Peyton Place (5 page)

Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all, nor for how long she will stay. In northern New England, Indian summer puts up a scarlet-tipped hand to hold winter back for a little while. She brings with her the time of the last warm spell, an unchartered season which lives until Winter moves in with its backbone of ice and accoutrements of leafless trees and hard frozen ground. Those grown old, who have had the youth bled from them by the jagged edged winds of winter, know sorrowfully that Indian summer is a sham to be met with hard-eyed cynicism. But the young wait anxiously, scanning the chill autumn skies for a sign of her coming. And sometimes the old, against all the warnings of better judgment, wait with the young and hopeful, their tired, winter eyes turned heavenward to seek the first traces of a false softening.

One year, early in October, Indian summer came to a town called Peyton Place. Like a laughing, lovely woman Indian summer came and spread herself over the countryside and made everything hurtfully beautiful to the eye.

The sky was low, of a solidly unbroken blue. The maples and oaks and ashes, all dark red and brown and yellow, preened themselves in the unseasonably hot light, under the Indian summer sun. The conifers stood like disapproving old men on all the hills around Peyton Place and gave off a greenish yellow light. On the roads and sidewalks of the town there were fallen leaves which made such a gay crackling when stepped upon and sent up such a sweet scent when crushed that it was only the very old who walked over them and thought of death and decay.

The town lay still in the Indian summer sun. On Elm Street, the main thoroughfare, nothing moved. The shopkeepers, who had rolled protective canvas awnings down over their front windows, took the lack of trade philosophically and retired to the back rooms of their stores where they alternately dozed, glanced at the
Peyton Place Times
and listened to the broadcast of a baseball game.

To the east on Elm Street, beyond the six blocks occupied by the business section of the town, rose the steeple of the Congregational church. The pointed structure pierced through the leaves of the surrounding trees and shone, dazzlingly white, against the blue sky. At the opposite end of the business district stood another steepled structure. This was St. Joseph's Catholic Church, and its spire far outshone that of the Congregationalists, for it was topped with a cross of gold.

Seth Buswell, the owner and editor of the
Peyton Place Times,
had once written, rather poetically, that the two churches bracketed and held the town like a pair of gigantic book ends, an observation which had set off a series of minor explosions in Peyton Place. There were few Catholics in town who cared to be associated in any partnership with the Protestants, while the Congregationalists had as little desire to be paired off with the Papists. If imaginary book ends were to exist in Peyton Place they would both have to be of the same religious denomination.

Seth had laughed at the arguments heard all over town that week, and in his next edition he reclassified the two churches as tall, protective mountains guarding the peaceful business valley. Both Catholics and Protestants scanned this second article carefully for a trace of sarcasm or facetiousness, but in the end everyone had taken the story at its face value and Seth laughed harder than before.

Dr. Matthew Swain, Seth's best friend and oldest crony, grunted, “Mountains, eh? More like a pair of goddamned volcanoes.”

“Both of ’em breathin’ brimstone and fire,” Seth added, still laughing as he poured two more drinks.

But the doctor would not laugh with his friend. There were three things which he hated in this world, he said often and angrily: death, venereal disease and organized religion.

“In that order,” the doctor always amended. “And the story, clean or otherwise, that can make me laugh at one of these has never been thought up.”

But on this hot October afternoon Seth was not thinking of opposing religious factions or, for that matter, of anything in particular. He sat at his desk behind the plate glass window of his street floor office, sipping at a cold drink and listened desultorily to the baseball game.

In front of the courthouse, a large white stone building with a verdigris-colored dome, a few old men lounged on the wooden benches which seem to be part of every municipal building in America's small towns. The men leaned back against the warm sides of the courthouse, their tired eyes shaded by battered felt hats, and let the Indian summer sun warm their cold, old bones. They were as still as the trees for which the main street had been named.

Under the elms the black tarred sidewalks, ruffled in many places by the pushing roots of the giant trees, were empty. The chime clock set into the red brick front of the Citizens’ National Bank, across the street from the courthouse, struck once. It was two-thirty on a Friday afternoon.

Maple Street, which bisected Elm at a point halfway through the business section, was a wide, tree-shaded avenue which ran north and south from one end of town to the other. At the extreme southern end of the street, where the paving ended and gave way
to
an empty field, stood the Peyton Place schools. It was toward these buildings that Kenny Stearns, the town handyman, walked. The men in front of the courthouse opened drowsy eyes to watch him.

“There goes Kenny Stearns,” said one man unnecessarily, for everyone had seen—and knew—Kenny.

“Sober as a judge, right now.”

“That won't last long.”

The men laughed.

“Good at his work though, Kenny is,” said one old man named Clayton Frazier, who made a point of disagreeing with everybody, no matter what the issue.

“When he ain't too drunk to work.”

“Never knew Kenny to lose a day's work on account of liquor,” said Clayton Frazier. “Ain't nobody in Peyton Place can make things grow like Kenny. He's got one of them whatcha call green thumbs.”

One man snickered. “Too bad Kenny don't have the same good luck with his wife as he has with plants. Mebbe Kenny'd be better off with a green pecker.”

This observation was acknowledged with appreciative smiles and chuckles.

“Ginny Stearns is a tramp and a trollop,” said Clayton Frazier, unsmilingly. “There ain't much a feller can do when he's married to a born whore.”

“’Cept drink,” said the man who had first spoken.

The subject of Kenny Stearns seemed to be exhausted, and for a moment no one spoke.

“Hotter'n July today,” said one old man. “Damned if my back ain't itchin’ with sweat.”

“’Twon't last,” said Clayton Frazier, tipping his hat back to look up at the sky. “I've seen it turn off cold and start in snowin’ less than twelve hours after the sun had gone down on a day just like this one. This won't last.”

“Ain't healthy either. A day like this is enough to make a man start thinkin’ about summer underwear again.”

“Healthy or not, you'd hear no complaints from me if the weather stayed just like this clear ’til next June.”

“‘Twon't last,” said Clayton Frazier, and for once his words did not provoke a discussion.

“No,” the men agreed. “’Twon't last.”

They watched Kenny Stearns turn into Maple Street and walk out of sight.

The Peyton Place schools faced each other from opposite sides of the street. The grade school was a large wooden building, old, ugly and dangerous, but the high school was the pride of the town. It was made of brick, with windows so large that each one made up almost an entire wall, and it had a clinical, no-nonsense air of efficiency that gave it the look more of a small, well-run hospital than that of a school. The elementary school was Victorian architecture at its worst, made even more hideous by the iron fire escapes which zigzagged down both sides of the building, and by the pointed, open belfry which topped the structure. The grade school bell was rung by means of a thick, yellow rope which led down from the belfry and was threaded through the ceiling and floor of the building's second story. The rope came to an end and hung, a constant temptation to small hands, in the corner of the first floor hall. The school bell was Kenny Stearns’ secret love. He kept it polished so that it gleamed like antique pewter in the October sun. As he approached the school buildings now, Kenny looked up at the belfry and nodded in satisfaction.

“The bells of heaven ain't got tongues no sweeter than yours,” he said aloud.

Kenny often spoke aloud to his bell. He also talked to the school buildings and to the various plants and lawns in town for which he cared.

From the windows of both schools, open now to the warm afternoon, there came a soft murmuring and the smell of pencil shavings.

“Hadn't oughta keep school on a day like this,” said Kenny.

He stood by the low hedge which separated the grade school from the first house on Maple Street. A warm, green smell, composed of the grass and hedges which he had cut that morning rose around him.

“This ain't no kind of a day for schoolin’,” said Kenny and shrugged impatiently, not at his inarticulateness but in puzzlement at a rare emotion in himself.

He wanted to throw himself face down on the ground and press his face and body against something green.

“That's
the kind of day it is,” he told the quiet buildings truculently. “No kind of a day for schoolin’.”

He noticed that a small twig in the hedge had raised itself, growing above the others and marring the evenness of the uniformly flat hedge tops. He bent to snip off this precocious bit of green with his fingers, a sharp tenderness taking form within him. But suddenly a wildness came over him, and he grabbed a handful of the small, green leaves, crushing them until he felt their yielding wetness against his skin while passion tightened itself within him and his breath shook. A long time ago, before he had taught himself not to care, he had felt this same way toward his wife Ginny. There had been the same tenderness which would suddenly be overwhelmed by a longing to crush and conquer, to possess by sheer strength and force. Abruptly Kenny released the handful of broken leaves and wiped his hand against the side of his rough overall.

“Wish to Christ I had a drink,” he said fervently and moved toward the double front doors of the grade school.

It was five minutes to three and time for him to take up his position by the bell rope.

“Wish to Christ I had a drink, and that's for sure,” said Kenny and mounted the wooden front steps of the school.

Kenny's words, since they had been addressed to his bell and therefore uttered in loud, carrying tones, drifted easily through the windows of the classroom where Miss Elsie Thornton presided over the eighth grade. Several boys laughed out loud and a few girls grinned, but this amusement was short lived. Miss Thornton was a firm believer in the theory that if a child were given the inch, he would rapidly take the proverbial mile, so, although it was Friday afternoon and she was very tired, she restored quick order to her room.

“Is there anyone here who would like to spend the thirty minutes after dismissal with me?” she asked.

The boys and girls, ranging in age from twelve to fourteen, fell silent, but as soon as the first note sounded from Kenny's bell, they began to scrape and shuffle their feet. Miss Thornton rapped sharply on her desk with a ruler.

“You will be quiet until I dismiss you,” she ordered. “Now. Are your desks cleared?”

“Yes, Miss Thornton.” The answer came in a discordant chorus.

“You may stand.”

Forty-two pairs of feet clomped into position in the aisles between the desks. Miss Thornton waited until all backs were straight, all heads turned to the front and all feet quiet.

“Dismissed,” she said, and as always, as soon as that word was out of her mouth, had the ridiculous feeling that she should duck and protect her head with her arms.

Within five seconds the classroom was empty and Miss Thornton relaxed with a sigh. Kenny's bell still sang joyously and the teacher reflected with humor that Kenny always rang the three o'clock dismissal bell with a special fervor, while at eight-thirty in the morning he made the same bell toll mournfully.

If I thought it would solve anything, said Miss Thornton to herself, making a determined effort to relax the area between her shoulder blades, I, too, would wish to Christ that I had a drink.

Smiling a little, she stood and moved to one of the windows to watch the children leave the schoolyard. Outside, the crowd had begun to separate into smaller groups and pairs, and Miss Thornton noticed only one child who walked alone. This was Allison MacKenzie, who broke away from the throng as soon as she reached the pavement and hurried down Maple Street by herself.

A peculiar child, mused Miss Thornton, looking at Allison's disappearing back. One given to moods of depression which seemed particularly odd in one so young. It was odd, too, that Allison hadn't one friend in the entire school, except for Selena Cross. They made a peculiar pair, those two, Selena with her dark, gypsyish beauty, her thirteen-year-old eyes as old as time, and Allison MacKenzie, still plump with residual babyhood, her eyes wide open, guileless and questioning, above that painfully sensitive mouth. Get yourself a shell, Allison, my dear, thought Miss Thornton. Find one without cracks or weaknesses so that you will be able to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Good Lord, I
am
tired!

Rodney Harrington came barreling out of the school, not slowing his pace when he saw little Norman Page standing directly in his path.

Damned little bully, thought Miss Thornton savagely.

She despised Rodney Harrington, and it was a credit to her character and to her teaching that no one, least of all Rodney himself, suspected this fact. Rodney was an oversized fourteen-year-old with a mass of black, curly hair and a heavy-lipped mouth. Miss Thornton had heard a few of her more aware eighth grade girls refer to Rodney as “adorable,” a sentiment with which she was not in accord. She would have gotten a great deal of pleasure out of giving him a sound thrashing. In Miss Thornton's vast mental file of school children, Rodney was classified as A Troublemaker.