Ev Hillman

Ev Hillman is David Brown’s grandfather and, in the novel’s final crisis, Haven’s “town in exile”: its long-standing memory and one of the few people able to see the town’s transformation without being absorbed into it. His resistance makes him an essential witness to the Tommyknockers’ influence, but his defining act is not merely to survive it. Ev helps Jim Gardener understand what has happened to David and keeps a power source running long enough to give the boy a chance of rescue, at the cost of his own life.

Identity and Place in Haven

At seventy-three, Ev has lived in Haven long enough to know its people and history. The narration describes him as the town’s memory, in contrast to Ruth McCausland, who had been its heart and conscience. Ev’s capacity to listen and his accumulated familiarity with the place give him a perspective grounded in more than the immediate emergency.

His immunity is associated with two small steel plates in his head, souvenirs of a German grenade that exploded near him during the Battle of the Bulge. The connection becomes significant when Ev realizes that Haven’s altered residents can read one another’s minds, but cannot enter his unless he allows it. He suspects the steel in his skull may explain the difference. What once marked a wartime injury thus becomes, in the present crisis, a barrier against the town’s collective mental life.

Ruth recognizes this difference while Ev is arranging for Hilly to be taken to Derry. Though his eyes seem faded with age, she discovers that she can barely read him. She understands that, like Bobbi’s friend, Ev remains outside whatever is happening in Haven: he knows something of it, but is not part of it. The insight brings her excitement and envy, because his exemption offers a freedom she does not possess.

David’s Disappearance and Ev’s Resolve

When David disappears, Ev refuses to treat the boy as dead simply because that conclusion would be easier to bear. He believes David is alive, lost, and in danger, and regards that belief not as ordinary wishful thinking but as a strong intuition. His conviction is sharpened by a nightmare in which David calls to him from a bleak, unfamiliar place, saying he cannot breathe and cannot find his way home. Ev wakes shaken, but the dream does not persuade him to abandon hope; it gives emotional force to his fear that David is in real danger.

After Haven’s crisis, Ev remains with Hilly at Derry Home Hospital, staying in Room 371 and taking a furnished room on Lower Main Street after the nurses send him away for the night. The experience does not make him withdraw from the search. Instead, he buys a Maine Atlas and a compass, turns to the map showing Haven, and draws a circle around the township. The practical act of marking the town gives shape to a problem he has not yet solved: how to return to Haven and get out again.

Ev eventually sees a possible opening in Ruth McCausland’s funeral. After a longer sleep than he has had in years, he wakes feeling restored and decides that, for David’s and Hilly’s sake, he will take the risk of going back into Haven. His purpose is personal, but the decision also puts him back into the reach of the force that has changed the town.

Partnership with Butch Dugan

Ev’s visit to Butch Dugan helps bring the trooper’s concern about Haven back into focus. Dugan had been troubled by Ruth’s uncharacteristic handling of David’s search and recalls telling her Ev’s belief that the whole town had gone crazy in some strange way. He has also heard from David Bright, a reporter for the Bangor Daily News, and the old man’s warning now seems too consequential to ignore.

Ev makes clear that he expects danger: when Dugan warns that using a flare gun without a permit could land him in jail, Ev replies that, if the signal is needed, jail will be the least of his worries. Dugan follows him the next day, despite not knowing where Ev is going. His stated reason is that he wants to prevent Ev from setting the eastern Maine woods on fire to send a signal, but the decision makes him Ev’s companion in a journey neither fully understands.

As they approach the town during Ruth’s funeral, the church bells sound and Dugan questions what he is doing at the town line with Ev. By then, he feels it is too late to turn back. When the influence of Haven weakens him, Ev retrieves supplies from a gunnysack and tries to help. He cuts open the bag and brings out a flat-pack oxygen-supply tank bought from Maine Med Supplies. Ev’s attention to improvised equipment becomes part of his wider usefulness: he is not immune to every danger, but he is resourceful in meeting the immediate needs of the person beside him.

At the spacecraft, Ev considers whether David might be imprisoned inside, then recognizes the likelihood that a child could not have survived there for long without food or water. When he and Dugan prepare to leave, Ev takes a small camera and a flare gun. Their retreat is interrupted by townspeople, including Bobbi Anderson, who arrive with weapons and take control. Dugan is made to back away; much of his memory of Ev will later be erased. Ev remains standing before the enormous saucer-shaped ship, and his shrug conveys the limited result of their attempt: they tried, but have not freed David.

Captivity, Message, and Sacrifice

Ev is later found by Gardener in Bobbi’s shed, suspended with Anne Anderson and Peter in altered shower cabinets. Cables connect Ev to a transformer, part of a system that is keeping the captives alive and drawing on them for power. Peter’s eyes have cleared, and when the dog looks toward Gardener, the scene reveals both the cost of the apparatus and the continued awareness of its victims.

Ev opens one eye and communicates with Gardener. His message identifies David Brown as the boy who must be saved, then supplies the answer to Gardener’s question: David is on Altair-4. Ev directs him to use the transformer to save David, then disconnect the system and destroy the place. The information turns the search from a general effort to find a missing child into a specific rescue mission, while Ev’s instructions recognize that freeing David and ending the captives’ ordeal are inseparable tasks.

Even as his own condition worsens, Ev tells Gardener that Anne is dead and urges him to go now. He admits that he is in pain, but says he can hold on if Gardener gets moving. The exchange makes the remaining power in the shed a resource measured in time: Ev cannot sustain it indefinitely, and his attention cannot be divided between keeping the transformer running and protecting the others.

The shed catches fire. As the transformer pulses in the burning room, Peter lies still and the fluid around Ev grows dangerously hot. The main cable’s insulation begins to melt, but the connection holds for the moment. Ev’s final thought is to give Gardener a chance to get away. After the computer screen implodes, the system fails; the fluid from Ev’s cabinet meets the fire and produces deadly steam, and Ev is finally released from the apparatus in death.

Narrative Significance

Ev’s arc brings together the novel’s two forms of resistance: the ability to stand apart from Haven’s shared influence and the willingness to act for someone else despite that danger. His wartime steel plates may account for his mental privacy, but they do not make him invulnerable. The same outsider position that lets him recognize what the town has become also leaves him to make difficult choices without the protection of belonging to its altered collective.

His refusal to give up on David gives the story’s search a destination and a moral urgency. The map and compass represent an attempt to locate and contain the danger; the later message about Altair-4 gives that effort its decisive direction. At the end, Ev cannot accompany Gardener to the boy. He can only keep the power available long enough for Gardener to go. His last act therefore completes the role suggested by the phrase “town in exile”: separated from the community that has changed, Ev nevertheless spends what remains of his strength trying to restore someone the town has lost.