Snowbound

Fourteen

Coopersmith was standing at the foot of the vestry ladder, looking up into the belfry, when the door swung open and Frank McNeil came inside.

Pivoting abruptly, he saw the cafe owner bump the door closed with one hip and press back against it. McNeil gaped with frightened, furtive eyes at the wetness on the floor directly under the belfry, at the flakes of snow which sprinkled down and liquefied on Coopersmith’s head and shoulders. Sweat beaded his upper lip like a thinly glistening silver mustache.

Face void of expression, Coopersmith crossed to him and said evenly, “What are you doing in here, Frank?”

“I knew it,” McNeil said, “I knew something was going on. You and John Tribucci and that Cain alone in here before, had to have your heads together about something, and then you with the organ music and hymn singing and neither one of them is out front now, I looked when I saw you slip in here a minute ago and they’re not there and not in here either. They got out, didn’t they? They broke out through one of the belfry windows, didn’t they?”

A tic made Coopersmith’s left eyelid flutter in arhythmic tempo, so that he seemed incongruously to be winking. “Keep your voice down,” he snapped.

“For Christ’s sake why did they do it, why did you help them do it, what’s the matter with you, they’ll be killed out there, they’ll be killed and we’ll be killed too, we’re all going to be killed — ”

Coopersmith slapped him across the face. “Shut up, McNeil, shut up!”

McNeil’s eyes bulged exophthalmically, and his fingertips trembled over the reddened surface of his cheek. He made a soft, choking sound that might have been a sob and turned to fumble the door open. Coopersmith reached for him, caught his shirt sleeve, but the rough material slipped from his grasp; McNeil went through the door, onto the pulpit beyond.

He backed away to the left and leaned up against the curved outer edge of the organ, still touching his cheek. Coopersmith came out grimly and shut the door. The silence in the dim room was funereal now. Maude Fredericks had played eight hymns and said then that she could not do any more; the Reverend Mr. Keyes had stood up immediately, shakily, and offered a long prayer to which Coopersmith only half listened because he was not sure Cain and Tribucci had had enough time to get out. When the minister finally subsided, he had gone instantly into the vestry to make sure. He knew now that he should have gone first to Ann and Vince; knew as well that the open-handed slap he had just given McNeil was a second misjudgment, that he should have hit him with a closed fist instead, knocked him unconscious. McNeil was half out of his head with fear-a coward, something less than a man at this moment-and his eyes and the quivering white slash of his mouth made it plain he was going to tell everyone Tribucci and Cain were gone.

Coopersmith said, “Frank,” sharply, aware that some of the others were looking at the two of them now and sensing the tension between them. He took three quick steps toward the cafe owner, said his name a second time.

And McNeil told them: loudly, running his words together, putting it all in the worst possible perspective.

The immediate reaction was just as Coopersmith had known it would be. There were spontaneous articulations of alarm, a half-panicked stirring as men and women got to their feet-some turning to their neighbors, some pushing forward onto the pulpit. Ellen came up beside him, took his arm, but Coopersmith’s eyes were on Ann Tribucci. She was standing between Vince and Rebecca Hughes in a rear pew, face milk-white, and her lips moved with the words “Johnny, Johnny, oh Johnny!” Vince caught her by the shoulders, steadied her; his features were set in hard lines of concern, but they betrayed little surprise.

Questions, remarks pounded at Coopersmith from several directions. He waved his arms for quiet, shouting, “Listen to me, all of you listen to me!”

The voices ebbed. He faced his friends and neighbors steadily, let them see nothing but assurance and authority and self-control. Then, keeping his voice calm, low-keyed, talking over interruptions, he explained the situation to them: why the decision had been made, why the secrecy, how it was being handled by Tribucci and Cain, exactly what they were now attempting to do.

More apprehensive vocalization; a soft cry from Ann that cut knifelike into Coopersmith and made him wince. The Reverend Mr. Keyes stepped forward, supporting his bloodied, scarf-bandaged right hand in the palm of his left. “ ‘Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavors: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert.’ ” Then: “ ‘The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.’ ” No longer benign, no longer clement, he spoke harshly the passages from Psalms in the Old Testament; his spirit, now, seemed to seek communion not with the God of Love and Charity, but with the God of swift and merciless Wrath.

McNeil pointed a spasmodic, accusatory finger at Coopersmith. His face was lacquered with sweat. “You had no right, you had no right to make a decision that might cost me my life!”

“The decision was the Lord’s,” the Reverend Mr. Keyes said. “The Lord granted them the wisdom and the courage to do what must be done, and the Lord will grant them the strength to carry it through.”

“The Lord, the Lord, I’ve heard enough about your Lord-”

The Reverend Mr. Keyes started toward McNeil angrily. Webb Edwards restrained him. Eyes touched the minister, touched McNeil, returned to Coopersmith; the preponderence of expressions revealed a vacillation between hope and deepening terror.

Joe Garvey, his nose puffed into a discolored blob from the pistol whipping he had taken earlier, said thickly, “Lew, I can understand why Johnny would risk his life for us, and I can trust him and believe in him. But what about this Cain? He’s an outsider, a man who’s made it plain all along he wanted nothing to do with any of us. How could you and Johnny be sure of what he’ll do out there?”

“That’s right,” McNeil cried, “that’s right, that’s right! A bird like that, a lousy vandal, he’ll run away and try to save himself the first chance he gets. Oh you crazy old man, you crazy old fool!”

Blood surged hotly in Coopersmith’s temples. “What right have you got to judge and condemn a man you don’t know anything about-a man with guts enough to fight for your miserable life and everybody else’s life here? Cain won’t run away, any more than Johnny will. And he isn’t the one who broke into the cafe; whoever it was, it wasn’t Zachary Cain.”

“The hell it wasn’t, he’s the one all right-”

“That’s enough!” a voice shouted suddenly. “I won’t listen to any more against Mr. Cain, I’m the one who broke into the cafe, I’m the one.”

The voice belonged to McNeil’s son, Larry.

Coopersmith stared down at the youth; of all the Hidden Valley residents who might have been responsible for the breaking and entering, Larry was one of the last he-or any of the others-would have suspected. Sandy McNeil said something to her son in a hushed voice, but he shook his head and pushed out into the center aisle. She came after him, one arm extended as if beseeching, as he stepped up onto the pulpit and approached his father.

McNeil was looking at him incredulously. “You, boy — you?”

“Me, Pa.” To Coopersmith, Larry’s thin face seemed for the first time to contain maturity, a kind of determined manliness. “I slipped out of the house around 3 A.M. both mornings, when everyone in the village was asleep, and used an old tire iron you had in the garage to jimmy the door. Then I propped it wide with the orange crates so the snow could blow in and ruin as much stock as possible. I’d have owned up to it sooner or later anyway, with you threatening to have Mr. Cain arrested; but now that I know he’s gone out there to try to save us, I just can’t hold it inside me anymore.”

McNeil’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. Then, in a low voice that cracked as brittly as thin ice: “My own son, Jesus, my own son.”

“Always talking about Ma,” Larry said, “always talking about her in front of other people, putting her down, saying dirty things. And the way you treated her, both of us, like we were nothing to you and we’re not, all you care about is yourself. That’s why I did it. I thought it would be a way to hurt you. I’m sorry for it now, I wish I hadn’t done it-not only because it was wrong but because I was thinking and acting the way you do, I was being just like you. And I don’t ever want to be like you, Pa, not ever…”

His voice trailed off, and the silence which followed was thick and uneasy. Sandy McNeil looked at her husband, at her son, and then she moved closer to Larry and took his hand; the gesture, the stolidity of her expression told Coopersmith she had made a decision for the future, if there was to be one for the two of them, which she would not compromise.

McNeil’s cheeks were gray and damp and hollow. He watched his wife and son walk away from him; searched the eyes of the others and found no sympathy, found nothing at all for him. He seemed to fold in on himself, to shrivel and age perceptibly until he became like a gnome whose eyes glistened wetly with the cancer of cowardice and self-pity. He groped his way to the organ bench and sat on it and put his head in his hands.

The collective gazes turned from him and settled again on Coopersmith. Quietly, he told them about Cain-who the man was, why he had come to the valley, why he had volunteered to join Tribucci. And when he was finished, he saw a grudging acceptance of the situation on the majority of faces. The palpable, fear-heavy tenseness was more acute than ever, but there would be no panic, no chaotic infighting. Things in here, at least, appeared to again be under control…

“Webb!”

The cry came from Vince Tribucci, jerked heads around once more, brought Dr. Edwards running down the center aisle in immediate response. Vince was leaning anxiously over his sister-in-law, helping her into a supine position on the pew bench; Rebecca held her head, pillowed it gently on one thigh. Ann’s swollen abdomen heaved, convulsed, and her face was contorted with pain. She had her lower lip clenched deeply between her teeth, as though to keep herself from screaming.

Ellen clutched at Coopersmith’s jacket. “She’s gone into labor; the shock put her into labor. Dear heaven, Lew, she’s going to have her baby…”