Mr. Chance, who was the town’s leading realtor, had plenty of things to think about besides the drumming (if that’s what it was). Business had been slumping for months.
More people were moving out of town than were coming in, which meant residential prices were falling, and many properties were sitting around unsold. Mr. Chance had made a small fortune in the town in the past fifteen years, but he was holding too much property himself right now, principally the Great Hill development, and he was starting to worry.
He drove up Great Hill later in the afternoon. The autumn sun was hot there. He left his jacket in the car and walked around the place in his shirtsleeves, glancing at the unsold houses on empty streets where weeds crowded the edges of the asphalt. The view was fine — the country club with its golf greens and fairways down below, and the creek that meandered toward the town beyond, with the Beetleback range of hills in the distance. The view, yes, but water and sewage problems had jacked up costs — and now the only three buyers were moving out, anxious to sell at almost any price.
Mr. Chance was a thick man, with a bulldog face and meaty hands that by habit he clenched and opened as he walked around, wondering what to do. Cut prices some more? Wait for an upturn in land value?
It was quiet up there. Not a sound — except the drumming. A soft, steady beat, like wings on air, like waves against the shore.
Nothing moved. There wasn’t a soul in sight, not even a bird. Just these hollow houses, empty streets. Turning, Mr. Chance saw someone at the edge of a thicket of pine trees that sat on the crown of the hill. A man was standing there. Mr. Chance thought of calling out something — a greeting, an inquiry — but did not. He paused to draw his sleeve across his face to wipe the sweat away. When he looked again, the figure was nowhere to be seen.
“He was a tall fellow,” Mr. Chance told his wife at supper that evening, “and his hair was kind of long. Dark hair, pulled back and tied behind his neck. Like an Indian, come to think of it.”
“They used to live up there. That’s what Mrs. Worthy told me.”
“I don’t think they lived there. They hunted up there or used it for their ceremonies, but Lord, that’s twenty years ago or more, when this town was just a wide spot in the road.”
“This must have been a pretty place,” said Mrs. Chance, “before the trees were cut down.”
“We didn’t cut all the trees, Shirley. There are some left. Anyway, you’ve got to utilize your resources.”
Mrs. Chance, having heard her husband’s views many times, listened with a patient smile.
“Why, when this was a mostly Indian town,” Mr. Chance went on, “they had a one-room schoolhouse and one paved road and a tumbledown general store, and the whole shebang wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. But we’ve got a solid tax base now. We’ve got value and we’ve got conveniences. You can’t live without conveniences.”
“They did.”
“Ha,” said Mr. Chance. “You think they were better off? Why, they were selling beaded stuff to the tourists then. That’s all they had for income. And we brought in service industries and the sawmill and the textile mill—”
“That didn’t last long.”
“All right, we lost the textile mill, but you can’t win ’em all.”
“The Dixons are going to Cleveland,” said Mrs. Chance. “Naomi told me today.”
“Moving away? They’re leaving?”
“And Estelle Faber. She said she and George have about decided to go to Florida.”
“That can’t be,” said Mr. Chance. “George would never leave.”
“Estelle said he says the fishing’s about gone, and that’s what he cares about. He says it’s all the runoff from the lawns and golf greens, it’s poisoned the marsh and got the bay shore choked with weeds and done something to the bottom so the fish can’t feed.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Chance. “There are plenty of fish.” Then he cocked his head. “Hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“That drumming. Hear it?”
“I don’t hear anything,” said Mrs. Chance.
Mr. Chance continued to wonder about the long-haired man on Great Hill. There weren’t more than a dozen Indian families left, living near the sawmill, and he thought he knew all the adults by sight. He’d never seen that fellow before, though. He mentioned the intruder (as he had come to think of the man) to several people around town. The druggist, Mr. Stolles, remembered he’d seen a dark-skinned man down by the creek, just beyond the fifteenth green on the golf course.
“Indian man?” asked Mr. Chance.
“Could be,” said Mr. Stolles.
“Bet it was.”
“Well, he wasn’t tall like yours,” Mr. Stolles said. “He was sort of squat-shaped, nobody I’d ever seen before, and he just stood there, not hiding or anything, just watching. It sort of distracted me. Made me miss my putt.”
Mr. Chance frowned at this, and addressed himself to Police Chief Knowles. “It might be something to look into,” he said. “I mean, if we’ve got a couple of vagrants in town—”
“We don’t know they’re vagrants,” said the chief.
“They’re strangers, and they don’t five here. Maybe they’re the ones doing the drumming. I tell you, I don’t like it. That drumming — it’s a public nuisance. I didn’t mind it at first, but now it keeps me awake at night.”
“I can’t hear it. You hear it, Jake?”
“Not at night,” said Mr. Stolles.
“Well, I hear it,” said Mr. Chance, “and when I don’t actually hear it, I’m aware of it.”
“Oh, hell, John,” said the chief. “Let ’em drum if that’s all they want to do. What else have they got, anyhow?”
“What have they got?” said Mr. Chance. “Why, they’ve got the same as we have as citizens of the town.”
“They may not see it that way,” said the chief. “This used to be their town.”
“It wasn’t theirs,” said Mr. Chance. “They didn’t own it. We proved that in the land suit, didn’t we? And what evidence did they have? Just a wad of old papers all creased and folded so you couldn’t make them out, and then that moldy old rag they said was a treaty. The town lawyer made short work of that, all right.”
“That was your lawyer, really, John.”
“Well, I went out and got him, L. B. We needed the best land attorney in the state for this. We couldn’t afford to lose. We couldn’t have built the country club.”
“We could have put it somewhere else.”
“Anyway, we kept the land, and we improved it. We’ve got to remember that. We invested. We took risks — with our own money. We created something of value! And now what do we see? We’ve got vagrants and intruders coming in, and that damned drumming day and night...”
Mr. Chance went on like this for a while, and then he mopped his brow and apologized to his friends for having become overexcited, and headed for his office farther along on Main Street.
There he was informed by his assistant, Miriam Krug, that two buyers had backed out of deals that had been almost concluded, and that Jack Landis, who owned the bakery, wanted to put it on the market. Mr. Chance at once telephoned the bakery. While he was waiting for Mr. Landis to come to the phone, he got a call on his second line from Marshall Pickering, the high-school music teacher, who said he’d gotten a job offer from out of state, and wondered how much Mr. Chance thought he could get for his house.
“What’s this town coming to?” Mr. Chance muttered to himself after these calls were concluded. Deals broken! Bakery for sale! No high-school music teacher!
Through the front window he noticed someone standing across the street, partly obscured by parked cars. A woman, a dark woman. Facing his way. She was wearing some kind of embroidered shawl. “Miriam,” he called out to his assistant at her desk in the corner. “Look out there.”