Peyton Place (8 page)

At the extreme western end of Chestnut Street stood the imposing red brick house of Leslie Harrington. Harrington, who was the owner of the Cumberland Mills and a very rich man, was also on the board of trustees for the Citizens’ National Bank, and the chairman of the Peyton Place school board. The Harrington house, screened from the street by tall trees and wide lawns, was the largest in town.

On the opposite side of the street was the home of Dr. Matthew Swain. His was a white house, fronted with tall, slim pillars. Most of the townspeople defined it as “southern looking.” The doctor's wife had been dead for many years, and the town often wondered why The Doc, as he was informally known, insisted on keeping his big house.

“Too big for a man alone,” said Peyton Place. “I'll bet The Doc rattles around in there like a marble in a tin cup.”

“The Doc's place ain't as big as Leslie Harrington's.”

“No, but it's different with Harrington. He's got a boy that's going to get married someday. That's why he keeps that big house since his wife died. It's for the boy.”

“I guess that's so. Too bad The Doc never had kids. Must be lonely for a man with no kids, after his wife goes.”

Below Dr. Swain, on the same side of the street, lived Charles Partridge, the town's leading attorney. Old Charlie, as the town called him, had a solid, Victorian house which was painted a dark red and trimmed with white, and where he lived with his wife Marion. The Partridges had no children.

“Seems funny, don't it?” said the townspeople, some of whom lived, with many children, in cramped quarters, “that the biggest houses on Chestnut Street are the emptiest in town.”

“Well, you know what they say. The rich get richer, and the poor get children.”

“Reckon that's right enough.”

Also on Chestnut Street lived Dexter Humphrey, the president of the Citizens’ National Bank; Leighton Philbrook, who owned a sawmill and vast tracts of hardwood forest; Jared Clarke, the owner of a chain of feed and grain stores throughout the northern section of the state, who was also chairman of the board of selectmen; and Seth Buswell, the owner of the
Peyton Place Times.

“Seth's the only man on Chestnut Street who don't have to work for a living,” said the town. “He can just set and scribble to his heart's content and never worry about the bills.”

This was true. Seth was the only son of the late George Buswell, a shrewd landowner who had eventually become governor of the state. When he died, George Buswell left a healthy fortune to his son, Seth.

“Hard as nails, old George Buswell was,” said the townspeople who remembered him.

“Yep. Hard as nails and crooked as a corkscrew.”

The residents of Chestnut Street regarded themselves as the backbone of Peyton Place. They were of the old families, people whose ancestors remembered when the town had been nothing but wilderness, with Samuel Peyton's castle the only building for miles around. Between them, the men who lived on Chestnut Street provided jobs for Peyton Place. They took care of its aches and pains, straightened out its legal affairs, formed its thinking and spent its money. Between themselves, these men knew more about the town and its people than anyone else.

“More power on Chestnut Street than in the big Connecticut River,” said Peter Drake, who practiced law in town under a double handicap. He was young, and he had not been born in Peyton Place.

On Friday nights the men of Chestnut Street met together at Seth Buswell's house to play poker. Usually, all the men came, but on this particular Friday evening there were only four of them sitting around Seth's kitchen table: Charles Partridge, Leslie Harrington, Matthew Swain and Seth.

“Small gang tonight,” commented Harrington, who was thinking that a small group precluded a large pot.

“Yep,” said Seth. “Dexter's got his in-laws visitin’ and Jared had to go over to White River. Leighton called me up and said that he had business down to Manchester.”

“Alley cat business, I'll bet,” said Dr. Swain. “How old Philbrook has managed to avoid the clap this long, I'm sure I don't know.”

Partridge laughed. “Probably looks after himself like you taught him, Doc,” he said.

“Well, let's play,” said Harrington impatiently, riffling the cards with his white hands.

“Can't wait to take our money, eh, Leslie?” asked Seth who disliked Harrington intensely.

“That's right,” agreed Harrington, who knew very well how Seth felt and smiled, now, into the face of his enemy.

It excited Leslie Harrington to know that people who hated him nevertheless felt impelled to tolerate him. To Harrington, this was the proof of his success and it renewed in him, every time it happened, a rich sense of the power he wielded. It was no secret in Peyton Place that there was not a single issue that could come to a town vote with any assurance of success unless Harrington was first in favor of it. He was not in the least ashamed of the fact that on various occasions he called his millworkers together and said, “Well, fellers, I'd feel pretty damned good if we didn't vote to put up a new grade school this year. I'd feel so goddamned good that I'd feel inclined to give everybody in this shop a five per cent bonus the week after next.” Seth Buswell, in whose veins flowed the blood of a crusader, was as helpless before Harrington as was a farmer who had fallen behind in his mortgage payments.

“Cut for the deal,” said Partridge, and the poker game began.

The men played quietly for an hour, Seth rising from his chair only when there was a need to refill glasses. The newspaper editor played badly, for instead of keeping his mind on the cards, he had been busily thinking up, and discarding, ways to broach a sensitive subject to his guests. At last he decided that tact and diplomacy would be futile in this case, and when the next hand had been won, he spoke.

“I've been thinkin’ lately,” he said, “about all the tar paper shacks that this town has got spread around. Seems to me like we ought to think about gettin’ zonin’ laws into effect.”

For a moment no one spoke. Then Partridge, to whom this was an old topic of conversation, took a sip of his drink and sighed audibly.

“Again, Seth?” asked the lawyer.

“Yes, again,” said Seth. “I've been tryin’ to talk some sense into you guys for years, and now I'm tellin’ you that it's time to get somethin’ done. I'm goin’ to start runnin’ a series of articles, with pictures, in the paper next week.”

“Now, now, Seth,” said Harrington soothingly, “I wouldn't be too hasty about this. After all, the folks who own those shacks you're talking about pay taxes the same as the rest of us. This town can't afford to lose any taxpayers.”

“For Christ's sake, Leslie,” said Dr. Swain. “You must be going soft in the head in your old age to run off at the mouth like that. Sure the shackowners pay taxes, and their property is evaluated so low that what they pay the town is peanuts. Yet they live in their shacks and produce kids by the dozen. We're the ones who are paying to educate their kids, to keep the roads paved and to buy a new piece of fire-fighting equipment once in a while. The taxes a shackowner pays in ten years wouldn't pay to send his kids to school for one year.

“You know damned well that Doc's right, Leslie,” said Seth.

“Without the shacks,” said Harrington, “the land that they stand on now would be idle. How many tax dollars would you collect then? Not only that, but you can't raise taxes on the shacks unless you raise everybody's taxes. Rezone the shack areas, and you've got to rezone the whole damned town and everybody'll be madder than hell. No, fellers, I don't like paying to educate a woodchopper's kids any better than you do, but I still say, leave the shacks alone.”

“For Christ's sake!” shouted Dr. Swain, forgetting himself and losing his temper in a way that he and Seth had agreed privately beforehand not to do. “It's not only a matter of taxes and the fact that those places are eyesores. They're cesspools, as filthy as sewers and as unhealthy as an African swamp. I was out to another shack just last week. No toilet, no septic tank, no running water, eight people in one room and no refrigeration. It's a wonder that any of those kids ever live long enough to go to school.”

“So
that's
the boil on your ass, is it?” laughed Harrington. “You're damned right it's not the taxes that are bothering you and Seth. It's the idea that some squalid little urchin might catch cold running to the outhouse in his bare feet.”

“You're a fool, Leslie,” said Dr. Swain. “I'm not thinking of colds.

I'm thinking of typhoid and polio. Let one of those get a toehold around the shacks and it wouldn't be long before the whole town was in danger.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Harrington. “We've never had anything like that around here before. You're an old woman, Doc, and so is Seth.”

Seth's face colored angrily, but before he could say anything, Partridge intervened quickly and quietly.

“How in hell did you plan to get the owners out of their shacks if they refused to abide by these zoning laws of yours, Seth?” asked the lawyer.

“I don't think that many of them would choose to leave,” said Seth. “Most of them can well afford to make improvements on their property. They could use some of the money they drink up to install toilets and tanks and water.”

“What are you trying to do, Seth?” asked Harrington, laughing. “Make Peyton Place into a police state?”

“I agree with Doc,” said Seth. “You
are
a fool, Leslie.”

Harrington's face darkened. “Maybe so,” he said, “but I say that when you start telling a man he's got to do this, that or the other thing, you're coming pretty damned close to infringing on a citizen's rights.”

“Oh, God,” moaned Seth.

“Go ahead and accuse me of being a fool if you want,” said Harrington righteously, “but you'll never get me to vote for passing a law that dictates what kind of home a man must have.”

Seth and Dr. Swain regarded Harrington with utter disbelief when he spoke this sanctimonious sentence, but before they could speak, Partridge, who was a born pacifist, picked up the deck of cards and began to shuffle them.

“We came here to play poker,” he said. “Let's play.”

The subject of the tar paper shacks of Peyton Place was not mentioned again, and at eleven-thirty when one of the men suggested playing a last hand, Dr. Swain picked up the cards to deal.

“I'll open,” said Harrington, holding his cards close to his chest and peering at them frowningly.

“I'll raise,” said Seth, who held his cards one on top of the other in one hand.

Partridge and Dr. Swain dropped out and Harrington raised Seth.

“Again,” said the newspaper editor pushing more money into the center of the table.

“All right,” said Harrington irritably. “And raise again.”

Dr. Swain noticed with distaste that Harrington had begun to sweat.

Greedy bastard, thought the doctor. With his dough, he's worried over a measly hand of five-and-ten poker.

“Again,” said Seth coldly.

“Goddamn you,” said Harrington. “O.K. There you are. Call.”

“All pink,” said Seth softly, fanning out his diamond flush on the table.

Harrington, who had held a king high straight, purpled.

“Goddamn it,” he said. “The one hand I hold all night and it's no good. You win, Buswell.”

“Yes,” said Seth and looked at the millowner, “I generally do, in the end.”

Harrington looked Seth straight in the eyes. “If there's one thing I hate more than a poor loser,” he said, “it's a poor winner.”

“Hold up a mirror and you're bound to see your own reflection, as I always say.” Seth grinned at Harrington. “What do you always say, Leslie?”

Charles Partridge stood up and stretched. “Well, boys, morning comes early. Guess I'll be on my way.”

Harrington ignored the lawyer. “It's the man who holds the best cards who wins, Seth. That's what I always say. Wait a minute, Charlie. I'll walk home with you.”

When Partridge and Harrington had left, Dr. Swain put a sympathetic hand on Seth's arm.

“Too bad, feller,” he said. “But I think you'd better wait a while and talk to Jared and Leighton before you start anything about those shacks in your paper.”

“Wait for what?” demanded Seth angrily. “I've been waiting for years. What'll we wait for this time, Doc? Typhoid? Polio? Pay your money and take your choice.”

“I know. I know,” said Dr. Swain. “All the same, you'd best wait a while. You've got to educate people to new ways of thinking, and that's a long, slow process sometimes. If you go off half cocked, they'll turn on you the same as Leslie did tonight and tell you how those shacks have been around town for years, and we've never had an epidemic of any kind yet.”

“Hell, Doc, I don't know. Maybe a good epidemic would solve everything. Perhaps the town would be better off without the characters who live in those places.”

“There is nothing dearer than life, Seth,” said Dr Swain gruffly. “Even the lives being lived in our shacks.”

“Please,” said Seth, his good humor restored. “You could at least refer to them as ‘camps’ or ‘summer dwellings’!”

“The suburbs!” exclaimed Dr. Swain. “That's it, by God! Question: “Where do you live, Mr. Shackowner?’ Answer: ‘I live in the suburbs and commute to Peyton Place.’”

Both men laughed. “Have another drink before you go,” said Seth.

“Yes,
sir
, Suburbia,” said Dr. Swain. “We could even name these estates. How about Pine Crest, or Sunny
Hill, or Bide-A-Wee?
”

“You left out Maple Knoll and Elm Ridge,” said Seth.

It wasn't funny, though, reflected Dr. Swain half an hour later after he had left Seth and was taking his usual nightly walk before going home.

He walked south, after leaving Chestnut Street, and was no more than half a mile out of town when he passed the first shack. A light shone dimly through one small window, and a curl of smoke rose thinly from the tin chimney. Dr. Swain stopped in the middle of the dirt road and looked at the tiny, black tar-papered building which housed Lucas Cross, his wife Nellie and their three children. Dr. Swain had been inside the shack once, and knew that the interior consisted of one room where the family ate, slept and lived.