Deel Town was quiet. That was often the case if there was a morning breeze on the water. People went sailing or were drawn out to walk. Polly did her errands and chatted with the counterboy at Harney’s. He’d gone to the high school and was back from UMaine Farmington for the summer. Polly told him he must be very smart and was immediately glad Dick hadn’t heard her say that. He was apt to find her interaction with the public inane. She put her food in the car, thinking she’d done things in the wrong order. Oh well. She looked in the windows of the shops, at the clothes, the jewelry made of local stones set in gold and silver, the gift items, and patted a placid dog tied up in front of the hardware store. A bowl of water had been set out for just such dogs, a thoughtful touch. “You’re a good boy,” she told the dog, who seemed to return the compliment. Then she gathered her mail at the post office, and Agnes’s too.
A letter from James—her heart sank a bit, as he generally wrote her to tell her what to do about something or other; a forwarded bill from the Cricket Club, which she’d quietly pay lest Dick question why they needed a membership anymore; and then two exciting envelopes, one from Agnes’s publisher, and a letter from Dick’s chair! Perhaps they’d changed their decision about his emeritus status—realized their mistake.
Polly picked up her pace on her way back to the car, eager to deliver these missives. Then wouldn’t you know it, she got stuck trying to cross the street. Traffic was backed up behind a wide truck laboriously hauling long logs. Polly wondered who was building what—something on the east side, no doubt. She grieved at the sight of cut trees and shorn meadows.
The police car—there was only one on Cape Deel—was in the line behind the truck. She rapped on the glass, her hand raised to wave hello to Bobby and Joe, both boys she’d known as children. Joe glanced at her swiftly without smiling. Bobby kept his eyes on the road. She was embarrassed and took a step away. But as the rear of the car came abreast, she took a swift, reluctant look into the backseat. To her shock, she saw Robert Circumstance, bending forward, his hands cuffed behind his back.
“Robert!” she called out. He turned and their eyes met and exchanged disbelief. She stepped off the curb and rapped on the window by Joe. It whirred down. “What is going on, Joe?”
“Can’t discuss it, Mrs. Wister.” His words were carried on a plume of fruity scent from an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror.
“But why is Robert Circumstance in your car?”
He looked ahead, stony as the shoreline.
“Joe, you know Robert. Whatever this is, it’s a mistake.”
The window closed. Polly touched Robert’s window, and he offered her a bleak smile and a rueful shrug.
“Don’t worry,” she yelled. “We’ll get you home today.”
He nodded and dipped his head forward again.
She made it to her car, heart pounding, sick in her soul. It was hot, hot as hell. Her back cooked against the seat. Right now Robert was being pulled out of the car and walked into the town hall—in handcuffs! Everyone would stare. They all knew him. He’d been there a thousand times on a thousand errands—as had Polly, who’d seen men brought in before, mainly for a spell of drying out. The municipal building held one lone cell in the corner like a zoo cage. Was Robert being put into it now? She rocked back and forth, pressing her fists against her abdomen like she used to do when she had cramps. Rock, rock, rock and a hard place. Why had she had to see, and to be the one to bring the news to the Point?
She headed home the faster way through the backwoods, down what they’d always called Dump Road; the town dump was off a side road, and marked by gulls and other birds of prey circling overhead. The cramped, potholed track ran between an unofficial, uneven allée of pine and maple trees that cupped a gloom, even on glittering days. There wasn’t a view to be had from beginning to end. Dick sometimes told her to go this way, and when she resisted he lectured her that the rural scene was as true to the Cape’s character as where they lived on the water. He interpreted the denizens for her via literary references. The Beans, he’d say, pointing at a clot of trailers and unkempt kids running around, or The Misfit, when they passed a menacing, big-bearded man in a rusty pickup truck.
Hers wasn’t an aesthetic shudder, though, and it bothered her that Dick would say it was, even as a joke. Yet she couldn’t explain her disturbance well enough to set him straight. It was too interior, too private, too in the same range as how she’d felt when Lydia died. The road filled her with a profound desolation. She struggled to swallow from a dry mouth. Part of it was poverty. She was sure these people had a culture they were proud of—humans made the best of things—but that was the point. They had been born into a situation where they had far to go, but that unfairness didn’t cause the deep distress she felt being in this place. It was something more elemental—like the inverse of the miraculous sense of smallness she felt when she looked up at the sky. There was nothing miraculous in the enclosed, fated atmosphere of Dump Road, and she was eager to get through it and out the other side—where she felt she mattered.
A passel of grimy children chased a ball out of a yard dotted with dead cars and two immobile trailers, slowing her down. They stopped their game as she passed, and their inscrutable gazes landed on her. She waved. They stared harder. She blushed and pulled her hand down abruptly. What was she doing? She wasn’t creepy. But she was a stranger, and O-L-D. In other words—creepy.
She pressed forward along the road in hiccupping leaps, unable to keep her foot steady. The scent of burning leaves penetrated her windows and her shirt dampened from nerves. What in God’s name was Robert doing in the back of that police car? Mistake, mistake, it had to be a mistake.
She looked sideways again. The nearby yard was choked with dandelions and trash, a half dozen strewn tires, the rusty body of an old green sedan, a ghoulish gathering of filthy plastic climbing toys and bikes, tinsel gum wrappers. There was something else as well, that she could not understand immediately. She slowed to puzzle it out. The shapes were familiar, but their relation to each other wasn’t. She stopped. Squinted. And suddenly she shivered a cringe that reached all the way down to the nut of her.
A dog—a thin, gray creature with a wide heavy head—stood perched on top of a large wooden box. The box was next to a tree. A maple. A rope led from a branch to the dog’s neck. Polly stared at the rope. Something was wrong. A grim, sad dirtiness hung in the air. Her gaze measured its length. The knot over the tree branch, the knot at the dog’s neck— Oh, she gasped, oh Lord.
The rope was taut. If he tried to jump down to the ground he’d strangle. And what was he supposed to drink up there? Polly put the car in park and rocked against her stomach. What could she do? She was close to her home—a walk, if she were younger. How could this be going on so nearby?
Part of her counseled she should just go on home and forget she’d ever seen this. But that wouldn’t stand up on Judgment Day, if there was one.
She unbuckled her belt and worked her way around until she could reach into her brown paper shopping bag. She groped for the packet of hamburger, sat back down, and opened the brown paper, exposing the pink squiggles of top-of-the-round ground. Chances of her throwing it accurately enough that it would land on top of the box were zilch. Should she get out of the car? The idea was insane and reckless. But it was that or leave having done nothing, which was intolerable.