The crying of the bells.

Bobbi Anderson got out of her blue Chevrolet truck, slamming the door, smoothing her dark blue dress over her hips and checking her makeup in the truck's outside mirror before walking slowly down the sidewalk to the church. She walked with her head down and her shoulders slumped. She was trying hard to get the rest she needed to go on, and Gard had helped to put a brake on her obsession

(and that's what it is, an obsession, no use kidding yourself)

but Gard was a brake that was slowly wearing out. He wasn't at the funeral because he was sleeping off a monumental drunk out at the farm, his grizzled, worn face pillowed on one arm, his breath a sour cloud around him. Anderson was tired, all right, but it was more than tiredness-a great unfocused grief seemed to fill her this morning. It was partly for Ruth, partly for David Brown, partly for the whole town. Yet mostly, she suspected, it was for herself. The “becoming” continued-for everyone in Haven except Gard, that was-and it was good, but she mourned her own unique identity, which was now fading like a morning mist. She knew now that The Buffalo Soldiers was her last book… and the irony was that she now suspected the Tommyknockers had written most of that, as well.

The bells, bells, bells.

Haven answered them. It was Act I of a charade titled The Burial of Ruth McCausland, or, How We Loved That Woman. Nancy Voss had closed the post office to come. The government would not have approved, but what the government didn't know wouldn't hurt them. They would know plenty soon enough, she thought. They would get a big old express-mail delivery from Haven very soon. Them and every other government on this flying mudball.

Frank Spruce, Haven's biggest dairy farmer, answered the bells. John Mumphry, whose father had run against Ruth for the position of town constable, answered them. Ashley Ruvall, who had passed her out by the town line two days before her death, answered them with his parents. Ashley was crying. Doc Warwick was there, and Jud Tarkington; Adley McKeen came with Hazel McCready on his arm; Newt Berringer and Dick Allison answered them, walking slowly and supporting Ruth's predecessor, John Harley, between them. John was feeble and nearly transparent. Maggie, his wife, was not well enough to attend.

They came, answering the summons of the bells-Tremains and Thurlows, Applegates and Goldmans, Duplisseys and Archinbourgs. Good Maine people, you would have said, drawn from a healthy stockpot that was mostly French, Irish, Scots, and Canadian. But they were different now; as they drew together at the church, so did their minds draw together and become one mind, watching the outsiders, listening for the slightest wrong note in their thoughts… they came together, they listened, and the bells rang in their strange blood.

Ev Hillman sat up behind the wheel of the Cherokee, eyes opening wide at the dim sound of the carillon. “What in the hell-”

“Churchbells, what else?” Butch Dugan said. “It sounds very pretty. They're getting ready to start the funeral, I suppose.” They're burying Ruth over in the village… what in God's name am I doing out here by the town line with this crazy old man?

He wasn't sure, but it was too late to change his course now.

“The bells in the Methodist church never made a sound like that before in my time,” Ev said. “Someone's changed them over.”

“So what?”

“So nothing. So everything. I dunno. Come on, Trooper Dugan.” He turned the key, and the Cherokee's engine roared.

“I'll ask you again,” Dugan said with what he thought was extraordinary patience. “What are we looking for?”

“I don't rightly know.” The Cherokee passed the town-line marker. They had left Albion now and entered Haven. Ev had a sudden sickening premonition that in spite of all his precautions and care, he was never going to leave it again. “We'll know it when we see it.”

Dugan didn't reply, only held on for dear life and wondered again how he had gotten into this-he had to be as crazy as the old fart he was riding with, and then some. He raised one hand to his forehead and began rubbing, just above the eyebrows.

A headache was forming there.

There were sniffles, red eyes, and some sobbing as the Rev. Goohringer, his bald head gleaming mellowly and in a soft variety of colors courtesy of the summer sunshine falling through the stained-glass windows, launched into his funeral eulogy following a hymn, a prayer, another hymn, a reading of Ruth's favorite scripture (the Beatitudes), and yet another hymn. Below him, foaming around the lectern in a semi-circle, were great bunches of summer flowers.

Even with the upper windows of the church thrown open and a good breeze blowing through, their smell was suffocatingly sweet.

“We have come here to praise Ruth McCausland and to celebrate her passing,” Goohringer began.

The townsfolk sat with hands either folded or gripping handkerchiefs; their eyes -most wet-regarded Goohringer with sober, studious attention. They looked healthy, these folk-their color was good, their skin for the most part unblemished. And even someone who had never been in Haven before could have seen that the congregation here fell naturally into two groups. The outsiders didn't look healthy. They were pale. Their eyes were dazed. Twice during the eulogy, people left hurriedly, dashed around the corner of the church, and were quietly sick. For others, the nausea was a lower complaint-an uneasy rolling in the bowels not quite serious enough to cause an exit but simply going on and on.

Several outsiders would lose teeth before that day was over.

Several developed headaches which would dissolve almost as soon as they left town-the aspirin finally working, they would surmise.

And more than a few of them had the most amazing ideas as they sat on the hard pews and listened to Goohringer preach Ruth McCausland's eulogy. In some cases these ideas came so suddenly and seemed so huge, so fundamental, that the persons to whom they occurred would feel as if they had been shot in the head. Such persons had to fight down an urge to bolt out of their pews and run into the street screaming “Eureka!” at full volume.

The people of Haven saw this happening and were amused. All of a sudden the apathetic, puddinglike expression on someone's face would be shocked away. The eyes would widen, the mouth flop open, and the Havenites would recognize the expression of a person in the throes of a Grand Idea.

Eddie Stampnell of the Derry barracks, for instance, conceived of a nationwide police band on which every cop in the land could communicate. And he saw how a cloak could easily be thrown over such a band; all those nosy civilians with their police-band radios would be shit out of luck. Ramifications and modifications poured into his mind faster than he could deal with them; if ideas had been water, he would have drowned. I'm gonna be famous for this, he thought feverishly. Rev. Goohringer was forgotten; Andy Rideout, his partner, was forgotten; his dislike of this goofy little town was forgotten; Ruth was forgotten. The idea had swallowed his mind. I'm gonna be famous, and I'm gonna revolutionize policework in America… maybe in the whole world. Holy shit! Hoo-oly SHIP

The Havenites, who knew Eddie's great idea would be foggy by noon and gone by three, smiled and listened and waited. Waited for it to be over, so they could get back to their real business.