwin said. "Apparently they don't have room to keep them at their offices, so they're here."

"And what else?"

"Well, I'm not familiar with the collection. Is it arranged chronologically?"

"I'm not sure. I think so." She led Erwin through to the back room, where six tables were piled with files. "I used to come and help sort through things," she said. "But this last year's been so hectic-" She flicked through one of the piles. "These are all marked nineteen forty to forty-five." She moved on to the next pile. "And these are forty-five to fifty."

"So it's in increments of half-decades."

"Right."

"Well that's a start. And the newspapers?"

Phoebe pointed through the adjacent door. "they are in order. I know,

'cause I was the one did it."

"Wonderful. I'll get started then."

:'Do you want me to wait till you're finished?"

'It depends how patient you're feeling."

"Not very," she said with a little laugh. "Maybe I should just jot down my telephone number, and when you're done@' "I'll call you and you can come over and lock up."

"Right."

"That's a deal then." She went to the front desk, wrote her number on one of the Society brochures, and took it back to him. He was already plundering the contents of one of the files.

"You will put everything back, won't you?" Phoebe said, in her best forbidding manner.

"Oh yes. I'll be careful," Erwin replied. He took the brochure from her. "I'll call you when I'm done," he said. "I hope it won't be too late."

As she got into the car she thought: What would happen if I never went home again? If I just drove to Joe's place now and left town tonight? It was a tempting idea-not to have to go back to the house and cook dinner and listen to Morton bitching about every damn thing-but she resisted it. If her future with Joe was to have a chance then she had to plan it: carefully, systematically. they weren't teenagers, eloping in the first flush of love. If they were going to leave Everville permanently (and she couldn't imagine their staying, once the truth was out) then they had responsibilities to turn over and farewells to take.

She'd be happy never to see the house or Morton or the stinking ashtrays he left behind him ever again, but she'd miss Dr. Powell, along with a handful of his regulars. She'd need to take the time to explain herself to the people she valued most, so that they knew she was going for love's sake, not because she was fickle or cruel.

So, she'd stay, and enjoy her last Festival in Everville. Indeed, thinking of it that way gave her a taste for the celebrations she'd not had in years. This weekend she'd get out and party, knowing that next year, come August, she'd be in another part of the world.

Hunger always made Morton bad-tempered, so rather than have him wait while she cooked, she went by Kitty's Diner to pick up a burger and fries. It was now three years since the death of Kitty Cowhick, and despite hard economic times her son-in-law Bosley had turned the place from a shabby little establishment into a thriving business. He was born Again, and brought his strict moral viewpoint to bear in managing the diner. He forbade, for instance, the reading of any literature he deemed indecent in the booths or at the counter, and if a breath of profanity was exhaled he personally requested that the guilty party leave. She'd seen him do it too. I want this to be a place the Lord himself could come to, he'd told her once, if He wanted a piece of pie.

Morton's burger purchased, she set off home, only to find the house deserted. Morton had been back-his work jacket was on the kitchen table, along with a couple of empty beer cans-but he'd apparently tired of waiting for her to come home, and gone out in search of something to eat. She was pleased: It gave her a little more time to @.

She sat at the kitchen table picking over the soggy fries, and used the pad she usually made her shopping lists on to jot down the things she wanted to take with her when she left. There wasn't much. Just a few bits and pieces that had some sentimental significance: a chair she'd inherited from her mother; some needlepoint her grandmother had made; the quilt in the spare bedroom.

thinking of the quilt, she left off her list-making and turned her mind back to the deeds of the afternoon. Or rather, to the deed performed in that room. It would not always be so wonderful, she counseled herself, the heat between them would be bound to mellow over the years. But if and when that happened, there would be a weight of feeling that re. And ffim would be memories of events like this aftenoon that would spring to rwnd every time she pressed her face to the quilt.

A little after eight-thirty, with his stomach growling for want of dinner, Erwin's search through the woefully disorganized files turned up an odd little pamphlet, penned by one Raymond Merkle. He knew the name, vaguely. The man had made himself a minor reputation as a chronicler of smalltown Oregon. Erwin had seen companion volumes to this in the bookstore in Wilsonville. The text was a curious compendium of facts about Everville, written in the belabored style of a man who had aspirations to being a writer but precious little ear for language. It was entitled These Dreaming Hills, which turned out to be a quote from a piece printed (without the name of the poet, so Erwin assumed it to be Merkle) of doggerel at the front of the pamphlet. And there, halfway through this little labor of love, Erwin encountered the following: That the forces of heinous and unrepentant evil make their barbaric mark in a city as sweetly favored as Everville should come as no surprise to those of us who have seen something of the larger world. 1, your author, ventured from the fertile climes of our glorious state in the fortythird year of this century to perform my duties as an American in the South Pacific, and will carry to my grave the scenes of cruelty and human degradation I witnessed there, in surroundings as paradisaical as any this globe can offer.

It surprised me then not at all to discover, in the course of preparing this volume, rumors of diabolical deeds performed within the precincts of Everville's comely community.

The sad story of the death of Rebecca Jenkins is well known. She was a daughter of that fair city, much prized and adored, who was murdered in her eighth year, her body deposited in the reservoir. Her murderer was a man out of Sublimity who later died in prison while serving a life sentence. But the mystery surrounding the tragedy of poor Rebecca does not end there.

While gathering stories about the stranger incidents associated with Everville, the quizzical demise of one Richard Dolan was whispered to me. He had owned a candy store, I was told, and little Rebecca Jenkins had been a regular customer of his, so he had taken the death of the child particularly hard. The.capture and subsequent incarceration of her unrepentant murderer had done nothing to subjugate his great uneasiness. He had become more and more melancholy, and on the night of September

19, 1975, he had told his wife he was hearing voices from Harmon's Heights. Somebody was calling to him, he said. When she asked him who, he refused to say, but took himself off into the night. He did not return, and the next day a party ascended the Heights to look for him.

After two days of searching they found the delirious Richie Dolan, wedged in a crevice of rock on the northeast slope of the mountain. He was very horribly banned by his fall, but he was not dead. Such was the state of his face and torso that his wife fell into a swoon at the sight of him and was never of sound mind again.

He died in Silverton Hospital three days later, but he did not die silent. In that seventy-two hours he raved like a bediamite, unsubdued by the tranquilizers his doctors gave him.

What did he speak of in his final, agonizing hours? I could find no firsthand testament on this, but there is sufficient consensus among the rumors to suppose them broadly true. He raved, I was told, about dead men calling to him from Harmon's Heights. Over and over, even at the very end, when the doctors stood astonished at how he was clinging to life, he was begging forgiveness The account maundered on for a couple more paragraphs, but Erwin merely skimmed them. He had what he needed here: Evidence, albeit rudimentary, that there was some truth in what McPherson had written. And if one part was truthful, then why not the rest?

Content that his pursuit of verification was not a folly, he left off the search for the night, and called Phoebe Cobb. Would she come over and lock up? he asked. She would, of course. If he would just be kind enough to close the windows, she'd pop over in a while to secure the front door.

Her voice sounded a little slurred, he thought, but maybe it was his imagination. The day had been long, and he was weary. Time to get home, and try and put the McPherson confession out of his head until he resumed his inquiries tomorrow.

He knew where he'd begin those inquiries: down by the creek. Though it was three decades since the events McPherson had described, if the house he claimed the trio had burned down had in truth existed, then there would be some sign of it remaining. And if there was, then that would be another part of the confession verified, and he would be tempted to bring the whole story into the open air, where the whole state could smell how much it stank.

Phoebe had opened the brandy bottle around a quarter to eight, telling herself she wanted to toast her coming liberation, but in truth to dull the unease she was feeling. On the few occasions Morton went out to get some dinner for himself, he was usually back within the hour, ready to deposit himself in front of the television. Where had he gone to tonight? And more: Why did she care?

She drowned her confusion in a brandy; then in another.

That did the trick just fine, especially on an almost empty stomach. By the time the attorney called, she was feeling very mellow; too mellow to drive. No matter. She'd walk to the Old Schoolhouse she decided.

The night was balmy, the air fragrant with pine, and the walk proved more pleasant than she'd expected. At any other time of the year, even at the height of summer, the streets would have been pretty quiet in the middle of the evening, but tonight the lights were still burning in many of the stores along Main Street, their owners working on Festival window displays or stocking the shelves for the profitable days ahead. There were even a few visitors around, come early to enjoy the quiet of the valley.

At the corner of Main and Watson she waited for a moment or two. A

right turn took her up towards the schoolhouse, a left led down past the market and the park to Donovan Street, and a little way along Donovan Street was the apartment house where Joe lived. It would be just a slip of the foot to turn left rather than right. But she fought the urge. Better to let all that they'd felt and said this afternoon settle for a few hours, rather than get hot and flustered again. Besides, brandy always made her a little tearful, and her face got puffy when she cried. She'd see him tomorrow, and dream about him in the meantime.

Turning right, she headed on up the gentle gradient of Watson, past the new supermarket, which was still open and doing brisk business, to the schoolhouse. It took her five minutes to check all the windows, pull down the blinds, and lock up. Then she began the return journey.