Secrets of Slaters Falls

Easier To Pass Judgment Than Offer Help

The crowd continued to gather in front of the First Trust Bank. They jostled each other as they vied for better views.

The glare of the sun from the large front window at this time of day made seeing inside virtually impossible. How many of them would keep watching if they actually had to witness what was happening inside?

The whole commotion started when Ms. Jenna Zhi, one of the bank's two tellers, ran outside shouting incoherently fifteen minutes earlier. She was one of the most intelligent people in the whole town so this fit of hysteria didn't go with her personality. Just as in a bad melodrama, she actually had to be slapped by a passerby in order to get her to make a modicum of sense.

"Delores Farinelli had just left after making a deposit. I was alone in the bank with Mr. Courant," she began with her arms waving wildly as if flapping them would help force the words out. "Then he, he came in with it. He demanded to see Mr. Courant. I told him Mr. Courant was having his lunch and he could make an appointment-"

"Who came in with what?" someone interrupted.

"Jeremy Watkins with the KNIFE," she shrieked again like she was playing a high-stakes version of the board game Clue that got out of control.

Inside the bank, Jeremy Watkins stood by the side of the large cherry wood desk in the bank president's office while Carl Courant remained seated and calm. How anyone could be calm while a crazed, half drunken man waved a nine-inch hunting knife in his face is beyond belief.

The townspeople always said Mr. Courant had a namby-pamby personality, especially for a bank president. Carl had never wanted to play the part of the tough banker in life, but he had inherited the job from his father when his father died of a heart attack, sitting at that very same desk many years earlier.

He stepped up to the plate and did an admirable job managing the bank's portfolios. When it came to saying no and being a tough creditor, though, Carl fell decidedly short. In recent years, Ms. Zhi had taken over the role of the "bad guy" when it came to these matters.

Jeremy Watkins had fallen on hard times over the past few years. He'd been a semi-skilled laborer at one of the few remaining jewelry plants in the state, which had once been known as the jewelry capital of the country.

After World War II, there was an almost leisurely erosion of the industry in the Northeast. The last remaining plant closed in the late 1990's. Jeremy worked right up to the last day, but wasn't offered a transfer to Mexico when his firm headed south of the border.

Although highly skilled in jewelry manufacture, he was barely even semi-literate and not able to transfer those skills to another area of expertise. He'd been unemployed or underemployed for too many years and all his resources, including friends, families, and plain old charity finally dried up.

The bank repossessed his car, but he survived. He ate little and lost weight, but he survived. He even sold off the only thing he had of value, a collection of antique silver bells that his great-grandmother left him in her will, and he survived that too.

However, last Wednesday, when he received the notice in the mail that, due to non-payment for nine months, the bank would have to foreclose on his property, Jeremy Watkins decided he no longer wanted to survive.

He also decided that day that someone had to pay for this injustice that was his life. The name Carl Courant stood out in bold at the bottom of the letter. He had his target.

"Now, Jeremy, let's talk about this like mature men," Carl Courant said in that modulated voice for which he was known.

Jeremy Watkins slammed the knife's point down into the wooden desk just to see what kind of reaction he could elicit from Carl.

"Jeremy, there is no reason to destroy the furniture in my office."

Jeremy pulled the knife out of the desk and held it right up to Carl's neck.

Carl noticed the intricate designs carved into the wooden handle.

"That's right, admire my work, Mr. Banker Man. I ain't no loser who sits behind a desk all day in a shirt and tie and plays with imaginary numbers. No sir, I'm a real New Englander with real skills."

Carl tried not to flinch from the smell of alcohol on Jeremy's breath. With his free hand, Jeremy picked up one of Carl's hands and said, "What have these shirt and tie, fancy college degree hands ever done?"

For the first time since the knife-wielding drunk burst into his office, Carl showed some emotion. He abruptly pulled away from Jeremy's rough, calloused grip. He said nothing, but thought to himself, these hands cared for my two children when they had nobody to depend on except me.

"You took everythin' else away from me," Jeremy accused. "I ain't lettin' you take my house too."

"The IRS is going to put a lien on it for back taxes anyway," Carl explained reasonably. Of course, this was no time for reason and the comment about the IRS sent Jeremy into a rage.

"Oh yeah, well damn them too. Damn all of you! A man works his whole life and what for anyway? So some stuffed shirts can steal it all away from him with nice legal-soundin' letters?"

The knife slashed at a paper on Carl's desk. "Dear Jeremy Watkins," he said and ripped another. "Your bill is overdue." This time he threw a folder across the room and the papers fell like butterflies. "Thirty days to pay."

He knocked the printing calculator to the floor. When it landed, the paper advance button got stuck so the rest of the time they spoke, the sound of the calculator roll turning could be heard in the background.

Carl had stealthily been moving away from the desk. Jeremy didn't seem to notice. In order to make it to the door, he would have to walk right in front of Jeremy or somehow get the knife away from him.

As if in answer to his unasked prayer, Jeremy lowered the knife. "I didn't want it to be like this, I only wanted to have a good job and a good life," he wailed. "What am I doin' here? This is so stupid."

Carl Courant looked at the broken man in front of him. Though minutes earlier, Jeremy had held a knife up to his neck, Carl didn't hate him for it or even fear him; in this one moment, he only pitied him. Carl put his hand on Jeremy's shoulder and said in his ever-soothing voice, "Jeremy, everything will be fine, you're not stupid."

In his manic and alcohol-soaked brain, Jeremy heard the words of that wicked woman, Miss Brasche, his fifth grade teacher from Slaters Falls Elementary School, who made fun of him every time she called on him and he couldn't answer a question. "Jeremy, you'll never go to college. Better learn to work with your hands just like that useless father of yours. You're so stupid."

In less time than it takes to strike a match, Jeremy's hand clutched the knife so hard that his knuckles turned white. He thrust it straight up into Carl's chest once.

Then again. And again. The knife dropped from his hand. The blade clanged as it bounced off the desk and landed against the metal frame of the chair.

Outside, the unknowing crowd chattered endlessly, speculating about what was going on inside. Jenna Zhi was now somewhat calmer and repeated her story to a Slaters Falls police officer that just arrived. Although it seemed like hours, it had only been less than five minutes since Jenna's first panicked shriek in the street.

The lawyer's wife was still there. "That Jeremy Watkins always was a drinker," she said with an air of superiority.

"Much easier to pass judgment on people than it is to offer them help, apparently," said Ruth Martelle without stopping as she walked by again on her way back to the library.

"And of course, we have an incident like this in Slaters Falls and you just know it had to involve a black person," the lawyer's wife said once she thought Ruth was safely out of earshot. Another bystander nodded knowingly.

Since Ruth was so accustomed to the quiet of the library, the sounds on the street were almost overwhelming to her. She could hear a feather fall twenty feet away.

She stopped abruptly and spun on her heels. She marched right up to the lawyer's wife. "In case you've forgotten, the 'black person,' as you called him, who is involved in this incident happens to be the victim here. He also happens to be the president of the bank in which you deposit your husband's paycheck. If that's not enough, he volunteers his time to manage the hospital's finances."

Ruth was on a roll. There was nothing she liked more than exposing someone for what they really were. "As for you, just what is it you do all day besides spend your husband's money and have lunch at the Country Club with Joanna Harrison when she's in town?"

"Well, I never-" began the lawyer's wife.

Ruth interrupted, "Perhaps that's why you have no children, so maybe 'you don't,' but local legend has it that your grandmother did- frequently, so you'd better watch just who you're calling a 'black person' before you find out that the mirror has two faces." With that, Ruth left the woman speechless. The lawyer's wife had always thought that part of her family's history was a well-guarded secret.

When Jenna Zhi screamed again, this time it was with even better reason. The first thing she saw was a bloody hand reach up and soil the pristine glass with a red streak.

Then Carl Courant stumbled through the front door of the First Trust Bank. He grasped helplessly at the shreds of his torn shirt. People backed up in horror.

Only the police officer, Randy Trembley, went to help him. The red blood instantly mixed with the blue of Randy's uniform, turning it a macabre purple.

"His poor sons," someone in the crowd said. "To lose their mother like they did when they were just babies and now to lose their father like this."

There was nothing left to Carl's breathing but a high-pitched wheeze. In his last moment of life, he whispered in Officer Trembley's ear, "Tell my sons, tell Nathan and Steven, I never believed or gave up hope that she-" Carl silently begged God for one last breath, but his lungs no longer functioned.

The cop asked, "She who? Hope for what?" but they were pointless questions. He no longer held a man in his hands. He held a corpse.