Theater Macabre (17 page)

I'm almost done. After I've finished this, I'm going to finish this bottle of whiskey and then snap as many of their strings as I can until nothing holds me to them any more. Until I can no longer move. Only watch.

What will they do
then
, I wonder?

A Letter from Phoenix

I had never seen a congregation so large in Harperville outside of the weekly meetings at the town hall, where matters both critical and commonplace were treated with equal respect and voices were seldom raised. Those tiresome gatherings were presided over by the same man who served as the focal point for today’s hastily summoned conference, and to him we could apportion at least some of the blame for the tediousness of each event.

Mayor Rickman wore only one expression, and it was just as well. Severity suited him; all others did not. A smile, or a look of surprise, would have been akin to a Halloween mask on a nun. It was something we never expected to see. But that dry, humorless face had a habit of draining the joy from everyone forced to look upon it. It also made the mayor, who was only 5”7 and of average build, seem more threatening than he actually was. This was enough to ensure we gave him the respect afforded him by his position.

On this particular morning, the town, or a good-sized portion of it, had gathered without ceremony and with little regard for subtlety, in Rickman’s office. It was a significant move, for generally it was unacceptable to see the mayor without prior appointment. His secretary, Wen Glosserman, a hatchet-faced woman forever dressed in a shapeless gray smock with absurdly incongruent daffodil yellow trim, guarded Rickman’s oak door with the tenacity of a pit bull. It was the opinion of most of the townspeople that reasoning with the dog would yield better results.

Sheer number, however, had stunned her into acquiescing to the people’s demands that day. She could only turn her colorless gaze on so many of us before, as one, we made for the door. Against what was in essence a human battering ram, good sense spirited the secretary back behind her desk before she was trampled to death. I doubt anyone, not even Rickman, would have mourned her passing should she have chosen to stand firm, particularly in light of the distraction the butcher, Elwin Crook, provided for him in the moments following our intrusion. Why Elwin, a ruddy man of little grace, with beady eyes and a porcine snout, should have been chosen as the one to deliver the all-important missive, was beyond me.

“What is this?” Rickman asked, his hooded eyes searching the butcher’s face. In one hand he held the letter Crook had unceremoniously deposited on the polished mahogany desk at which the mayor sat. Though we’d barged in and found him in his usual state of business and preoccupation, it was unclear what it was he’d been doing. The desk was bare but for a black ink blotter and a pen. The cheerful morning sun cast slanted bars of hazy golden light on either side of him through the tall mullioned windows at his back. Dust motes danced in lazy patterns.

“You might want to read it and see for yourself,” said Veronica Sanders, the principal of the elementary school. Her cheeks were as red as her hair from the force of the ire that had propelled her here. The fire of that passion was visible in everyone else’s face too. Nobody knew what would come of this, but whatever eventually transpired, they knew they would be largely responsible. Riding the crest of that petulance was a thread of resentment at their being put in this position in the first place, and it was aimed Rickman’s way. He had been elected to ensure such things never became an issue.

The mayor studied each face in turn, at least those visible, for the crowd stretched out into the outer office where the secretary sat at her desk looking defeated and shamed, but if he sensed that electric current of dissension toward him, it did not show.

After settling his gaze on me, Rickman gave a little nod of acknowledgment, then brought his attention to the letter.

“Something has to be done,” a small voice said, the interruption to the sudden silence welcome. “We can’t have this. Not here.”

“Like I said, as long as we know for sure,” was the contribution of a conscientious other. “And we’re not making a terrible mistake.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous.”

“You saw the letter,” the carpenter Albert Stall snapped and unthinkingly spat a thick wad of phlegm on the plush maroon carpet.

“This isn’t your workshop,” Rickman said flatly, without raising his eyes from the letter. “Kindly remember your manners.”

“Sorry,” Albert said, visibly castigated. “It’s just—”

“We’re all a bit out of sorts,” Jim Laramie the high school football coach interrupted, his muscles flexing with the need for affirmative action. “I mean…we maintain good family values in this town. We’ve fought long and hard to keep them that way. Only…” He shook his head. “Only for
this
to happen. To
us
.”

“Should be grateful we didn’t just go and lynch him,” murmured another.

“Just let him finish the letter,” the jeweler Abigail Wray suggested. As always, she looked radiant, and bare of the wares she could so easily have wreathed around her neck and wrists as an advertisement for her store.

We looked back at Rickman, and some of the tension seemed to leave the crowd, the sense of panicked obligation slowly ebbing away, transferred by osmosis to the man in charge of such things, the man we’d appointed to protect the town.

The letter was a lengthy one, a mistake by some misguided soul who hadn’t predicted its discovery.

“How did you find this?” Rickman asked.

The crowd shuffled, making a hole large enough to accept the obese form of Sal Appleton, the postmaster. His sweat-darkened blue shirt was untucked, belly button peering out like a curious eye from between the tails. “I intercepted it,” he said, proudly.

Rickman looked up. “You
intercepted
it?”

“Yes sir.”

“And what cause did you have to go looking through the mail?”

The pride faltered. “Mayor?”

The crowd began to look at their neighbors for support. I knew what they were thinking:
Is our cause going to be derailed on a bullshit technicality like that? Did he even
read
the thing?

“I said: what cause did you have to go searching the mail? What was your motive, or is this something you do on a regular basis?”

Now Appleton looked uncomfortable. “No sir. I don’t look through the mail. Ever. I…it was something Corman said to me.” He looked desperately around for Pete Corman, one of his mail carriers, to back him up. But Corman wasn’t there. He was, most likely, delivering the mail. Not everyone yet knew about what had happened in our town, and not all of those who did could afford to take time off to join a lynch mob. Not even, it seemed, the one who had planted the seed that was now blossoming in Mayor Rickman’s office.

“Appleton?”

The postmaster looked apologetic. “Mayor, Corman put the idea into my head, or at least, he gave me reason to believe we had one of
them
in our town.”

“And where is Corman now?”

“Dunno.”

“How appropriate that the men we’re eagerly pinning badges of blame on today are nowhere to be seen, and so can neither confirm nor deny any of the accusations.”

Appleton swallowed, cleared his throat. “I’m not blaming Corman. Not at all. It was just what he told me, that’s all. Got me worried.”

“And what was that?”

“Mayor?”

“What did he tell you?” asked Rickman, patiently.

“He told me he thought Wesley Noon had been acting funny.”

“Funny how?”

“Antsy.”

“Antsy, I see. And that’s justification for a violation of the man’s privacy, is it?”

“It was more than that. Noon was drunk one day—I think Corman said it was just after the May festival—and he was sitting on his stoop drinking from a bottle of whiskey. He was weeping.”

“And?”

“And when Corman dropped off his mail, Noon was a mess. Said he was expecting a letter from Phoenix. When Corman told him he was out of luck—“nothing but bills,” he said—he went crazy. Smashed the bottle and demanded that Corman give him the letter. Which of course, he couldn’t, because he didn’t have it. Didn’t even know what the hell Noon was raving about. So Corman got out of there, scared that Noon was going to follow him. But he didn’t.”

Rickman inspected the letter. It was unclear how much of it he’d read. Then he raised his eyes again and looked at the postmaster. “This doesn’t sound like Wesley Noon to me. He’s a cop. He’s kept us together many times when it looked like we were going to crumble, do you recall?”

Though he’d been addressing Appleton, a low murmur of assent passed through the crowd.

“One might even say there wouldn’t
be
a town if not for his efforts.”

The assent was a little more subdued, a little less audible this time.

Then, like a soldier asked to give rank and serial number, Tom Garland stepped forth from the crowd, his eighty-two year old spine as straight as he could make it. Tom was old school, knew what he wanted, and maintained to anyone who’d listen that he knew exactly how to get it too. He’d served in the war, and wasn’t about to have his dotage corrupted by abominations on the soil for which he’d so arduously fought. His pale blue eyes fixed on the mayor, he nodded respectfully and said, “That’s a pile of horseshit, Rickman.”

Unperturbed, the mayor set the letter down and clasped his hands on the blotter. “I beg your pardon?”

“He’s one of
them
, you understand?” Tom said, his voice like someone raking pebbles. “And our town charter, never mind every goddamn law in the country, states that
they
aren’t allowed here. Not anymore. Not after what they did to us. So rather than giving Appleton the third degree, why don’t you quit stalling and tell us what you plan to do about this?”

“Damn right,” someone said.

“You said it, Tom,” added another.

“You know the procedure as well as I do,” Rickman said. “But I’m not about to have a good citizen removed from this town based on a letter and the suspicions of a snooping postmaster, who, I might add, is about the most guilty man in the room right now. A lot of things have changed in this country over the past ten years, but the consequences for tampering with the mail isn’t one of them.”

“With all due respect,” Veronica Sanders said. “Tom’s got a point. What Appleton did might be illegal, but surely concessions can be made based on the fruit of his investigation?” She indicated the letter. “If not for him, we might never have found out about this.”

“And quite frankly,” said Tabitha Farris, the librarian, “I don’t see how you can doubt the veracity of the claim when proof of it is right there in front of you.” Her carefully plucked eyebrows were arched like church windows.

“I can doubt it,” Rickman told her, “because words can be interpreted any number of ways.” He unclasped his hands and tapped an index finger against the letter. “Did any one of you stop to consider that the declarations of love in this letter might be unrequited? That Wesley has been getting them and is just as alarmed as we are by their content?”

“You heard Appleton,” Tom Garland said, with disdain. “Noon was
waiting
for a letter from Phoenix. Why wait for a letter you don’t want?”

“And why are you so quick to defend him anyway?” someone else piped up.

Abruptly, there was dead silence. Heads turned to see who had spoken, but no one stepped forth, raised a hand, or otherwise made themselves known. It was a dangerous moment. Calling the town sheriff’s character into question was bad enough, but questioning the mayor’s was worse. Abruptly the townspeople found themselves balanced on a precarious slope. From here, things could go either way.

At length, Rickman spoke. “If it seems to you good people that I’m trying to poke holes in your theory, you’re correct. It’s called being thorough. It’s called covering your ass. I like my job, as I’m sure do all of you. We live in a pleasant little town that is the envy of many others. We’ve come al long way in a short amount of time. What you’re proposing here is that I put all of that in jeopardy to accuse a man who has never appeared any different from us, who has risked his life a hundred times over to
help
us, of being an Outsider. One of you expressed a concern earlier that we might be making a mistake. If we are, we stand to lose a good neighbor, a good friend, and a damned good policeman, our
only
policeman. And we’ll have lost him because we chose to throw all our compassion and love for the man out the window.” He raised the letter. The sun turned it transparent, revealing the spidery handwriting that had led us here. “Because of this.”

After a few moments of uncertain silence, Tom Garland asked, “So what do we do?”

“We ask the one person in the room who knows him better than anyone,” Rickman said.

Everyone turned to look at me.

*

“The fact that he’s here should be enough,” Jim Laramie said, jerking a thumb in my direction.

Rickman nodded his agreement, but didn’t break eye contact with me. “John? Have you anything to add?”

I have never been comfortable under close scrutiny, but at that moment I realized how important it was that I face this head-on and swallow my discomfort. I had instigated this, more or less, brought the town here to let them know the truth about Wesley Noon.

About my brother.

“It’s true,” I said. “Wesley’s an Outsider.”

“Can you present any evidence to solidify that claim?”

“Only my own testimony.”

“And what makes you so sure this is the case?”

“He told me, not in so many words of course, but any fool could see what he meant. Besides, I’ve always had my suspicions.”

“When did you speak to him?”

“Last Thursday night. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. He called me, drunk, as he seems to be more often than not these days. He was upset, started on about how he was being haunted by memories of the old days, felt shamed that he had wandered off the path meant for him. He said that in the days before the Handover, he had falsified documents to persuade the authorities that he was one of us.”