‘Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help.
Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn’t have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It’s why they left, I guess — it was too sad to stay.
But my ma used to claim the little fella, he stayed. She used to say that he’s still on the TR.’
I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since.
‘Then there was Kenny Auster’s father, Normal,’ she said. ‘You know that story, don’t you? Oh, that’s a terrible story.’ She looked rather pleased — either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I know Kenny, though. He’s the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.’
‘Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny’s little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side going to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn’t drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.’
I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as
lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator: help im drown.
‘He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.’
‘You aren’t going to tell me Kenny Auster’s dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs.
Meserve?’
She shook her head. ‘Nawp. He did it on the Brickers’ lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.’
‘The Brickers? I don’t — ‘
‘You wouldn’t. Hasn’t been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware.
Quality folks. You’d think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they’re gone, now, too.
Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he’ll never sell it at the price he’s asking. Mark my words.’
The Washburns I had known — had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called
‘quality.’ Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there’s nothing much — the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall.
Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump.
‘Did he leave a note? Any explanation?’
‘Nawp. But you’ll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn’t say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain’t the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much I try to get it aired out. I ‘magine that’s logs. Log buildins don’t go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.’
She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman’s purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to.
‘I can’t stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer’s ha’vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don’t let em get all dewy.’
‘I won’t.’ And I didn’t. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I’d been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just had to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.’s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest — one of my unseen guests — was saying ha ha ha.
I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business.
Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo’s death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was.
‘Lindy, do you have a town history?’ I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife.
‘We have two,’ she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, ‘Neither is much good.’
‘Which one is better?’ I asked, matching her tone.
‘Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote Dark Score Days in 1965 or ’66. He had it privately published because he couldn’t find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed.’ She sighed. ‘The locals bought it, but that’s not many books, is it?’
‘No, I suppose not,’ I said.
‘He just wasn’t much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either — those little black-and-white snaps of his make my eyes hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing’s trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nine-teen-thirties . . . ‘
‘Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?’
She nodded, smiling. ‘Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you?
I’m glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it’s in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he’d give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.’
‘So would I, but none were ever made.’ A haiku by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me: Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone? ‘What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don’t recall the name.’
‘Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,’ she said. ‘Cancer.’
‘You said there were two histories?’
‘The other one you probably know — A History of Castle County and Castle Rock. Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen’s book isn’t very well written, but he wasn’t dry.
You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.’ She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read of OF MAINE INTEREST. ‘They don’t circulate.’ Then she brightened. ‘Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.’
Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words Nice catch.
Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington’s, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the OF MAINE INTEREST shelves. But she was right — lucky or not, it had been a nice catch.
‘What are you looking for?’
I was so deep into the two histories I’d found that Mattie’s voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away.