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"How'd he get there?" they all wanted to know after their initial queasiness
had
quieted down some.
"Ain't got the foggiest," Bob answered.
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"Why doesn't someone get him down?" was their inevitable next question.
"The wife won't let them. Oh, she will sooner or later, it's just that
there's
gonna have to be a little wait."
And with every one of those motorists, all of them out of towners, that was
the
end of the questioning.
Sitting there on his lawn chair that day, Bob had occasion to remember when,
and
why, he'd put up that twenty-five-foot pole. It was going on thirty years ago
now, the summer Phyliss had miscarried and they had to do emergency
female-type
surgery to save her life, and for a spell there, it was touch and go, no one
knowing if she would make it. Acting on an impulse he never bothered to try
to
understand, Bob, who'd always had a knack for woodworking and carpentry, had
built that pole while she was still in the hospital
recuperating--recuperating
and discovering the Good Book. He built it "to last forever," as he sometimes
later boasted. He cut the ash himself from a grove up in the Berkshire Hills,
planed the ash into straight pieces, sectioned and glued the pieces, painted
the
completed pole white, and dug the hole and poured the concrete for the
foundation. He even erected it himself, alone, with the help only of an
ingenious series of cables and pulleys attached to nearby trees. It was nice,
every now and again, remembering when he'd still been young enough to tackle
a
project like that.
By morning of the second day, word about the man on the pole was spreading
through town, and more than a few of the locals were making the drive out to
Bob's Texaco to have a look-see for themselves. Unlike the out of towners,
the
locals were not so queasy. Weird things had happened before in Hancock (all
those people over the years who'd disappeared under strange circumstances up
at
Windham's Folly, the old quarry, just to give one example), and more likely
than
not, they would happen again. Especially when Phyliss was involved. Everybody
knew how different she'd been since losing her baby so long ago. Everybody
had
heard the talk of the strange goings-on out at her place, talk of funny
noises
and tourists who'd mysteriously disappeared and Bible-thumping and candles
burning late into the night. Who knew
307
the truth of any of it, but since when did truth ever get in the way of a
juicy
rumor?
None of the locals seemed to care one whit who the man on the pole was, long
as
he wasn't one of their own--and Sheriff Thompson had already established that
by
taking pictures with a Polaroid camera, then comparing those shots to his
missing persons file (which had only two entries: Billy Williams, who
wandered
away in a drunken fit from time to time but always did turn up again; and
twenty-three-year-old George Aliens, a faggot since eighth grade, rumored to
have run off to live with a guy who wore dresses).
How the stranger had wound up there thirty feet in the air was, however, a
subject of great debate.
"He must have dropped from a plane," was one theory.
"Ain't no doubt he shinnied up there drunk and then stuck hisself," was
another.
"Got what he deserved for trying some fool stunt like that, you ask me."
"Phyliss's got something to do with it, mark my words," was a third.
"You oughtta charge a buck a head admission, Bob," allowed one man. "You'd be
on
easy street in no time."
Phyliss came out of her room just once the second day. She stood at the door
of
the house, looked up at the top of the flagpole, and went back inside without
uttering a word.
On the afternoon of the third day, a thunderstorm of frightening proportions
ripped through Hancock, spawning tornadoes that ripped up Elise Brett's barn
and
knocked Jimmy Carson's trash truck over and blew all of the windows out of
the
Hancock school bus, unoccupied at the time, thank the Good Lord. Bob, who
took
cover inside a garage that hadn't seen business since before the flagpole
went
up, was betting sure that the storm would snap the pole. It did not, although
the pole did sway and creak terribly, all the while producing sounds like an
animal in pain. Neither did the man up there become dislodged, although his
clothes became a tattered mess. Phyliss emerged briefly after the storm had
passed. Seeing that the stranger was still aloft, she pronounced that fact to
be
the work of the Lord and then disappeared back inside.
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Morning of the fourth day broke clear and cool. When Bob went out to switch
on
the pumps, he noticed a flock of crows had finally found the body and were
picking at the head, exposing the skull in one spot; he scared them off with
his
shotgun, the same weapon Phyliss had threatened to turn on Sheriff Thompson.
Along about noon, Phyliss walked into the sunshine. Her face was drawn, her
gait
tired and unsteady, but for the first time since the whole affair had begun,
she
was smiling. She told Bob that it was time, the man could now safely come
down.
Those were her precise words: "It's time. He can now safely come down."
"Who is he, Mother?" Bob asked.
"The son we've waited for all these years."
"Say again?"
"He's my baby."
"But that can't be," Bob said, ruffled for the first time since this whole
dang
thing started.
"But it is."
"How can you know?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]