Salem's Lot

18

Henry Petrie was an educated man. He had a BS from Northeastern, a master’s from Massachusetts Tech, and a PhD in economics. He had left a perfectly good junior college teaching position to take an administration post with the Prudential Insurance Company, as much out of curiosity as from any hope of monetary gain. He had wanted to see if certain of his economic ideas worked out as well in practice as they did in theory. They did. By the following summer, he hoped to be able to take the CPA test, and two years after that, the bar examination. His current goal was to begin the 1980s in a high federal government economics post. His son’s fey streak had not come from Henry Petrie; his father’s logic was complete and seamless, and his world was machined to a point of almost total precision. He was a registered Democrat who bad voted for Nixon in the 1972 elections not because he believed Nixon was honest-he had told his wife many times that he considered Richard Nixon to be an unimaginative little crook with all the finesse of a shoplifter in Woolworth’s - but because the opposition was a crackbrained sky pilot who would bring down economic ruin on the country. He had viewed the counterculture of the late sixties with calm tolerance born of the belief that it would collapse harmlessly because it had no monetary base upon which to stand. His love for his wife and son was not beautiful-no one would ever write a poem to the passion of a man who balled his socks before his wife-but it was sturdy and unswerving. He was a straight arrow’ confident in himself and in the natural laws of physics, mathematics, economics, and (to a slightly lesser degree) sociology.

He listened to the story told by his son and the village abbé sipping a cup of coffee and prompting them with lucid questions at points where the thread of narration became tangled or unclear. His calmness increased, it seemed, in direct ratio to the story’s grotesqueries and to his wife June’s growing agitation. When they had finished it was almost five minutes of seven. Henry Petrie spoke his verdict in four calm, considered syllables.

‘Impossible.’

Mark sighed and looked at Callahan and said, ‘I told you.’ He had told him, as they drove over from the rectory in Callahan’s old car.

‘Henry, don’t you think we-’

‘Wait.’

That and his hand held up (almost casually) stilled her at once. She sat down and put her arm around Mark, pulling him slightly away from Callahan’s side. The boy submitted.

Henry Petrie looked at Father Callahan pleasantly. ‘Let’s see if we can’t work this delusion or whatever it is out like two reasonable men.’

‘That may be impossible,’ Callahan said with equal pleasantness, ‘but we’ll certainly try. We are here, Mr Petrie, specifically because Barlow has threatened you and your wife.’

‘Did you actually pound a stake through that girl’s body this afternoon?’

‘I did not. Mr Mears did.’

‘Is the corpse still there?’

‘They threw it in the river.’

‘If that much is true,’ Petrie said, ‘you have involved my son in a crime. Are you aware of that?’

‘I am. It was necessary. Mr Petrie, if you’ll simply call Matt -Burke’s hospital room-’

‘Oh, I’m sure your witnesses will back you up,’ Petrie said, still smiling that faint, maddening smile. ‘That’s one of the fascinating things about this lunacy. May I see the letter this Barlow left you?’

Callahan cursed mentally. ‘Dr Cody has it.’ He added as an afterthought: ‘We really ought to ride over to the Cumberland Hospital. If you talk to-’

Petrie was shaking his head.

‘Let’s talk a little more first. I’m sure your witnesses are reliable, as I’ve indicated. Dr Cody is our family physician, and we all like him very much. I’ve also been given to understand that Matthew Burke is above reproach… as a teacher, at least.’

‘But in spite of that?’ Callahan asked.

‘Father Callahan, let me put it to you. If a dozen reliable witnesses told you that a giant ladybug had lumbered through the town park at high noon singing "Sweet Adeline’ and waving a Confederate flag, would you believe it?’

‘If I was sure the witnesses were reliable, and if I was sure they weren’t joking, I would be far down the road to belief, yes.’

Still with the faint smile, Petrie said, ‘That is where we differ.’

‘Your mind is closed,’ Callahan said.

‘No-simply made up.’

‘It amounts to the same thing. Tell me, in the company you work for do they approve of executives making decisions on the basis of internal beliefs rather than external facts? That’s not logic, Petrie; that’s cant.’

Petrie stopped smiling and stood up. ‘Your story is disturbing, I’ll grant you that. You’ve involved my son in something deranged, possibly dangerous. You’ll all be lucky if you don’t stand in court for it. I’m going to call your people and talk to them. Then I think we had all better go to Mr Burke’s hospital room and discuss the matter further.’

‘How good of you to bend a principle,’ Callahan said dryly.

Petrie went into the living room and picked up the telephone. There was no answering open hum; the line was bare and silent. Frowning slightly, he jiggled the cut-off buttons. No response. He set the phone in its cradle and went back to the kitchen.

‘The phone seems to be out of order,’ he said.

He saw the instant look of fearful understanding that passed between Callahan and his son, and was irritated by it.

‘I can assure you,’ he said a little more sharply than he had intended, ‘that the Jerusalem’s Lot telephone service needs no vampires to disrupt it.’

The lights went out.