'It's bad luck for my head,' Eddie replied. 'It aches like a bastard.'
'Well, let's get it over and get out,' Andy said. 'She was a good woman, but she's gone. And between you and me, I don't care if I never spend another fifteen minutes in Haven now that she is.'
They stepped into the Methodist church together, neither of them looking at Rev. Lester Goohringer, who stood beside the switch which controlled his lovely carillon, smiling and rubbing his dry hands together and accepting the compliments of all and sundry.
7
The crying of the bells.
Bobbi Anderson got out of her blue Chevrolet truck, slamming the door, smoothing her dark blue dress over her hips and checking her makeup in the truck's outside mirror before walking slowly down the sidewalk to the church. She walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped. She was trying hard to get the rest she needed to go on, and Gard had helped to put a brake on her obsession
(and that's what it is, an obsession, no use kidding yourself)
but Gard was a brake that was slowly wearing out. He wasn't at the funeral because he was sleeping off a monumental drunk out at the farm, his grizzled, worn face pillowed on one arm, his breath a sour cloud around him. Anderson was tired, all right, but it was more than tiredness - a great unfocused grief seemed to fill her this morning. It was partly for Ruth, partly for David Brown, partly for the whole town. Yet mostly, she suspected, it was for herself. The 'becoming' continued - for everyone in Haven except Gard, that was - and it was good, but she mourned her own unique identity, which was now fading like a morning mist. She knew now that The Buffalo Soldiers was her last book ... and the irony was that she now suspected the Tommyknockers had written most of that, as well.
8
The bells, bells, bells.
Haven answered them. It was Act I of a charade titled The Burial of Ruth McCausland, or, How We Loved That Woman. Nancy Voss had closed the post office to come. The government would not have approved, but what the government didn't know wouldn't hurt them. They would know plenty soon enough, she thought. They would get a big old express-mail delivery from Haven very soon. Them and every other government on this flying mudball.
Frank Spruce, Haven's biggest dairy farmer, answered the bells. John Mumphry, whose father had run against Ruth for the position of town constable, answered them. Ashley Ruvall, who had passed her out by the town line two days before her death, answered them with his parents. Ashley was crying. Doc Warwick was there, and Jud Tarkington; Adley McKeen came with Hazel McCready on his arm; Newt Berringer and Dick Allison answered them, walking slowly and supporting Ruth's predecessor, John Harley, between them. John was feeble and nearly transparent. Maggie, his wife, was not well enough to attend.
They came, answering the summons of the bells - Tremains and Thurlows, Applegates and Goldmans, Duplisseys and Archinbourgs. Good Maine people, you would have said, drawn from a healthy stockpot that was mostly French, Irish, Scots, and Canadian. But they were different now; as they drew together at the church, so did their minds draw together and become one mind, watching the outsiders, listening for the slightest wrong note in their thoughts ... they came together, they listened, and the bells rang in their strange blood.
9
Ev Hillman sat up behind the wheel of the Cherokee, eyes opening wide at the dim sound of the carillon. 'What in the hell - '
'Churchbells, what else?' Butch Dugan said. 'It sounds very pretty. They're getting ready to start the funeral, I suppose.' They're burying Ruth over in the village ... what in God's name am I doing out here by the town line with this crazy old man?
He wasn't sure, but it was too late to change his course now.
'The bells in the Methodist church never made a sound like that before in my time,' Ev said. 'Someone's changed them over.'
'So what?'
'So nothing. So everything. I dunno. Come on, Trooper Dugan.' He turned the key, and the Cherokee's engine roared.
'I'll ask you again,' Dugan said with what he thought was extraordinary patience. 'What are we looking for?'
'I don't rightly know.' The Cherokee passed the town-line marker. They had left Albion now and entered Haven. Ev had a sudden sickening premonition that in spite of all his precautions and care,