World Made by Hand

Twenty-one

The top floor of our three-story town hall, an 1879 Romanesque red sandstone heap, was the old council chamber that had also served for generations as the community theater and civic ballroom. It had a proscenium stage at one end. The seats were not fixed, so they could be arranged for official meetings, shows, dances, banquets, what have you. In the 1950s, they held boxing matches up there. The high coffered ceiling was partitioned into twelve octagons that had been painted long ago to depict the signs of the zodiac. They were so faded and flaked you could barely make out which sign was which.

Back of the stage, a painted flat from the last community theatrical production remained in place: the musical Guys and Dolls. It showed a Times Square scene of the mid-twentieth century. It was startling to be reminded that people had lived in a world of skyscraper apartments, night clubs, neon lights, and taxicabs. I remembered the excitement the week the show ran. We so looked forward to coming here and putting it on each night, no matter how hard we’d worked during the day or how frightened we were about what was happening around the country. Sandy played Sarah Brown, the Salvation Army girl, sweetheart of gambler Sky Masterson (Larry Prager). Loren was Nathan Detroit. Linda Allison was Adelaide. I played violin in the orchestra, of course. My Daniel was in the chorus of Nathan’s gambler chums, with a painted-on mustache. We lit the stage with footlights fashioned out of candles and tin cans dug up from the general supply, and it all looked perfectly enchanting. You didn’t need a thousand watts to put a show on. The people came from all around the county night after night to see it. Many came more than once. The children seemed baffled about the world that the play depicted. Since the flu hit, we hadn’t put on any more plays.

This evening the old wooden folding chairs were arranged in a few concentric circles with twelve at the center reserved for us trustees. I had slept most of the afternoon and felt nearly normal again, mentally. My shoulder hurt, but I had full rotation. The sun still lit the big arched windows when the trustees straggled in at eight. In late June, twilight would last until nine thirty. It was warm up there in the top floor of the old building and the big room smelled faintly of bats.

Before the meeting got underway, the trustees and some observers stood around in knots. They all stopped gabbing when I came in. Many acknowledged me with a nod, I supposed because of what happened at the fire. But then I realized it was because I was the one who’d called the meeting, and they were looking to me to explain why. The trustees were Ben Deaver, Ned Larmon, and Todd Zucker, all farmers; Cody DeLong, who still pretended to be a banker at the Battenkill Trust but barely survived off the big garden in the back of his house; Jason LaBountie, the veterinarian; shopkeeper Terry Einhorn; Rod Sauer, the mason; Victor Gasparry, the tinsmith; Loren, Andy Pendergast, and Dale Murray, the mayor. All the trustees were men, no women and no plain laborers. As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we’d thought were obsolete. The egalitarian pretenses of the highoctane decades had dissolved and nobody even debated it anymore, including the women of our town. A plain majority of the townspeople were laborers now, whatever in life they had been before. Nobody called them peasants, but in effect that’s what they’d become. That’s just the way things were. Shawn Watling, rest his soul, had called it clearly.

Jane Ann was among the few women there. She and Loren had an understanding that she always stood by him in public, whatever went on in private life. She explained to me more than once when we were together, as if she needed to explain it to herself. The idea was to reassure those whose families had been blown apart by catastrophe that the minister and the minister’s wife remained a continuing presence for them, like a father and mother in the greater household of the town, and that therefore some kind of benign order still prevailed in our little corner of the universe. Jane Ann cast a haunted gaze at me when I came in, and I realized that we’d failed to get together that week.

Loren bustled over to me with Andy Pendergast. I’d taken that awkward head bandage off at home and they admired the stitches that Jerry had left in my scalp.

“Where’d you learn how to leap out of a burning house like that?” Andy said. “You looked like one of those old Hollywood stunt men.”

“Self-preservation is a great motivator,” I said.

“We’re all proud of what you did,” Loren said.

“It could have been anyone,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

“Well, you’re our hero,” Andy said, “so, hey, when are we all going to get together?” I knew what he meant by that. It was his code for prompting our music circle to meet. It had become his job to get the rest of us to make it to practice, especially this time of year when there was so much else to do.

“I’m not sure if I can play,” I said, showing my bandaged hand.

“Well, you better heal up. It’s important to keep things going, especially the way things are now.”

I supposed that he meant Shawn Watling getting killed.

“It does keep the morale up around here,” Loren said.

“It’s more than that,” Andy said. “It’s light in the darkness. And I wonder if I’m alone thinking there’s ever more darkness around us.”

“You’re not alone,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” Loren said.

Just then Dale Murray sauntered over, as though he still had the liveliest law practice in Washington County. He was actually wearing a necktie-the only one in the room. It was red silk foulard patterned with golden crests of some long lost fraternity or civic organization, and had a dark stain on it. His shirt collar was all nubbly too. His face had that flushed look, so I assumed he’d been drinking.

“Evening, gentlemen,” Dale said. You could smell the liquor now, poorly made corn whiskey with a lot of fusel oil in it. “What’s this all about, Robert?”

“It’s about running the town’s affairs.”

“Anything about them in particular?”

“I have a whole list of particulars.”

“Any you’d care to share before things get underway?”

“No.”

He flinched theatrically, the way a drunk will, as though to register an insult when he can’t quite put the words together. The fact that he was a genuine clown made it seem less comic.

“Should I take that as unfriendliness?” he said.

“Since when were you and me friends, Dale?”

“I’m everybody’s friend.”

“And I expect you’ll stay that way,” Loren said.

Brother Jobe suddenly emerged at the top of the stairs with two cohorts, Brother Elam and Brother Seth, who might have been defensive backs in the National Football League. Next to those two, with his hat on, Brother Jobe looked like a cookie jar. All eyes in the room went to them.

“There’s your next mayor, if you ask me,” Dale said.

“You’re a little off on that,” I said.

“See if you can stop him.”

“Evenin’ all,” Brother Jobe said, doffing his hat with a flourish.

Some of the others mumbled “good evening” back.

Brother Jobe came directly over to us.

“What’s up, old son?” he said.

“You’re going to commence your civic duties tonight,” I said.

“That a fact?” he said with something like genuine glee and he turned to Dale. “Howdy-do there, Mayor?”

“I was just telling Robert here, I expect you’ll be mayor yourself here before too long,” Dale said.

“Oh Lordy,” Brother Jobe said. “I don’t know that I can fill your shoes.”

“A fellow like you could do this job barefoot,” Dale said.

“Maybe so,” Brother Jobe said. “I hear you’ve been doing a fair amount of it in your sleep.”

Brother Jobe cracked up at his own joke. That got Loren and Andy cackling. Dale Murray seemed to grasp that the jokes would continue at his expense, so he cut his losses and called the meeting to order.