John Finn is a study in frustration. Like all the lead characters I write about, he is in large part a doppelganger—some alternate version of myself, had I taken the different road. There are certainly other differences, usually for the better. I would like them to be heroes, after all, even if they are imperfect. But their faults are often my own. They fail as I would, and have.
In this way the egotism and omnipotence inherent in the creation of the character is relieved in some measure by flaws I understand—by reality and thereby an enforced humility as well. Otherwise, a character might be imagined to be anything, or do anything, and fulfill any wish. Such a story would be pointless, especially to this author. There would be little to learn from the effort. We human beings so seldom learn from success. By this reasoning the character’s story…
There was no happy end to it.
Tom Browne would have returned the next morning, at the first chance, from his post with the American forces at Charlestown neck. He found Mary was not at home. At his brother’s house he learned that Mary had left the night before. He checked with neighbors and then went to his own home to speak with his mother and father before returning to duty.
Tom’s father promised to check for Mary, as he did each noon afterward, walking the mile and back before dinner. But the Andrews house remained abandoned. And in the weeks that followed the house was vandalized repeatedly. Finally there was a fire. Perhaps accidental.
Mary Andrews was never seen again.
Tom Browne made saddles and harness for the next forty-seven years, died a bachelor, and was buried now in the ground with the others who…
Peter Hansen worked his way slowly through the shadows just beyond the rough of the gutter at the side of the road, dropping his leg over the crook of the pasture fence without touching wood. He could not afford to be seen now. He could not run. His boots, the only pair he owned, were better for steady work. Blisters had started at his toes. And if he were caught, in times like these, he might be quickly hung and counted with the casualties of the rebellion.
He would be happy to be off this road soon. It was the route the Regulars had taken and the events of the day had left everyone too raw here. He should have calculated this in his scheme. Better to have cut back to Wilson’s lane and gone south by Little Pond. Old Whittemore had dogs there, and Hansen had gotten by…
I felt at loose ends. Too many loose ends.
Matty had not returned home last night, but Mary Ellen called while I was making my coffee this morning to say that our girl had shown up at school on time. Along with Eric. Mary Ellen wanted me to come by later.
I called Connie and told him I couldn’t make the job that afternoon. He couldn’t say a lot about it. I was working more shifts than anyone else on the staff. He just asked about Matty and I told him. He said he was happy not to have any daughters, but we both knew that was a lie.
I spent the better part of the day at the Historical Society. Afterward, I drove over to Arlington and parked outside the high school in the line of cars with other parents waiting to pick up their responsibilities.…
I figured I had an excuse. I wanted my cap back. Besides, the drive isn’t so bad. A straight shot down I-95. Most the time is spent on the ferry out of New London, and now that I know there’s a good little diner there where I can get some breakfast, getting the early boat was not so bad either.
I called Mrs. Arnold first, of course. Last night. She was a little surprised to hear from me.
She said, “I thought you’d come back for the hat, but I was thinking it would be that very day. You’re lucky. I almost donated it to the Salvation Army last week.”
I said, “It’s a nice cap. My kids gave it to me for Christmas years ago.”
She said, “It’s a little worn out, don’t you think. It’s Christmas again. Maybe you should ask Santa for another…
Mae Johnson opened the door and dipped her head slightly, eyeing me over the top of her glasses. She’s a big woman. Heavy set. As tall as Burley. Taller than Burley’s father. She fills the space she’s in. But I could see over her shoulder that there was already a gathering at the kitchen table.
“If you’ve come for dinner you picked the wrong night. I’m not cooking tonight. I had a hard day at work. I’ve already warned everyone, it’s every man for himself.”
No smile. Mae can do a deadpan like Jack Benny. She also has a stare that will quiet dogs and a scowl that can translate profanity without a word spoken. It’s obvious where Burley got his theatrical nature. She left the door open and walked back toward the kitchen. I closed the door and followed her.
I said, “I was looking for Burley. The fact…
1955 (part one)
A tar blister, black and shiny, bloomed from the wooden crevice of a joint in the short bridge, close to Aran’s right foot. The glisten of sun on the tar caught his eye. Aran shifted his sneaker away. His grandmother would not want the tar in the house. The bridge, lengths of wood as thick as railroad ties and darkened with creosote, joined the rusted bones of an iron trestle that crossed the wider gully of the creek more than the creek itself, spanning the red gouge between a corn field and a pasture.
“Aw, shoot!”
His voice was muffled by the dense quiet. Even his breath was smothered by the sun itself. Everything had changed. Nothing ever stayed the same long enough.
Aran stood at the middle of the bridge, elbows planted on top of the side rail, his palms clasped to each…
“The thunder had rumbled at my heels all the way, but the shower had passed off in another direction; though if it had not, I half believed that I should get above it. I at length reached the last house but one, where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while the summit itself rose directly in front. But I determined to follow up the valley to its head, and then finding my own route up the steep as the shorter and more adventurous way. I had thought of returning to the house, which was well kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and perhaps remaining a week there if I could find entertainment. Its mistress was a frank and hospitable young woman, who stood before me in a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her long black hair while she kept talking, giving her head the necessary…
Detective Wise used another nice word when he called this morning. The law is full of such gems: seisin, replevin, comity, escheat, gravamen, moiety, moot, and subpoena. Wise had found a judge in Texas to give him a subpoena for phone records. There was news from that. Neither George Jefferson Adams nor his wife had been accurate about where they were that last weekend in October. They had possibly been together, but not in Houston. In Boston. And in that neither had returned Wise’s subsequent phone calls, the Detective had asked the Houston police department to make a visit to Adams’ law office for an inquiry.
I was awake and oddly giddy over this. Something like a sudden sugar high. Something was going on. At least the investigation into what had happened to Desiree Perry was not lost…
I was disappointed. That’s a fact.
When I was a kid one of the local television stations used to have a small library of films they would run whenever a ball game got rained out. One of those films was Call Northside 777. I think it was my favorite at that time. It appealed to my boyhood need for order in a disordered world. It was a sort of ‘police procedural’ with a reporter played by Jimmy Stewart doing the legwork trying to save the life of an innocent man on death row. Against his better judgment he followed lead after lead developed from scarce facts. Day after dogged day he made his way through the dark side of 1930’s Chicago until he found the truth. Tenacity, disappointment, and grit set in a noirish world of hoods and whores. Very appealing to a fourteen year old mind on a…
