Noise.
Across the quiet of a waiting city, I can hear the man’s Noise.
And he can hear mine.
Todd Hewitt? he thinks.
And I can hear the smile growing on his face, too.
Found something, Todd, he says, across the square, up the tower, seeking me out in the moonlight. Found something of yers.
I don’t say nothing. I don’t think nothing.
I just watch as he reaches behind him and holds something up towards me.
Even this far away, even by the light of the moons, I know what it is.
My ma’s book.
Davy Prentiss has my ma’s book.
[TODD]
Early next morning, a platform with a microphone on it gets built noisily and quickly near the base of the bell tower and, as the morning turns to afternoon, the men of New Prentisstown gather in front of it.
“Why?” I say, looking out over ’em.
“Why do you think?” Mayor Ledger says, sitting in a darkened corner, rubbing his temples, his Noise buzz sawing away, hot and metallic. “To meet the new man in charge.”
The men don’t say much, their faces pale and grim, tho who can know what they’re thinking when you can’t hear their Noise? But they look cleaner than the men in my town used to, shorter hair, shaved faces, better clothes. A good number of ’em are rounded and soft like Mayor Ledger.
Haven musta been a comfortable place, a place where men weren’t fighting every day just to survive.
Maybe too much comfort was the problem.
Mayor Ledger snorts to himself but don’t say nothing.
Mayor Prentiss’s men are on horseback at strategic spots across the square, ten or twelve of ’em, rifles ready, to make sure everyone behaves tho the threat of an army coming seems to have done most of the work. I see Mr. Tate and Mr. Morgan and Mr. O’Hare, men I grew up with, men I used to see every day being farmers, men who were just men till suddenly they became something else.
I don’t see Davy Prentiss nowhere and my Noise starts rumbling again at the thought of him.
He musta come back down the hillside from wherever his horse dragged him and found the rucksack. All it had in it any more was a bunch of ruined clothes and the book.
My ma’s book.
My ma’s words to me.
Written when I was born. Written till just before she died.
Before she was murdered.
My wondrous son who I swear will see this world come good.
Words read to me by Viola cuz I couldn’t–
And now Davy bloody Prentiss–
“Can you please,” Mayor Ledger says thru gritted teeth, “at least try–” He stops himself and looks at me apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he says, for the millionth time since Mr. Collins woke us up with breakfast.
Before I can say anything back I feel the hardest, sudden tug on my heart, so surprising I nearly gasp.
I look out again.
The women of New Prentisstown are coming.
They start to appear farther away, in groups down side streets away from the main body of men, kept there by the Mayor’s men patrolling on horseback.
I feel their silence in a way I can’t feel the men’s. It’s like a loss, like great groupings of sorrow against the sound of the world and I have to wipe my eyes again but I press myself closer to the opening, trying to see ’em, trying to see every single one of ’em.
Trying to see if she’s there.
But she ain’t.
She ain’t.
They look like the men, most of ’em wearing trousers and shirts of different cuts, some of ’em wearing long skirts, but most looking clean and comfortable and well-fed. Their hair has more variety, pulled back or up or over or short or long and not nearly as many of ’em are blonde as they are in the Noise of the menfolk where I come from.
And I see that more of their arms are crossed, more of their faces looking doubtful.
More anger there than on the faces of the men.
“Did anyone fight you?” I ask Mayor Ledger while I keep on looking. “Did anyone not wanna give up?”
“This is a democracy, Todd,” he sighs. “Do you know what that is?”
“No idea,” I say, still looking, still not finding.
“It means the minority is listened to,” he says, “but the majority rules.”
I look at him. “All these people wanted to surrender?”
“The President made a proposal,” he says, touching his split lip, “to the elected Council, promising that the city would be unharmed if we agreed to this.”
“And you believed him?”
His eyes flash at me. “You are either forgetting or do not know that we already fought a great war, a war to end all wars, at just about the time you would have been born. If any repeat of that can be avoided–”
“Then yer willing to hand yerselves over to a murderer.”
He sighs again. “The majority of the Council, led by myself, decided this was the best way to save the most lives.” He rests his head against the brick. “Not everything is black and white, Todd. In fact, almost nothing is.”
“But what if–”
Ker-thunk. The lock on the door slides back and Mr. Collins enters, pistol pointed.
He looks straight at Mayor Ledger. “Get up,” he says.
I look back and forth twixt ’em both. “What’s going on?” I say.
Mayor Ledger stands from his corner. “It seems the piper must be paid, Todd,” he says, his voice trying to sound light but I hear his buzz rev up with fear. “This was a beautiful town,” he says to me. “And I was a better man. Remember that, please.”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
Mr. Collins takes him by the arm and shoves him out the door.
“Hey!” I shout, coming after them. “Where are you taking him?”
Mr. Collins raises a fist to punch me–
And I flinch away.
(shut up)
He laughs and locks the door behind him.
Ker-thunk.
And I’m left alone in the tower.
And as Mayor Ledger’s buzz disappears down the stairs, that’s when I hear it.
March march march, way in the distance.
I go to an opening.
They’re here.
The conquering army, marching into Haven.
They flow down the zigzag road like a black river, dusty and dirty and coming like a dam’s burst. They march four or five across and the first of them disappear into the far trees at the base of the hill as the last finally crest the top. The crowd watches them, the men turning back from the platform, the women looking out from the side streets.
The march march march grows louder, echoing down the city streets. Like a clock ticking its way down.
The crowd waits. I wait with them.
And then, thru the trees, at the turning of the road–
Here they are.
The army.
Mr. Hammar at their front.
Mr. Hammar who lived in the petrol stayshun back home, Mr. Hammar who thought vile, violent things no boy should ever hear, Mr. Hammar who shot the people of Farbranch in the back as they fled.
Mr. Hammar leads the army.
I can hear him now, calling out marching words to keep everyone in time together. The foot, he’s yelling to the rhythm of the march.
The foot.