Then Sam Parry rose, his figure straight even at his age. “They half got me once,” he said. “Let them finish me now.”
Mudgett had his hand on his gun.
“How would you have had me dispose of the child?” Perly asked, almost in annoyance, his eyes darting over the crowd.
“Oh Emmie. Poor Emmie,” moaned Agnes Cogswell.
Without a word, Frank Lovelace pulled himself to his feet. And John tugged at Mim’s elbow to make her stand too, with Hildie in her arms.
And people noticed that the doctor was still standing in the back where he had been all along, standing casually with his arms folded, watching the proceedings.
Sam Parry began, slowly, to smile.
The silence stretched. Dan Rouse stood bolt upright, his brown eyes on Perly. His wife switched from side to side in her chair. Finally she stood up and cried, “He never gave her nothin’ for all her pain—nothin’ but that child itself, and used that agin us too. And soon’s she was born, he took her too.”
The crowd began to whisper.
“He come in here,” the mother went on, “with that animal way of his. And he fastened his eye on Sally, her only just fourteen and headstrong. Nothin’ ever to suit that child. And he come in here with all that power and money and a knowin’ full well what he wanted. Well, our Sally, she went a dancin’ off after him like he was the Pied Piper. Ain’t like we didn’t try to teach her right...”
Perly stood on his toes, his chest thrust out and his head back, his mouth open with his answer before the mother finished. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Let’s get one thing clear. That’s not my child,” he said. “I came to this town exactly two hundred and eighty days before that baby was born. Count for yourself. The doctor here can tell you the human gestation period is two hundred and eighty days. You give me too much credit. No man on earth could arrive in town, search out Sally Rouse, seduce her, and conceive a child at the first shot—all between sunup and sundown. I’m flattered you think I could, but it’s not humanly possible. And that child was eight and a half pounds—full term or over. This is one accusation that just isn’t feasible. You’ll have to dream up something better than that.”
Perly shrugged, mischief spreading across his face. “Not that I deny that I’ve had my times with Sally Rouse. A tough little number she was too, whatever her age. Not much I could teach her. Look at her.”
Some of the townspeople turned and looked. Sally forced her head back further still and held her blue eyes hard on Perly, though now the color was rising through her fair skin.
Look at her, Perly repeated. “What red-blooded man could possibly refuse?”
Mrs. Rouse stood in her place. “And then... And then...” she screamed, unable to finish.
Perly shook his head and frowned. “Still, my fault or not, I offered to do the honorable thing—”
“To kill the helpless babe, not marry her,” shouted the mother. “Evil upon evil.”
“No girl ought to marry a man nearly thirty years her senior,” Perly said softly.
There was a muffled undercurrent of talk and motion in the hall.
Perly stood perfectly still beneath the town shield, watching.
With the help of her canes, Ma got shakily to her feet and leaned against the chairs in front of her.
Perly’s face flushed darker and darker.
John reached to support his mother and cried, “And what about that four-year-old blond beauty you promised for next week? What about the barn and the steep pasture?”
“What, just what, did you think you was a goin’ to do?” Ma demanded.
“Silence!” shouted Perly. “You’re wrong. You’re all wrong! You misunderstand everything. I’m only one man... only—
“I say we understood too damn much for too damn long and kept too damn quiet,” cried Mickey, his words slurred. He pulled Agnes up to stand beside him.
“There’s no law,” cried Perly. “Nothing I’ve done is against the law. You have no authority to put me on trial like this. What are you charging me with? With having ideals? With teaching Sunday School? With falling in love with...”
Silently Walter French stood up, then Arthur Stinson, and Ezra Stone.
Now the color began to drain from Perly’s face. “Ezra...” he said.
And one by one the men and women in the room stood up. The rustling in the hall grew to a babble.
Perly stood as if frozen in place, watching the turmoil beneath him spread. “Just remember this,” he said in a deep voice that cut neatly through the confusion. “Whatever I’ve done, you’ve let me do.”
Then, after one last survey of the people of Harlowe, he turned adroitly on his heel and headed swiftly toward the wings on the side of the New Hampshire flag, with Dixie trotting at his heel.
Perly took six steps before the crowd began to push at one another to get into the aisles, shouting at him to stop.
Then he drew himself up short.
In the shadow of the flag, Bob Gore, in his usual sagging denim shirt and Levi’s, blocked his way. He held the gun awkwardly in both hands, pointing it at Perly, just as he had pointed it at Hildie’s bedroom window.
Across the stage, Mudgett leaped nimbly out from behind the American flag, and everyone saw that his gun was also drawn.
Gore swung his gun away from Perly and onto Mudgett.
The noise in the room vanished, sucked in on the breath of the crowd, and for long seconds nobody moved at all. Perly stood facing Gore. Gore and Mudgett stared into the muzzles of each other’s guns.
Then Dixie sprang through the air, a tan streak, and landed on Gore’s shoulder. His gun arm flew into the air and the gun went off. The town shield over the center of the stage shattered and crashed to the stage in a cloud of plaster dust. Gore roared and rolled over and over, embracing the snarling dog. Mudgett stepped forward and danced after them, keeping his gun on Gore.
There was another shot, and the children cried out. Mudgett shrieked and dropped his gun to the stage with a thud.
“Red!” shouted Perly and rushed forward, his arms stretched toward Mudgett. But instead of stopping to tend him, he ran past him without a pause, off the stage and out through the wing by the American flag. Dixie, who had turned at the shot, abandoned Gore and galloped after Perly.
A shout went up in the hall. Mudgett stood white-faced, grasping his right arm. Blood soaked through his sleeve and dripped to the floor. And Gore got shakily to his feet to search for his gun in the swirls of plaster dust.
It was Ezra Stone who raced up the stairs to the stage two at a time, his gun drawn, and headed toward the wing where Perly had disappeared.
Gore picked up his gun and followed him. Then a number of other men detached themselves from the crowd and rushed for the exits.
Mudgett clutched at his bloodied arm, his eyes glazed with fear. His wife, bulky with his child, stumbled up to him, then stopped, wide-eyed, afraid to touch him.
15
Many of the townspeople had fallen to the floor at the first shot. Now they stood up and reached out to touch the other members of their families. Everyone talked. Agnes wept loudly. Mim cuddled Hildie who had awakened crying at the shots, and John put his arm around Ma.
The double doors in the back of the hall were thrown open and cold air swept over the close hall. Ma untangled her coat and her canes from the jumble of wooden chairs, and the Moores moved slowly down the main aisle. When they reached the doors, they paused. Instead of going home, the townspeople were crossing the green in clusters, drawn as if mesmerized toward the auctioneer’s house.
Lit up brilliantly enough for a wedding or a ball, it cast a glow across most of the green. Every window shone, even in the auction barn. Six spotlights on the front lawn gave a sheen to the new white paint and an icy sparkle to the fretwork under the eaves. The glistening facade was broken only by the unsteady black shadows cast by the bare maples. And overhead, the lynx hunched, as always, restless and shifting on its weathervane.