There were enough competing historical claims on this particular detail that it was effectively impossible to tease out the real story. In some stories, it was the site of a great war between the tribes and was subsequently considered haunted by the natives. In another, there was no war, but the crops always failed, so it was cursed. A third had the tribes keeping away because of the wrath of an angry local god, although the expression of this wrath was unspecified. The most benign version held that the weather in this part of the valley was simply too harsh for people who lived lives which didn’t include modern winter gear. This one had merit for being the least condescending toward the belief systems of the regional native Americans—who were in most respects, quite practical—if it did somewhat discount the ingenuity of a people who lived year-round in New England.
What all iterations of the story did have was the drum.
The drum used to rest on a tree stump in the middle of a field a short walk from the shore of the river. That field was now a parking lot and the stump was long gone, but a plaque was erected—by the same committee that funded Josiah’s mural—and that plaque was still standing at the edge of Main in front of the parking lot.
As it went (in most of the stories) when there was an inter-tribal dispute, any one of the elders from any of the tribes could travel to the stump and bang on the drum, which would signal all of the tribes that a meeting was required. The other elders would show up shortly after, and the matter would be resolved peacefully, with no bloodshed, due to the sacred/cursed nature of the land on which the drum sat. It sounded like a great way to avoid a war in an era before telephones and treaty organizations.
Given this description it was reasonable to assume the drum was larger than the one in Desmond’s office, because the real thing had to be something big enough to be heard throughout the valley. This was a very modern idea, though, because in truth, Main Street ran through a midpoint in a natural concavity. If one took away all of the buildings and the cars somehow, added some more trees and got rid of the parking lot, it was possible that the sound of a drum could carry pretty far if one faced in the correct direction. Even a small one.
In the early going, it was to the Sorrowers’ benefit that the locals—who surely would have otherwise slain them for their encroachment—were afraid to shed blood on the ground they’d elected to call home. Sorrowers were also considered cursed people by a couple of the tribes, not specifically because of where they were living but because when they arrived the first thing they did was shed blood (Josiah’s) in a place where that was taboo.
The tribes mostly left them alone, then, and figured it was okay so long as none of the Sorrowers did something stupid, like touch the drum.
Then came winter.
Josiah’s cult had some experience with winter, certainly. All of them were born and raised in the Americas, and they’d toughed out two prior winters isolated from the larger settler populations to the southeast. But half their summer was spent in canoes, which left almost no time for preparing the sorts of things a community needed to survive a winter in this climate: shelter, adequate provisions, and so on. They also had no horses and hardly any weapons, and half of them were dying from what turned out to be syphilis. (The Sorrowers called the disease the God’s Wrath Plague, and in this instance that was probably accurate.)
One evening in the first winter, with a quarter of their number already dead, a young man decided, on his own, to trudge through a foot of newly fallen snow to the drum, which he banged furiously for an hour. His name was Oliver Tempest Hollis.
Young Hollis likely had no idea what the drum was for and just wanted something to hit, although later it would be said this was a divinely directed action, and who was to say?
Assuming his goal was to alert the neighbors that the tribe of white men residing on cursed soil was about to perish, he succeeded. Within two days multiple representatives of each of the five tribes arrived at the stump.
Pretty much nothing was known about what happened in the conversation that followed, between the elders and their clansmen and Oliver Tempest Hollis. As the banger of the drum, the natives took Oliver to be the man who spoke for all of the Sorrowers, and so he did. He had no authority to do so, but the deal he struck ended up being one that saved the lives of everyone else living in Sorrow Falls, so the others had little choice but to roll with it.
One thing that came out of the talk was that young Hollis was promised to an age-appropriate woman from one of the tribes. This was in exchange for food, clothing, and shelter, and a long-term co-existence between the Sorrowers and the Natives, so the implication was that Oliver Tempest Hollis was one hell of a catch.
This also may have been true, in that the elders appeared to have considered him a great man to survive on cursed land and to bang the drum without being struck dead by their gods for this impertinence.
There was an accompanying Disney version of this tale that held that the woman Oliver wed—her name was Aquena in most of the texts, and the daughter of one of the elders—was there the day they found him at the drum, and they fell in love on sight.
This was probably not true. But it was a neat idea, and neat ideas almost always made for better stories.
HOLLIS’S OFFICE took up a third of the top floor of the mill, which made it about level with Main Street out of one window. Another window presented a terrific view of the Connecticut River, and the sudden disappearance of said river over Sorrow Falls.
Annie had been in the office a half-dozen times, and liked to imagine the view from there wasn’t all that dissimilar to the last one Josiah had.
“I’m glad we finally had a chance to talk,” Desmond was saying to Ed as everyone took their seats.
Desmond Hollis was the youngest of the three brothers. Desmond, Richard and Louis, and their sister Katherine, were the children of Allan Hollis and his wife June. Allan was, in turn, the only living son of Calvin Hollis, the founder of Hollis Paper Goods. Calvin’s great-great-great-grandfather was Oliver Tempest Hollis, meaning the Hollises were one of the oldest families in America, and certainly the oldest that virtually nobody knew a thing about.
They seemed to like it that way.
“Well, I don’t know what you heard,” Ed said. “It’s not a big deal, really.”
“Nonsense, a reporter in town to write a big story on our special visitor? I wouldn’t turn you away. We want everyone in Sorrow Falls to feel welcome, isn’t that so, Annie?”
“It certainly is.”
“How’s you mother, hon? You know if you need anything at all…”
“I know, Desmond. Thank you. I’ll tell mom you said hey.”
“You better.”
Desmond was approaching sixty and had plans to hand over the business to whichever son he felt would do right by the town. That was how he ended up running the mill over his elder brothers, although word was they showed little interest one way or the other.
There were a lot of bad stories about industry in New England, but the Hollis paper mill was one of the few consistently good stories. It remained a family-owned company with its own way of doing things. Sometimes that way of doing things was contrary to what was most profitable, which was why choosing the right successor was so important, to Allan Hollis before and to Desmond now.
Ten years ago there was a fire, which gutted a large part of the factory beneath them. Desmond could have been made whole for the loss by insurance and kept the mill closed indefinitely at no additional cost. It was the profitable thing to do. Instead, he nearly bankrupted his entire family by using most of the insurance to rebuild and compensate all of the employees while rebuilding. Anything other than that would have ruined most of the town, and he knew it.