The Tommyknockers

  But Ruth discovered she liked the job. Among other things, it gave her a chance to put a stop to some nasty goings-ons that old John Harley had allowed to continue . . . and grow.

  Del Cullum, for instance. The Cullums had been in Haven since time out of mind, and Delbert--a thick-browed mechanic who worked at Elt Barker's Shell--was probably not the first of them to engage in sexual congress with his daughters. The Cullum line was incredibly twisted and interbred; there were at least two cataclysmically retarded Cullums in Pineland that Ruth knew of (according to town gossip, one had been born with webs between its fingers and toes).

  Incest is one of those time-honored country traditions of which the romantic poets rarely write. Its traditional aspect might have been the reason John Harley had never seriously tried to put an end to it, but the idea of "tradition" in such a grotesque matter cut no ice with Ruth. She went out to the Cullum place. There was shouting. Albion Thurlow heard it clearly, although Albion lived a quarter of a mile down the road and was deaf in one ear. Following the shouting there was a sound of a chainsaw cranking up, followed by a gunshot and a scream. Then the chainsaw stopped and Albion, standing out in the middle of the road now, one hand shading his eyes as he looked toward the Cullum place, heard girls' voices (Delbert had been cursed with girls, six of them, and of course they literally were his curse, and he theirs) raised in cries of distress.

  Later, in the Haven Lunch, recounting his tale to a fascinated audience, old Albion said that he thought about going back into his house and calling the constable ... and then he realized the constable had probably been the one fired the shot.

  Albion only stood by his mailbox instead, awaiting developments. About five minutes after the sound of the chainsaw died, Ruth McCausland drove back toward town. Five minutes after that, Del Cullum drove by in his pickup. His washed-out wife was in the shotgun seat. A mattress and some cardboard boxes filled with clothes and dishes sat in the truck's bed. Delbert and Maggie Cullum were seen no more in Haven. The three Cullum girls over eighteen went to work in Derry and in Bangor. The three minors were placed in foster homes. Most of Haven was glad to see the Cullum family broken up. They had festered out there at the end of the Ridge Road like a rash of poison toadstools growing in a dark cellar. Folks speculated about what Ruth had done and how she did it, but Ruth never told.

  Nor were the Cullums the only people Ruth McCausland, graying, trim, five-feet-five, and one hundred and twenty-five pounds, either ran out of town or had jailed over the years. There were the dope-smoking hippies that moved in a mile east of the old Frank Garrick farm, for instance. Those worthless, crab-raddled excuses for human beings came in one month and went out on the toe of Ruth's dainty size-five shoe the next. Frank's niece, who wrote those books, probably smoked some rope from time to time, the town thought (the town thought that all writers must smoke dope, drink to excess, or spend their evenings having sex in odd positions), but she didn't sell it, and the hippies half a mile down from her had been doing just that.

  Then there were the Jorgensons out on the Miller Bog Road. Benny Jorgenson died of a stroke, and Iva remarried three years later, becoming Iva Haney. Not long after, her seven-year-old son and five-year-old daughter started having household mishaps. The boy fell getting out of the tub; the girl burned her arm on the stove. Then the boy slipped on the wet kitchen floor and broke his arm and the girl stepped on a rake half-buried in fallen leaves and the handle spanged her upside the head. Last but hardly least, the boy stumbled on the basement stairs while going after some kindling and fractured his skull. For a while it looked as if he wasn't going to pull through. It was a real run of bad luck, all right.

  Ruth decided there had been enough bad luck at the Haney place.

  She went out, driving her old Dodge Dart, and found Elmer Haney sitting on the porch drinking a quart of Miller Lite, picking his nose, and reading Soldier of Fortune magazine. Ruth suggested to Elmer Haney that he was bad luck around Iva's place, particularly for Bethie and Richard Jorgenson. She had noticed, she said, that some stepfathers were very bad luck for their stepchildren. She said she thought their luck might improve if Elmer Haney left town. Very soon. Before the end of the week.

  "You are not scaring me," Elmer Haney said serenely. "This is my place now. You want to get off it before I brain you with a stick of stovewood, you meddling bitch."

  "Think it over," Ruth said, smiling.

  Joe Paulson had been parked out by the mailbox at the time. He heard the whole thing--Elmer Haney's voice had been slightly raised, and there was nothing wrong with Joe's hearing. The way Joe told it down at the Haven Lunch later that day, he had been sorting mail while the two of them argued it up and down, and he couldn't seem to get it sorted just right until that conversation was over.

  "Then how'dya know she was smiling?" Elt Barker asked.

  "Heard it in her voice," Joe replied.

  Later that same day, Ruth had taken a ride up to the Derry state-police barracks and spoke with Butch "Monster" Dugan. At six-feet-eight and two hundred and eighty pounds, Monster was the largest state cop in New England. Monster would have done anything short of murder (maybe that, too) for Ralph's widow.

  Two days later, they went back to the Haney place. It was Monster's day off and he was in civvies. Iva Haney was at work. Bethie was in school. Richard was, of course, still in the hospital. Elmer Haney, who was still unemployed, sat on the porch with a quart of Miller Lite in one hand and the latest issue of Hot Talk in the other. Ruth and Monster Dugan visited with him for an hour or so. During that hour, Elmer Haney had an extraordinary run of bad luck. Those who saw him leaving town that night said he looked like someone ran him through a potato grader, but the only one with nerve enough to ask just what had happened was old John Harley himself.

  "Well, I swan," Ruth said, smiling. "It was the darnedest thing I ever saw. While we were trying to persuade him his stepkids might live luckier if he left, he decided he wanted to take a shower. Right while we were talking to him! And do you know, he fell down in the tub! Then he burned his arm on the stove and slipped on the linoleum while he was backing away from it! Then he decided he wanted some fresh air and he went outside and stepped on the same rake little Bethie Jorgenson stepped on two months ago, and that was when he decided he ought to just pack up and go. I think he was right to do it, poor man. He'll live luckier himself somewhere else."

  5

  She really was the person who came closest to being the heart of the town, and that may have been why she was one of the first to feel the change.

  It began with a headache and bad dreams.

  The headache came in with the month of July. Sometimes it was so faint she barely noticed it. Then, without warning, it would swell to a thick, throbbing beat behind her forehead. It was so bad on the night of July 4th that she called Christina McKeen, with whom she had planned to go see the fireworks in Bangor, and begged off.

  She went to bed that night with light still lingering in the sky outside, but it was dark before she was finally able to drift off to sleep. She supposed the heat and humidity were keeping her awake--they would keep people awake all over New England that night, she reckoned, and this wasn't the first night that had been like this. It had been one of the stillest, hottest summers in her memory.

  She dreamed of fireworks.

  Only these fireworks were not red and white and coruscating orange; they were all a dull and terrible green. They burst across the sky in starbursts of light ... only instead of going out, the starfish shapes in the sky oozed together and became huge sores.

  Looking around, she saw people she had lived with all her life--Harleys and Crenshaws and Browns and Duplisseys and Andersons and Clarendons--staring up at the sky, their faces rotted swampfire green. They stood in front of the post office, the drugstore, the Junque-A-Torium, the Haven Lunch, the Northern National Bank; they stood in front of the school and the Shell station, eyes filled with green fire, mouths hanging stupidly agape.

&nb
sp; Their teeth were falling out.

  Justin Hurd turned to her and grinned, lips pulling back to show bare pink gums. In the crazy light of her dream, the saliva streaking those gums looked like snot.

  "Feelth good, "Justin lisped, and she thought: Get out of here! They all have to get out of here right now! If they don't, they are going to die the same way Ralph did!

  Now Justin was walking toward her and she saw with mounting horror that his face was shriveling and changing --it was becoming the bulging, stitched face of Lumpkin, her scarecrow doll. She looked around wildly and saw that they had all become dolls. Mabel Noyes turned and stared at her and Mabel's blue eyes were as calculating and avaricious as ever, but her lips were plumped up in the Cupid's-bow smile of a china doll.

  "Tommyknockerth," Mabel lisped in a chiming, echoing voice, and Ruth woke up with a gasp, wide-eyed in the dark.

  Her headache was gone, at least for the time being. She came out of the dream directly into wakefulness with the thought: Ruth, you have to leave right now. Don't even take time to pack a bag--just pull on some clothes, get in the Dart, and GO!

  But she could not do that.

  Instead, she lay down again. After a long time, she slept.

  6

  When the report came in that the Paulsons' house was burning, the Haven Volunteer Fire Department turned out ... but they were surprisingly slow about it. Ruth was there ten minutes before the first pumper showed up. She would have torn Dick Allison's head off when he finally showed up, except she had known both of the Paulsons were dead ... and, of course, Dick Allison had known too. That was why he hadn't bothered to hurry, but that did not make Ruth feel a bit better. Quite the opposite.

  That knowing, now. What exactly was that?

  Ruth didn't know what it was.

  Even grasping the fact of the knowing was almost impossible. On the day the Paulsons' house burned, Ruth realized that she had been knowing things she had no right to know for a week or more. But it seemed so natural! It didn't come with trumpets and bells. The knowing was as much a part of her--of everyone in Haven now--as the beat of her heart. She no more thought about it than she thought about her heartbeat thudding softly and steadily in her ears.

  Only she had to think about it, didn't she? Because it was changing Haven ... and the changes were not good.

  7

  Some few days before David Brown disappeared, Ruth realized with dull, dawning dismay that she had been ostracized by the town. No one spat at her when she walked down the street in the morning from her house to her office in the town hall ... no one threw stones ... she sensed much of the old kindness in their thoughts ... but she knew people were turning to follow her progress as she walked. She did this with her head up, her face serene, just as if her head wasn't throbbing and pounding like a rotted tooth, just as if she hadn't spent the previous night (and the one before that, and the one before that, and ...) tossing and turning, dozing into horrible, half-remembered dreams and then clawing her way out again.

  They were watching her ... watching and waiting for ...

  For what?

  But she knew: they were waiting for her to "become."

  8

  In the week between the fire at the Paulsons' and Hilly's SECOND GALA MAGIC SHOW, things began to go wrong for Ruth.

  The mail, now. That was one thing.

  She kept on getting bills and circulars and catalogues, but there were no letters. No personal mail of any kind. After three days of this, she took a stroll down to the post office. Nancy Voss only stood behind the counter like a lump, looking at her expressionlessly. By the time Ruth finished speaking, she thought she could actually feel the weight of the Voss woman's stare. It felt like two small dusty stones were lying on her face.

  In the silence, she could hear something in the office humming and making spiderlike scritching noises. She had no idea what it

  (except it sorts the mail for her)

  might be but she didn't like the sound of it. And she didn't like being here with this woman, because she had been sleeping with Joe Paulson, and she had hated 'Becka, and--

  Hot outside. Hotter still in here. Ruth felt sweat break out over her body.

  "Have to fill out a mail complaint form," Nancy Voss said in a slow, inflectionless voice. She slid a white card across the counter. "Here you go, Ruth." Her lips pulled back in a cheerless grin.

  Ruth saw half the woman's teeth were gone.

  From behind them, in the silence: Scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch, scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch.

  Ruth began to fill out the form. Sweat darkened big circles around the armpits of her dress. Outside, the sun beat steadily down on the post-office parking lot. It was ninety in the shade, had to be, and not a breath of wind stirring, and Ruth knew the paving in that lot would be so soft that you could tear off a chunk with your fingers if you wanted and begin to chew it....

  State the Nature of Your Problem, the form read.

  I'm going crazy, she thought, that is the nature of my problem. Also, I am having my first menstrual period in three years.

  In a firm hand she began to write that she had gotten no first-class mail for a week and wished for the matter to be looked into.

  Scratch-scratch, scritchy-scratch.

  "What's that noise?" she asked, without looking up from the form. She was afraid to look up.

  "Mail-sorting gadget," Nancy droned. "I thought it up." She paused. "But you know that, don't you, Ruth?"

  "How could I know a thing like that unless you told me?" Ruth asked, and with a tremendous effort she made her voice pleasant. The pen she was using trembled and blotted the form--not that it mattered; her mail wasn't coming because Nancy Voss was throwing it out. That was part of the knowing, too. But Ruth was tough; her face remained clear and firm. She met Nancy's eyes directly, although she was afraid of that dusty black gaze, afraid of its weight.

  Go on and speak up, Ruth's gaze said. I am not afraid of the likes of you. Speak up ... but if you expect me to scutter away, squeaking like a mouse, get ready for a surprise.

  Nancy's gaze wavered and dropped. She turned away. "Call me when you get the card filled out," she said. "I've got too much work to do to just stand around shooting the breeze. Since Joe died, the work's piled up out of all season. That's probably why your mail isn't

  (GET OUT OF TOWN YOU BITCH GET OUT WHILE WE'LL STILL LET YOU GO)

  coming just on time, Missus McCausland."

  "Do you think so?" Keeping her voice light and pleasant now required a superhuman effort. Nancy's last thought had slammed into her like an uppercut. It had been as bright and clear as a lightning stroke. She looked down at the complaint form and saw a large black

  (tumor)

  blot spreading over it. She crumpled it and threw it away.

  Scritch-scritch-scratch.

  The door opened behind her. She turned and saw Bobbi Anderson come in.

  "Hello, Bobbi," she said.

  "Hello, Ruth."

  (go on she's right get out while you still can while you're still allowed please Ruth I we most of us bear you no ill will)

  "Are you working on a new novel, Bobbi?" Ruth could now barely keep the tremor out of her voice. Hearing thoughts was bad--it made you think you were insane and hallucinating it. Hearing such a thing from Bobbi Anderson

  (while you're still allowed)

  of all people, Bobbi Anderson who was just about the kindest--

  Ididn't hear anything like that, she thought, and grasped the idea with a sort of tired eagerness. I was mistaken, that's all.

  Bobbi opened her post-box and took out a bundle of mail. She looked at her and smiled. Ruth saw she had lost a molar on the bottom left and a canine on the top right. "Better go now, Ruth," she said gently. "Just get in your car and go. Don't you think so?"

  Then she felt herself steady--in spite of her fear and her throbbing head, she steadied.

  "Never," she said. "This is my town. And if you know what's going on
, tell the others that know what's going on not to push me. I have friends outside of Haven, friends that will listen to me seriously no matter how crazy what I'm saying might sound. They would listen for my late husband's sake, if not for my own. As for you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. This is your town too. It used to be, anyway."

  For a moment she thought Bobbi looked confused and a little ashamed. Then she smiled sunnily, and there was something in that girlish, gap-toothed grin that scared Ruth more than anything else. It was no more human than a trout's grin. She saw Bobbi in this woman's eyes, and had certainly felt her in her thoughts ... but there was nothing of Bobbi in the grin.

  "Whatever you want, Ruth," she said. "Everyone in Haven loves you, you know. I think in a week or two ... three, at the outside ... you'll stop fighting. I just thought I'd offer you the option. If you decide to stay, though, that's fine. In a little while you'll be ... just fine."

  9

  She stopped in Cooder's for Tampax. There were none. No Tampax, no Modess, no Stayfree maxis or minis, no generic pads or tampons.

  A hand-lettered sign read: NEW SHIPMENT ARRIVES TOMORROW. SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.