| Lisa of the Fields Chapter 1, Page 2 The telephone also rang in those early morning hours at the home of William Cavanaugh, though his children were not involved in any accident�that is, unless you count oldest child Billy�s drunken spill down a grassy slope on his way back from a little partying at a dorm across the campus at UNH, resulting in a few scrapes and ceaseless laughter from his roommates. The elder Cavanaugh�s phone rang just before three in the morning and, as he pulled on his gun belt and blue windbreaker, he poked his head into the twins� room. The girls were asleep and he let them be. They were used to his having to duck out in the middle of the night; he didn�t even feel the need to leave a note on the kitchen table anymore. He�d tell one of his patrolmen to swing by a little later, and he�d make sure to call if he couldn�t make it back at some point in the morning. Heck tomorrow�actually today�is Saturday, Cavanaugh thought to himself as he pulled the door shut and double locked it, the girls won�t even stir before noon. Cavanaugh drove through the same intersection that the Delacroix Buick would cross about an hour later. The blinking stoplights that would catch Free�s eye were of no interest to the man in the police cruiser: he had seen the lights in that state much too often. What was on Cavanaugh�s mind was the phone call he had received and the accident scene he was headed to. Every spring, prom season came, and, as sure as the days getting warmer, you could bet that somewhere in Maine there�d be a car accident to go along with the festivities. Some teenage knucklehead, filled with Budweiser and Jack Daniel�s, would try to drive like Richard Petty, though his senses more closely resembled those of Mr. Magoo, and there�d be a couple of lifeless bodies wrapped around some pole, and glass and metal and plastic sprayed out on the road. It never failed. Then on the local news you�d see the poor friends of the dead kids trying to deal with the overpowering sorrow, standing by the spot where it happened, picking up twisted pieces of the wreckage, leaving flowers and candles and cards behind. It happened every spring in some Maine city or town, and Cavanaugh would sympathize with the families, shake his head and turn off the TV. But this year, it wouldn�t be so easy. This year it happened in his jurisdiction. It was not the telephone, or any sound, that pulled Amanda Berkly from her slumber, but rather the absence of sound. She had fallen asleep around midnight to the music of raindrops, each surface struck by the plummeting globules providing a slightly different tone, so that together a symphony of precipitation filled the air. Amanda had found the watery concerto comforting and lay awake listening for a while before drifting off. The young girl needed soothing on this particular night because there was something gnawing inside her, as a rat gnaws at a tiny hole in a wall, making it larger and larger. This particular rat was unleashed by none other than her best friend, a person she loved and admired. The rodent stumbling around Amanda�s psyche was the fact that on this night, her friend, Lisa Delacroix, was at the Kingston High School prom. That she had gone to a prom, an affair�Amanda tried to convince her friend�that was such the antithesis of what Lisa was about, was bad enough, but that she had gone to a function like that without Amanda was especially disturbing. The rats kept chewing and eventually revealed the larger issue at hand: was Lisa changing? Was the friendship between the two girls eroding? Such thoughts had been plaguing Amanda for several weeks and, after spending the entire night alone in her room, she crawled into bed, needing the rainwater sonata to dispel the vermin so that she could sleep. At some point, the rain had ended. Through half-open eyes, Amanda looked around, and slowly the omnipresent darkness became the familiar objects of her room. She rose and went to the window. Sitting on the sill, she enjoyed the soft, sweet, cool breeze that kissed her face as she stared out at the wet asphalt pavement. She watched as rivulets ran along the black road and poured down into the sewers along her street. After climbing back into bed, Amanda had some trouble returning to sleep. The nimbostratus symphony had left town, and she was left to negotiate the road to tranquility alone. As the girl finally began to doze, the siren of a police car could be heard off in the distance. Out west of town, past Boston Road and beyond the interstate, the same soft, sweet, cool breeze that had affectionately greeted Amanda now ran through open fields�the grass moving in ripples like ocean waves�and then disappeared into the woods, gently shaking rainwater from the leaves of trees along the way, while above, fast-moving tufts of cloud cover were sliding by, sailing off eastward to reveal a backdrop of thick blackness punctuated with luminescent specks, all sitting in silence, an audience of brilliant observers who never betray emotion, but only stare eternally. |