Bellows Falls (3 page)

It is not big. The village covers a single square mile. It is also strikingly photogenic, as much for its glut of statuesque nineteenth century mansions as for its glumly quaint, abandoned factories. Seen from the air, Bellows Falls protrudes like a pregnant stomach into the Connecticut River, forming a tight half-circle, at the apex of which is the dramatic, rocky cascade that gives the town its name. It owes its existence to that water’s energy, which in the early years gave the upstart, industrially minded settlers an advantage over their more staid agrarian neighbors. For a succession of grist mills, rag-paper plants, and pulp mills, the ceaseless water became literal life blood, supplying power, spawning river, rail and road transportation, and creating other tangential manufacturing. Now, as if personifying the village’s current impotence, the Connecticut’s flow is controlled by a dam sluicing water down the remains of an old canal to feed the turbines of a local utility company.

Its picture postcard prettiness may in fact best represent Bellows Falls’ most paradoxical irony—that while most other places proudly point to a few older buildings as standard-bearers of an earlier time, the past is about all this town has left to brag about. It is a pantheon of long-vanished industrial might. Ancient red brick shells can find but a few new tenants, a once thriving railroad junction has been reduced to a single platform, and the elaborate mansions have mostly been diced up into apartments by out-of-state landlords who care little about upkeep and less about their welfare tenants.

Periodically, the village erupts with face-saving activity. Meetings are held and committees formed to identify and solve the place’s underlying problems. But whether it’s half-heartedness from within, or the sheer magnitude of the task, these groups never seem to last long and sink below the surface with little flotsam left behind: a few new benches on the square, a coat of paint on an old wall, a scattering of shrubs to eventually die of neglect or abuse. Another movement was afoot right now, in fact, dedicated to the usual renaissance. It seemed better organized than its predecessors, but no one I knew was placing any bets. A museum of glories past, the name Bellows Falls had become a statewide joke, solely equated with failure.

The police station, my intended first stop, was located north of the village in a modern building it shared with the fire department, and which local wags had dubbed the House of the Seven Gables for its tortured profile. But I took the southernmost of the two interstate exits servicing Bellows Falls so I could drive through downtown. I was one of those who genuinely liked the town, despite its pratfalls and ill fortune. Its mere existence spoke of the same perseverance that drove Vermont farmers to till soil that was more rock than dirt—and to dismiss it as merely “bony.”

The southern approach to the village, no enhancement to its self-image, features a nondescript cluster of filling stations, pizza joints, video arcades and one porno store; and the first building beyond the official historical marker is a bar. But the old village center, when it appears around a gentle corner, comes as a refreshing reward. A Y-shaped “square,” with the Y opening toward the north, it is defined by the weathered red brick that once symbolized New England as an industrial powerhouse. Among the bas-reliefs and the odd crenellation or granite molding, the clock tower of the town hall looks startlingly like a miniature version of the same structure in Florence, Italy.

There are gaps in this facade—empty asphalt lots or tiny bench-equipped parks—which testify to Bellows Falls’ most biblical of afflictions. Through the decades, with the regularity of mythic rite, fire has eaten at the village. Factories, retail buildings, homes, and a few bars have gone up in smoke, all from unrelated causes. Over time, bikers, dopers, and train-delivered New York misfits had all had their turns at stamping the town with their identities. The ceaseless fires, therefore, played in some people’s minds as an eerie form of divine retribution—a viewpoint that both irritated the hard-core village boosters and occasionally left them wondering.

Currently that reputation was less lurid, sadder, and looked much tougher to cure. Bellows Falls, during the go-go eighties, had been the place to live cheaply if you worked in Springfield, Brattleboro, Walpole, or Keene. The mansions of onetime magnates went for twenty thousand dollars and rentals were plentiful and affordable. But times had changed. Values climbed, taxes kept pace, and absentee landlords carved their holdings into ever smaller and shabbier tenements. Businesses increasingly moved out or shut down, and Bellows Falls became a welfare town, rife with domestic disputes, drinking and drug use, larceny, theft, and vandalism, and a pervading undercurrent of teenage parenthood and sexual abuse. At twenty percent, the school system had a higher percentage of “special ed” kids than any other in the state.

For a small, low-key police department, it sometimes became quite a handful.

I’d met the BFPD’s chief twice, both times only long enough to exchange greetings. Emile Latour had been described to me as a homegrown product who’d joined the force after impatiently treading water as a security guard for three years following high school. Now in his late fifties, he’d been chief for some fifteen years and was locally touted as an Eisenhower-era neighborhood cop—avuncular, available, compliant with his bosses, and maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed. Unlike most of the rest of us in Vermont law enforcement, Latour kept to himself, shunning the regional meetings and conferences we increasingly used to keep in touch, and staying outside the networking loop that had developed as a byproduct. There are only eleven hundred full-time cops in Vermont, servicing a population that barely tops half a million. Yet to the few who’d heard of him, Emile Latour, despite a lifetime in the business, had managed to remain little more than a name on his department’s letterhead.

The impression was only enhanced by his appearance. As I swung out of my car in the police department parking lot and paused to enjoy the view of the broad Connecticut River across the road, a short, burly, round-bellied man with thinning white hair, a flushed complexion, and a shy smile, walked out of the building to greet me. His regulation blues fit him as comfortably as a pair of pajamas. He was a vision from a forty-year-old recruitment poster.

“Joe Gunther? Good to see you again. I’m Chief Latour. Thanks for coming up so fast.”

I shook his hand, noting its blunt, dry, dormant strength, reminiscent of my long-dead father’s. A farmer’s hand. Despite the uniform, I instantly envisioned him on his knees in a large garden, enjoying the silky dampness of earth between his fingers.

“My pleasure,” I answered. “Hope I can be useful.”

He touched my elbow and gestured toward the building’s front door. “Oh, that won’t be a problem. I don’t think this’ll lead to anything.”

From the outside, the House of the Seven Gables was weighted toward the fire department’s needs, with a row of open bay doors revealing several gleaming trucks. Once over the threshold, I became all but convinced that the police department’s tenancy had been an afterthought at best. They had a nice if compact radio dispatch room, with windows facing both the parking lot and the lobby, but beyond the inner blue door, we were faced with a cramped, ill-fitting string of narrow, short hallways, tiny rooms, and a twisting staircase. Latour’s office on the second floor was tucked under the eaves, with two skylights angled so close to the one small conference table that I had to watch my head as I pulled out a chair to sit. Legend was that the building had been the first municipal project of a young architect fresh out of school, who had among other things omitted putting heat in the basement because, as he’d explained it patiently to his challengers, “Heat sinks.”

Chief Latour, shorter and more used to the precarious proximity of his ceiling, grabbed the chair facing me without concern. “Did Tony Brandt fill you in at all?” he asked.

“He said it was a sexual harassment case.”

The chief shook his head. “It’s got to be a bum rap. The officer’s name is Brian Padget. He’s been with us two years. He’s well liked, respected, a hard worker—probably end up going to the State Police, with my luck. The complaint is he’s been pestering a married woman.”

“And the husband brought the complaint?”

Latour quickly glanced at my face. I sensed that locking eyes with other people made him uncomfortable. “Right. Norman Bouch. Not one of our model citizens. That’s one reason I think this whole thing is bullshit.”

“He have a grudge against Padget?”

He paused while the room filled with the reverberating roar of an unseen passing truck. “I don’t know that they’ve ever met,” he said eventually.

“What makes Bouch not a model citizen?”

“Nothing we could ever prove. He pretends he’s an excavation contractor. He’s got a backhoe he digs holes with around town, but everybody knows he sells dope for most of his income.”

I was a little uneasy with the assumptions. “He lives beyond his apparent means?”

Latour was now staring at the polished tips of his shoes, and smiled at my careful phrasing. “He’s got a wife and kids, a decent house, a Harley with all the fixin’s and a late-model Firebird. You figure it out.”

The conviction in his voice was absolute. I shifted my approach slightly. “Tell me a little about Padget.”

There was a fleeting glance at the wall. “Best officer I ever had.”

Given such praise, I was surprised at its brevity. “Local boy? Married? Liked by the others?” I prompted.

Latour straightened in his seat, suddenly emphatic. “No, he’s not married. But he wouldn’t fool around. I told you, he’s respected and admired—by everybody.”

I finally sensed what was eating at him. “But you think there might be something to what Bouch is claiming.”

The chief stood up, crossed the room, and resettled behind the protection of his desk.

“Are you going to interview him?” he asked.

“Not until I’ve finished my investigation. If I dig up anything criminal, a statement by him prior to being Mirandized will be thrown out in court—the judge’ll say he was coerced into talking for fear of being fired.”

Latour flapped his hand as if to shoo me away, no doubt regretting his having called Brandt in the first place. “Criminal? Christ Almighty. Bouch is just trying to bust our chops.”

“Does Padget know about the allegation?”

“Sure he does. I told him. He denied it completely. I’ve put him on paid leave till this is cleared up.”

“And he knows I’ve been asked to check it out?”

Latour gave a rueful half-smile. “By now, I’d say the whole department does.”

“What’s the general consensus?”

“They all think like I do. Bouch is just doing a number. It happens a lot, especially in this town. Do you know what they call Bellows Falls at the police academy? ‘Dodge City’—I kid you not. Our crime stats are in the top four or five for the state year after year, and we’re a quarter Brattleboro’s size—thirty-eight hundred people, tops. Besides me, I got one sergeant, six officers, and a bunch of part-timers. My other sergeant’s with the drug task force for two more years. We’re sitting ducks.”

“Does Bouch get much of your business?” I asked, hoping to head off more complaining.

“We’ve gone to his house for disturbances—domestic abuse stuff, drunk and disorderly. We’ve held him overnight to dry out, but no one’s ever filed charges against him.”

I rose and prepared to leave, my mind chasing after a dozen diverging questions. I had my doubts, however, that Chief Latour was the unbiased source I needed for answers.

· · ·

I left to get my bearings—drive around, clear my head, and see the town. Latour had grumpily given me Padget’s and Bouch’s addresses. I wanted to check out the latter’s first but took the scenic route to get there.

The geographical protuberance I thought of as Bellows Falls’ pregnant belly is called the Island, although it is only the canal that has made it such. Nevertheless, that barrier has led to a wholly separate identity, consisting largely of an empty railroad yard and station, a few half-abandoned factories and warehouses, a couple of businesses, and an impressive view of the cascade and Fall Mountain beyond. It is like a failing industrial park hogging the best real estate in the area.

The next longitudinal stratum to Bellows Falls, west of the canal, is the downtown corridor I’d driven through on Rockingham Street, resolutely turned in on itself around its oddly shaped square, and—as in Brattleboro and many other older New England towns—with its back turned against the natural scenery.

Prominent above downtown is Cherry Hill, an oblong rise bisecting the village, and jammed with an assortment of schools, churches, a cemetery, and some of the town’s famous and ubiquitous white clapboard housing—both pleasant Greek Revival single-family homes and several squalid three-deckers, bursting at the seams with down-and-out tenants.

Skirting Cherry Hill’s western slope, Atkinson parallels Rockingham Street but is overwhelmingly lined with residential buildings. It exposes the village’s social extremes most clearly, with some of its more spectacular mansions snuggling up to the seediest flophouses. Atkinson, and the side streets extending across a narrow flat section to its west, are where the vast majority of the town’s inhabitants live. It is a beehive-like neighborhood—rich, poor, elaborate, and plain—virtually crawling with people and stamped by their passage. Toys, bikes, cars abandoned and functional, swing sets, birdbaths, and assorted debris all lie scattered among the houses like yard sale rejects. More vivid than the dramatic setting, overwhelming the spectacular architecture, is the sense of people in this town. They appear to live everywhere, as on an overloaded riverboat.

Predictably, from what Latour had portrayed, Bouch had chosen this area to call home.

His house was easy to spot, being marked by a backhoe and a gravel truck, both looking the worse for wear. But it was the Harley that caught my eye—and the man working on it.

Dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and work boots, Norm Bouch at first glance looked like any other working-class male, his head buried in a motor and his hands covered with grease. But as I drove slowly by, I noticed the precision with which he handled his tools and the perfect balance he maintained as he moved. Like a relaxing predator, he showed confidence and grace and exuded an indefinable sense of menace.