Characters in One for the Road

Twice we had seen Billy Larribee go by high in the cab of the town plow, and the second time Tookey ran him out a beer—an act of pure charity my mother would have called it, and my God knows she put down enough of Tookey's beer in her time.

“Have one for the road, Booth,” Tookey says, “I'm gonna shut her down.” He poured me one and himself one and that's when the door cracked open and this stranger staggered in, snow up to his shoulders and in his hair, like he had rolled around in confectioner's sugar.

She looked up at me then, Lumley's daughter Francie. She was no more than seven years old, and she was going to be seven for an eternity of nights. Her little face was a ghastly corpse white, her eyes a red and silver that you could fall into.

“I'm not crazy.” Well, you couldn't have proved it by me. “What's your name?” I asked him. “For the sheriff.” “Lumley,” he says. “Gerard Lumley.” He started in with Tookey again, and I went across to the telephone. I picked it up and heard nothing but dead silence.

… It was quarter past ten and Herb Tooklander was thinking of closing for the night when the man in the fancy overcoat and the white, staring face burst into Tookey's Bar, which lies in the northern part of Falmouth. It was the tenth of January, just about the time most …

And still—how can I say it?—I yearned after her, so dark and beautiful with that green poncho floating around her neck and shoulders, as exotic and strange as to make you think of some beautiful woman from a Walter de la Mare poem. “Janey!” Lumley cried. “Janey!”

And that's where I'm goin’.” He slammed out of the bar and no one said a word for a while. Then Lamont Henry says, real quiet, “That's the last time anyone's gonna see Richie Messina. Holy God.” And Lamont, raised to be a Methodist from his mother's knee, crossed himself.

And I wondered if his wife and his little girl were dressed any warmer than him. We hiked him across to the fireplace and got him sat down in a rocker that used to be Missus Tookey's favorite until she passed on in '74.

It burned out of control for three days. After that, for a time, things were better. And then they started again. I only heard the word “vampires” mentioned once. A crazy pulp truck driver named Richie Messina from over Freeport way was in Tookey's that night, pretty well liquored up.

My own Victoria passed on in '73, and Tookey's was a place to go where there were enough voices to mute the steady ticking of the deathwatch beetle—even if there was just Tookey and me, it was enough.