Part 28 (1/2)

Hope Fry was back in the hammock on the sleeping porch. It was pitch dark on the porch, so dark that the ugly mesh of the black screens was invisible. Low in the western sky she could see the slender crescent of the new moon.

Across the hall Ananda was moving around. Hope could hear his hurrying footsteps going up and down the stairs again and again.

She was eager to tell him she had heard the wood thrush singing in Gowing's Swamp. But she was angry with him for not being at home for the lovely supper she had made with such special care. If he had been too sick to go with them to Gowing's Swamp this morning, he should have been too sick to go out for supper. He had spent the day with Bonnie Glover, that was obvious. Hope wasn't about to coo at him about birds, not when she was so cross at him, so disappointed.

And miserable, just miserable. It wasn't only that Hope was in love with Ananda Singh. It was something more than that. She was beginning to see the world through Ananda's eyes. She saw him moving along a path strewn with pine needles, waving aside a swarm of black flies, climbing a hillside lush with ferns, growing to the dimensions of a white oak tree, his arms poised like branches, his hands fingering out into leaves. Oh, what was he doing, running up and down the stairs like that?

There was a grinding noise outdoors. Hope sat up suddenly, and the hammock nearly dumped her on the floor. She knew that noise. It was Ananda's car. He was leaving.

Oh, but she had to talk to him, she had to. She had to tell him about the singing bird and the garden in the swamp. Hope rushed down the back staircase, not stepping on each stair but dropping down in the controlled fall she had learned in childhood.

Her father was alone in the kitchen. ”Oh, where is he going?” cried Hope.

Oliver Fry looked at her in surprise. ”He told me to say good-bye to you.”

”He hasn't gone for good?”

”Well, yes, I guess he has.”

”But where? Where is he going?” Hope strained at the jammed screen door and jerked it open.

Oliver Fry stared at his daughter. ”He's moving in with a roommate. They found a place on Belknap Street.”

Oh, it was Bonnie, of course it was Bonnie. Ananda was moving in with Bonnie Glover. A lump swelled in Hope's throat. She cast a desperate glance at her father and ran out of the kitchen. The owl shrieked. The door of the porch banged shut.

Oliver's pity went out to his daughter. He wanted her to be happya”one's children should not be wretcheda”but her present misery seemed better to him than her former bitter pride.

Outdoors in the driveway beside the house, Hope stopped short. Ananda's car was still there. The noisy engine had been turned off. The driver's seat was empty. In the glow from the kitchen window she could see the suitcase on the front seat, the boxes of books in the back.

Ananda had been about to drive to Belknap Street, and then he had changed his mind. He was nowhere to be seen. Where was he?

Hope ran out to the sidewalk and looked left and right. Then she saw him in his long white Indian s.h.i.+rt. He was pumping a bicycle, moving away toward the center of town.

She followed him. She couldn't help it. As the narrow moon dropped out of sight behind the houses on Everett Street, Hope began to run after the dim white figure rising and falling on her father's old bicycle, wheeling slowly in the direction of the Milldam.

*60*

...sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! a”Walden, ”Spring”

The Madwoman of Chaillot was opening in the theater at 51 Walden Street. The first act had been a smash hit. At intermission the audience flowed out into the open air and milled around on the sidewalk in front of the theater, smoking, sipping white wine from plastic cups, grinning at each other, looking conspicuously jolly the way one is supposed to look at such times, happy with an enviable gaiety that makes other people wonder why their own lives are so drab.

Jo-Jo Field and her husband were there, talking rapturously to Roger and Marjorie Bland. Roger would just as soon have spent the evening at home, because theatrical productions bored him, but Marjorie had explained that he had to be seen by the voters, he had to introduce himself to strangers and be amiable to all and sundry. Besides, lots of these people were probably Harvard grads, too, Marjorie said, and they'd be helping to choose new overseers. So Roger was doing his best to be a hearty good fellow.

Jack Markey and Jefferson Grandison were there for similar reasons, beaming and affable, true members of the Concord community, not menacing outsiders. Grandison had even brought along his wife, a nondescript little woman with dyed red hair.

Ananda Singh saw the crowd on the sidewalk as he rode up Walden Street on Oliver Fry's bicycle. At once he slowed to a stop and put one foot down on the pavement. Ananda was in no mood to see or be seen. He didn't want to ride into that flood of light, that worldly glarea”not when he was so wretched, not when his life was disintegrating around him.

There was a path beside the theater, leading off into the darkness. Ananda dismounted, b.u.mped the bike up on the sidewalk, left it leaning against the fence beside the path, and hurried out of the light, head down.

The path was narrow, but it led straight away from Walden Street between the theater and the savings bank next door. Apple trees lined the path. Ananda's feet kept kicking the hard little k.n.o.bs of green fruit littering the ground. To his surprise the path took him to a narrow wooden bridge. At once he guessed that the water flowing beneath it was the Mill Brook. Long ago the little stream had been dammed to make a millpond. The pond and the mill were gone, but Main Street was still called the Milldam.

The bridge was a surprise, a sanctuary in the middle of town. Ananda stopped on the bridge and leaned on the railing, looking up at the clapboarded rear wall of the First Parish Church. Above it the gold dome of the lighted steeple rose into the dark sky. Then he stared down at the black water. Along the edges of the stream, nature had crowded forward, filling every niche. Wild vines reached across it into empty air. The water itself was invisible, but he could hear it purling, moving secretly toward the river.

When he heard voices, his misery returned. People were approaching along the path. Ananda hurried to the other side of the bridge and lowered himself into the thick growth of weedy shrubs lining the sh.o.r.e. Boldly he stepped into the shallow water and waded upstream.

”Here,” said Jack Markey, stopping on the bridge, and running his hand along the railing. ”No one will bother us here.”

Jefferson Grandison moved up beside him, and together they looked down at the water. ”Well?” said Grandison.

Jack took a deep breath. ”I'm resigning,” he said. ”Well, of course I'll carry on with Walden Green, but as for everything else, I'm sorry, sir, but I'm quitting. As of right now.”

There was a pause. Then Grandison spoke very softly. ”Whatever for?”

Jack couldn't tell him the real reason, his sense of ill fortune to come, of the approach of the last days. I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe. ”It's just that I've had enough.” He turned to look at his chief, but Grandison's face was invisible in the darkness. Only his gla.s.ses glimmered at Jack. ”I think, sir, I've done all you asked of me without question or complaint.”

Jefferson Grandison spoke without emotion, his face still blank and dark. ”I'm not sure you understood me when I turned over those funds to you the other day. Not only were they to be shared with your subordinates, they were for services not yet rendered.”

Again there was a pause. ”What do you mean,” said Jack, ”not yet rendered?”

”I mean services still to be performed.”

”No,” said Jack. His voice trembled. He was overcome with a sense of injustice. ”No more. There won't be any more.” Angrily, almost weeping, he related in detail the hideous difficulties he had encountered in disposing of the body of Pete Harris. ”Oh, killing him was nothing. A gun to the head in a dark corner of the hospital parking lot in the middle of the night, nothing to it. The river was right there, so I tossed away the gun. And then I shoved Harris into the trunk of my car. But, Christ, next morning when I tried to dump him in the open place in the swamp, that a.s.shole Homer Kelly came along and saw him there, so I had to haul him out again. The d.a.m.n carca.s.s must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Two hundred and fifty swollen, stinking pounds. And then I had to figure out what to do with it. Well, what the h.e.l.l would you do? I'll tell you what I did, Ia””

”The landfill,” said Grandison at once, interrupting, grasping Jack by both arms.

”The landfill?” Jack gaped at him.

”The compactor. They've installed one. It's one of ours.”

Jack shuddered. He was filled with horror. He had a mental image of the bloated body of Pete Harris being crushed in the compactor, exploding into hideous, foul-smelling fragments. ”Oh, Christ,” he said, pulling away from Grandison.

Then they both turned their heads and stared at the water. There had been a noise, a splash, an exclamation. ”What was that?” said Grandison.