6

THE PASTOR’S PRICE

There were the silken colonists, sporting round their Maypole; perhaps teaching a bear to dance.… Often, the whole colony were playing at blindman’s buff, magistrates and all, with their eyes bandaged, except a single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a flower-decked corpse, with merriment and festive music, to his grave. But did the dead man laugh?

—Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” 1832

After a tumultuous autumn for the purple-painted church, Connell worried that the end result would be violence.

Two centuries of storms had failed to rip the church’s ancient, sacred timbers out of the foundation and cast them to the wind, but now, outside, gusts tore crimson-stained leaves from branches and scattered them to die on the ground, while inside, whirlwinds of accusations, power plays, counter-accusations, and legal threats were bloodying the reputations and wallets of all involved.

The tug-of-war—which by then involved Connell, the directors, the town, and a new group of historical preservationists who wanted to buy the property and restore it to a pre-Connell state of being—was part and parcel of the same fog of malcontent that was enveloping the entire Free Town community, setting neighbor against neighbor in pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way.

In early winter, without warning, all the frenetic, destructive energy suddenly ceased. A calm descended over the church, as if the strife had been frozen by the front of sterile Arctic air settling over the region. Town officials and libertarian lawyers disengaged from one another, setting aside their powerful pens in favor of holiday celebrations at home.

Connell’s mood seemed to shift. In early December, he managed to get the furnace repaired and buy some heating oil. Though there was no clean resolution to the financial and legal problems that had ensnared him, he stopped lighting up the libertarian community with intensely personal attacks against the church directors, focusing instead on questions of theology.

As the winter of 2015 settled in, he took an interest in the work of Thieleman J. van Braght, a Dutch Anabaptist who lived in the 1600s and was part of the religious Reformation that swept Europe.

“The greatest danger to our souls today is not any particular denomination,” Connell posted, quoting van Braght, “but any religious tradition that intertwines itself with the world system and relies on state support.… Convinced that we desperately need to drag ourselves from a slumber which rapidly looks more and more like death.”

The quotation was from a 1660 book called Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians. The reference to a subset of Christians as “defenseless” is a nod to nonresistance, a trait that the Anabaptists believed was shared by the martyrs in the book, including Jesus.

During this lull in hostilities, the Anabaptist ideas of nonresistance may help explain Connell’s newfound passivity. Having always lived his public life espousing the virtue of noncooperation, he was aware of the capacity of such traditions to inspire social change; his belief in the power of non-cooperation was what had once led him to show up at a courthouse without the means to pay his ticket, and to fast in solidarity with social causes.

But the Anabaptist doctrine of nonresistance goes further in walking the path of peace. It takes an almost Zen-like approach and does not support, for example, defending oneself in a lawsuit or lobbying the government. Defenseless martyrs, van Braght taught, completely abandon themselves to the will of God.

Connell’s commitment to defenselessness was tested when, after a quiet holiday season, the peace was shattered. During its first meeting of 2016, the Grafton selectboard found that the church directors had exhausted all time lines to make good on back taxes, which by then totaled more than $14,000.

When the selectboard voted to initiate the proceedings to repossess the property, one of the church directors resigned; the remaining directors filled the vacancy with Dave Kopacz, the Second Amendment activist with whom John Redman had exchanged schoolyard taunts during the October deposition. Rather than work with Kopacz, Redman resigned from his role as co-pastor.

Connell, perhaps thinking of the Anabaptist doctrine of nonresistance, gave no public comment on these developments. On a Sunday night, as his precious store of heating fuel created a little envelope of warmth in the church, he watched a lengthy video in which four religious leaders debated when, exactly, Jesus would once more walk upon the Earth and physically reign over humankind.

“What would you say or do to Jesus if you met him on the street?” he asked on Facebook.

There was just one response, from a friend: “Hi, want a beer?”

“I shoulda known,” Connell wrote back.

On Monday, he posted a poem he’d written on multiple social media outlets.

“Christ ain’t about the pistol and knife, my friends. Christ ain’t about the riffle [sic] and sword,” he wrote. He matched the poem with an image of a Bible carved into the shape of a gun.

“Read the Gospel, and read it well, my friends. Then, pick up your cross and follow,” his song continued. “Pick up your cross, and follow Christ, my friends. Let us not wait until tomorrow.”

ON TUESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2016, a cold front pushed temperatures down to 16, the coldest day of the winter. Strong winds blew in a cloud system from the north, hiding the crescent moon.

As dawn broke, the sun struggled to send a few rays of light earthward through the endless cloud banks; soon, it gave up the battle and was dimmed. Around 9:30, the winds calmed, and the murky skies cast down tiny floating sculptures of ice, ephemeral and endless. A gauzy scrim enshrouded the church, covering, for a while, the riot of color on the exterior and transforming it back into an idyllic New England building, both quaint and holy.

Outside the church, two men stood peering up at wisps of light smoke emanating from the second floor and drifting skyward.

When the call came in, John Babiarz hopped into the Grafton fire truck and sped up Route 4. As he came around the bend, he too saw the smoke seeping out of the second floor. The lack of visible flames made him cautiously optimistic that it might be a kitchen fire.

When entering a burning building, firefighters follow an OSHA “two-in, two-out” protocol: two responders enter together, keeping within sight of one another, while two more monitor them from outside, prepared to rescue the rescuers.

But Babiarz was alone. He could see that Connell’s two vehicles were both parked outside, but there was no sign of the man. So Babiarz hurriedly shrugged on an oxygen tank, thirty minutes of life that he wore like a backpack, and put the snouted air mask over his face.

He went in through the front door. If the world outside was a gray limbo, the inside was a pitch-black hell. Waves of smoke and warmth emanated from unseen flames.

Babiarz called out, but got no response.

He didn’t dare go more than a few steps into the church. The first floor was a maze of Connell’s clutter, and the church had no insulation, meaning fire could race along the walls and floors with frightening speed. Once the rectangle of brightness behind him disappeared, there was a significant risk of becoming disoriented and getting trapped inside himself.

He needed backup.

And it was on its way. Outside, as John Redman rode toward Canaan on Route 4, wearing his trademark flat derby cap and John Lennon glasses, he passed a couple of fire trucks rushing past him.

Uh oh, Redman thought. He called Tom Ploszaj, but Ploszaj told him that he couldn’t talk because he was already on the way to the fire scene from Center Harbor, a lake town about an hour away. Neither Redman nor Ploszaj knew where Connell was.

When the first wave of firefighters arrived from Canaan, they decided that they couldn’t immediately reenter the building—best practices for entering burning buildings take into account that smoke inhalation can kill a victim in less than six minutes; within ten minutes, wooden trusses can fail, even in a newly built structure. In this case, there was an extra danger posed by a bronze bell, perched atop timbers that ran all the way to the ground. It was six feet in diameter and an estimated five thousand pounds, poised to impose a hasty death sentence on anyone who ventured inside.

By 10:00 a.m., firefighters were setting up a perimeter, cutting off electricity to the church and redirecting Route 4 traffic up toward Ruggles Mine. Redman was now at the scene, shivering in his fleece jacket as he began taking pictures.

The smoke pouring out of the second floor was thicker now. A firefighter went in through a window on the north side, away from the bell and near Connell’s living quarters. He came back out a few minutes later. There was still no sign of Connell.

A second alarm was raised, to bring in more resources from more fire companies.

Lebanon and Hanover sent their expensive fire equipment down, trucks with extended tower ladders that dangled buckets off their ends. It was hard to tell where in the building the smoke was coming from before it escaped and blended into the gray sky above. Little knots of spectators began to form, standing in the snow and passing scraps of information back and forth.

They speculated on the church’s flammability, and whether the huge open attic space was a help or a hindrance. One thing the church had going for it was its chestnut beams, which were slow to catch fire.

“There’s probably a ten-thousand-pound bell hung up there by a fucking string,” said someone.

At first, the fire seemed manageable. A firefighter laid a ladder on the roof and used a long pike to puncture it, striking over and over so that he could clear out enough space to let the heat escape. Once he opened it up, he used a hook on the end to drag out flaming pieces of wood that slid down the roof toward the gutter.

The firefighters became embroiled in a horrendous game of whack-a-mole. Each time they saw a hint of flame, they pried open shingles or siding to dump water in, only to see the blaze resurface in another part of the building. Two Hanover firefighters standing in the bucket used a chainsaw to cut through the siding; the released heat and smoke warped the bottom of the purple-painted window frame above it. Another pair stood in a raised bucket, using gloved hands to rip off slats of the shutters in the bell tower, where particles of soot levitated on thermal currents en masse.

John Babiarz spoke to one news crew in the early afternoon, his glasses and oversized white helmet giving him a boyishness immediately belied by his grave expression. He focused on a small silver lining: though he’d almost called in an excavator to knock the church down, he now felt that the building could be saved.

A short while later, he left the scene, and Rosalie Babiarz showed up, with Oreos and water for the firefighters. A neighbor came out and set up a hot chocolate station on his porch for anyone who wanted it.

In the early afternoon, rumors began to circulate that a body had been found in the kitchen, but the authorities wouldn’t confirm it. When Police Chief Russell Poitras (Chief Kenyon had retired) drove slowly by, Redman called out to him until he stopped and put his window down.

“Do we know something yet?” asked Redman.

“I can’t tell you anything,” said Poitras.

“Who’s going to identify?” asked Redman.

“That will be my task shortly,” said Poitras, pulling away.

As soon as the chief was out of earshot, Redman laughed. Snow tangled in long, stray hairs from his ponytail.

“He can’t tell me anything,” he said derisively. “He told me everything!”

Above the firefighters’ heads, two small gray birds, chimney swifts, entered and exited the belfry at will, apparently unbothered by the smoke and activity.

“I’m still holding out hope that it was just one of John’s stupid fucking mannequins,” said a libertarian who was watching.

“Well, it wasn’t,” said Redman. “Not when Russell just said what he said.”

An onlooker plugged a recording device into the inverter of his Jeep, so he could document the loss of the historic resource.

Tom Warner, pastor of the Millbrook Church, stopped by. Before his congregation sold the church to Connell, he’d spent twenty-two years there, preaching a thousand sermons as its pastor.

“It’s just too sad to hang around and continue to watch it burn,” he said, before leaving the scene.

Dusk fell before the fire was extinguished. The fire crews set up huge spotlight arrays, the light glinting off the yellow and silver reflective striping of their turnout jackets.

That was about the time they removed the body. At first, they wouldn’t identify it to the public.

“It’s a male victim,” said Deputy Fire Marshal Keith Rodenhiser, beefy and clean-shaven. “That’s as far as we are willing to go.”

Babiarz talked to the media again. His tone was level and professional, but beneath the snow-encrusted visor of his helmet, his eyes looked haunted. More snow gathered on his shoulders, unbrushed.

“I think we did a fantastic job with the mutual aid we had,” he said, still emphasizing the positive. His eyes roved restlessly. “To, quote, hold the building together.”

When the fire was finally extinguished, the building still stood, thanks in part to the chestnut beams, but it was blanketed in water, ash, and ice. Holes gaped; only the chimney swifts seemed not to mind.

A day or two after the fire, when the body was identified as Connell, the news rocked the Free Town community. It was eventually determined that he died of smoke inhalation. His three adult children expressed deep concern and shared the information from investigators that he did not have drugs or alcohol in his system. His daughter circulated a survey in which she asked people to weigh in on whether he had committed suicide, been the victim of a homicide, or been killed by an accident or an act of God. The results were inconclusive.

Three years later, state investigators still considered the case unsolved. It was unclear whether a strict adherence to fire codes—of the sort that both Connell and the Free Towners eschewed—might have made the difference in Connell’s death.

Russell and Kat Kanning, who were particularly close to Connell, posted lengthy, heartfelt messages about the friend they’d lost. Joe Brown, the author of sometimes caustic posts on the freedom forums, also spoke effusively about Connell’s devotion to peace.

“He was a man of honor, integrity, decency, and kindness.… He may not have turned my life around, since we were both walking in roughly the same direction… but someone walking the same direction can lend you a hand when the path is steep and rocky.… You were deeply loved, my friend, and you will never be forgotten by those who loved you,” Brown wrote.

They were beautiful words, and they demonstrated how Connell, for all his quirks, served as a stabilizing influence in a Grafton community that was bearing a greater and greater resemblance to a Wild West town. Without Connell’s constant calls for peace, the people he helped had one less reason to restrain themselves from the sort of street justice that sometimes accompanies the pursuit of rugged individualism.

Three years after Connell’s death, Joe Brown got into a roadside altercation with another driver alongside Route 4. Both men had their young children in the car. The other driver reportedly punched Brown, after which Brown reportedly shot the other driver in the stomach.

The Free Town Project went on.