The Halo Effect
Anne D. LeClaire
PROLOGUE
Every day is ordinary. Until it isn’t.
On this early-October morning, the townspeople in Port Fortune wake before dawn to an ordinary day with its ordinary sounds: the groaning of trawlers straining against lines in the mist-shrouded harbor, the metallic chorus of gear being loaded on board underscored by the fog-muted, early-morning conversation of men, the deep-throated tolling of the marker buoy in the outer harbor, and over at Cape Port Ice the drone of the giant ice-making machines. They wake, too, to the town’s ordinary smells: at the docks the distinct miasma of salt air, diesel fuel, ripe bait, and mug-up coffee, and at the Loaves of the Fisherman Bakery on Prospect Street the aroma of anise, cardamom, sugar, yeast, Frialator oil, and cappuccino, scents so thick they nearly coat the air. These everyday noises and smells are not dissimilar to those of her sister fishing ports along the Northeast Coast and yet are somehow so particular to this place that a lost and sightless child could find her way home.
At the police station, the shift changes, and Detective Dan Gordon retrieves his service revolver from his locker, where he has stored it since the birth of their daughter the year before. His wife insists on this precaution. Holly no longer wants a gun in the house, not even one he swears he always unloads and secures in the small gun safe in the basement. He is not unsympathetic to her request. Even in this small town, he has seen the sorrow caused by weapons that are believed to be unloaded, not to mention the grief resulting from those deliberately loaded and fired in hot passion or cold foresight.
At the Church of the Holy Apostles, Father Paul Gervase unlocks the front door and prepares for early Mass amid the comforting aroma of incense, wax, and the oil soap Mrs. Mason uses on the worn oak floor. Not long ago, the church was kept unlocked, but a recent uptick in crime changed that. The local paper ran a series about the town’s growing drug problem, particularly the OxyContin scourge that has led to a heroin epidemic, the lead story for a week until it was crowded off the front page by reports about nearly a dozen girls at the local high school getting pregnant. The world is changing, and no one knows this more than Father Gervase. He waits for the first parishioners to arrive, Italian and Portuguese wives and widows for the most part, holding tight to the rituals of a lifetime as if by this they can slow a world spinning beyond their control.
At Port Fortune High School, Wayne Jervis, the custodian who moonlights part-time doing work at Holy Apostles, arrives and turns up thermostats. He unlocks classroom doors and then enters the faculty lounge, where he switches on the automatic coffee machine and adds water and grounds. Lastly, as he does every weekday, he goes to the girls’ locker room. The bitches’ locker room. He knows what they call him behind his back. Jervis the Pervis. Bitches. In recent months, nine of them have become pregnant, and despite the denials by the school principal, the girls, and their parents, a rumor persists that these are deliberate decisions, the result of a pact among the girls. Bitches. Sluts. Whores. The lot of them. If they are so hungry for cock, he’d be happy to show them what a real man can do. And a lot better than their high school boyfriends can. Jervis enters a stall and takes a long piss, leaving the seat up and the toilet unflushed when he is done.
At the Loaves of the Fisherman, Manny Costa, Leon Newell, Caesar Amero, and Portuguese Joe arrive early. The four have spent a lifetime rising before dawn, and although they no longer fish, the old habits die hard. At their regular table, they drink coffee, eat sweet rolls, and talk about the things that occupy their conversation every morning: the weather, town politics, how maybe the foreign fleets haven’t completely killed the industry but the restrictions of new federal fishing regulations surely will.
Gradually the fog lifts and the sun inches upward, striating the horizon and casting a roseate glow over the eastern sky, the harbor and icehouse, the station, the bakery, other businesses, and homes. Slowly the rest of the town awakes.
On Chandler Street, Rain LaBrea hears her brother revving the engine of the thirdhand, piece-of-crap Mazda he thinks is such a big deal and curses him for not waiting to give her a ride to school. She texts her friend Lucy about how she now will have to take the bus like the dweebs do. There is no use complaining to her parents unless she’s up to enduring one more lecture about how she should get up earlier if she wants Duane to give her a ride. Duane, her mother’s Golden Boy who, in her eyes, can do no harm.
Across town, on Governors Street, Sophie Light raps twice on her daughter’s door. “Lucy? Are you up?” She listens for a moment, and reassured by the noises inside the room, she descends to the kitchen and crosses to where Will is pouring coffee into two mugs and brushes his cheek with her lips, smoothes an unruly lock of hair with her fingers, a cowlick that spins in a counterclockwise directions that not even a comb and application of hair gel could tame.
“What time did you finally come to bed?” she asks.
“Around midnight. The game went into overtime.” He hands one of the mugs to her. “Did I wake you?”
“I was so wiped last night I wouldn’t have moved if Hannibal and his elephants bivouacked in the room.” She takes a sip of coffee, smiles her thanks. “So who won?”
“Green Bay.”
“Is that good?”