a story by Harry Johnson
My great aunt, Armena Willis, loves to tell stories. She sits in her favorite chair and sips tea with lemon, her feet propped up on a worn ottoman, wearing a turquoise pair of retro eyeglasses on a jeweled chain around her neck. When she talks she tilts her head to one side, like a person saying “aww” at the sight of a really cute puppy. Armena and her late husband, Hank Willis, grew up in Crumford, a quiet little burg whose only resource was the uneven tourist business from visitors to the medium-sized lake on the northern edge of town. Hank was elected Sherriff a record 17 times, and Armena used to work in his office as a dispatcher back in the 60s and 70s, so she has plenty of stories to tell. Her favorite is about a boy named Roy Crittendon who became a local legend by what Armena like to call ‘whipping up hullabaloo of mayhem.’ She always begins telling this story with the same words: “Rambunctious was about the kindest word anyone ever used to describe young Roy.”
This legendarily wild child was usually the primary topic of conversation among the regulars who hung out every day at Mabel’s Restaurant. Armena spent every afternoon at her cousin’s eatery, which happened to be the only restaurant in town not primarily catering to the lake crowd. At exactly three fifteen every afternoon, Armena turning the switchboard over to the young deputy, Marshall White, and walked one block to Mabel’s for her daily gossip fix. And what do you know, the conversation was focused, as usual, on The Village Terror.
“I heard he cut the tail off of poor Marilyn Sankey’s old dog.”
“I’m scared to walk anywhere nowadays, day or night.”
“I’ve been telling y’all for years, he’s just plain crazy.”
“Crazy is one thing, but that boy’s dangerous.”
When the crowd spotted Armena strutting down the street in her uniform, everyone scooted around the big circular booth to make room for her. She claimed she didn’t approve of gossip, but being the de facto hub of Crumford’s communication system, her arrival at Mabel’s was the high point of the day for the gang at the corner table. Armena made a point of never telling the crowd the latest news until she had taken her seat and Mabel had poured her a cup of tea with lemon. In her later years, Amerna had taken to requesting a couple of artificial sweeteners. Eighty-year-old Frederick Masters always sat to Armena’s left, from whence he continually, stubbornly theorized that Roy’s wild streak was the direct result of his family’s misfortune, pinpointing the onset of Roy’s new temperament to the very day that Roy’s father lost three-quarters of his right leg in an accident at the Crow’s Point textile mill, which forced the family to go on disability.
“They had to move to a tiny place south of Elm, remember? The two boys had to share a bedroom.”
Mrs. Threadkill was quick to point out that plenty of people had it worse than Roy. “I shared a room with my two sisters until I was sixteen. You don’t see me going around beating up people and smashing stuff.”
“Oh, come on, ‘Risa, you know girls aren’t prone to violence. I’m sorry, but that’s just not a good example.”
“Oh, is that so, Mr. Smartypants? What about Bonnie what’s-her-name, the bank robber? What about your cousin over in Dual Forks who set her momma’s house on fire?
“Everyone knows she had certified brain damage.”
“Well, maybe Roy was dropped on his head.”
Frederick rolled his eyes as Mabel stopped by to refill the coffee cups. She liked to chime in now and then.
“Are y’all still trying to figure out what flipped Roy’s switch? Things just happen, you know, with no reason anywhere in sight. God knows I appreciate you’re having these discussions on my watch, but let’s face it, Roy’s was born a miniature maniac and that’s all there is to that.”
“But you can’t deny,” chimed in Frederick once again, “that Roy’s personality disorder coincided with his dad’s accident, now can you?”
Joanne Fogerty stopped fiddling with her napkin. “’Personality disorder?’ I declare, you’re starting to sound like that Phil Donahue on the television.”
Mabel waited her turn to respond to the self-appointed brainiac, aiming her retort directly to Masterson, “Let me ask you something, Mr. Mensa. When I get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning, and the sun comes up right after, does that make me responsible for the daylight?”
Everybody laughed uproariously, as though they hadn’t heard this argument a thousand times.
“Say what you want. Everybody knows that boy turned rotten when his family fell on hard times, and it’s been downhill ever since.” Masterson liked to have the last word. But as Mabel headed back toward the kitchen, she mumbled loudly, “I’ve been wondering if anybody ever dropped you on your head.” The titters around the table went unnoticed by Frederick, who was busy stewing at Mabel, whom he both resented and, secretly, very secretly, adored with all his heart.
It was a known fact that Roy began beating up his older brother, Ned, Jr., on a regular basis when they moved to the south side. But Crumford was the kind of town where folks minded their own business and let families work out their own problems. It wasn’t long Roy’s violence spread outside his family and began affecting the whole town. By age ten, Roy had punched up dozens of boys, stolen from stores and houses, terrorized girls and damaged a considerable amount of property, both public and private. A host of unsolved misdemeanors and vandalisms were attributed to the evil scamp. Most people suspected it was Roy who set the fire at the post office that summer but no one could prove it. People complained to one another and to the sheriff, but no one had any idea what to do about the boy.
One Wednesday afternoon Armena received a call that summoned Sherriff Willis to the playground of the regional school.
“It seems Roy had smashed a open-end wrench across the skull of the school bully, Joseph Connor, causing a nineteen-stitch gash. This was the one and only instance when Roy’s classmates appreciated his violent behavior, the irony being that Roy didn’t crack open Connor’s cranium to protect weaker kids from harassment. He sent him to the hospital simply because he liked beating up on people. He didn’t even try to get away. Hank told me when he arrived, Roy was quietly standing over his victim, with the bloody wrench in his hand. He looked up at Hank and calmly offered his wrists for the handcuffs. Like he’d had a moment of regret or something. It sounded eerie to me.”
While Roy was in custody for the alleged assault, Armena got a close up look at him in the holding cell as they waited for the juvenile authorities to arrive. She couldn’t wait to repeat her observations to the gang at Mabel’s.
“First off,” she said, “He’s not your typical criminal type, if you know what I mean. He doesn’t have an Alfred E. Neuman face or anything.”
Joanne Fogerty couldn’t sit still, she was so excited about the prospect of hearing first hand information. “Is he fidgety? They say serial killers and career criminals are fidgety.”
Armena couldn’t fuel their fire. “Nope. He doesn’t drool or talk to himself or use profanity. And you’re not going to believe this, but when Hank made him wash up and slick his hair down, I swear, he looked like a perfectly normal boy any family would be proud of.”
Mabel chipped in again, “I remember seeing him in church when he was little.”
“That’s right. He had good posture, too.”
“And kids loved playing with him. Our little Jimmy was over there every day before they moved.”
“Not to mention, he gets straight-A’s in school.”
“Boy, am I sick of hearing about that.”
“If it wasn’t for his grades and that meddling Bernice Delacroix, he’d be rotting in Juvenile Hall where he belongs.”
“As if that nosy social worker knows anything. So what if he makes A’s. Tell that to Marilyn Sankey’s dog.”
“Between Delacroix and those old Baptist bitties coming to his defense, you’d think it was our fault he turned out to be the devil himself. They’re always claiming he was some kind of savant or whatever.”
“What ever happened to common sense?”
“You can’t fix something that’s broke that bad.”
Everybody except Frederick Masterson said, “Amen.”
Roy was given yet another reprieve by the uninformed powers that be, and the population of Crumford continued to lock their doors, keep their pets inside and make sure they knew the whereabouts of their children at all times. Then, on his eleventh birthday, in the clear view of several witnesses, Roy threw a brick at the windshield of a passing Greyhound bus, causing the Regional Youth Authority to finally overrule Ms. Delacroix and the Bible thumpers. A clear-minded judge promptly sent him off to a state detention center for a year.
A big smile always spread across Armena’s face at this point in the story. She would tilt her head to the opposite side, take a sip of tea and ask me if I wanted some biscuits. I would always say, “No, thank you, ma’am.” She smiled and settled in for part two of the story.
“With Roy locked up, you’d think the citizens were all on permanent summer vacation, they way they lolled about, knowing Roy wouldn’t be strangling their pets or slashing the contents of their clotheslines to ribbons. They went back to leaving their doors unlocked and letting their children play in the woods.”
Sherriff Willis’s switchboard was so quiet, he and Armena actually took a short vacation. They drove down to Charleston to visit his maiden aunt Sylvia and her companion Louise Parker Heinrich.
Crumford’s holiday of relief and contentment ended abruptly when Roy was released two months before his sentence was up, “for good behavior if you can believe that.” He was dropped off in town by the state Juvenile Department of Corrections, at which time he immediately proceeded to beat up his brother Ned for the ten millionth time.
The next day’s round table discussion centered around the possibility that the town was hexed, that maybe their suffering was karmic punishment for some dastardly moral crime committed by their forefathers. But there was no history of events normally associated with hexed villages, such as lightning strikes, tornadoes or other natural disasters. And of course Frederick knew the answer to a recurring question in the land of Dixie.
“No,” he said, “no one in Crumford ever owned slaves. I’d like to say it was a moral choice, but the simple truth is, no one could afford one.”
Roy’s second reign of havoc lasted almost three months, then one day the news broke. Armena was the first to hear, of course, and couldn’t wait to get over to Mabel’s. She left her post immediately, unable to resist the urge to share the biggest piece of information in the modern history of Crumford. As she so aptly put it, “No decent Christian, God-fearing or otherwise, would ever own up to it out loud, but every man, woman, and child in town, (minus Roy’s family, of course—and we weren’t sure about them), was relieved and not at all surprised the day that Roy turned up dead in Connor’s Woods. No one had any idea at the time how it happened or who did it. The prevailing attitude in Crumford was that the ends justified the means, whatever they might turn out to be.”
“The strangest of coincidences, which is what makes this story worth repeating in the first place, is that young Roy’s death occurred shortly after people began coming from all over creation to see the stone. It’s amazing how those mystical types can sniff out something mysterious from miles away. One day, a large hunk of rock oozed up out of the ground, and the next thing you know, we’re surrounded by spiritual seekers.”
“Yes, it was extremely unusual, but we didn’t think much of it at the time. The stone was about the size of a large doghouse and, according to Frederick Masters, was ‘not constituted of the same geological material normally found in the area.’” Being the sheriff’s wife, Aunt Armena saw herself as a woman of the people—but when she told the story of the miracles, she was likely to wax somewhat eloquent. “It was several shades of gray with flecks of white, with that stratified look of parallel lines along its sides. It was sort of pointed, but not sharp like an arrow, more like the nose of a small-sized jet airplane. It jutted out of the ground at about 45 degrees and gave the impression that there was a lot more of it below ground than above, like an iceberg.”
Armena always laughed at this very same point in the story, because she always, always forgot to mention that it started raining unseasonable torrents right about the time the stone rose out of the ground. The downpour was not the most important fact in the story, but it definitely added to the mystery of the coincidences.
“At first, people thought the stone was a stunt cooked up by some carpetbagging land developer. It wouldn’t have been the first time some out-of-town charlatan tried to swindle what he perceived to be a bunch of rednecks. But cooler heads reminded everyone that the land was notoriously unsuitable for building or growing, which pretty much eliminated the greed factor. Most of the unincorporated county land bordering the Dublin Road contained only southern pine trees and some thick, ugly shrubbery, neither of which was ever seen in any other part of the county. It wasn’t long before the protruding rock in the clearing quickly became a powerful magnet for lost souls, dreamers, evangelists, repentant sinners, and the simply curious from far and wide.”
“Mabel had a theory about the pilgrims. She said that the further folks traveled to see a ‘miracle,’ the more amazed they were, which makes sense if you think about it.
‘If a sojourner puts in her effort, she’s going to want commensurate results, right? Say you’re sitting right here at your usual table, for example, and somebody says, ‘Hey, don’t that look just like Jesus over there on Winnie’s Esso sign?’ All you have to do is turn your head, look out the window, and say yes or no. No big deal, right? If a clump of dirt turns out not to resemble the Lord, then it’s no skin off your nose. You see what I’m getting at? So imagine, when you drive 500 miles on back roads to see some stone sticking out of the ground, then you better have one heck of a spiritual experience to justify all that gas money and your stiff back and everybody telling you you’re out of your mind. Am I right or am I right?’” Armena shook her head from side to side and laughed out loud at the memory of her cousin Mabel.
“It’s a good thing your uncle and I took that little trip to Charleston when we did, because pilgrims were arriving in droves from all over the tri-state area and even as far away as Athens, Greece to get a glimpse of what they started calling ‘Rockland County’s geological miracle.’ I declare. There were ten times as many of these spiritual travelers than even the summer lake crowd.
“It’s amazing how the visitors knew more about our town than we did. We didn’t know, for example, that the Connor family, who had received the land as a grant from the British Crown, was originally descended from an ancient noble line traceable back to the year 1067. Apparently, their clan had fallen from grace in the United Kingdom, quite a simple task for an Irishman, and all the Connors were exiled to the New World. Two generations after their arrival, the family suffered the humiliating allegation of witchcraft in one of their daughters. The problem was solved, after much consternation, by the conventional method at the time, drowning.”
“Anyway, between the throngs of seekers clogging Dublin Road and the incessant rain, it took Hank a while to get to the site where Roy’s body had been discovered by a couple of curious pilgrims who had wandered off course. By the time he and his deputy finally arrived, the crowd staring at Roy’s corpse was almost as big as the crowd around the stone.”
Rumors were born, embellished, mutated, and spread around the county faster than a flu epidemic. Everyone had an opinion, because everyone had a story about Roy. News travels fast in a small town, but this was like lightning. Every phone line was busy, every public place filled with chatter. Not much got done at work or school for days.
None of this anecdotal information advanced Hank’s investigation, however. The authorities had little to go on. Ned, Jr. was the first person everyone thought of, but he and his parents had been at Mabel’s enjoying her famous chicken fried steak at the official time of death, which was estimated by the Rockland County Coroner at six p.m. Heck they didn’t even know until Armena arrived with the news. She always remarks how that was the most uncomfortable moment she ever had professionally, having to tell the Crittendons about the death of their son.
There was no evidence at the scene of any forensic value. Footprints that might have provided clues in the dank woods had been trampled over by the curious crowd or washed away by the rain. Rumor had it that the initial examination of the body indicated he had been beaten or choked, or both. Hank wisely called in the state police to assist.
The crowd at Mabel’s corner table was working on the case in their own way.
“I heard that Roy went to the woods to meet up with someone.” Armena had to interject: “Well, I happen to know that molestation has been eliminated as a theory of the crime.”
“I can name dozens of people who’d like to molest him, just not in that way.”
“Besides, didn’t that pervert - what’s his name – Paul something. Didn’t he go off to the Episcopalian Seminary last year?”
“Yes he did. And he swore he’d never come back.”
“Good riddance.”
Everyone at the table except Frederick Masterson said, “Amen.”
Sheriff Willis had no trouble rounding up scores of volunteers to comb the area. Frederick was the first person to volunteer. Nothing much was getting done around town anyway, so a body might as well get into the thick of it and maybe be the one who helped solved the case. The only requirement for this little posse was desire and a workable pair of boots. Remembering his early police academy training, Hank conducted systematic, thorough searches, fanning out in ever-widening circles from the crime scene and nothing was found. After a few days, when the initial buzz began to ebb, the question was raised one morning among the regulars at Mabel’s (no one remembers who said it) as to whether the emergence of the Stone, this historical rain, and the death of young Roy were connected. Jim Gibberly played substitute genius, since Frederick was out searching, pointing out the post hoc, propter hoc correlation, a theory with which the round table was well-acquainted with in less formal terms from Mabel’s oft-quoted sunrise example. It was generally accepted, however, that one did not have to be religiously persuadable to believe that some coincidences were odder than others. Once again, the local phone lines were alive with gossip about what was now being called the double miracle. Armena rolled her eyes to the heavens, “It didn’t take much.”
At this point, Armena settled into her role as raconteur. “It seems that a reporter from Mobile, Alabama had been dispatched to write a story about The Stone for his newspaper, which was owned and read mostly by evangelical Christians. None of us thought much about it, mind you, what with the strangers everywhere you looked. This ‘journalist’ was one of those falsely cheerful types with beady eyes and ears that stuck out. He wore a worn-out, black suit in spite of the weather, with pamphlets and scraps of paper sticking out of most of his pockets. His umbrella had one spike sticking out with no cloth on it so his left shoulder was always soaked through. His shoddy shoes were quickly ruined by the rain and mud. He interviewed lots of people, including me, along with Doctor Krohn and a couple of preachers. Hank wouldn’t talk to the press during an ongoing open investigation. The article appeared a few days later and made frequent references to miracles, the devil, and the mystical power of prayer. The writer drew the conclusion, if you could call it that, that the rock had been sent by God to save the town from Roy.” Armena rolled her eyes twice.
“Nobody in town paid any mind to that newspaper article, but it did lead to the next part of the story. It seems a TV station in Montgomery (not to be outdone by those amateurs in Mobile) sent a full reporting crew up here to expand the story into a mini-documentary, which aired on their high-powered station as the lead story of the Sunday six-o’clock news. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people in six states had heard about ‘The Double Miracle of Rockland County.’”
The otherwise blasé population of Crumford couldn’t resist tuning in to the broadcast. Mabel even brought in a tiny TV from her daughter’s room so the rumor squad could watch it together without leaving the psychological comfort of their corner table. The most powerful of the local interviews was with a thoughtful young girl in glasses and a plain blue dress who revealed that she had been teaching Roy how to play the oboe. By the way, playing the oboe in the land of banjos and gut buckets was a bit of miracle in its own right.
Every eye in Mabel’s was glued to the set as the camera zoomed in on little Maria, her dark hair pinned to her temple with a homemade ribbon. “Roy and I used to meet after school and practice together in the woods not far from my house. Just far enough so nobody would hear us. I would play a phrase and he would try and copy me. We took turns. It was fun.”
“We all figured she must have been the last person to see Roy alive. She certainly was the only person in town who didn’t seem to be afraid of him. She avoided the religious inferences the reporter kept insisting were at the root of the event, and told her story in the softest, sweetest voice this side of Kansas, causing even the most skeptical to conclude she was telling the truth.”
“I don’t know about that,” she quietly stated, “all I know is I accidentally discovered this caney sort of plant in the woods one day, and it seemed like the same kind of wood as the reeds my dad sends away to Richmond for.”
Armena said it was the longest time she had ever seen that table full of chatterboxes at Mabel’s sit still without talking. This little child musician had learned how fashion her own oboe reeds. Talk about miracles.
Maria continued, “I don’t have any friends, really, so when I found the reed plant, I told Roy about it the next day at school. He was all excited and asked me if I would play something for him. So I met him after school several days in a row and played my lessons for him. Then one day he asked me to teach him how to play.”
Jim Gibberly was practically in tears, staring at her little face on television.
Martha knew Maria and her family from shopping at the general store and said, “They’re very honest people. They pay for things I didn’t see them pick up and the little girl walked all the way back into town one day to pay a bill.”
“Mrs. Poole said she’s a good student, too. She keeps to herself, but a nice girl.”
“You know, her story might explain why things were so quiet the week or so before Roy died, remember? It was probably because he was in the woods with Maria.”
Other people who claimed to know her said she was not given to lying, nor was she the lovesick type who might come to the defense of an outcast against all authority and common sense.
There was a moment when Maria’s father, Frank, was on camera. “We were appalled at the idea of our only daughter being acquainted with the deceased, but we support out talented little girl during these calamitous times.”
Young Maria’s unabashed sincerity in her television interview brought up guilt feelings and confusion in many people who hated this poor dead boy who apparently had a soft side and even wanted to learn the oboe, of all things.
“What are we supposed to think now?”
“Was Roy one of those mentally unbalanced children?”
“Are you saying it wasn’t his fault?”
“Hell, what do I know about psychology?”
The townspeople didn’t want to feel ignorant, so they began buying into the myriad of new-age theories that sprang up like mosquitoes in July, mostly proliferated by the outsiders who’d come to see the stone.
Sherriff Willis, on the other hand, had no interest in theories, his only interest was in who. The focus of his investigation came to roost on a select few citizens. Armena kept her table of talkers informed of the latest dope: Marylin Sankey had been in Atlanta the week of the crime meeting with a veterinary surgeon, and the two teachers who had received anonymous death threats were questioned and released. Hank was logically interested in several members of the old Connor family, particularly Patrick, the father of the bully who Roy had been beaten within inches of his life. The Sherriff was very aware that every single Sunday since Joseph’s beating some member of this hard-drinking clan swore revenge on Roy. This usually occurred moments before the would-be avenger stumbled off a barstool and knocked himself unconscious. To hear Armena tell it, people avoided the Connors as they would keep clear of a bull in a pasture during mating season. She said they were unfit to socialize with decent folks, which was truly a shame, because Asa Connor, the 18th century founder of their town, was renowned as an honest and industrious man who would undoubtedly turn in his grave if he could see his descendants wasting the Lord’s day stinking up a roadhouse with empty oaths and whiskey-fueled bravado.
Armena, with her infinite wisdom and the benefit of hindsight, pointed out one benefit that can occasionally be derived from what she called “drunken oafishness” — it often brings situations to a boil. Such was the case when the TV in the roadhouse happened to be tuned to the Montgomery news station that was carrying the “miracle rock” story. That particular Sunday afternoon, as the sun descended and the lunacy intensified, Patrick Connor abruptly decided to get to the bottom of the Roy mystery. He staggered down the road, leading his band of inebriated kinfolk from the local saloon to the home of the innocent oboist to demand an explanation. Their meandering march through town caused such a ruckus that Sheriff Willis was alerted. Someone else called the family and Maria was instructed by her father to hide in the basement until it was safe. He stood on his front porch like Atticus Finch (except that he was unarmed) and talked the Connor boys down to a dull roar, all the while looking up and down the road for reinforcements. It turns out the sheriff had seen the documentary, and was already on his way to question Maria when Deputy White called from the switchboard and forewarned him about the Connors.
“Funny thing was, when Hank finally arrived, the Connors had sobered up somewhat, and were carrying on a fairly civilized conversation with Maria’s dad. Patrick Connor explained to the Sheriff and a swelling group of onlookers, in his rambling, poetic manner common to Irish alcoholics (excuse the redundancy), that he’d seen a vision. Hank harrumphed, knowing that Connor was prone to bourbon hallucinations, but, in the interest of peace, allowed him to continue. Hank had often confided in me that the key to negotiations with criminals and drunks is to merely keep them talking. It seems Mr. Connor’s ‘vision’ included Maria hiding in the basement with her homemade reeds, the miraculous stone in the woods and the dead boy. Patrick was convincing, in that way drunks have of cutting to the quick (in a roundabout way, if that makes any sense), so even though my husband didn’t believe a word of his story, he no longer considered him a threat to anyone, except possibly himself.”
Sherriff Willis now turned his attention to his original reason for the visit, the child Maria. “Excuse me, Mr. Battaglia, would you mind bringing your daughter out here? I’d like to have a word with her.”
Maria’s father went inside the house, and after several minutes, Maria demurely emerged behind her dad, blinking her eyes to adjust to the light after having hidden in the basement for so long. The setting sun was shining brightly on the Battaglia’s porch. By now a middling-sized crowd of townfolk had assembled and was growing by the minute. Her father coaxed Maria out onto the porch where everyone could see her. Flash bulbs popped. Hank later confided in Armena that he was very upset with the crowd of curiosity-seekers. He was reluctant to question the little girl in front of everyone, but he realized he was caught in a situation he was powerless to change. He was also aware that elections were coming up in the fall, so he addressed the crowd in what Armena called his best ‘authority-with-a-heart’ voice.
“Folks! Everybody! Now lookee here. I must remind you that this here is an official police investigation.” The crowd had quieted and was paying the sheriff the respect he deserved.
“Now, I understand basic human curiosity and the need to know what all’s going on in our own backyard. But this is first and foremost police business, and I’m asking you kindly to please show respect for the law and for this little lady. It’s not going to make talking to her any easier with y’all gawkin’ and buzzin’ and snappin’ photographs. So. If you would kindly let us get on with our task here, I’d certainly appreciate your cooperation.” He turned back toward little Maria.
Armena tried to hide her pleasure at this part of the story, but it was plain to see she was very proud of her husband. When Jim Gibberly first told her what had happened, she made him repeat the story three times to make sure she would always remember every word of it. Jim said that when Hank finished his little speech to the crowd, he turned around to talk to little Maria, somebody in the crowd started clapping. Pretty soon all of the several dozen onlookers were wrapped up in applause. The sheriff turned back around to quiet them and they clapped harder, like he was taking an encore bow or something. He planted his hands on his hips and glared at the crowd, looking from face to face, like a teacher demanding quiet from an unruly classroom. They stopped applauding as quickly as they started, like somebody threw a switch.
Meanwhile, Maria was standing there the whole time, next to her dad, her dark eyes cast modestly downward. She was holding what turned out to be an envelope and two oboe reeds. Her father said, “Go ahead, honey.” She looked up at her dad for reassurance, cleared her little throat, and began speaking, softly and in measured cadence.
“I used to meet Roy after school in the woods and practice on the oboe. I was teaching him how to play.” She stopped talking and swallowed a couple of times. She was having trouble catching her breath. “Roy left these things for me to find. He whittled the reeds himself. We found a plant in the woods that made perfect reeds.” She went silent again.
The sheriff spoke up. “And what’s that in the envelope, sweetie?”
Maria slowly opened the envelope and removed a single piece of paper. She held it up for everyone to see. The sheriff asked, “What is that, music?”
“Yes sir, it is. This is an etude that we worked on when we practiced. Roy wrote on the back.”
The people watching stood perfectly still, taking in this surreal scene, watching this little girl speak almost like an adult.
“I’m very sorry, sir, that I didn’t speak up sooner. I’m pretty sure the letter will explain everything.” She read:
Dear Maria,
Thank you for being my friend. You are
the only person who was ever nice to me.
Please use these reeds next time you practice.
I am going to take a lot of pills I stole from Mr.
Gordon’s drugstore, and then run myself into
trees in the woods to make it look like I was beat
up bad. Maybe one of those dopes who hated me
will get blamed for it.
I wish I could say I will see you in heaven
someday, but I don’t think they’ll let me in.
Your friend,
Roy
As Armena put it, “You didn’t need the police radio to spread the word quickly around Crumford. The next morning the rain and clouds were gone and the sun shone brightly for the first time in weeks. Over at the general store, folks were shopping for Windex and shoe polish, when a tourist walked through the front door and started in on Martha, the owner, about her faulty directions to the Miracle Stone. Martha’s nickname was the human map, so when the camera-toting outsider raised her voice to challenge her, everybody in the store stopped to listen.
“I’m sorry, lady, but it’s not my fault don’t know your way around here.”
“You said to follow the signs to the lake, then turn right on Dublin Road, go precisely one half mile and stop, then head due west into the woods, right?”
Martha couldn’t deny those were her exact words. “Yeah, that’s sounds right.”
“Well, I’m telling you, there ain’t no stone there.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I’m standing here. And I got dozens of witnesses.”
“Martha didn’t even bother to reply. She just walked straight out of the store and hopped in her Jeep. All the local residents followed her out the door. Everyone in town got it at once. Vehicles started up from one end of town to the other.
The scene that followed in Connor’s Woods consisted of scores of disappointed pilgrims on the one hand, slouching out of the woods toward their cars, griping of their dashed hopes, wondering what they would tell the folks back home. In the opposite direction slogged hundreds of Crumfordians, from the Dublin Road into the muddy woods, where they jammed themselves around the edge of the clearing and stared at the spot where the stone used to be, each of us lost in our own thoughts.”
To this day, folks like to visit Mabel’s to hear about Roy and The Stone. Mabel’s daughter, Abby, runs the place these days, and most of the old gossip gang have long ago passed on, telling their stories to fellow angels in heaven. Hank passed away six years ago, and Armena stays home most of the time. But she still enjoys going back there every now and then, sitting in the corner table, and enjoying a cup of tea with lemon. People always come over and ask politely if they might sit with her and she welcomes the company. She takes off her turquoise retro glasses, closes her book, and asks them to please sit down. Sooner or later, the talk shifts to the story of the twin miracles and Armena is in a heaven of her own, recounting the fantastic but true story that finally put Crumford on the map: “Rambunctious was about the kindest word anyone ever used to describe young Roy…”