The Other

by Thomas Tryon

Caribbean: Jamaica and Trinidad and Martinique. And in Pequot Landing didn’t the Perrys prosper! Pequot Landing—I’m sure you know what that’s like, a typical Connecticut river town, small, unpretentious, elderly. Splendid elms forming shady aisles over the streets—before the Dutch Blight, this was—spacious, well-kept lawns, promising in June, scorched by September, houses of wood or brick or stucco, sometimes all three. The Perry house, stalwart, large, rambling. Once-white clapboards grimed to gray, paint blistered on green shutters framing tall windows, the glass pitted and watery, the patinated gutters pocketing last October’s leaves. A comfortable house: veranda, pillared portico at one end, fireplaces in most of the high-ceilinged rooms, everywhere lace curtains, even the attic dormers. Watermarks on the plaster overhead. The barn was venerable, swaybacked, lichen-spotted, musty, sitting on a small rise beside the icehouse road. Up on the rooftree was a cupola, a four-windowed affair where pigeons were housed. This was the highest point anywhere around, and on this small peaked roof sat a weathervane, a peregrine falcon, emblem of the Perrys, commanding the view. With the passing of Granddaddy Perry—just after the First World War, that was—the farm had ceased altogether being a farm. Except for one hired man, old Leno Angelini, all the hands were laid off, the livestock disposed of, the plows and harrows sold or left to rust. Neither Vining nor his younger brother Geo...