At home, beat down and depressed, he dropped into a chair facing the TV. It was off, but he didn’t feel like turning it on. Etta came in and sat down on the sofa near him. The fatness and silence of her presence irritated him all the more, but, hell, she didn’t have it easy either. He got to talking out loud, said the way things were going, it sure didn’t look to be a very hilarious goddamn thirtieth anniversary for them this year, did it? and how he figured they were really done for. Why was it turning out like this? Thank God, they still had the old house, but, shit, they’d probably have to mortgage that, too. And then, all of a sudden, he saw Etta was crying. He got half out of his chair, took her hand, said not to cry like that, he was just mouthing off, hell, things’d work out, they always did. But she handed him a letter.
He glanced at the envelope: from their oldest boy, Vince Junior. He was working out on the Coast, worked on airplanes. Vince supposed something terrible must have happened, one of the grandkids or something, and, Jesus, just now—! He was almost crying and he hated to look inside. But when he opened it, there was a nice friendly letter and scribblings from the grandkids and a check for $300. The boy said he figured things must be a little close, what with the mines closed down, and, since he had a little extra, he was sending it along, keep beer in the icebox and Angie in pretty clothes, and so on, have a happy anniversary, and to let him know if they needed more.
“Jesus, Etta,” Vince said. “That sure was nice of Junior, wasn’t it?” And he got out his handkerchief and blew his nose.
Vince had always gagged along with the rest about getting old, but nowadays he found it hard to smile, found that cracks about his fifty years only made his stomach turn. Couldn’t land a new job and he began to see it wouldn’t even be easy to get on at the mines now. Trouble was, though he hadn’t wanted to admit it before, people hardly ever hired a new man old as Vince was. He could do the work of five or six young guys, understand, especially in the mines, he had the basic skills down and that’s what really counted these days, but, hell, it still didn’t matter. It was just the dumb attitude these people doing the hiring took. Vince hated even to look into a mirror. A thick gray depression was crowding down all over him.
One Tuesday at Wanda’s — he’d fallen into the consoling habit of passing afterdark Tuesdays there — when there wasn’t much to do but talk, he tried to explain it. He had been feeling his goddamn half century all day, and now, mainly because before coming over he had got a little too tanked up at the Eagles, he couldn’t seem to stiffen the old pecker up enough to get the trick done, and that made him all the more miserable. “Wanda, I have to tell you, I’m getting old,” he confessed simply. He was goddamn sorrowful. The hall light was on, just outside the bedroom door, and it spread a harsh sallow glare over their side-by-side bellies.
“It sure is somethin’ how time gits on,” she replied. She sounded worn out. Life was no picnic for her either, goddamn it.
“It sure is a tough solution to worry about. I just don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do.” His tongue was thick. Room was slipping a little toward the left. And he’d never felt so weak and shriveled. “The future looks to me just like a big goddamn empty hole, Wanda.”
She yawned. Her breasts filled up a little, and then slid off to each side again like wobbly little airbubbles. Then she giggled.
“No, listen! I mean it, Wanda! What’s gonna come of me?”
There was a long idiot span of silence, filled only by the squeaky sucking noises that the baby in the crib at the foot of their bed was making on his bottle. Wanda dug at one ear with her finger. The coarse pale hairs of her crotch poked up like dry weeds, pitched long sharp shadows across her right groin. He felt dizzy. He closed his eyes. And finally she said, “Vince, hon, d’you believe in talkin’ with spirits?”
11
What does it matter that secrecy has been decreed? the Spirit is made manifest by signs. Else, how account for the uprooting of the widow Mrs. Wilson’s hollyhocks, excrement on her front porch, a signature from the “Black Hand”? Or the theft of the widow Mrs. Lawson’s porch swing, the dead rat left on her window ledge? The inexplicable death of the coalminer Mr. Hall’s young bird dog? The town veterinarian Dr. Norton diagnoses: internal bleeding. Or how explain the suddenly fierce gossip of the dour old women in the nave of St. Stephen’s? “Fatti del diavolo!” Or the revival of St. Peter gags in clubs and bars and on church lawns Sundays? Or the excited nonsense of boys in high school locker rooms? “Gee whiz! the end of the world already, and me almost a virgin still!” How else shed light on the anonymous phonecalls received at the home of the coalminer Mr. Bruno? the appearance in the city newspaper of strange tales of medieval seers and wizards? the inflamed preachments against heresy from the pulpit of the Church of the Nazarene?
Or who can say why else this town’s collective fate darkens so? The last of the area mines seems sure to close. The streets of the business sector grow desolate. Glumly, the shopowners visit each other. The mayor declares a one-month moratorium on parking meters to encourage downtown trade. The winter is bitter and long. The families of ninety-seven dead coalminers huddle around old habits, their empty futures hovering like birds of prey. Some marry again, some leave. Most wait, not knowing for what. Young people desert, breaking up families. A motel closes. The basketball team loses. A strange virus cripples half the community. The whole town seems to age overnight. Children grow rebellious. TV reception is often bad. A dance at the Eagles is canceled. People die. The rate of harassment crimes rises.
Who is the “Black Hand”? Opinions vary. Italians, including the Police Chief Dee Romano, fear the revival of old blood enmities, of old extortions and death by night, but, strangely, few Italians are struck. Some blame out-of-towners, even rival cities. Others the Klan. A maniac. Communists.
The mayor recognizes the adolescent style: some high school prankster.
Coalminers observe uncomfortably that the victims are usually coalminers or their families. Not even widows in mourning are exempted. The Nazarene pastor Reverend Baxter, his own congregation often the prey, passes thundering judgment upon false prophets and apostates who, with their black signature and foul deeds, confess their allegiance to the Devil. “These here people they are murmurers! they are malcontents! they are walking after their own lusts! ungodly folks turning the great grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying our only Master and Lord, Christ Jesus! These here people, I tell ye even weeping, they are the enemy of the cross of Jesus! Their end it is perdition! their god it is the belly! and they do glory in their shame!” Rumors of Black Masses.
Actually, a clandestine high school club or gang, not just a single boy, the mayor explains to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce board members.
The schoolteacher Mrs. Norton attributes the attacks to “the powers of darkness,” and when the widow Mrs. Collins contends it can only be the work of “Baxter’s people,” Mrs. Norton reminds her that the specific agents utilized by the dark powers are less significant than a recognition of the existence and activity of the powers themselves. To friends in private, Mrs. Collins admits frankly that she doesn’t understand what Mrs. Norton means, and she sits up nights hoping to catch one of the “people” redhanded and prove her point.
The mayor announces in the city newspaper, the West Condon Chronicle, that the frequency of the recent “Black Hand” incidents makes it clear that it has become a new teen-age fad, a game, and he asks cooperation from all parents. With that, it does in fact become a teen-age fad, proving the mayor a prophet if not a consummate analyst, and culminates with a “Black Hand Blast” up at the youth center, which is converted at the last moment by the adult supervisors into a “Black Magic Party,” and, as usual, is not much of a success.