The Town Read Online Free

during the witch-hunting McMartin days in Los Angeles, when the public seemed to see child-molesting satanists behind every tree. Someone had reported spotting a group of devil worshipers in a cemetery, and the LAPD had ended up disrupting a Molokan burial service. It was understandable. The anonymous tipster had reported a group of robed figures, all dressed in white, walking through a graveyard at night, chanting, and the police had been obliged to investigate. But the Molokans, also understandably, were not only deeply offended but angry.
    Despite America’s guarantee of religious freedom, they had never had an easy time of it, and what the Constitution promised and how citizens actually acted were two different things. The Molokans had left Russia, fleeing religious persecution from the czar and the Russian Orthodox Church. They were pacifists, living strictly by the laws of the Bible, and the fact that they recognized both Christian holidays and Jewish celebrations such as Passover led to as much misunderstanding in the United States as it had in Russia. Even more offensive to Americans was the fact that Molokans were conscientious objectors, opposed on religious grounds to participation in the military. That had led to discrimination against them in the United States as well, particularly during World War II, and far too often that prejudice had been validated and reinforced by civic authority.
    The police had not been the problem here, however. It was the media. The cops had merely investigated, apologized, and moved on, but the local news stations, in their insane quest for ratings, had milked the “satanist” angle for all it was worth. Million-dollar anchors had joked about smog and marine layers with their comical weathermen, then expertly shifted their smiles into expressions of grim seriousness and solemnly reported that perpetrators of the satanic rituals described by molested preschool children had been spotted desecrating a cemetery in East L.A.
    Even though it was not true.
    Even though the police had already rejected and discounted any connection between the Molokan burial service, satanism, and child molestation.
    He’d been embarrassed by the Molokans when they’d made the news for those two days, but he’d also been angry at their accusers and had fired off a series of letters to the local television stations and the Los Angeles Times, taking them to task for their inaccurate and inflammatory reporting.
    Embarrassment and defensiveness.
    It was the constant duality of his life.
    Teo and Adam finally tired of their Old Maid game, and Teo asked him for the hundredth time to describe their new home to her. Adam and Sasha both groaned loudly, but Gregory launched into a by-now-pat spiel, recounting how he and their mother had found the house and instantly fallen in love with it, painting a picture of the huge lot on which the house sat and the hill that abutted the back of the property, and describing the location of each of their bedrooms and how they were going to fix them up.
    He caught his mother’s gaze in the rearview mirror once again.
    He’d saved the best news for last, and it was time to reveal it.
    “There’s also a banya, ” he said.
    His mother’s eyes widened. There was a tinge of excitement in her voice. “Banya?”
    He smiled. “Remember the Shubins? They used to live right next to our new house—”
    “The Megan place?”
    “Yes!” he laughed. “The Megan place. It’s our place now. And the Shubins’ burned down quite a while ago, so the people who bought the Megan place bought their property as well, and now it’s all ours. Both lots. There’s nothing left of the Shubins’ house at all, but the banya ’s still there.”
    “Completely untouched,” Julia said.
    “What’s a banya ?” Teo asked.
    “It’s a bathhouse,” Julia explained. “In the old days, houses didn’t have water or indoor bathrooms. You had to get water from a well, and you had to go to the