Strange Fits of Passion Read Online Free PDF

can trace their roots back to the war, others that come from Bangor or over from Calais. We had Indians here too, but now they're on the reservations down to Eastport. I say reservations, but we're talkin' about cinder block housing projects that'd make you sick to look at. Unemployment and alcohol—it's a sin. What we did to 'em, I mean. Anyway, it's not a problem I can solve.
    We got a library, open two days a week. Elementary school. For high school, the kids go over to Machias. The church, the post office, my store. Tom Bonney got sick of lobsterin', tried to start up a marine supply store, don't you know, but it didn't take off—most of the men, they make their own pots, and the gear gets handed down father to son. And Elna Coffin tried to get the co-op to go in with her on a clam shack, but like I say, we're out here at the end of the road—not a road
to
anywhere—and they wouldn't back her.
    Those houses over there, they're from the shipbuilding days. A hundred and fifty years ago, this town was big in shipbuilding. We had a hotel too, but it burned down; was at the other end of the common. We had twenty-five hundred people in the town at one time, if you can believe it. You'll see some of the houses on the coast road, abandoned a lot of them. Old Capes, some farmhouses. These houses here now, there's two still in the family, but the people in 'em don't have two sticks to rub together, and they're livin' in only one or two rooms in the winter. Shut the rest off. One of the other houses belongs to the schoolteacher, and the fourth is Julia's. Julia does her best to keep the house standin', but it needs work, you can see that. She come from a bit of money years ago, and she went to college too. Up to Bates. Her mother sent her. Nearly killed her mother when Julia up and married Billy Strout. Anyway, Julia had some money afore Billy run through it, but she kept the house, and she's got the three cottages. We get a coupla dozen summer people. Water's too cold 'n' we're too far north for most people. And the black flies are wicked in June. Still, you wouldn't believe the rents people from the city are willin' to pay in the summer, just to get away from it all. Julia makes a bit of money rentin' out June to September. Uses it to live on the rest of the year.
    You read the tourist brochures, the shortest paragraphs are about St. Hilaire. And you won't find a single advertisement for anything in town. There's nothin' here.
    So that's about it, as far as the history of the town is concerned. I can't think what else to tell you. 'Cept that we never had a murder as long as I can remember. We've had some violence, what you would call aggravated assault, and I've had to bring in a coupla lobstermen took some whacks at poachers. Dennis Kidder got both his hands broke bad. And Phil Gideon got shot in the knee last year. You take your life in your hands you fiddle with someone else's pots.
    And another thing. I know I just said the word
murder,
but you won't find many people in town refer to the events of last winter as murder. They'll call it "that awful business up to Julia's cottage," or "that terrible story about the Amesbury woman," or even "the killing over to the point." But there's not too many willing to say the word
murder.
And to tell you the truth, I guess I feel the same way too.

Mary Amesbury
    I drove along the coast road leading out of the village. I was driving only twenty-five, but less than a mile from the store, I felt the rear wheels slip out from under me so that for a moment the car skated sideways to the road. My stomach lurched with that feeling you get when the earth seems to have deserted you, and I whipped my hand around to hold the baby basket in place. I straightened out the car, put it into first, and inched even more slowly than before through a nearly silent landscape. Headlights coming toward me seemed like large ships at sea, and when I passed them I gave them such a wide berth I