Читать книгу Peyton Place - Grace Metalious - Страница 17

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Now it was winter and the town lay frozen under a low, gray sky that held no visible sun. The children, clad in bright snow suits although there was still no snow, hurried on their way to school, eager now to reach the comfortable, steam-heated buildings that awaited them at the end of Maple Street. The wooden benches in front of the courthouse were deserted; the old men who had kept them filled all summer had long since moved into the chairs around the stove in Tuttle’s Grocery Store. Everyone waited for the snows which had been threatening to arrive since before Thanksgiving, but the ground was still bare in this first week of January.

“The cold’d snap if we got some snow,” said one of the old men in Tuttle’s.

“Sure looks like we’d get some today.”

“Nope. It’s too cold to snow.”

“That’s foolishness,” said Clayton Frazier. He lit his pipe and stared into the bowl until he was satisfied with its glow. “Snow’s in Siberia all the time, and the thermometer falls to sixty below over there. ’Tain’t never too cold to snow.”

“That don’t make no difference. This ain’t Siberia. It’s too cold to snow in Peyton Place.”

“No, ’tain’t,” said Clayton Frazier.

“Them fellers still down in the cellar?” asked the man who was so sure that it would not snow that he declined to discuss the matter further with Clayton Frazier.

This was the big topic of conversation in Peyton Place and had been since before Christmas. It had become so familiar that there was no longer any need for anyone to ask, “What fellers?” or “What cellar?”

On the first of December, Kenny Stearns, Lucas Cross and five other men had disappeared into Kenny’s cellar where Kenny stored the twelve barrels of cider which he had made early in the fall. They had been armed with several cases of beer and as many bottles of liquor as they could carry, and they had remained in the cellar ever since. The men had fastened a strong, double bolt attachment to the inside of the door and so far the efforts of any outsider to penetrate this barricade had been futile.

“I seen one of the school kids headed over that way yesterday with a bagful of groceries,” said one of the old men, putting his feet up on the warm stove in Tuttle’s. “Ast ’im what he was doin’, and he told me Kenny’d sent ’im for food.”

“How’d the kid get into the cellar?”

“Didn’t. Told me Kenny handed the money out through the cellar window and took in the groceries the same way.”

“The kid see anything?”

“Nope. Said Kenny’s got this black curtain fastened to the inside of the window so’s nobody can see in, and he said Kenny no more than opened the window a slit to pass out the money and take in the stuff.”

“What do you suppose made them fellers go down there and stay all this time?”

“Dunno. There’s some say that Kenny promised the next time he caught Ginny runnin’ out he was gonna go on a drunk like nobody ever seen. Reckon this is it.”

“Reckon so. Them fellers been down in that cellar goin’ on six weeks now.”

“Wonder if they run out of booze yet. Twelve barrels of hard cider don’t go too damn far. Not with seven of ’em drinkin’.”

“Dunno. Somebody said they seen Lucas over to White River one night, late. Drunk as a lord he was, with a beard a foot long. Mebbe he sneaks out at night and goes over to White River to get more drink.”

“Six weeks. Jesus! I’ll bet a nickel they don’t even have any beer left, let alone hard stuff.”

“Can’t understand why Buck McCracken don’t put a stop to it, though.”

“Reckon the sheriff’s ashamed, that’s why. His own brother is down in the cellar with Kenny and them.”

“Wish I could be a fly on the wall down there, by God. Must be goin’s on in that cellar that’d make a man’s blood run cold.”

“You’d think the cold would freeze ’em out.”

“Naw. Ginny told me Kenny’s got an old Franklin stove down there, and he’d got in his cord wood long before him and the fellers went down to stay. Ginny said she had to move out because she couldn’t get down to get wood for the stoves up in the house.”

The men laughed. “Reckon Ginny don’t need no wood fire to keep her warm!”

“Wonder what Ginny’s doin’ for company these cold nights. With all her boy friends down in that cellar, she must be gettin’ a trifle lonesome.”

“Not Ginny Stearns,” said Clayton Frazier. “Not by a long shot.”

Several men snickered. “How do you know, Clayton? You been takin’ up where the others left off?”

Before Clayton could answer, a group of school children came trooping into the store and the men ceased talking. The youngsters crowded around Tuttle’s penny candy counter, and the men around the stove smoked silently, waiting. When the children had spent their pennies and one lone boy had bought a loaf of bread, the men rustled themselves and prepared to talk again.

“Wa’nt that the Page kid? The one that bought the bread?”

“Yep. Never seen a kid with such a pinched-lookin’ face. Don’t know what it is exactly. He’s better dressed than most kids and his mother’s comfortably fixed. Yet, that kid has the look of a starvin’ orphan.”

“It’s his age,” said Clayton Frazier. “Growin’ pains.”

“Mebbe. He’s growed fast in the last year. Could be that’s what makes him so pale lookin’.”

“Nope,” disagreed Clayton, “that ain’t it. He’s just got one of them dead fish skins, like his mother. His father wa’nt ever too ruddy himself.”

“Poor old Oakleigh Page. Reckon he’s better off in his grave than he was alive with all them wimmin fightin’ over him all the time.”

“Yep,” the men agreed. “ ’Twa’nt no life for a man.”

“Oh, I dunno,” said Clayton Frazier. “Seems to me like Oakleigh Page ast for all his troubles.”

“Ain’t nobody asks for trouble.”

“Oakleigh did,” said Clayton.

The argument began. Oakleigh Page was forgotten once his name had served to start the words flying. The men in Tuttle’s began to enumerate the people in town who had—or had not—asked for their troubles. Clayton Frazier’s old eyes gleamed. This was the part of each day that he lived for; when his disagreeableness finally provoked a lively discussion. The old man tilted his chair back and balanced himself on its two rear legs. He relit his pipe and wished fleetingly that Doc Swain had more time to hang around. A man didn’t have to work hardly at all to get The Doc going, while it sometimes took a considerable while to get the men in Tuttle’s riled up.

“Don’t make no difference what none of you say,” said Clayton. “There’s folks that just plain beg for trouble. Like Oakleigh Page.”