Chapter 38

Bruton surfaces at the hospital in the morning. Apparently he was between The House and Fair Mantle Village the day of Farrell’s alleged abduction. He doesn’t deny giving Farrell the trip to Oxford. It was, he says, an old man’s way of thanking a younger woman for leaving her home and family to help the Village in its time of crisis. She’s very lucky he was able to talk his wife into not pressing charges.

As for Francis Hume? “He was disintegrating before my eyes. But, since it’s against the law to hospitalize competent people against their will, I had to let his condition play out. It did, he was found – in time, thank God – and that’s all there is to it.”

Effen has no desire or inclination to tell the police what happened at The House or why he tried to dispatch himself. He says little, even to Farrell. His withdrawal and the likelihood he’ll once again try to part company with the earth earns him a transfer to the part of the hospital that staff and visitors enter by way of a coded door.

He’s still not about to talk. He needs to not talk.

There is no explanation, no rationalization, no justification for everything that has happened. There are only scraps of suppositions and regrets that could never be proved or reversed.

Gustie knew Tom hadn’t died on Mount Can’t. Effen told her the truth before the plan was carried out – and before he hid that same truth from Farrell and the rest of the Mount Can’t staff that last evening in the village office. Tom was supposed to hold a press conference in Trenton the day after the “deaths” to explain how he meant to make the state see the terror its “volcano” wrought upon the innocent population.

But Gustie was of no mind to attempt to understand what Tom was trying to do. Fury crowded her logic. Rather than shout, lest the sound carry through the cottage’s thin walls and into the houses fewer than twenty feet away on either side, she rasped into his face.

“What is wrong with you? What will happen to the people you don’t warn? What will happen to the families who think they’ve lost sons and fathers? What will happen to the girls and me when the police catch up with you and you’re convicted as frauds? How will that help us? How will we live?”

“That’s the point,” he said, determined to keep calm. “Nothing will happen to you. Nothing should happen, because nobody is going to die. Tom’s not leaving you.”

“It’s not about the money! It’s about the humiliation. How do we live with the humiliation you’re all about to bring on us? How do the girls go to school knowing their classmates and teachers are snickering at them behind their backs? How can you yourself continue in your profession knowing people will always associate you with your role in Tom’s plans? You’re finished, Francis. We’re all finished.”

Effen can’t remember when the blows began. All he knows is that Gustie wasn’t listening to him. She responded only to the torment of the sickening, uncertain future she was designing for herself and the girls. She wasn’t slapping his face, though. Mad as she was, she must have realized that marks could show. She was slapping the side of his head, pounding his shoulders, punching the ribs still aching with the effects of the brawl with the troopers who had evicted him from the farm. He couldn’t strike back, if only to defend himself, not to hurt her. He would never strike her. He absorbed the blows, knowing he deserved her outrage. They were coming so quickly he didn’t realize he was holding his breath, girding himself against the pain. His sight faded. It seemed the floor tipped. He reached out to steady himself on something. The nearest something was Gustie. She shook him off. He dropped on all fours.

She was looking down at him, her face deformed by revulsion ... fear ... horror. Was it revulsion at him for what he had done or revulsion for what she was doing to him?

He remembers being amused by a sudden association. “To think I told you … because I didn’t want you … to be upset …”

She let him struggle to his feet by himself, and followed him to the door, and locked the door behind him. She could not have signaled contempt with greater clarity than if she spat on him.

Perhaps, in their own way, they all ended up spitting on each other.

Tom and Bruton had expected the panic held in check since the hearing would suppurate. Though Tom had once predicted just such a flight to Farrell, he couldn’t appreciate its intensity until he saw it for himself. In the end, though, he was too afraid to surface. Face the public, and he and Johnson and Birdsall would be charged with anything from making terroristic threats to conspiracy. So he thought best to wait. Reason would prevail. It didn’t. The town emptied. Gustie killed herself and the girls. Suddenly it was too late for reason. Johnson and Birdsall scrambled to a hunting lodge near Gettysburg. Tom hid in The House, seeking refuge in the cellar whenever anyone appeared.

Effen knows now he should have told Farrell everything. He thought that by not telling her, he was doing what was best at that time. He hopes Farrell will leave him, He would love her more if she saw him for the monster he is and for having the sense to protect herself from him.

But Farrell gives no sign of leaving. She’s with him every day, for as long as visiting hours last. She owes him. She never should have gone to the funeral. She should have realized Effen was taking the loss of his family too well. She thought he was just being Effen; he was shored up by the same unfathomable philosophy that gave him the strength to go about his profession. Apparently there was more to the miracle and mystery of Francis Hume than she imagined.

After a while, she realizes that trying to figure out what happened is useless. What happened, happened. All the reasoning in the world can’t account for it or reverse the effects. She’s got to go forward. Effen’s got to go forward. She swaddles her wits and her heart with the same quiet courage he so unknowingly taught her and gets on with the business of living, hoping he’ll come along for the ride.

Every day, she goes to him with teddy bears, books, clothes, and gossip from Matt and Ben. It’s a tough assignment. He isn’t fun to be with. The stuff they give him puts him in a walking stupor and makes him sick to his stomach. Either he can’t grasp what she’s saying or lunch is bubbling out of him, usually without warning.
He’d rather not see her. But whenever he tries telling her to go away, something hard stops up his throat and his cheeks become glossed by glistening, translucent sheets. He doesn’t know he’s crying until she hands him a tissue oir wipes away the tears herself. He apologizes, saying he’s “such a mess.”

Eventually he notices she glows with a serenity and sense of purpose he’s never before seen in her. There’s a new tenderness, too. Her presence becomes a heady blend of kindness and consolation and yes, even a little silliness when, like an imaginative child, she makes the bears “talk: to him and dance with each other. When she’s there, he has to be with her. When she’s at The House, he longs to be with her. She’s everything he can’t be. He can’t see she’s everything he’s inspired her to become.

One day, he’s Effen again. He knows he’ll never be able to walk the earth not remembering what happened to Gustie and the girls, but the mind-twisting anguish is gone. His interest in the world returns. Farrell, who’s never found the letter he left her that bizarre night, knows he’s ready to be released back to society when he counts how many days he’s been confined and estimates how high his medical insurance will skyrocket.

Effen returns to The House in early spring. It’s a warm, hazy afternoon, tinted bright, new-leaf green by the blooming sycamores. The hyacinths in the backyard have sprouted. The grass is growing. Robins are building a nest deep amid the rhododendrons that surround the porch.

Matt and Ben are hosting two viewings. As always, the Monteverdi Vespers are soft and unobtrusive in the background. Effen and Farrell mean to sneak up the back stairs, but Effen can’t resist a little side trip through the kitchen to peek into the hallway.

It’s a full house. Ben stands sentry between the parlors, hands loosely clasped behind his back, appearing serious and attentive.

Effen clucks at Ben the way he used to cluck at the horselets to get their attention.
Ben whips in the direction of the sound, then chases The Owner into the kitchen, where he smothers him with a hug and calls him a sonofabitch for throwing him out of character. Next it’s Harry, who wondered why Ben hightailed down the hallway. After that, it’s Matt, who wondered why Harry was hurrying toward the kitchen. Vince follows Matt, and Effen is sucked into a hearty, hugging and shoulder-clapping reunion better suited to a tavern than a funeral home.