Peyton Place (14 page)

Allison fell off the packing crate and lay on the cold ground. Her whole body was wet with perspiration and the world seemed to undulate over her and around her. She panted with the effort to fight off the blackness that threatened her from every side, but she had to give way to the nausea that fought its way out of her throat.

Now it was winter and the town lay frozen under a low, gray sky that held no visible sun. The children, clad in bright snow suits although there was still no snow, hurried on their way to school, eager now to reach the comfortable, steam-heated buildings that awaited them at the end of Maple Street. The wooden benches in front of the courthouse were deserted; the old men who had kept them filled all summer had long since moved into the chairs around the stove in Tuttle's Grocery Store. Everyone waited for the snows which had been threatening to arrive since before Thanksgiving, but the ground was still bare in this first week of January.

“The cold'd snap if we got some snow,” said one of the old men in Tuttle's.

“Sure looks like we'd get some today.”

“Nope. It's too cold to snow.”

“That's foolishness,” said Clayton Frazier. He lit his pipe and stared into the bowl until he was satisfied with its glow. “Snow's in Siberia all the time, and the thermometer falls to sixty below over there. “Tain't never too cold to snow.”

“That don't make no difference. This ain't Siberia. It's too cold to snow in Peyton Place.”

“No, ’tain't,” said Clayton Frazier.

“Them fellers still down in the cellar?” asked the man who was so sure that it would not snow that he declined to discuss the matter further with Clayton Frazier.

This was the big topic of conversation in Peyton Place and had been since before Christmas. It had become so familiar that there was no longer any need for anyone to ask, “What fellers?” or “What cellar?”

On the first of December, Kenny Stearns, Lucas Cross and five other men had disappeared into Kenny's cellar where Kenny stored the twelve barrels of cider which he had made early in the fall. They had been armed with several cases of beer and as many bottles of liquor as they could carry, and they had remained in the cellar ever since. The men had fastened a strong, double bolt attachment to the inside of the door and so far the efforts of any outsider to penetrate this barricade had been futile.

“I seen one of the school kids headed over that way yesterday with a bagful of groceries,” said one of the old men, putting his feet up on the warm stove in Tuttle's. “Ast ’im what he was doin’, and he told me Kenny'd sent ’im for food.”

“How'd the kid get into the cellar?”

“Didn't. Told me Kenny handed the money out through the cellar window and took in the groceries the same way.”

“The kid see anything?”

“Nope. Said Kenny's got this black curtain fastened to the inside of the window so's nobody can see in, and he said Kenny no more than opened the window a slit to pass out the money and take in the stuff.”

“What do you suppose made them fellers go down there and stay all this time?”

“Dunno. There's some say that Kenny promised the next time he caught Ginny runnin’ out he was gonna go on a drunk like nobody ever seen. Reckon this is it.”

“Reckon so. Them fellers been down in that cellar goin’ on six weeks now.”

“Wonder if they run out of booze yet. Twelve barrels of hard cider don't go too damn far. Not with seven of ’em drinkin’.”

“Dunno. Somebody said they seen Lucas over to White River one night, late. Drunk as a lord he was, with a beard a foot long. Mebbe he sneaks out at night and goes over to White River to get more drink.”

“Six weeks. Jesus! I'll bet a nickel they don't even have any beer left, let alone hard stuff.”

“Can't understand why Buck McCracken don't put a stop to it, though.”

“Reckon the sheriff's ashamed, that's why. His own brother is down in the cellar with Kenny and them.”

“Wish I could be a fly on the wall down there, by God. Must be goin's on in that cellar that'd make a man's blood run cold.”

“You'd think the cold would freeze ’em out.”

“Naw. Ginny told me Kenny's got an old Franklin stove down there, and he'd got in his cord wood long before him and the fellers went down to stay. Ginny said she had to move out because she couldn't get down to get wood for the stoves up in the house.”

The men laughed. “Reckon Ginny don't need no wood fire to keep
her
warm!”

“Wonder what Ginny's doin’ for company these cold nights. With all her boy friends down in that cellar, she must be gettin’ a trifle lonesome.”

“Not Ginny Stearns,” said Clayton Frazier. “Not by a long shot.”

Several men snickered. “How do you know, Clayton? You been takin’ up where the others left off?”

Before Clayton could answer, a group of school children came trooping into the store and the men ceased talking. The youngsters crowded around Tuttle's penny candy counter, and the men around the stove smoked silently, waiting. When the children had spent their pennies and one lone boy had bought a loaf of bread, the men rustled themselves and prepared to talk again.

“Wa'nt that the Page kid? The one that bought the bread?”

“Yep. Never seen a kid with such a pinched-lookin’ face. Don't know what it is exactly. He's better dressed than most kids and his mother's comfortably fixed. Yet, that kid has the look of a starvin’ orphan.”

“It's his age,” said Clayton Frazier. “Growin’ pains.”

“Mebbe. He's growed fast in the last year. Could be that's what makes him so pale lookin’.”

“Nope,” disagreed Clayton, “that ain't it. He's just got one of them dead fish skins, like his mother. His father wa'nt ever too ruddy himself.”

“Poor old Oakleigh Page. Reckon he's better off in his grave than he was alive with all them wimmin fightin’ over him all the time.”

“Yep,” the men agreed. “’Twa'nt no life for a man.”

“Oh, I dunno,” said Clayton Frazier. “Seems to me like Oakleigh Page ast for all his troubles.”

“Ain't nobody asks for trouble.”

“Oakleigh did,” said Clayton.

The argument began. Oakleigh Page was forgotten once his name had served to start the words flying. The men in Tuttle's began to enumerate the people in town who had—or had not—asked for their troubles. Clayton Frazier's old eyes gleamed. This was the part of each day that he lived for; when his disagreeableness finally provoked a lively discussion. The old man tilted his chair back and balanced himself on its two rear legs. He relit his pipe and wished fleetingly that Doc Swain had more time to hang around. A man didn't have to work hardly at all to get The Doc going, while it sometimes took a considerable while to get the men in Tuttle's riled up.

“Don't make no difference what none of you say,” said Clayton. “There's folks that just plain beg for trouble. Like Oakleigh Page.”

Little Norman Page hurried down Elm Street and turned into Depot Street. When he passed the house on the corner of Depot and Elm, he kept his eyes on the ground. In that house lived his two half sisters Caroline and Charlotte Page, and Norman's mother had told him that these two women were evil, and to be avoided like mad dogs. It had always puzzled Norman that he should have two such old ladies for sisters, even half sisters. They were really old, as old as his mother.

The Page Girls, as the town called them, were well over forty, both big boned with thick, white skins and white hair and both unmarried. As Norman walked past the house, a curtain in the front room window quivered, but neither a hand nor a figure was to be seen.

“There goes Evelyn's boy,” said Caroline Page to her sister.

Charlotte came to the window and saw Norman hurrying down the street.

“Little bastard,” she said viciously.

“No,” sighed Caroline. “And that's the pity of it all. Better if he were a bastard than what he is.”

“He'll always be a bastard as far as I'm concerned,” said Charlotte. “The bastard son of a whoring woman.”

The two sisters bit off these words as crisply as if they had been chewing celery, and the fact that these same words in print would have been an occasion for book banning and of shocked consultation with the church did not bother them at all, for they had the excuse of righteous indignation on their side.

Caroline dropped the curtain as Norman moved out of sight.

“You'd think that Evelyn would have had the decency to move out of town after Father left her,” she said.

“Humph,” said Charlotte. “Show me the whore who knows what decency means.”

Little Norman Page did not slow his steps or sigh with relief when he had passed the house of his two half sisters. He still had to go by the house of Miss Hester Goodale before he could reach the sanctuary of his own home, and he dreaded Miss Hester every bit as much as he feared the Page girls. Whenever he encountered his half sisters on the street, they merely fixed him with dead looks, as if he were not there at all, but Miss Hester's coal-black eyes seemed to bore right through him, looking right down into his soul and seeing all the sins hidden there. Norman hurried now because it was Friday afternoon and almost four o'clock, and at exactly four on Fridays Miss Hester came out of her house and walked toward town. Although Norman was on the opposite side of the street from the one on which Miss Hester would walk, he was nonetheless afraid, for Miss Hester's eyes, he knew, could see for miles, around corners and everything. She could look right into him as clearly from across the street as she could have if he stood directly in front of her. Norman would have run except that if he arrived home flushed and panting his mother would think he was sick again and put him to bed. She might even give him an enema, and while Norman always got a bittersweet sort of pleasure from that, he had to stay in bed afterward. Today he decided that getting the enema was not worth the hours alone that were sure to follow, so he forced himself to walk. Suddenly he saw a figure ahead of him, and recognizing it as Allison MacKenzie he began to shout.

“Allison! Hey, Allison. Wait for me!”

Allison turned and waited.

“Hi, Norman,” she said when he reached her side. “Are you on your way home?”

“Yes,” said Norman. “But what are you doing over here? This isn't the way to your house.”

“I was just taking a walk,” said Allison.

“Well, let me walk with you,” said Norman. “I hate to walk alone.”

“Why?” asked Allison. “There's nothing to be afraid of.” She looked hard at the boy beside her. “You're always afraid of something, Norman,” she said jeeringly.

Norman was a slight child, built on delicate lines. He had a finely chiseled mouth which trembled easily, and enormous brown eyes which were filled with tears more often than not. Norman's eyes were fringed with long, dark lashes. Just like a girl's, thought Allison. She could see the lines of blue veins plainly beneath the thin skin on his temples. Norman was very good looking, thought Allison, but not in the way that people thought of as handsome.

He was pretty the way a girl is pretty, and his voice, too, was like a
girl's, soft and high. The boys
at school called Norman “sissy,” a name with which the boy found no quarrel. He was timid and admitted it, easily frightened and knew it, and he wept at nothing and never tried to stop himself.

‘I'll bet he still pees the bed,” Rodney Harrington had been heard to say. “That is, if he's got a dink to pee with.”

“There is too something to be afraid of,” said Norman to Allison. “There's Miss Hester Goodale to be afraid of, that's what.”

Allison laughed. “Miss Hester won't hurt you.”

“She might,” quivered Norman. “She's loony, you know. I've heard plenty of folks say so. You never can tell what a loony person will do.”

The two of them were now standing directly opposite the Goodale house.

“It
is
sort of sinister looking,” said Allison musingly, letting her imagination take hold.

Norman, who had never been afraid of the Goodale house before, now felt his fear spark on the edge of Allison's words. He was no longer looking at a rather small and run down Cape Cod, but at a closed-looking house whose windows stared back at him like half-lidded eyes. Norman began to tremble.

“Yes,” repeated Allison, “it has a
definite
sinister look.”

“Let's run,” suggested Norman, forgetting his mother, the enema, everything, for Miss Hester's house looked suddenly to him as if it were about to sprout arms, ready to engulf children and sweep them through the front door of the brown shingled cottage.

Allison pretended not to hear him. “What does she do in there all day, all by herself?”

“How do I know?” asked Norman. “Cleans house and cooks and takes care of her cat, I suppose. Let's run, Allison.”

“Not if she's loony,” said Allison. “She wouldn't be doing plain, everyday things like that if she's loony. Maybe she stands over her stove cutting up snakes and frogs into a big black kettle.”

“What for?” asked Norman in a shaking voice.

“To make witch's brew, silly,” said Allison crossly. “Witch's brew,” she repeated in a weird tone, “to put curses and enchantments on people.”

“That's foolish,” said Norman, striving to control his voice.

“How do you know?” demanded Allison. “Did you ever ask anybody?”

“Of course not. What a question to ask!”

“Don't you visit Mr. and Mrs. Card next door to Miss Hester's a lot? I thought you said Mrs. Card was going to give you a kitten when her cat has some.”

“I do and she is,” said Norman. “But I'd certainly never ask Mrs. Card what Miss Hester does. Mrs. Card's not nosy like some people I know. Besides, how would she be able to see anything? That big hedge between the two houses would keep everybody from seeing into Miss Hester's house.”

“Maybe she
hears
things,” said Allison in a whisper. “Witches chant something when they stir up a brew. Let's go visit Mrs. Card and ask her if she ever hears anything spooky coming from Miss Hester's.”

“Here she comes!” exclaimed Norman and tried to hide himself behind Allison.

Miss Hester Goodale came out of her front door, turned carefully to make sure that it was locked behind her, and walked out her front gate. She wore a black coat and hat of a style fashionable fifty years earlier, and she led a huge tomcat along on a rope leash. The cat walked sedately, neither twisting nor turning in any effort to escape the length of clothesline which was tied on one end to a collar around his neck, and wound several times around Miss Hester's hand at the other end.