Tom Deady: Haven

He arrived at Billy’s to find his driveway empty. Shit, he’s not home yet. He walked up the steps and was about to knock anyway when the door flew open, almost knocking him off the porch.

“Oh, Denny! You scared the crap out of me.”

“Hi, Julie,” was the best response he could muster, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. Julie Cummings was three years older than Denny but that didn’t stop him from having a full-blown, knee-weakening crush on her. He found her attractive in a way he couldn’t describe. It wasn’t that long ago that she would hang out with Denny and Billy, goofing around or playing flashlight tag or hide-and-go-seek. This school year she’d started hanging with a different crowd. It was inevitable, Denny guessed, but he missed seeing her on a regular basis. Since she had “matured” Denny found himself tongue-tied whenever she was around.

“Billy’s not home. My mom was picking him up after practice and taking him for a haircut and stuff.” Just as she finished, a car whipped into the driveway leaving a cloud of dust as it slid to a stop.

Denny’s stomach went into an immediate knot when he saw Dale Crawford hop out of the Mustang’s driver seat and head toward them. “What the fuck are you doing talking to my girl, O’Brien?” He loomed over Denny scowling, fists clenched at his sides. Dale was a big kid, tall and bulky. Still a year away from getting a driver’s license, that didn’t stop Dale from terrorizing Haven from behind the wheel of the Mustang. Having the Chief of Police as your dad had its privileges. Dale’s build would have made most kids his age turn to sports, but Dale chose bullying as his favorite sport. He wore a black Harley t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His thickly muscled arms were covered with home-made tattoos. But it was the bloodstained bandage on Dale’s face that riveted Denny’s gaze. It was big and it was fresh. He certainly didn’t have it when he gave Denny the love-tap to the skull at school. He consciously made an effort to pull his eyes away, knowing it would only piss Dale off to catch him staring. He heard Bear’s guttural snarl and finally looked away to make sure Bear wasn’t going to do anything more than make noise. The dog’s ears were pinned back and his teeth were bared but he was making no move toward Dale. Denny was both relieved and disappointed.

“Leave him alone, Dale, he’s just looking for Billy. Did you get in another fight?” Julie sounded disgusted.

“Shut up, Julie, it’s none of your business.”

Denny wished he was older, bigger, stronger, and tougher. Then he’d show Dale a thing or two about how to talk to people, especially nice girls like Julie. But he was none of those. “Tell Billy I stopped by,” he squeaked as he backed away. Julie smiled and nodded before turning away. As Denny started back up the hill, he could hear the heated argument between the two and his own anger and humiliation burned inside of him.

Father McCarthy waited patiently for the teapot to whistle, glancing hopefully at the closed guestroom door. After the incident at the gas station, Paul had lapsed into a morose silence. Instead of taking Paul around town and risking any more negativity, McCarthy took Paul to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers to get him clothes and toiletries for life on the outside. He’d hoped that the spectacle of the state-of-the-art mall would boost Paul’s spirit but it seemed to have the opposite effect, driving him into a deeper mood, perhaps reminding him of how much he’d missed. They’d returned to McCarthy’s for a mostly-silent dinner, and Paul had soon after retired to the guest room.

McCarthy felt himself being pulled down into the abyss of Paul’s despair. This was a day they had both hoped for, waited for, and it had been ruined almost as soon as they crossed the Haven town line. Doubt gnawed at him; perhaps returning to Haven was a mistake. Maybe Paul would be better off starting fresh, a new life where nobody knew his past. McCarthy made his tea and took it out on the small deck off the kitchen. There always seemed to be a breeze, a heavenly breeze, one might say, on the deck, no matter how hot and stagnant the air was.

McCarthy recalled his first meeting with Greymore, almost seventeen years earlier. It was through a program designed to offer one-on-one religious counseling to inmates. Braxton worked with churches of all denominations in surrounding towns to facilitate “spiritual growth” among those convicted of violent crimes. At the time, McCarthy was assigned to a small parish in Peabody and had time on his hands. He felt inexplicably drawn to the program with a force almost as powerful as the one that led him to him the priesthood. For a time, he didn’t understand what had driven him; the work was thankless, a bunch of bad people feigning contrition to make their chances of parole better. Or for the older ones, to make their chances of staying out of Hell better.

Then a new inmate joined the program, and McCarthy found his answer. The man, just a boy really, was so lost, so vulnerable… and as McCarthy got to know him, became friends with him, so clearly innocent. McCarthy began to look forward to the weekly visits, and as the other inmates drifted away and eventually the program lost funding, McCarthy continued the visits on his own time. The friendship grew over the years, and McCarthy spent time researching the case, becoming all the more convinced of Greymore’s innocence. When the tragedy occurred in Haven with Father Krieger and the parish needed someone, McCarthy pulled in every favor he could to get the assignment. Not long after, as it became evident that Greymore was not far from release, McCarthy planted the seed of returning to Haven.

Greymore had been outwardly appalled at the first mention of it, but McCarthy thought (hoped?) he saw desire in Paul’s eyes. A longing to go home. He hadn’t pushed, but had coerced in his own way, mentioning the goings-on in Haven and how beautiful the lake was and how faithful the townspeople were. Slowly, Paul warmed to the idea. Eventually, Haven became all he spoke of. McCarthy had been careful not to mention Crawford’s rise to Police Chief, and Greymore had never asked. It was a lie of omission that McCarthy thought was for the best. Until now.

After seeing what happened at the gas station first-hand, McCarthy finally understood people’s reaction to Greymore’s appearance. It was a form of prejudice, no different than racism or anti-Semitism. It was based in fear and ignorance and McCarthy found it offensive. But that made it no less real, and as he had witnessed today, no less dangerous. Had his own naïveté put Greymore in danger? Surely his release would have been well-publicized, and his face so easily recognized… how had he not thought this through? All he wanted was for Greymore to come home to the town he loved and have a good life. And he had played on Greymore’s own desire for the same thing to lure him back. As bad as McCarthy now felt, he also understood the agony that Paul must be in.

He finished his tea and sat holding the empty cup, a mixture of emotions startling him. The feelings of guilt and shame he understood: he had not been completely honest with Paul and misled him. He knew how to fix that, knew he would fix it. But there was something else, something that felt somehow worse. Off in the distance a dog barked, somewhere else a car horn honked. On McCarthy’s deck, the breeze he came out looking for finally kicked up, gently setting in motion a set of wind chimes that hung off the deck’s railing. The sound usually calmed McCarthy but tonight it put him on edge, and he realized what he was feeling.

The chimes sounded to McCarthy like a telephone ringing. He immediately thought of a night long ago, when he was just a boy. The same sound had awoken him in the darkest part of the night; it seemed to go on and on. His father was a sound sleeper and his mom, a nurse, was working the night shift at the hospital. Young McCarthy stumbled out of bed, suddenly afraid. The ringing continued as he made his way toward his parents’ room, his heart beating faster, and suddenly he wanted to cry. Finally he heard his father pick up the phone. He stopped in the hallway, paralyzed with fear, and heard a sound he had never heard before: his father crying.