Free Rescue by Jeremiah Healy

as some towns, that’s for true. But we don’t have a ski mountain close on, or a university like Durham or even a college like Henniker. No, what we’ve got is some clean air and country roads and two thousand or so good souls.“
    “Sounds like enough.“
    “Not quite.“ He motioned with his hand. “Now this left, just past that lightning maple. Should take the poor tree down, before it falls on somebody.“
    “What do you mean by ‘not quite.’“
    “Huh?“
    “What do you mean by the air and roads and good people not being quite enough?“
    “Oh. You got to understand Elton as a small town in New Hampshire . Fine state, blessed with a lot of natural beauty but too few natural resources. Quarry petered out around the time they finished the town building we were just in. Mills did fine till the Great Depression in the thirties, then went south to the Carolinas . We had a nice little factory here made some kind of computer thingies till the company that opened her went bust down by you. That factory, it carried this town a good fifteen years, but it’s gone and that’s it. What the state gives the towns to spend on education hasn’t been what it should be for a couple generations, and that’s coming home to roost. Then—“
    Pettengill stopped. I said, “What’s wrong?“
    “Nothing’s wrong. I just didn’t mean to be going on like that.“
    “It was interesting. I didn’t mind.“
    “Man who used to drink and doesn’t anymore has a lot of time on his hands. I fill it up reading, but that doesn’t mean I should be blabbing about current affairs the way I used to about other things when I’d be three sheets.“
    What Pettengill had been talking about didn’t seem to me like a man showing off his education, informal or otherwise, but I didn’t press it. “Anything I should know about this Oswald Finn before we meet him?“
    “Nothing that won’t be apparent.“

    It was an old clapboard house, one full story and half of a second. The half wasn’t quite vertically proportional to the first, as though the upper part was added oh by someone else later. The roof was missing some shingles, and others were cracked here and curling there. Pettengill and I climbed the steps to the shallow, open porch that held a broken-down wicker chair and a gut-sprung easy chair, the fabric faded beyond color.
    “Mind that board before the top. She’ll give on you a little.“
    I stepped up and over it.
    “Not like Oz to be inside on a day like this. Lord knows we’ll be seeing few enough more of them.“
    Pettengill opened the screened door and banged hard on the inside one. I didn’t hear anything, and apparently he didn’t either because he banged louder.
    Turning to me, “Oz is a bit—“
    A voice said something from well past the inside of the door.
    The chief put his mouth to the crack of the jamb, shouting. “Oz, it’s Kyle Pettengill. I’d appreciate a few minutes of your time.“
    There was a rattling of the knob, and Pettengill pulled back his head before the door shuddered and then heaved open. I didn’t hear the sound of any locks first.
    The man on the other side of the door looked like a human basset hound. The skin on the forehead nearly drooped over the eyebrows, the jowls hanging so far they swung as he moved his head from Pettengill to me and back again. The eyes were hawkish, but the right side of his mouth seemed to tic along independent of the left, and the hands that gripped the top rails of the four-footed walker were gnarled and colored in swirls of red and purple. He wore a white dress shirt with frayed collar and a brown cardigan sweater with frayed cuffs over stained, baggy suit pants.
    Then he smiled, yellowed false teeth, and you could see a young man trying to get out and have a good time for himself. “Kyle, sure is a pleasure to see you.“
    The voice was raspy, but not loud.
    Also in a normal voice, Pettengill said, “Oz, this is John Cuddy.“
    “Mr. Cuddy, pleased to