Chapter 10

Bruton sees Von Aldo’s page, but he's at the hospital and not of a mind to indulge in Fair Mantle Village business. He doesn’t call back until he’s driving home later in the morning.

Traffic on the two-lane country road is heavy. Bruton tries Effen’s house, only to get the answering machine. He asks Effen to have Tom call him on the car phone, then phones home to see if Von Aldo tried to reach him there.

Elizabeth answers. He can hardly hear her. There’s a flute playing in the background, and a weird yowl. The sounds hit a nerve. Bruton pulls his BMW to the side of the road before he hits something. “What the hell is that?” he shouts.

“Farrell’s practicing, dear.”

“Not her. The other noise.”

“That’s Jack. He’s singing along.”

Bruton has a vision of the little Jack Russell terrier sitting up, paws extended, head thrown back, its mouth forming a tiny “o.” “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth, it sounds like an atrocity being committed.”

“Brut, he loves it.”

“Well, for God’s sake, make sure he can’t be heard outside. If he were a human child, we’d be charged with some form of abuse. Now if Tom calls, just tell him I’m on the way in.”

It’s nearly five full minutes before Bruton can pull back onto the road. Just as he noses back onto the macadam, the phone bleeps. He swerves back to the shoulder. “Christ, a cop’ll see me and think I’m drunk,” he mutters. “What!” His greeting is neither friendly nor appropriate etiquette. Bruton hears static, then nothing. The connection is dead. Was it Tom? He waits, watching the phone. It bleeps again. Bruton snatches it up before it bleeps a second time. The line is clear. “Tom?”

At the same time, Francis Hume is saying, “Brut, can you hear me?”

“I was looking for Tom.”

“He was here early this morning.”

“Do you know what he wanted?”

“Something about the stairs in the chapel. Listen, I’m looking for him, too. If you happen to reach him before I do-"

“Right, right.” Bruton wants to end the call and get going, but Effen is telling him that the farm just had a visit from two state vets.

“Did you say state vets? Veterinarians?”

“They wanted to know how the horselets were acting.”

“Why would they want to know a fool thing like that?”

“It’s not a fool thing. You know they go berserk before a Concorde flies over. These people gave me the impression the state wants them out of here. Soon.”

Bruton wants to tell him, “I think they’re going to want everybody out of there soon,” but holds his tongue.

“Brut, do you still hear me?”

Bruton clears his throat. “Where are you?”

“At the farm.”

“Do you have visitors today?”

“Visitors” is Bruton’s word for Effen’s clients.

“No, not yet.”

“Then sit tight. I’m on my way.”

He dials home and tells Elizabeth to send Farrell to the village with her flutes. Now. He doesn’t say it, but he doesn’t like what Effen’s just told him. Too much is hitting the fan too soon. If they aren’t careful, things will be out of control.

Farrell, meanwhile, gathers her music. She plays traverso, the one-keyed wooden flute popularly called Baroque flute. She has an ebony reproduction of a flute made by Heinrich Grenser of Dresden in 1798 and a boxwood reproduction of a flute made by G.A. Rottenburgh in Brussels in 1760. Each is in four sections and may be dismantled for carrying in small, black velvet bags. She decides to bring the Grenser, which the staff at Fair Mantle Village prefers for its dramatic color.

Today, however, Bruton couldn’t care which flute she plays, so long as she busies herself nearby. “We’re going to need you, but not right away,” he says as she walks up the stairs to his office. “I was thinking you could practice in the archives while you’re waiting.”

The go down to the rear of the entrance vestibule. Here Bruton unlatches a low, thick, wooden door. The door hides the steps to the cellar, a damp, cold cinder-blocked vault where the village historic documents and books are stored. Sound is muffled. A light bulb dangles from the low beamed ceiling, casting the kind of huge, sharply defined shadows seen in old horror movies.

“Here! You can play to your heart’s content. If you need anything, we’re right upstairs. All right?”

The place is like a tomb. If the volcano has a growth spurt that causes an earthquake, and the building falls down, Farrell will be buried alive.

She shudders. “What about the enameling building or the general store? They’ve got great acoustics.” And heat, she adds silently.

“The state doesn’t let visitors in without official guides, remember? It’s a matter of liability. Now enjoy yourself. But play quietly. The fewer who hear you, the better. It’ll prevent a lot of unnecessary explanations.”

There’s no use to saying yes or no. Bruton is stomping back up the stairs to warmth and relative safety.

Farrell is certain Bruton is obsessed with her return to Fair Mantle. His obsession was clear soon after she set foot in his home, a historically correct, red-brick Federal house on the town green.

She was unpacking in the room normally occupied by their daughter, who is away in university. Bruton sat in the boudoir chair, sticking out amid the flowery wall and bed coverings like a mistake of nature. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spend time in town,” he said. “A lot of people know you had to move after your mother died. I don’t want them wondering why you returned. If you need anything from the store, just ask me or Elizabeth; we’ll be more than happy to see you get what you need. And I mean anything,” he emphasized. “If you need something for yourself and Elizabeth’s not available, tell me. I’m a spouse and a daddy. I’ve purchased every kind of ladies’ essentials you can think of, from hair spray to pantyhose to all the rest.” The meaning of “all the rest” was understood. His speech done, he thanked her for her discretion.

Farrell didn’t know if he was treating her like a daughter or a younger sister or a mistress. She suspected his caution was unrealistic. His home is in the center of town. She has to drive in and out. And she has to stop for gas. Somebody has to see her at some point. It’s as inevitable as the ordinary doings of life itself.

For the first time in two days, Farrell thinks of leaving. Bruton’s discretion scares her almost as much as the volcano. At best, it’s secrecy; at worst, duplicity. The only way she can comfort herself is by remembering that Bruton isn’t in control; the state is. The state will close Fair Mantle Village and move everybody out of town before things get bad.

In the chill, it could take as long as twenty minutes to warm the Grenser before she could play it. Farrell spends the time in part worrying about volcanic earthquakes and in part looking at the books on the shelves. Most are histories and hymnals from the early nineteenth century. She would like to look at the music, which, she remembers, is printed in the shaped notes so popular throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but that would mean taking badly needed time away from her flute.

Suddenly, someone is at the top of the stairs. It must be one of the maintenance men.

“Tom?”

Farrell knows the voice. Her lips part in a mute gasp.

Before he reaches the bottom step, Effen is crying, “Hey, you’re not Tom! My God! What are you doing here?”

Farrell doesn’t know if she’s surprised Effen as much as he’s surprised her. Her heart is pounding, and the icy state of her hands has nothing to do with conditions in the cellar. But she keeps her wits. She notices he’s thrown the long black overcoat she refers to as his funeral coat over the jeans and flannel shirt he usually wears around the barn. He always wears the good coat when he has to meet with the state people. It takes the grimy edge off his barn attire. He leaves it open, too, lest the lining become too horsey.

Farrell hopes her voice doesn't shake. “You’ve heard of use of the hall? This is use of the dungeon. It’s supposed to be my practice room.”

“You’re kidding.”

Great. No one’s supposed to know she’s here. Now she’s got to explain why she’s consigned to the cellar. She holds out the flute. “You remember this individual. It’s ebony. Living wood. If I don’t play every day …”

“The wood warps. Why are you playing it down here?”

“I have no place else at the moment.”

“They won’t let you practice in your apartment?”

Farrell can’t lie to Effen. She peeks up the stairs, and in a low voice explains her situation with the Brutons. She leaves out the part about the volcano, saying only that she’s been recruited to work on publicity to bring back visitors scared away by Concorde damage.

Effen squashes a laugh. “So the little rat of a dog doesn’t like your music, eh? Serves him right.”

“Be nice, F.N.”

“I’m not un-nice. The creature’s not a dog, it’s a rodent. My horselets are more like dogs than that thing will ever be.”

Squinting in what strikes Farrell, as distaste, Effen looks around the shelves and boxes and tables that clutter the room. “God help me, I can’t believe he’d put you down here. The place reminds me of all those real-life horror stories about people hiding from the Nazis. There must be another place. What about the enameling building? It’s got great acoustics.”

“I asked. He said the state doesn’t let people in the buildings with an official guide. It’s a liability.”

“Bruton’s a liability. The man is a doctor! Doesn’t he know a person could get sick in a place like this?”

Heavy footsteps overhead shake the ceiling. Effen swings back onto the staircase; his coat sweeps out with the motion. “Got to find Tom. Hang in there! We’ll think of something better for you, I’m sure.”

When she returned to Fair Mantle, Farrell wondered if she would run into Effen. She imagined it would be one of those fleeting, “Hi, how are you?” moments.

The encounter might have produced more than that fleeting “Hi, how are you?” but the speed of Effen’s departure persuaded her that their acquaintance would continue to be a series of niceties unified not by the desire of one friend to seek out the other, by the accident of two near-strangers being in the same place at the same time.

She was foolish, if not childish and unrealistic, to expect anything else.