“Guess you heard about the fires all right, seven of them in a week and a couple more that never got goin’ good,” Mudgett said in his quick high voice. “And that bloody fool of a Gore took off.”
John said nothing. He stood perfectly still with his hands in his pockets.
“That makes Red here, as first deputy, the acting police chief,” Perly said, looking Mudgett over as if for the first time.
Mudgett stood rocking nervously on his toes as if to the rhythms of a transistor radio in his head. “Relax, Johnny,” he said. “We ain’t collectin’.” He gave a short laugh. “Unless collectin’ people counts.”
Both John and Ma listened impassively.
“People are getting panicky,” Perly said. “With good reason. We have to do something to keep the town safe. Somebody clearly has to take some initiative to straighten things out. And I’ve grown so attached to this town...”
“We want to know who’s settin’ them fires,” Mudgett said. “I hear tell you been lettin’ your temper hang out lately, Johnny. You got any idea who it could be?”
“Who, me?” John said.
“It’s the lightning strikin’, Red Mudgett,” Ma said, turning on Mudgett almost with relief, her voice confident against the man she had known as a child. “It’s the lightning strikin’, and it’s a goin’ to come after you too. Just you wait.”
“Mrs. Moore,” Perly said reproachfully. “Red lost the ell on his house last night.”
“And it ain’t lightning neither, Mrs. Moore. It’s some twolegged skunk. One that ain’t long for this world, I promise you.”
“We haven’t decided yet what to do,” Perly said. “We’ve called a meeting for tonight in the town hall to talk things over. We really need you as one of the old families. All of you,” he added, looking around, “if Mim and Hildie come back.”
Ma took a step toward Red Mudgett. “Goin’ to set fire to the whole lot of us at once, that’s what,” she said. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”
Mudgett snapped his fingers. “Maybe we oughta take the truck after all, Perly.” he said, watching Ma.
Perly turned half-hooded eyes on Mudgett. “We can’t do a thing for the town till we get it back to normal,” he said. “Just keep that in mind.” He kept looking around the kitchen as if he half expected to find Mim and Hildie hidden in some corner—at Ma in her flannel robe leaning on her nicked canes, at the mutilated kindling stick on the table, at Hildie’s hair ribbon and rag doll in Mas lawn chair. “You will come?” he asked John. “We need all the input we can get. And what we don’t need is more trouble.”
John took his knife from his pocket and began absently stabbing at the table with it.
Mudgett gathered himself together and stood still, but Perly, his eyes on John’s face, continued to wait for an answer.
“I’ll think about it,” John said without looking up.
“Good enough,” Perly said, showing his teeth in a smile. He turned back toward the door. “See you there.”
“If not...” Mudgett said, and flicked the gun in its holster with his trigger finger so that John reflexively stepped back. Mudgett grinned.
Perly moved quickly down the path without a backward glance. Mudgett danced behind him, side-stepping and wheeling to keep a constant eye on John.
14
The Parade was so crowded they had to park the truck half a block away. Hildie danced on ahead, but not too far, excited and a little awed by the experience of being out after dark. Mim and John, one on each side, helped Ma as she limped down the road and up the long sidewalk toward the door of the town hall.
“I got a feelin’ there’ll be nothin’ but cinders left to go home to,” Mim said.
John said nothing.
“That there’s a man thinks he’s God. Thinks he can move the mountains and dry up the seas,” Ma said. “And there’s them as believes him too.”
“Not me, Ma,” John said. “But you might’s well sign a confession as stay home.”
Ma snorted. “He thinks we’re nought but a passel of witless ninnies, and we ain’t done nothin’ to show him otherwise.”
They moved slowly. People piled up behind them and stepped around them. A number stopped to say, “Why, Mrs. Moore, how you doin’?” as if they were half surprised to find her still alive. The men she had taught as boys in Sunday School, and the women she had made bridal bouquets for—some were deputies and some were not, but they all greeted Ma as if she were part of some prior life, before the town had been drawn off into parties.
The town hall served also as the theater and the movie house and the gymnasium and the selectmen’s office. It was heated by a crackling wood stove with a bright stainless steel exhaust pipe that ran glittering half the length of the room before it turned into the cinderblock chimney. The folding wooden chairs, the same ones they used for auctions, were set up in rows facing the stage.
They settled Ma in the middle of the hall. She took off her kerchief, unbuttoned her coat, and settled her canes between her knees. Then she peered nearsightedly around her, looking for Hildie.
Hildie had found the French children and tagged after them as they clambered up the stairs of the stage and jumped off of it. The Frenches looked unkempt. The smallest boy had a large rip in the knee of his overalls and his black boots were mended with adhesive tape. The doctor’s daughter, a tall shy child about ten, walked slowly toward the other children, sucking the end of her pigtail. Finally, with a grand burst, Cogswell’s three youngest joined the fray.
Mim fretted. “Fetch her back,” she said to John.
“Let her be,” Ma said. “What harm can come to her here?” Ma hadn’t been to town since the day they’d gone to church. She kept recognizing people and asking about others. And now and then someone would lean over her to ask in a whisper about her health. It seemed to comfort them to find her there. She sat up stiffly in her chair. “Everyone’s here,” she said, “just like always.”
Mim nodded. “Whatever they have in mind, we won’t be alone.”
The adults were subdued, and the shouts of the children stood out in sharp relief. Presently, Walter French approached his children and herded them to their seats on the side, watching the back door from the corner of his eye.
Mim turned her head to see what he was looking at. What she saw was a proper city policeman in a navy blue uniform with a light blue shirt, a peaked cap, and a badge.
John snickered beside her. “Red Mudgett playin’ dressups,” he said. “Bobby had more sense.”
Mim looked again. The policeman was rocking just slightly on his feet and chewing gum. She stumbled into the aisle and ran to the front to catch up Hildie.
With Hildie safely in her lap, Mim felt the strength in her own body. She still had that. She could still run. She felt she had the energy to run for miles—away from everything. As a girl, when she had first known John, she used to run across the fields, through the woods, around the pond. She remembered the way the long muscles had obeyed her. She had known that in some way it would come to this—to the old woman and the child, John and his land, nailing her in place like a deerskin stretched on a wall. And yet she had always come back.
Mudgett stepped quickly up the stairs and onto the stage. His glance flickered from side to side. He moved precisely to the center of the stage and stood on the line where the maroon curtain closed when it was pulled, under the big painted plaster town shield that Linden’s grandfather had designed and donated in the days when the store did a good business and he was one of the richest men in town. To his left was the American flag, to his right the flag of New Hampshire.
His blank-eyed contemplation of the townspeople snuffed out the last noise in the hall so that even the chairs barely creaked. Mim noticed suddenly that Perly Dunsmore was sitting three rows in front of them, way over to the right. He sat as still as the others, his eyes resting easily on Mudgett as though he were watching images on a screen.