Dartmouth College Dartmouth Digital Commons Open Dartmouth: Faculty Open Access Scholarship 2014 Whisper My Name Ernest Hebert Dartmouth College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa Recommended Citation Hebert, Ernest, "Whisper My Name" (2014). Open Dartmouth: Faculty Open Access Scholarship. 3982. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/3982 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Dartmouth: Faculty Open Access Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 1 6/11/2014 9:24:34 AM ALSO BY ERNEST HEBERT The Darby Chronicles The Dogs of March A Little More Than Kin Whisper My Name The Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell Fiction Mad Boys The Old American Never Back Down I Love U Nonfiction New Hampshire Patterns with Jon Gilbert Fox University Press of New England Hanover and London Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 3 6/11/2014 9:24:34 AM University Press of New England www.upne.com © 1984 Ernest Hebert All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First University Press of New England paperback edition published in 2014. Whisper My Name was first published in 1984 by Viking Penguin Inc. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61168-625-8 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-626-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940328 5 4 3 2 1 This book is dedicated to my teachers and especially to the memory of David H. Battenfeld. Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 5 6/11/2014 9:24:34 AM Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 6 6/11/2014 9:24:34 AM Contents The Mall 1 The Moose 12 News 23 The Thought of the Money 30 Naming of Parts 39 Searching for Soapy 45 The Burglary 52 Crowbar 65 The Illness 74 Ike's Amazing Machine 84 McDonald's 95 Newhawk 98 Mrs. McCurtin 103 Contact 111 Silent Night 124 Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 9 6/11/2014 9:24:35 AM X CONTENTS Persephone's Rebellion 139 With the TV On 148 Reggie's Rebellion 153 Barnum's Proposal 178 Partings 180 Duty 185 Final Arguments 202 Surging 211 Ahead, Butterfly 218 The Trust 221 Red Herring 230 Whisper My Name 233 Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 10 6/11/2014 9:24:35 AM Whisper My Name Hebert_9781611686265.pdf 13 6/11/2014 9:24:35 AM e Darby Chronicles e Dogs of March A Little More an Kin Whisper My Name e Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell Guide to the Darby Chronicles <erniehebert.com> N Runs more or less INTERSTATE E Parallel to the W Connecticut 91 River on the S Vermont Side Original site of Cooty’s Cabin Site of former Abare’s Folly Basketville sign Mountain and Jordan shacks Great Meadow Village New Hampshire Vermont DARBY DEPOT Rte. 12 to Keene Site of PLC Project Ike’s Cutter Place Auction Barn Trust Lands Elman Place Grace Pond Dorne Place River Connecticut CENTER DARBY McCurtin Hillary Farm Place Town Trust Lands Hall RIVER DARBY Downed Elm Turner Primeval Forest Tree House Sandbank Jordan Place Latour’s Spoonwood Cabin UPPER DARBY Trust Lands Trust Lands Salmon Ledges Estate and 1-Mile where Birch Cooty’s was born Cabin The Hall The sound of the shower water beating against his skin reminded Roland LaChance of himself as a small boy lis­ tening to Old Joe humming coarsely against the drone of the family Ford station wagon. Only in the car, his mind on cruise, would Old Joe sing. Chance turned off the water, and the roar of a crowd from his portable television in the next room broke over him, quickly ebbed, and, fol­ lowing a split second of oppressive silence (when Chance heard Old Joe's hum die to a moan, signaling the onset of dark mood), he was listening to the water again, swirl­ ing into the drain, pittering from the shower head, drip, drip, drip ... "LaChance, I don't really want to send you a hundred miles to walk around a shopping mall," said Clovis Shard, editor of The Tuckerman Crier newspaper in Tuckerman, New Hampshire. "This is Mrs. Chubb's idea. But she's the publisher, and I'm willing to humor her now and then, as long as she keeps the hell out of my newsroom ninety- nine percent of the time. So, go. Walk the showcase of Magnus malls, talk to the people, ask 'em how they like it. Don't forget to sniff out the downtown, too. That's the 1 2 WHISPER MY NAME issue in Tuckerman: Will a mall leave the downtown a waste­ land of plywooded storefronts?" As he talked, Clovis Shard ran his fingers through his crew cut. It didn't matter to him that there were only four pr five gray bristles and two red ones on top of his head. Shard was hardly aware of himself as a physical being, hardly aware how sharply he contrasted with his rookie reporter, who was young with black, unruly hair, a wiry body, and dark skin, where Shard was middle-aged, bald, chunky, and fair. What Shard was aware of was that his reporter was difficult to handle. He wasn't the type you could bully, flatter, tease, or even reason with. To get work out of him, you had to leave him alone and hope he did the job. Shard suffered him because he had the raw stuff to make a good newspaperman. He could think fairly well, and he had an eye for detail, the ability to grasp ideas without being swept up by them, and no gift whatsoever for creative expression. What he lacked was doggedness, curiosity. He seemed preoccupied; he spent hours in the Crier files room; Shard didn't know what to make of him. Roland LaChance did not leave immediately for the Mag­ nus Mall of Grenoble, New York. First, he stopped at the Tuckerman County Courthouse, a place he had become quite familiar with after several months on the job as the Criers county reporter. He had spent many hours here attending meetings of the Tuckerman County Commissioners, the coun­ ty's legislative delegation, and numerous county committees, and he had also covered occasional court trials. This morning, however, it was not the Criers business he was on, but his own. "Anything? Anything at all?" he asked. He knew the answer to his question even before he asked it by the tiny, sympathetic smile breaking across the buck-toothed mouth of Charlene Harris, the clerk helping him with his case. "I'm afraid not," she said. "No couple or individual named LaChance adopted any children in New Hampshire in the year you say you were born, or in the two years following or the two years previous. I've checked all the files." 3 THE MALL "So, that's it." "Yes, that's it. You're sure you were born here?" "That's what my adoptive father said—conceived in Tuck­ erman County—let it out when he was drinking. Of course, he was such a liar, maybe even his Freudian slips were lies." "And you came to live in Tuckerman County to learn the truth one way or another?" Chance nodded, thanked Charlene, and left. Genevieve's silence over his origins, Old Joe's deception— these remaining mysteries. Chance's efforts to find his natural parents had failed. All he had learned was that Old Joe had lied in telling him his records had burned in a fire in a county building. There had been no such fire in forty years. However, Old Joe was right about one thing: his records were missing. Maybe they did not exist at all. It would have been logical for Chance to continue his search by questioning his relatives in Manchester, fifty miles away. But this he would not do. Chance wouldn't admit it to himself, but while he had come to Tuckerman to search, he didn't really want to find. In fact, he was oddly relieved at having arrived back where he started from—nowhere. He was re­ lieved because something told him that knowing his origins might be more difficult to bear up under than not knowing. He had searched just enough to fulfill the requisites of his sense of responsibility. He would do little more. He would stay in Tuckerman County and wait and see how fate dealt with him. This was natural to him because of his name. As a boy he had come by the nickname Chance, and as time passed he had grown into the name, so that now, if he had any faith at all, it was in his name, living by it. The light was gray and the air felt moist. Chance thought it might rain. He was still new enough to the area not to be able to distinguish a weather front from the haze that in the summer sometimes hung over the Tuckerman valley until late in the morning. So it was a surprise when his Subaru Brat reached into the hills that surrounded the city and plunged into booming sunshine. Out there was what Clovis Shard would 4 WHISPER MY NAME have called an f22 day. Chance glanced into the rearview mirror.