The Hawley Book of the Dead (12 page)

Relief flooded me, but I had no idea what I’d just seen.
“Shit, Mom. You scared me.
Were
you choking?”

“What?” She looked at me like I had two heads. “How
could I choke on blueberry cobbler? You’re too stirred up, honey. You’re
imagining things.”

“I am not!” I snapped. “I’m worried about
you!”

“Oh, Reve, don’t
fuss
.”

I fumed as I followed my striding mother as she made her way to the house
with the Betsy Ross flag out front. Hawley’s historical society was capitalizing
on the crowd, selling key chains and old maps on the front
porch. I
had no idea what we were doing there, and I was cross with Mom, but I sure didn’t
want to send her into another one of those fits.

A faded older woman sat behind the displays outside the historical
society. She was reading an Elmore Leonard book. Unlike the other booths and exhibits,
this one was not packed with people. Only one man, obviously from out of town with his
polished Docksiders and a camera bobbing against his navy polo–shirted chest, was
perusing the offerings.

He left after buying a key chain, left us alone with Hawley’s
history. My mom plucked up a monograph with a sepia photograph of Hawley Town Hall on
its cover. She flipped through it, while I turned the pages of the latest calendar. The
faded lady, brought out of the depths of her book, looked up at us.

“Is there anything I can help you with? We only have a few things
out for sale. The historical society museum isn’t open to the public today,
I’m afraid.” Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. “We had some
theft last year during the fair, some museum items stolen. So we decided it would be
better …”

“Oh, of course,” Mom piped in, using her committee meeting
voice. Whatever had happened at the blueberry cobbler tent, she was definitely back to
normal now. “The same thing happened in Williamstown, at the parsonage Christmas
tea. Do you know, somebody snuck upstairs and stole a chamber pot?” I stifled my
laughter, as the faded lady did not seem amused.

“Well, here it was a file of original Howes Brothers
plates,” she informed us grimly. “Quite a loss.” The Howes Brothers
had been itinerant photographers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
They traveled all the towns of western Massachusetts, photographing families and
thousands of structures, houses, barns, and grange halls that have since been torn down
or renovated beyond recognition. My mother sent me the Williamstown Savings Bank
calendar every year, which always featured Howes Brothers photographs of the old towns
and farms. The images were evocative of a kind of life just as vanished as the original
settlers.

“How dreadful for you! My daughter and I have always loved the
Howes Brothers. I’m Morgan Dyer and this is my daughter. Reve’s just
moved to town, and was thinking of becoming a historical society
friend.” I had to admire her skill. The faded lady was eating it up.

“Here’s the information, and the form. If you join at the
individual or family level, you’ll get a Hawley Pudding Contest apron. At the
friend level, you’d also get an autographed copy of Howard Stark’s history
of Hawley. But we don’t get too many friends in this economy.” I figured I
should have the book anyway, and for the $200, maybe I’d get more
information from the faded lady. I whipped out my checkbook. I could afford to be a
friend, and God knew I needed some, too, even if I had to buy them.

“Where do you live, dear? Are you the ones bought the Hartland
place?”

I tore out the check, handed it to her. She studied it for a moment. Maybe
it was my imagination, but her pale face seemed to pale even more.

“Hawley Five Corners,” she said, and dropped the check
I’d given her as if it scorched her hand. We both scrabbled on the floor for it.
She captured it, then looked at the amount. “Two hundred dollars! Well. This
certainly is generous.” She slid my book and apron in a white plastic bag, handed
it over. “You sure have your work cut out for you there. Carl Streeter’s
society treasurer. We’ve heard quite a bit at the last meeting about your move to
the old Sears place.”

My mom nudged me. “Carl is the one I give credit to. Without him I
would never have been able to find workmen, or get the house ready in time. I moved here
with my three daughters after my husband’s death … so
I’m happy to be closer to my parents.” As usual, I stumbled a little on
the explanation that placed the words
husband
and
death
in the same
sentence. My mother flashed her best “what a good daughter” smile. The
faded lady was looking on with interest now. She seemed to have regained a little color.
“I
am
sorry. It must have been difficult for you. But Carl is a wonder.
I’m sure he was a great help. It’s due to him we have such a good
collection. He scouts the auction catalogs, raises money for acquisitions. Even goes to
yard sales at the old houses, hunting for historical treasures.”

“Carl told me a little about Five Corners history,” I said.
“About the auction that took place after the town was abandoned. Do you know if
anything from Five Corners made its way to the society’s
collection? There’s a painting in my house, and I was wondering about it. Whether
it was painted by anyone local. Whether there might be more by the same artist.
It’s a portrait, maybe painted in the 1860s.” I didn’t mention the
possible family connection.

The lady faded again. I had to lean in to hear her muffled answer:
“The society acquired only a few things from the Five Corners. No paintings, that
I know of. And nothing from the auction.”

“I wonder why. It seems like it would have been a wonderful
opportunity.”

“Well, the society didn’t have the member base it does now.
Then acquisitions were mostly by donation.”

“I see. Of course I’d like to find out more about the Five
Corners. Does Mr. Stark’s book deal with its history, too?”

“Not much. Five Corners was a separate town, though. Not really
part of Hawley Village, ever. They had their own store and post office. Even their own
church.”

“Then the abandonment of the town wasn’t recorded in any
way? Which families went where, how long the process took?”

The faded lady had not only faded, but turned to a pillar of salt as well.
“No,” she said at last. “Nothing that’s definite. Just that
by the midtwenties, they were gone.”

“Then there wouldn’t be any documents that might shed light
on why they left?”

Faded lady took a sip of water from a Poland Spring bottle stashed under
the table. “I thought it was the painting you were interested in.”

“I’m interested in Five Corners history, in general. Since
I’m living there now.”

She toyed with her book, ruffling the pages as if she was dying to get
back to it. “Well. The Five Corners church may still contain some birth and death
records, maybe even church attendance. If no one has taken them, although I can’t
see why anyone would want to. I don’t know where in the church they’d be,
but you could look around.”

“Yes. I’ll do that. I heard the church bell chime a little
in the wind this morning, so I know
that’s
still there.”

If I thought the lady’s face was white
previously, now she looked like all the blood had been drained from her.

“But … you couldn’t have. The church
bell was one of the few things taken for this town. It was cast in 1759, for the church
at Five Corners, but it’s in our town hall now.” We all looked across the
street at the belfry that topped the town hall. It must have been open for the fair.
People in bright T-shirts were up there enjoying the view, standing around a big brass
bell. “That’s it. They only added on the bell tower here after they took
the bell from the Five Corners church. It went up in 1928.” She gave me an odd
look. “I wonder what it was you heard.”

Mom took my arm, and pinched me as she did so. “Oh, it must have
been music from the fair,” she told the faded lady. “Sounds echo off these
hills in strange ways, don’t they? When the wind is right in the summer I hear
music from the Williamstown Common concerts, and my house is two miles away.”

“That must be it then.” Our lady looked relieved.

“I’m sure it must. Look at the time! We should go,
Reve.” She propelled me down the steps. “It was lovely to
chat!”

Faded lady waved my check in the air. “Thank you again, for
becoming a friend!” It almost rhymed.

Mom steered me through a pack of children eating maple cotton candy, spun
in foamy clouds bigger than their heads.

“That was interesting. You’re right, Reve. She behaved so
oddly the moment she realized you lived at the Five Corners.”

“Maybe she’s just odd to begin with.”

“How about Carl Streeter?”

“Everybody’s strange here. It must be the water.”

“And you didn’t tell me about the bell.”

“I didn’t think much about it, until history lady had a
cow.”

“Let’s go see it. They’re letting people up.”
My mother loves a mystery. Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers are her favorite
writers.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go see the
bell.”

After climbing the narrow, dark stairway, we came up into brilliant
light. The town and the forest were laid out like a bright quilt, the saturated
colors of the trees—gold and scarlet, magenta and
emerald—scrolled out to the edge of the state and beyond, to the Green Mountains
of Vermont. Suddenly a tag of poetry flew into my head.
The woods are lovely, dark,
and deep
. I knew it was Robert Frost. I couldn’t remember the rest of
the poem at all, but the rhythm echoed through me like another pulse.

We crowded around the rail with other sightseers: a pair of teenagers
locked in an embrace, the polo-shirted man we’d seen on the historical society
porch snapping pictures of the view, his big-haired wife gripping his camera case, a
mother holding her young son back, warning him not to climb the railing. After a look at
the hills, we stepped back from the crowd and turned to the bell itself. It was cast
from bronze that had turned nearly black with age. There was writing just above the lip
of the bell, which I pointed out to Mom. All we could see on our side were the words
BEHOLD, I AM
. My mother read aloud as we walked around
the bell again: “ ‘I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I
am alive forevermore.’ ” She paused before the attribution, then
read on: “ ‘Revelation
1:18’ … it’s from the book of Revelation.
Isn’t that strange?”

It might or might not have been strange that a quote from the book of
Revelation was inscribed on the church bell. It might or might not have been a sign that
I was in the right place to keep my family alive, if not forevermore, then at least for
the usual span. But I wanted to think that it was.

We walked out of the sun into the darkness of the stairwell, which was
very like a well altogether, and smelled of damp and mouse. I’m used to
negotiating the shadowy spaces of theaters, can see in the dark better than most, but I
must have taken a false step. I lurched forward, unbalanced. I scrabbled to catch
myself, but went down anyway, hitting my elbow, my knee. I braced myself for landing on
the hard wooden floor, but when I
tumbled into the light, I was
caught by steadying hands. I fell against a man’s solid chest instead of the
floor.

I felt myself blushing an unattractive color, fuchsia, maybe. Why are we
so mortified by a stumble, a fall? After a certain age we want to stay on our feet, even
though the children we started out as are always with us, always falling, being hurt in
one way or another. We just get better at hiding it. But when I looked up at the man
who’d rescued me, I knew there was no way to hide anything. Eyes I knew too well
met mine.

“Reve!”

I would have fallen farther if he hadn’t still been holding me.
Jolon. His black hair short now, only a little graying, his lithe boy body filled out to
a man’s. His face had hardened with his body. Although he smiled at me now, it
was a long-lost smile. Maybe one he rarely used.

My mom caught up to us. “Jolon! What a surprise!”

“Ma’am.” He stepped back and let me go. Although
before he did, he made sure of my steadiness and told me, “You’re all
right, then.” He gave me a heads-up look, nodded. An old familiar gesture.
He’d picked me up many times, after all, saved me again and again from my
headlong self. I thought suddenly how unlike Jeremy he was. Jeremy who knew never to
catch me. Jeremy who knew I could take care of myself, and wanted to, more than almost
anything. I’d learned to save myself, and wanted to keep it that way. Even after
all that had happened,
that
intrinsic bit of my makeup hadn’t
changed.

“Are you visiting from away?” Mom was smiling up at him,
delighted.

He shook his head. “I live here. I’m just taking a break
from flipping burgers at the police- and firemen’s food booth. I’m
Hawley’s police chief now.”

“I didn’t know that, although
how
I didn’t
mystifies me.” Mom was usually up on all the small-town current events in western
Mass and southern Vermont, even if she wasn’t steeped in the history of the
place.

“I just transferred over from Worcester a few months ago.
I’ve lived back here for years, though. Not far from my parents’ old
place. The end of South Road, little cabin in the woods.”

Mom gave his big hand a squeeze. “I can’t say how wonderful
it is to
see you.” She shifted her eyes to me, a questioning
glance. I tried to will her to stay. She couldn’t be matchmaking, I thought. But
it seemed she was. “I should go find your father,” she said. “Let
you two catch up.”

“Mom!” I knew I sounded like the twins, shrill with
mother-induced exasperation. I made a vow never to mortify them again.

“Have to make sure he isn’t boring the girls to death with
lectures on old farm implements!” And she slipped into the crowd around the
caramel corn booth.