“How you gonna prove it?” This thing is rankling Tommy now. He wishes he hadn’t brought it up.
“Come and see for yourself.” Ugly is grinning. “C’mon. A thousand bucks. Your old man’s got the money.” He pokes his hand toward Tommy’s midriff.
“I’ll bet a quarter.”
“C’mon. A thousand bucks. Put up or shut up.”
“Okay, Ugly, I believe you. But that’s just one. Who else?”
Ugly backs down. “Lotsa people,” he says.
“Yeah? Like who?”
“You gonna soap that little thing all day?” Trying to get out of it. “Like who, Ugly?”
Outwardly, the signs are few. Intimately, the message radiates. At a meeting, ministers are warned. Over Cokes, a talent is described. In a bed, someone is invited. A child overhears his parents denounce an old friend. A priest, making a house visit, is bluntly turned away. An impeccable lawyer becomes irascible and unreliable. At an evening meeting of a Baptist youth group, “what if” questions are posed. Chiliastic warnings appear among the graffiti of boys’ rest rooms. MARCH 8. Erasure. MARCH 21 (in ink). Rotarians are informally entertained by a Presbyterian minister with new rumors. The newspaper, except for anonymous letters to the editor, is silent, but the editor is known to be intently absorbed in a new “project.” A neighbor darkens her kitchen and sits by the window. Observes the furtive arrivals. The sinister preparations. The burning candles. The sheets hung over the windows. Hears the screams. Who knows how the old man died?
The banker, phone cradled between jaw and shoulder, draws a square on his tablet. A cross inside the square gives him four small squares. Two diagonals: eight small triangles. He blacks in alternate ones with a vertical stroke. Then the remaining ones with a horizontal stroke. To one corner of the now all-black square, he attaches the corner of another large one, adds in the cross and diagonals. On the other end of the line, the high school principal is saying, “She’s just a substitute teacher, of course, but one of the finest we’ve ever come across. I’m glad you brought her name up, Ted. I wanted to mention her before, but she doesn’t have a certificate yet. With the board’s approval, of course, we hope to—”
“Unh-hunh. Well, don’t do anything too definite just yet, John. We want to—”
“No, no, of course not! Is something wrong?”
“No, I don’t think so. You know. We just want to run a routine check before we commit ourselves.”
“Something in the past?”
“Can’t be sure, John. Just want to be careful, that’s—”
“Of course, I had no way of knowing, Ted. I felt she qualified professionally, and, ah, but of course, I’ll wait to hear from you.” The original square, blacked in, has another square, comprising eight triangles each, attached to each corner.
* * *
The police are summoned by the Reverend Abner Baxter, irate. The city mayor Mr. Whimple is present during the call, so he accompanies two of his police, Mr. Romano and Mr. Wallace, to the Church of the Nazarene. Boxy building with artificial brick siding. Smell of mildew inside. Seething with rage, the redheaded preacher leads them to his pulpit, a plain rostrum on a one-foot stage, and, with a trembling white finger, stubby and fuzzy with fine red hair, directs their attention to the floor behind the lectern. The city mayor and the two policemen stare down at the little heap of feces. “Sacrilege!” the minister thunders. “Desecration!” And commences an oration on the theme.
The police chief Romano stoops and extracts a half-buried note, holds it between fingertips at arm’s length. The three men study it. THE BLACK PIGGY. “Looks more like a toe to me,” drawls Romano, his other hand resting nervously on the butt of his gun.
“Seems to be operating independently now,” observes the mayor.
The preacher whirls on them, red with wrath, and demands they remove their hats. “This is the house of the Lord!”
Sheepishly, the three do so. The policeman Wallace, abashed, stoops as though to inspect the feces. The other policeman and the mayor also stoop.
“There!” roars the preacher, pointing to an open window, through which, no doubt, the Black Piggy has come and gone. He marches over to secure it.
“Looks like baby shit,” Wallace whispers. “Whaddaya think, Mort?”
“I dunno, looks like it,” the mayor acknowledges in a hushed voice. “Whaddaya think, Dee?”
“Whaddaya asking me for?” Romano whispers in reply. “I don’t know nothing about shit.”
“Lemme see that thing. No, just hold it out there. Does look a little like a toe, all right.”
“I dunno, Mort,” drawls the police chief hoarsely. “Maybe we oughta call the FBI.”
Ben comes on a Friday night. Like a gift. The widow Betty Wilson knows the minute he walks in that he’s that strange dark man Mabel Hall found in her tea leaves, that “man of honor.” All night, in her breast, there is a flutter like a caged bird, like a fish in a net.
It is an exciting meeting because when they arrive they find the Bruno front room all fixed up like a church sort of, the television in the bedroom, and Giovanni sitting up in the living room armchair, the one his father died in. So pale! it frightens Betty even to look at him, so she hardly ever does, but when accidentally her eyes do happen to light on him, he is almost always staring straight at her, and that scares her all the more. But the room is very nice and they are all pleased, especially Clara, who has been using her own house for Sunday services for folks who don’t want to go hear Abner Baxter. There’s a little table fixed up with things like old Mr. Bruno’s gold pocketwatch and so on, and Mr. Himebaugh asks everybody to bring something to the next meeting that is precious to them to include there. Betty thinks right away of Eddie’s dentures, which she still to this day has kept in a glass on the dressing table by her bed in memory of him, but instead she decides she will bring his war medals. Mr. Himebaugh asks for Ely’s last note to hang there in a pretty frame he has brought, and Clara hates to give it up, but she is honored, too, and they all have a little ceremony there, putting it in the frame, and Mrs. Norton reads it to all of them so nicely.
Well, just then, in the middle of all that excitement, the doorbell rings. Mr. Norton says it is somebody who doesn’t know the password, and they are all afraid it is some dirty trick again. Mr. Miller gets up and goes out there. Whenever they have trouble, they always depend on him, such a fine strong young man, even if he isn’t too religious. When he returns, he brings this man in with him, and the man says his name is Ben Wosznik, and that’s when Betty’s heart starts to sputter around so. She looks over at Mabel and Mabel looks back at her. It is he. She was afraid the stranger might be Mr. Himebaugh, and now her fear is relieved. He says he has heard so much about them and he read the letter in the newspaper that said everybody was welcome (that was Clara’s letter), and, well, here he is. He is big and thick-shouldered and has black burry hair and heavy brows and kindly eyes and a man’s broad smile that creases his tan cheeks in many folds. He used to be a coalminer, he says, though now he is just sort of a farmer. He knew all their husbands. He says he always admired Ely Collins and is glad to know that Mrs. Collins is here. His brother who used to live with him was also killed in the disaster, he says. No, he says, he isn’t married.
The Girl Fried Egg of the West Condon Chronicle, opening her editor’s Saturday morning mail, discovers an envelope bordered in black. A death! she gasps inwardly, and eagerly opens it, but is disappointed by its unsigned contents. Doesn’t even understand it. She shows it, perplexed, to Mr. Miller. He smiles inexplicably and instructs her to pass such envelopes on to him unopened henceforth. She sighs, feels for some reason like crying or something. So much has been happening lately which she doesn’t understand.