The Tommyknockers Read online

  Of course, a pound went a lot further in those days.

  2

  When Hugh Crane died in 1826, there were a hundred and three residents of Montville Plantation. Loggers swelled the population to twice that for six or seven months of the year, but they didn't really count, because they took their little bit of money into Derry, and it was in Derry that they usually settled when they grew too old to work the woods anymore. In those days, "too old to work the woods anymore" usually meant about twenty-five.

  Nevertheless, by 1826 the settlement which would eventually become Haven Village had begun to grow up along the muddy road leading north toward Derry and Bangor.

  Whatever you called it (and eventually it became, except in the memory of the oldest old-timers, like Dave Rutledge, plain old Route 9), that road was the one the loggers had to take when they went to Derry at the end of each month to spend their pay drinking and whoring. They saved their serious spending for the big town, but most were willing to bide long enough at Cooder's Tavern and Lodging-House to lay the dust with a beer or two on the way. This wasn't much, but it was enough to make the place a successful little business. The General Mercantile across the road (owned and operated by Hiram Cooder's nephew) was less successful but still a marginally profitable business. In 1828, a Barber Shop and Small Surgery (owned and operated by Hiram Cooder's cousin) opened next to the General Mercantile. In those days it was not unusual to stroll into this lively, growing establishment and see a logger reclining in one of the three chairs, having the hair on his head cut, the cut in his arm stitched, and a couple of large bloodsuckers from the jar by the cigar-box reposing above each closed eye, turning from gray to red as they swelled, simultaneously protecting against any infection from the cut and taking away that malady which was then known as "achin' brains." In 1830, a hostelry and feed store (owned by Hiram Cooder's brother George) opened at the south end of the village.

  In 1831, Montville Plantation became Coodersville.

  No one was very surprised.

  Coodersville it remained until 1864, when the name was changed to Montgomery, in honor of Ellis Montgomery, a local boy who had fallen at Gettysburg, where, some say, the 20th Maine preserved the Union all by itself. The change seemed a fine idea. After all, the town's one remaining Cooder, crazy old Albion, had gone bankrupt and committed suicide two years before.

  In the years following the end of the Civil War, a craze, as inexplicable as most crazes, swept the state. This craze was not for hoop skirts or sideburns; it was a craze for giving small towns classical names. Hence, there is a Sparta, Maine; a Carthage; an Athens; and, of course, there was Troy right next door. In 1878, the residents of the town voted to change the town's name yet again, this time from Montgomery to Ilium. This provoked a tearful tirade at town meeting from the mother of Ellis Montgomery. In truth, the tirade was more senile than ringing, the hero's mother being by then full of years--seventy--five of them, to be exact. Town legend has it that the townsfolk listened patiently, a little guiltily, and that the decision might even have been recanted (Mrs. Montgomery was surely right, some thought, when she said that fourteen years was hardly the "immortal memory" her dead son had been promised at the name-changing ceremonies which had taken place on July 4th, 1864) if the good lady's bladder hadn't picked that particular moment to let go. She was helped from the town-meeting hall, still ranting about ungrateful Philistines who would rue the day.

  Montgomery became Ilium, just the same.

  Twenty-two years passed.

  3

  Came a fast-talking revival preacher who for some reason bypassed Derry and elected instead to spread his tent in Ilium. He went by the name of Colson, but Myrtle Duplissey, Haven's self-appointed historian, eventually became convinced that Colson's real name was Cooder, and that he was the illegitimate son of Albion Cooder.

  Whoever he was, he won most of the Christians in town over to his own lively version of the faith by the time the corn was ready for picking--much to the despair of Mr. Hartley, who ministered to the Methodists of Ilium and Troy, and Mr. Crowell, who looked after the spiritual welfare of Baptists in Ilium, Troy, Etna, and Unity (the joke in those days was that Emory Crowell's parsonage belonged to the town of Troy, but his piles belonged to God). Nevertheless, their exhortations were voices crying in the wilderness. Preacher Colson's congregation continued to grow as that well-nigh perfect summer of 1900 drew toward its conclusion. To call the crops of that year "bumpers" was to poor-mouth them; the thin northern New England earth, usually as stingy as Scrooge, that year poured forth a bounty which seemed never-ending. Mr. Crowell, the Baptist whose piles belonged to God, grew depressed and silent and, three years later, hung himself in the cellar of the Troy parsonage.

  Mr. Hartley, the Methodist minister, grew ever more alarmed by the evangelical fervor which was sweeping Ilium like a cholera epidemic. Perhaps this was because Methodists are, under ordinary circumstances, the most undemonstrative worshipers of God; they listen not to sermons but to "messages," pray mostly in decorous silence, and consider the only proper places for congregation-spoken amens to be at the end of the Lord's Prayer and those few hymns not sung by the choir. But now these previously undemonstrative people were doing everything from speaking in tongues to holy rolling. Next, Mr. Hartley sometimes said, they will be handling snakes. The Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday meetings in the revival tent beside Derry Road became steadily louder, wilder, and more emotionally explosive. "If it was happening in a carnival tent, they'd call it hysteria," he told Fred Perry, a church deacon and his only close friend, one night over glasses of sherry in the church rectory. "Because it's happening in a revival tent, they can get away with calling it Pentecostal Fire."

  Rev. Hartley's suspicions of Colson were amply justified in the course of time, but before then Colson fled, having harvested a goodly crop of cold cash and warm women instead of punkins and taters. And before then he put his lasting stamp on the town by changing its name for the final time.

  His sermon on that hot August night began with the subject of the harvest as a symbol of God's great reward, and then moved on to the subject of this very town. By this time, Colson had stripped off his frock coat. His sweatsoaked hair had tumbled in his eyes. The sisters had commenced getting down in the amen corner, although it would be yet a while before the speaking in tongues and the holy rolling got going.

  "I consider this town sanctified," Colson told his audience, gripping the sides of his pulpit with his big hands--he might have considered it sanctified for some reason other than the fact that his honored self had chosen it in which to spread his tent (not to mention his seed), but if so, he didn't say so. "I consider it a haven. Yes! I have found a haven here that reminds me of my haven-home, a lovely land maybe not so different from the one Adam and Eve knew before they went picking fruit from that tree they should have left alone. Sanctified!" Preacher Colson bellowed. Years after, there were members of his congregation who still spoke admiringly of how that man could shout for Jesus, scoundrel or not.

  "Amen!" the congregation cried back. The night, though warm, was perhaps not quite warm enough to completely explain the blushes on so many feminine cheeks and brows; such flushes had become common since Preacher Colson came to town.

  "This town is nothing short of a glory to God!"

  "Hallelujah!" the congregation yelled jubilantly. Breasts heaved. Eyes sparkled. Tongues slipped out and wetted lips.

  "This town has got a promise!" Preacher Colson shouted, now striding rapidly back and forth, occasionally flicking his black locks back from his forehead with a quick snap that showed his cleanly corded neck to good advantage. "This town has got a promise and that promise is the fullness of the harvest, and that promise shall be fulfilled!"

  "Praise Jesus!"

  Colson came back to the pulpit, grasped it, and looked out at them forbiddingly. "So why you want to have a town which promises the harvest of God and the haven of God--why you want to have a town that speaks of those
things named after some dago is more than I can figure out, brethern. Must have been the devil working somewhere in the last generation is all I can figure."

  Talk about changing the town's name from Ilium to Haven began the very next day. The Rev. Mr. Crowell protested the change listlessly, the Rev. Mr. Hartley much more strongly. Ilium's selectmen were neutral, except to point out that it would cost the town twenty dollars to change the Papers of Incorporation on file in Augusta, and probably another twenty to change the municipal road signs. Not to mention the letterheads on town documents and stationery.

  Long before the March town meeting at which Article 14, "To see if the town will approve changing the name of Incorporated Maine Town #193 from ILIUM to HAVEN," was discussed and voted on, Preacher Colson had literally folded his tent. and stolen into the night. Said folding and stealing took place on the night of September 7th, following what Colson had for weeks been calling the great Harvest Home Revival of 1900. He'd been making it clear for at least a month that he considered it the most important meeting he would hold in town this year; perhaps the most important meeting he ever held, even if he should settle here, something he felt more and more often that God was calling him to do--and didn't that news just make the ladies' hearts go pitty-pat! It was, he said, to be a great love-offering to the loving God who had provided the town with such a wonderful growing season and harvest.

  Colson did some harvesting of his own. He began by cajoling the attendees to give the largest "love-offering" of his stay, and finished by plowing and planting not two, not four, but six young maidens in the field behind the tent after the meeting.

  "Men love to talk big, but I guess most of em pack derringers in their pants no matter how big they talk," old Duke Barfield said in the barbershop one evening. If there had been a Stinkiest Man in Town contest, old Duke would have won hands down. He smelled like a pickled egg that has spent a month in a mud puddle. He was listened to, but at a distance, and upwind, if there was a wind to make this possible. "I heerd o men with double-barrel shotguns in their pants, and I reckon it's so every once n agin, and once't I even heerd tell o some fella had him a three-shot pistol, but that fucker Colson's the only man I ever heerd of who come packin a six-shooter."

  Three of Preacher Colson's conquests were virgins before the invasion of the Pentecostal pecker.

  The love-offering that night in the late summer of 1900 was indeed generous, although the barbershop gossips differed on just how generous the monetary part of it had been. All agreed that, even before the great Harvest Home Revival, where the preaching had gone on until ten, the gospel-singing until midnight, and the field-fucking until well past two, there had been a great outpouring of hard cash. Some also pointed out that Colson hadn't had many expenses during his stay, either. The women damn near fought for the privilege of bringing him his meals, the fellow who now owned the hostelry made him the long-term loan of a buggy ... and, of course, no one at all charged him for his nightly entertainments.

  On the morning of September 8th, tent and preacher were gone. He had harvested well ... and seeded with equal success. Between January 1st and town meeting in late March 1901, nine illegitimate children, three girls and six boys, were born in the area. All nine of these "love-children" bore a remarkable resemblance each to the other--six had blue eyes, and all were born with lusty crops of black hair. The barbershop gossips (and no group of men on earth can so successfully marry logic and prurience as these idlers farting into wicker chairs as they roll cigarettes or drive brown bullets of tobacco-juice into tin spittoons) also pointed out that it was hard telling just how many young girls had left "to visit relatives" downstate, in New Hampshire, or even all the way down to Massachusetts. It was also pointed out that quite a few married women in the area had given birth between January and March. About those women, who knew for sure? But the barbershop gossips of course knew what had happened on March 29th, after Faith Clarendon gave birth to a bouncing eight-pound baby boy. A wild wet norther was whooping around the eaves of the Clarendon house, dropping 1901's last large budget of snow until November. Cora Simard, the midwife who had delivered the baby, was in a half-doze by the kitchen stove, waiting for her husband Irwin to finally make his way through the storm and take her home. She saw Paul Clarendon approach the crib where his new son lay--it was on the other side of the stove, in the corner which was warmest--and stand looking fixedly down at the new baby for over an hour. Cora made the dreadful error of mistaking Paul Clarendon's fixed stare for wonder and love. Her eyes drifted closed. When she awoke from her doze, Paul Clarendon was standing over the crib with his straight-razor in his hand. He seized the baby by its thick crop of blue-black hair, and before Cora could unlock her throat to scream, he had cut its throat. He left the room without a word. A moment later she heard wet gargling sounds coming from the bedroom. When a terrified Irwin Simard finally found the courage to enter the Clarendon bedroom, he found man and wife on the bed, hands joined. Clarendon had cut his wife's throat, laid down beside her, grasped her right hand with his left, and then cut his own. All this happened two days after the town had voted to change its name.

  4

  The Rev. Mr. Hartley was dead-set against changing the town's name to one suggested by a man who had proved to be a thief, fornicator, false prophet, and all-around snake in the grass. He had said as much from his pulpit and had noted the agreeing nods from his parishioners with an almost vindictive pleasure that was really not much like him. He came to the town meeting held on March 27th, 1901, confident that Article 14 would be resoundingly voted down. He was not even troubled by the brevity of discussion between the Town Clerk's reading of the article and Head Selectman Luther Ruvall's laconic, "What's y'pleasure, people?" If he had had the slightest inkling, Hartley would have spoken vehemently, even furiously, for the only time in his life. But he never had so much as an inkling.

  "Those in favor signify by sayin aye," Luther Ruvall said, and at the solid--if not very passionate--Aye! that shook the roof-beams, Hartley felt as if he had been punched in the gut. He stared around wildly, but it was too late. The strength of the Aye! had taken him so totally by surprise that he had no idea how many from his own congregation had turned on him and voted the other way.

  "Wait--" he said aloud in a strangled voice that nobody heard.

  "Those opposed?"

  A scattered straggle of Nays. Hartley tried to scream his, but the only sound to escape his throat was a nonsense syllable--Nik!

  "Motion's carried," Luther Ruvall said. "Now, Article 15--"

  The Rev. Mr. Hartley suddenly felt warm--much too warm. He felt, in fact, as though he might faint. He pushed his way through standing throngs of men in red-and-black-checked shirts and muddy flannel pants, through clouds of acrid smoke puffed from corncobs and cheap cigars. He still felt faint, but now he felt that he might also vomit before he fainted. A week later he would not be able to understand the depth of his shock, so deep it was really horror. A year later he would not even acknowledge that he had felt such an emotion.

  He stood on the top town-hall step, snatching great swoops of forty-degree air, clutching the handrail in a death-grip, and looked out across fields of melting snow. In places it had now drawn back enough to show the muddy earth beneath, and he thought with vicious crudity that was also unlike him that the fields looked like splotches of shit on the tail of a nightshirt. For the first and only time, he felt a bitter envy for Bradley Colson--or Cooder, if that was his real name. Colson had run away from Ilium ... oh, beg your pardon, from Haven. He had run, and now Donald Hartley found himself wishing he could do the same. Why did they do it? Why? They knew what he was, they knew! So why did they--

  A strong, warm hand fell on his back. He turned and saw his good friend Fred Perry. Fred's long, homely face looked distressed and concerned, and Hartley felt an unwilling smile cross his face.

  "Don, are you all right?" Fred Perry asked.

  "Yes. I had a moment in there when I felt light-headed. It
was the vote. I didn't expect it."

  "Nor I," Fred replied.

  "My parishioners were part of it," Hartley said. "They had to have been. It was so loud, they had to have been, don't vou think?"

  "Well ..."

  The Rev. Mr. Hartley smiled a little. "I apparently do not know as much about human nature as I thought I did."

  "Come back in, Don. They're going to take up paving Ridge Road."

  "I think I'll stay out awhile longer," Hartley said, "and think about human nature." He paused, and just as Fred Perry was turning to go back, the Rev. Mr. Donald Hartley asked, almost appealed: "Do you understand, Fred? Do you understand why they did it? You're almost ten years older than I. Do you understand it?"

  And Fred Perry, who had shouted out his own Aye! from behind a curled fist, shook his head and said no; he didn't understand at all. He did like the Rev. Mr. Hartley. He did respect the Rev. Mr. Hartley. But in spite of those things (or maybe--just maybe--because of them), he had taken a mean and spiteful pleasure in voting for a name suggested by Colson: Colson the false prophet, Colson the confidence man, Colson the thief, Colson the seducer.

  No, Fred Perry did not understand human nature at all.

  2.

  'BECKA PAULSON

  1

  Rebecca Bouchard Paulson was married to Joe Paulson, one of Haven's two mail carriers and one-third of Haven's postal staff. Joe was cheating on his wife, something Bobbi Anderson knew already. Now 'Becka Paulson knew it as well. She had known it for the last three days. Jesus told her. In the last three days or so, Jesus had told her the most amazing, terrible, distressing things imaginable. They sickened her, they destroyed her sleep, they were destroying her sanity ... but weren't they also sort of wonderful? Boy howdy! And would she stop listening, maybe just tip Jesus over on His face, or scream at Him to shut up? Absolutely not. For one thing, there was a grisly sort of compulsion in knowing the things Jesus told her. For another, He was the Savior.