Characters in Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

… photos of my dad from before his hair started to go gray, and IMs back and forth between me and Billy Bogan. No news in them really, just jokes, and illuminating information like I just farted, and incisive questions like Did you do your algebra.

I have left you $800,000 in trust. The trustees are your father and Charles Rafferty, who is my business manager and who will now serve as my executor.

Just in time, too. Reverend Mooney came out of the side door, adjusting his tie. “Saying goodbye, Craig?” “Yes.” “Good. The right thing to do.” He slipped an arm around my shoulders and guided me away from the coffin.

I’d interned at the Enterprise the previous summer, mostly emptying the trash but also writing some sports and movie reviews. When I called Dave Gardener, the editor, he gave me some background the Enterprise hadn’t printed.

She said he was a square-dealing man, but if you weren’t the same, God help you. And had Dean Whitmore been square-dealing? No. Had Kenny Yanko been square-dealing? The same. So maybe Mr. Harrigan had been glad to pitch in.

“I’m on my cell phone.” God, I loved saying that. Denise made a humph sound. “Those things are full of radiation. I’d never own one. Hold on.”

Maybe even torturing him? Not likely, I thought. Remember what Mrs. Grogan told you about Dusty Bilodeau. She said he couldn’t have gotten a job shoveling henshit out of old Dorrance Marstellar’s barn after stealing from Mr. Harrigan.

And Edna Grogan, his housekeeper, would have been happy to dust his large collection of antique snow-globes and glass paperweights, but that was my job.

… he and Roy DeWitt found some fireworks in Roy’s cellar and when they shot them off one went into Frank Driscoll’s kindling box and set it on fire and Frank Driscoll said if they didn’t cut him a cord of wood, he’d tell their parents. He told me about …

I made friends with Frank Jefferson, the paper’s go-to IT guy, and one night over beer at the Madison Pour House, I told him I’d once been able to connect with the voicemail …

That was Mike’s father, George Ueberroth. “I’ll tell you about Yanko if you let me hit your soda.” “Okay, but don’t backwash.” “Do I look like an animal?

Then he grew serious. “Do you understand how rich John Harrigan is?” I shrugged. “I know he used to own mills.” “He owned a lot more than mills.

The obituary for Kenneth James Yanko wasn’t in the Lewiston Sun until Tuesday, and all it said was “passed away suddenly, as the result of a tragic accident,” but the news was …

I assumed it was either from Billy Bogan, a friend and classmate who had a Motorola Ming, or Margie Washburn, who had a Samsung . . . although I’d gotten fewer texts from Margie lately. I suppose Regina had blabbed about me kissing her.

That was where I met Mike Ueberroth, known then—as he is in his current career as a backup catcher for the Baltimore Orioles—as U-Boat.

But I had something to do first, and I had to do it right away, because Reverend Mooney could come back from the vestry at any time. I reached into the inside pocket of my sport coat and brought out Mr. Harrigan’s phone.

This was Mr. Albert Douglas, known to the kids as either Alkie Al or Dipso Doug.

“Fuck your thanks, new boy. And fuck you.” A week later, Kenny Yanko got into it with Mr. Arsenault, the woodshop teacher, and hucked a hand sander at him.

Usually all Mr. Nedeau brought was the weekly copy of Time, fliers addressed to Occupant or Our Friendly Neighbors, and the monthly bills.

“You three, make like bees and buzz,” Ms. Hargensen said. “Billy, go in the gym and tell Mr. Taylor I’ll be back in ten minutes. Girls, go outside and wait for Craig’s father. Wave him over to the staff door.” They went.

If you’d grown up with nothing but a party line and four other houses on it—including Mrs. Edelson, who never shut up—you might feel differently.” “When can I have a cell phone?”

How did he do it?” “I didn’t ask, and I wouldn’t tell you even if Pat Ingersoll had told me. You need to let this go, Craig. The boy had problems. His need to beat you up was only one symptom of those problems.

… bunch, perhaps picked from Mr. Harrigan’s own flowerbeds—and out of respect, not parsimony—was from Pete Bostwick’s family. I got down on my knees, but not to pray. I took my phone out of my pocket and held it in my hand. My heart was beating so hard it …

This fellow, Randy Squires by name, sat in my Toyota drinking from the neck of a Wild Turkey bottle purchased with some of the fifty dollars I’d given him …

I asked my dad to drive us, which he was more than happy to do. Regina Michaels asked Billy Bogan, so it was a double date.

There were local people there, of course, including Pete Bostwick, the gardener, and Ronnie Smits, who had done most of the work on his house (and gotten wealthy out of it, I’m sure), and Mrs. Grogan, the housekeeper.

He told me about how he and Roy DeWitt found some fireworks in Roy’s cellar and when they shot them off one went into Frank Driscoll’s kindling box and set it on fire and Frank Driscoll said if they didn’t cut him a cord of wood, he’d tell their parents.

… said, handing the can back to me, “and a couple of days after it happened I heard him talking to Sergeant Polk from the house. That’s what they call the cop-shop. They were out on the porch drinking beers, and the Sarge said something about Yanko …

Ted Corliss was killed instantly.

BELOVED TEACHERS KILLED IN VERMONT, the headline read. Victoria Hargensen Corliss had still been teaching biology at Gates; her husband was a math teacher at neighboring Castle Rock.

Virginia Hatlen had probably sneaked out back to have a cigarette, and the Rev would be in the vestry, taking off his robe and combing what remained of his …

I had switched my affections to a more available (and age-appropriate) young lady. Wendy Gerard was a petite blond from Motton who had just gotten rid of her braces.