A World of Their Own
Old Man Landry lived in East Ipswich all his life. He was born on what had originally been a three-hundred-acre farm that his great-great-grandfather, Zachariah Landry, bought as a young man. When ninety-eight-year-old Zachariah passed away, he left one hundred acres to each of his three sons. The land was further divided with each succeeding generation so that when Malachi's father died, the inheritance amounted to only thirty-three acres.
Sadly, Zachariah Landry's descendants discovered that farming small amounts of land did not pay. Whether it involved planting fields and harvesting crops or raising livestock, it was hard work and the profits were minimal. Worse, bad weather could destroy a crop or disease could kill off animals and plunge a farmer into debt.
Thankfully, East Ipswich was near enough to the city that it could benefit from urban sprawl. The price of land went up, and many farmers sold their property to developers. Soon after, a massive influx of homebuyers invaded the quiet, rural town. East Ipswich became a bedroom community. The newer residents were people with high-paying jobs who commuted to work in expensive cars and lived in three-story colonials, five-bedroom Tudors, huge box-like contemporaries and elegant townhouses.
Meanwhile, as the town continued to grow around him, Old Man Landry, who was old enough to collect social security benefits, gave up farming. His fields became overgrown with weeds, and his one-bedroom house fell into disrepair. Despite many offers to buy his land, he stubbornly refused. Of Zachariah's three hundred acres, only Malachi's thirty-three remained in Landry hands.
When Leif Borgeson sold his dairy farm and retired to Florida, the socio-economic transition was complete. What had initially been an agricultural town was now home to doctors, lawyers, engineers and businessmen. Old Man Landry did not mind the newcomers nearly as much as they minded him. After all, Malachi believed in the old adage "live and let live"; the newcomers, on the other hand, believed that everyone should live as they did.
The transplanted citizens took pride in their fine houses and landscaped properties. Their lawns were mowed regularly, and their shrubbery was carefully pruned and mulched. These homeowners looked in horror at Landry's property, which was liberally dotted with trash, and longed to see his acres subdivided and immaculate houses with well-maintained lawns like their own put up in its place.
Long considered the town eccentric, Malachi rarely left the confines of his small house. Few people knew what he looked like, and even fewer knew what he did for a living or how he managed to pay his bills. His reclusiveness naturally led people to believe the worst of him. For years, rumors circulated that he was possibly mentally deficient, a criminal, an alcoholic or a combination of the three.
Approximately once a month, Old Man Landry showed up at Filby's Market to buy his groceries. He would nod in greeting to those people he passed on the street, most of whom would snicker and whisper behind his back. That was the extent of his social interaction with the people in the community, until one day when he drove his old rusted Chevy pick-up into town and pulled into the parking lot of the East Ipswich Police Station.
"May I help you?" Sergeant Finley Hanrahan inquired.
"I'm here to report the death of my wife," Malachi said simply and unemotionally.
Silence fell on the station house. Everyone's eyes turned to Landry. No one had even known the old man was married.
* * *
Two police officers followed Malachi inside his house, or shack, to be more precise. Officer Tom Larkin looked furtively around the place, as though he were afraid it would collapse on his head.
He turned to his partner and under his breath said, "This dump makes moving into Fatty Belcher's trailer park look like upward mobility."
Officer Sue Crump agreed.
"It ought to be condemned by the board of health."
The glass in the kitchen window was gone, and a piece of corrugated cardboard had been tacked to the window frame to keep out the flies and mosquitoes. There were no curtains or rugs and hardly any furniture. A thick coating of grime and grease covered the floor, ceiling, walls and just about every other surface as well.
"Where's your wife?" Larkin asked, anxious to be out of the house.
"Back there, in the bedroom."
As Officer Crump followed her partner through the living room, she noticed that there were no books, television, radio, stereo or telephone. Did these people belong to some fundamentalist religious sect that required them to give up all material comforts? Surely, they couldn't be that hard up for money! Sue had seen senior citizens so destitute that they were living on cat food, yet they still owned televisions.
As Larkin and Crump entered the tiny bedroom, they were repulsed by the odor of urine, vomit and death. The stench was so bad that Tom eagerly volunteered to go out to the squad car to radio the medical examiner's office just to get a breath of fresh air.
* * *
District Attorney Anson Dimmock phoned the medical examiner three days later.
"What's the word on the Landry woman?"
"It was natural causes," Dr. Yuri Sokolov replied. "She died of cancer."
The district attorney was disappointed. He had been certain that Old Man Landry murdered his wife. The majority of the townspeople would like to see him put the old man away. If he did, those voting citizens would most likely remember him should he choose to run for political office in the future.
Dimmock hung up the phone and picked up the file on Landry. He carefully reread the report of the investigating officers. There was so much there that didn't ring true. The dead woman had lived in East Ipswich for thirty years, yet no one other than her husband knew of her existence. Why had she never ventured outside that filthy hovel in all that time?
The D.A.'s intuition kicked in. Had Malachi Landry kept his wife prisoner in that house?
He reached for his phone again. This time he dialed Officer Larkin's number.
"Tom? Dimmock here. I need some information on the Landry woman."
"Sure. Did the M.E. say she was murdered?"
"No. She died of cancer, but I think there's more here than meets the eye. I want to know who Mrs. Landry was and where she came from. Find out who her doctor was and when she last went to see him. Also, let me know if Landry was ever seen with any other women."
Larkin got back to Anson a week later.
"Mrs. Landry was born Hillary Watkins in Louisville, Kentucky," the police officer reported. "She met Malachi Landry in 1954 while she was visiting an aunt who lived nearby. After a short courtship, the two were married. When her mother tried to convince Hillary to leave her husband and return to Kentucky, Mrs. Landry broke off all correspondence with her family."
"Why did the mother want to break up the marriage?" Dimmock asked with rising hope.
"The Watkins family was well off and a bit snobbish. They couldn't stand to see their precious daughter married to a penniless nobody like Malachi. But according to the dead woman's sister, Mrs. Landry was quite content living in that shack. Hillary told her family that she loved her husband and wouldn't leave him."
"Did you locate her doctor?"
"No luck there, I'm afraid. I checked with every GP and oncologist in a fifty-mile radius of East Ipswich. No one has ever seen a woman named Hillary Landry or Hillary Watkins, either. I even showed the doctors that photograph of Mrs. Landry we found among her effects. No one could identify her."
"What about Landry? Were there any other women?"
"Not a one, as far as I can tell. I've asked every old-timer around town, but they knew little about him. It seems Old Man Landry kept to himself."
Dimmock wasn't satisfied. He was bound and determined to rid his town of Malachi Landry, but he needed a legal means of doing so.
"Why would a man who loved his wife expect her to live in that pigsty? The woman had only two housedresses and one nightgown in her closet. There was not a single piece of jewelry except for a cheap wedding band. She didn't have a TV, a radio, a book or even a magazine. How many women you know would be content to live like that?"
"It's weird, I'll give you that much," Tom concurred, "but weird isn't criminal."
"No, but keeping a sick woman locked up and refusing to give her medical treatment is. In my book, it's known as manslaughter."
* * *
Three days later, Malachi Landry was arrested. Kelly Muldaur, his court-appointed public defender, had him admitted to the East Ipswich Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Throughout his arrest, arraignment and hospitalization, the old man remained calm. He was apparently unaffected by either his wife's death or his own precarious legal situation.
The trial did not go well for the defense. Not only had the district attorney prepared a solid case, but also the members of the jury—all more recent residents of East Ipswich—were biased against the old hermit from the start. Dimmock described young Hillary Watkins as an intelligent, well-bred woman much like the respected matrons of East Ipswich.
"Why would she have thrown all that away to live in a foul little shack with Malachi Landry?" the D.A. asked.
There was not a woman on the jury who would have done so. Surely, Hillary had been kept there against her will, they reasoned.
Rather than help his client, the results of the psychiatric evaluation only thwarted the public defender's case. The patient was declared competent and able to stand trial. Muldaur suggested that Landry claim his wife had religious beliefs that prevented her from going to a doctor, but Malachi declined to do so.
"Why the hell didn't you take her to the hospital then?" his lawyer asked with frustration.
"I didn't know she was sick," the old man answered.
Kelly, who had seen postmortem photographs of Hillary Landry's wasted, cancer-ridden body, knew he would never get the members of a jury to believe that story. His only hope was to convince them that Malachi was mentally slow rather than sly, ignorant rather than criminal.
"When can I go home?" Malachi asked his lawyer, as the trial was drawing to an end.
Kelly raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
"You have to face it. Things aren't going well for us."
"You don't mean I'm going to lose, do you?" the defendant asked with disbelief.
"I'm afraid so. I can only hope the judge will take your age and lack of criminal record into consideration when he passes sentence."
"Is there any possibility that I'll be sent to jail?"
"I don't believe it's a question of if but of how long."
"If I do get convicted, I don't suppose they'll let me go home and straighten out my affairs before going to prison."
"No. You'll go right to the penitentiary from the courthouse."
It was the first time Old Man Landry appeared upset since he had reported his wife's death.
"I think I can prove my innocence," he announced.
"How?"
"I can't tell you. Go with me to my house, and I'll show you."
"I can't do that."
"I've seen trials on TV where the jury is taken to the scene of the crime."
"Why would you want the jury to see your house? It won't help your case any."
"I can't explain it. You'll just have to trust me."
Kelly was reluctant.
"I don't know ...."
"Why the hell not? What have I got to lose?" Malachi reasoned.
* * *
The ladies and gentlemen of the jury and members of the court were taken by bus to Malachi Landry's shack. As each person stepped off the bus, a look of distaste broke out on his or her face. When they entered the tiny house, some jurors even held their hands over their noses to block out the awful smell.
Kelly Muldaur looked to his client for guidance.
"Okay," he whispered, "what am I supposed to do now?"
"Just a minute," Malachi said as he headed toward the bedroom.
"Well, counselor?" Judge Asher Hoxley asked the public defender as they and several members of the jury squeezed into the small, foul-smelling room.
"Your honor, I ...."
Suddenly, Old Man Landry walked toward a wall that was covered with stained, peeling wallpaper and pulled open a hidden door. The bailiff reached for his gun, afraid that the defendant might have a weapon inside. He took aim, ready to fire should the old man make a threatening move. However, a strange light radiated from within that secret doorway. The people standing in the bedroom stared in awe at the wondrous landscape they saw through the hidden portal. Some witnesses later described it as paradise, others as heaven, but they all agreed that it was not any place on Earth or any place in the plane of reality in which the rest of us live.
"Hillary!" a young Malachi Landry called to the beautiful woman who inhabited that mysterious world.
A bright lightning-like flash lit up the dingy, malodorous bedroom, temporarily blinding the people inside. They heard rather than saw the secret door slam shut behind Malachi Landry. When his vision returned to normal, the bailiff crossed the crowded room and attempted to open the door, but he could find no handle or latch. Once again, the wall was nothing more than a solid surface covered by stained, peeling wallpaper; it was no longer a portal to a land of wonder and enchantment.
After several minutes of amazed silence, the judge ordered everyone present to board the bus. When he returned to the courthouse, the Honorable Asher Hoxley dismissed the jury.
District Attorney Anson Dimmock protested.
"What about Landry? How do we explain his disappearance?"
"He's a fugitive from justice. Call the police and have them put out an A.P.B. on him. But to be honest, Anson," Hoxley confessed, "I don't think the police will ever find him."
"The members of the press are going to love this! An old man escapes from a room full of people, including a judge, a bailiff and the district attorney."
"They'll have to realize that we're dealing with a professional here."
"A professional?"
"Yes. Malachi Landry and his wife have obviously been escaping reality for most, if not all, of their married lives. That's why no one ever laid eyes on Hillary Landry and why she never left the house. How else could they have stood living in all that filth with no comforts and no form of entertainment? They must have escaped their pitiful existence by fleeing to that idyllic world beyond the secret door."
Kelly Muldaur, who had remained silent throughout this conversation, finally spoke.
"In a way, the old man was right."
"How's that?" Dimmock asked.
"He said if the members of the court went to his house, he could prove his innocence. He has proved it to me, if not to everyone in that room. He wasn't responsible for his wife's death, any more than a man could be held responsible if his wife were an addict or an alcoholic. Hell, for all we know, Hillary Landry's spirit may still be alive and quite happy, reunited with her husband in that strange and beautiful world we all glimpsed but cannot begin to understand."
Salem once tried to live in a world of his own—one he made out of Legos.
