Thoreau at Devil's Perch (9 page)

Henry's plain face took on an expression of arrogant superiority. Then he tilted his head.

“I hear more war cries. They are from my enemies as they slaughter and maim and scalp my tribesmen. I must go to the aid of my brothers.”

Henry swayed back and forth in his chair, working his hands before him.

“But where is my ax? Oh, no! Sunk in my enemy's skull, it is gone down in the crevasse. The ax of my father and his father back in time. The jagged blaze of black stone running through the pink quartz carries great medicine. But I must leave it behind. I hear the enemy warriors rushing toward me through the trees, and I must return to my village to warn my people of their approach. I climb down the boulder. It is red with blood. I feel my side. It is wet with blood. My fingers sink deep into the open knife gash. I try to run, but my legs buckle. I fall, get up, and stumble forth toward a pond I can see through the trees. I fall again. I cannot get back up this time. As I stare at the sky I smell a sweet flower. I believe I am dying.”

“Wake him up, Adam!” Julia cried.

I clapped my hands sharply and was greatly relieved when Henry opened his eyes. He struggled a moment, looking about him, shaking off the effects of the ancient reality he had just lived. Then he smiled faintly. “So that is what dying feels like.”

“Poor Henry, what a dreadful experience to feel your life waning,” Julia said in a quivering voice.

He shrugged off her concern. “There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it. What mattered most to me at that time and place was having fought bravely and well.”

“Do you know what time and place it was?” I asked him.

He sat silent for a moment, considering. “It was in the eastern forests of America. Perhaps right here in Massachusetts. As I was running toward the boulder I passed indigenous oaks, maples, beech, and pine. And when I stumbled toward the water I noted trillium, lady slipper, hobblebush, and Cornell plants amongst the leaves and tree roots.”

I shook my head, smiling at him. “Yes, that Indian might well have been you in a former life, Henry. Who else would observe such things as that in the midst of battle?”

“But what was that sweet flower I smelled?” he said, frowning. “The scent is new to my present senses, and I do not know what genus it could have been.”

I had little interest in flora at the moment and asked him a more relevant question. “Can you tell me when in history this was?”

“No date comes to mind. As an Indian I would not have known the Gregorian calendar. But one of the men I slew carried a knife with a steel or iron blade. That would have been gotten in trade or war with white men. I saw no sign of a European settlement, however, and no Indian bore a musket. I suppose then it was before Plymouth or Boston existed, but no earlier than fifty years before, for trade had begun.” He shrugged. “Two hundred and fifty years ago, perhaps.”

He gazed at me in some wonderment, and then his face broke into a smile wider than I'd ever seen on his serious visage.

“An Indian,” he muttered in happy amazement. “A warrior at that. How I have longed to be a natural man, to be close to the edge of life, to confront existence without all our endless trappings of today! And so I have been just that, it seems. I must think deep upon it and decide if all this has been a creation of my own mind or, indeed, a recollection of a former life. How can one ever know?”

Without expecting a reply he gave me a most energetic handshake, took up his hat, bid Julia Good Day, and strode out of the house and away to his cabin by the pond.

I looked to Julia. Her fingertips were pressed against her cheeks again. Her face was flushed with excitement. “If Henry truly did go back in time, then so must have I.”

“Do not be so quick to jump to that conclusion, Julia. Henry himself expressed doubt, did he not?”

“Even so, I implore you to send me back to Rome. Only this time instruct me to remember what happened, as you instructed Henry.”

“I am not some sort of time engine that can transport you backwards,” I told her gruffly. “Indeed, I have little or no control over this phenomenon. It might even result in derangement of the mind.”

“Hah! It would take more than a swinging timepiece to derange
my
mind.”

“Best we forget about it, Julia.”

“No! I cannot! Oh, Adam, why are you being so obstinate about this?”

“It is you who are being pigheaded.”

“Well, if I am pigheaded, then you are a swine!”

I could not help but smile. “Let us not resort to childish insults, dear cousin.”

She smiled back at me. “Indeed, let us not,” she said and offered her hand.

I took it and had to resist bringing it to my lips. “And let us not dispute this matter further, Julia.”

“Very well,” she said, but she made sure I saw the disappointment in her lovely eyes before she turned away from me and busied herself making Grandfather's tea.

If she knew my reason for not wanting to bring her back to Rome again, she would understand. Or would she resent that I withheld much of her remembrance from her?

 

M
olly's father came by this morning to inform me that she will not be coming to work for yet another day. He is a big, raw-boned man with a plain, honest face, and I did not beat around the bush with him.

“Do you object to your daughter being under the same roof as an Indian, Mr. Munger?”

“I got nothing against Injuns, and Molly don't neither, Miss Bell. Fact is, she was enjoying her proximity to one and the attention that got her from curious town folk. But now she has taken to her bed, and there ain't no budging her out of it.”

“What ails her?”

Mr. Munger shrugged his massive shoulders. “She went out for a stroll Tuesday evening and come back looking mighty down. Took to bed, like I said, and there she remains.”

“Perhaps Dr. Adam should look at her,” I said.

“I suggested just that, but Mrs. Munger does not wish it,” Mr. Munger said. “She reckons our Molly's indisposition is minor and will pass shortly.”

Let us hope so, for I am left with a persnickety cookstove and three men to feed. Fortunately, two are convalescents with meager appetites, and the healthy one has his Granny Tuttle and her doting ward to cook for him whensoever he wishes.

After Mr. Munger left I managed to fire up the stove and boil up a pot of coffee, along with an egg. I must say I took a modicum of pride in the achievement, but when I fetched Grandfather his breakfast all he did was complain about the hardness of his egg yolk and the grit in his coffee cup. (I confess I had forgotten to settle the coffee grounds with dried fish skin.) Usually the Old Dear is quite agreeable when he awakens, but he did not seem at all pleased to see me this morning. No matter. I was pleased enough to see him, all bright-eyed and bushy-headed. I smoothed down his unruly white hair with a silver-backed brush that belonged to Grandmother Walker and offered to read him another of Poe's grotesque tales.

“I should like to recount a story to you instead,” said he.

My fond childhood memories of his vivid storytelling caused me to believe I would enjoy hearing it, and I nodded for him to go on.

“Once upon a time, long ago and far away,” he began, “an able-bodied young man married a beautiful young woman.”

“That sounds more like the end of a tale than the beginning of one,” I said. “I suppose they lived happily ever after.”

“No, they did not. For soon a child was born unto them.”

“And this did not bring them joy?”

“It brought them great anguish for the babe appeared to be a monster. It had but one eye located in the midst of its face.”

“Is this is a Greek legend concerning a Cyclops?”

“Alas, it is a true story, Julia, that took place in England, not Greece. Shall I continue?”

I nodded although I was not sure I wished him to.

“Above the babe's hideous orb was a tubular appendage, a small proboscis through which it could breathe with great difficulty. Within a few hours it mercifully died. The mother died shortly thereafter, and the distraught father sailed to America, where he had kin in Boston. There he began a new life with a new wife, and in 1645 he removed his family to the newly established township of Plumford. That man was your thrice-great-grandfather, Hezekiah Walker. And I have yet another story concerning our family history to tell you.”

I sensed it too would be a bleak one but asked him to proceed.

“This occurred during my own lifetime, when I was but ten,” he said. “In 1786 a babe was delivered of my Aunt Eugenia in this house, indeed in the very chamber you now occupy, Julia. The women of the family all gathered there to aid her, and the men awaited the blessed event in the front parlor. We could hear Eugenia's muffled screams through the ceiling for many hours, and then we suddenly heard the shrieks of the other womenfolk. The midwife came running down the stairs wailing for God to protect her and fled the house. All became silent, and the men froze in their chairs, except for Eugenia's husband, who immediately ran up to his young wife. I followed in his wake and entered the chamber without being noticed by the adults hovering around my sobbing aunt's bed. I went directly to the cradle, where a small form lay, shrouded by a pillowcase. I drew back the cloth and gazed upon an infant corpse that had hideous facial defects. Where the nose should have been, there was an open eye, big and blue as the sky, and above it a small trunk grew out of the forehead.”

I gasped. “No! How could such a thing happen again?”

“Two Walker cousins married again, that is how. Eugenia Walker married her first cousin, just as Hezekiah Walker's first wife was his first cousin. Both unions produced babes with the same tragic birth defects. And because you are my daughter's daughter, and Adam is my son's son, I fear it could happen yet again should you two wed.”

“We are not contemplating marriage, Grand-dear. So you have no reason to fear.”

“Have I not? I see how Adam gazes at you. And you at him.”

“Have you spoken to Adam concerning this?”

“Oh, we have discussed the dangers of close-blooded unions from a medical standpoint many times in the past. But I have not broached the subject with him since you came back to Plumford, Julia. Rather, I have chosen to speak frankly to you instead. Women have more control in love matters than men do.”

“Pray do not think I wish to encourage Adam's affections !”

“I do not think you would do so intentionally. But you must be on guard, my dear. Do not forget that you and Adam are no longer children. And what was considered a rash but innocent escapade twelve years ago would be considered a shame and a scandal now.”

“I assure you, Grand-dear, my cousin and I have made no plans to run off to California together again,” I said and forced a smile.

We left it at that. I did not have the heart to ask further questions regarding poor Eugenia and her husband. It is enough to know that here in this very chamber, with its faded pink toile wallpaper and white dimity window-curtains, a monstrous babe was born and died sixty years ago.

 

W
hat an odd assemblage our picknick party must have looked gathered 'round a checkered tablecloth beneath a big oak tree—Granny Tuttle in her linen mop cap, Trump with a red bandana wound round his head wound, Harriet in a modest poke bonnet trimmed with green ribbon, me under the wide brim of a battered straw hat borrowed from Grandfather, and the Old Dear himself sporting a shiny top hat to mark his first outing since breaking his leg.

Adam was bareheaded as he so likes to be, the breeze tousling his hair. Not only had he removed his hat, but also his frock coat and waistcoat and neck-cloth to cool off after unloading our grandfather from the wagon, along with a sizeable oak splint hamper. His sun-bleached linen shirt, homespun by Granny, has become soft and flowing from numerous washings, and should I ever convince Adam to pose for me, I would like to paint him wearing it, his strong neck emerging from the open collar. He should be painted outdoors, not in some stilted studio pose, and it is his lively expression I would most like to capture, along with the movement of fabric and hair in the breeze.

Movement! That is what I want to flow from my brush onto the canvas—the movement of energy and light. Some say the daguerreotypist will eventually replace the portrait artist, but I cannot believe it. How stiff and dull and inanimate people look in daguerreotypes. And in many a painting too, if the truth be said. But a talented artist can capture the very soul of the subject. Do I have such talent? Papa once told me that I have far more natural ability than he does. Yet he does not think I can succeed on my own, for men do not take female artists seriously. And it is men, after all, who pay the commissions for portraits of themselves and their kin. 'Tis no wonder Papa always took full credit for the work I did on his canvases. They would have far less value if it were known most of the brushstrokes were done by a mere woman. How that rankles. And how I intend to prove Papa wrong.

But back to the picknick. It was Granny Tuttle's fine notion to have one. “The old doc could use a good airing after such a long spell abed,” she told Adam, “and I am all in a pucker to get a look at the redskin.”

Granny and Harriet unpacked the hamper and spread out the bounty. There were two good-sized loaves of brown bread baked in Granny's beehive oven overnight, along with a pie bursting with Sheepnose apples that had just come into fruition, a ham cured in the smokehouse last fall, a plump round of Granny's aged, sage-flavored cheese, a slab of sweet butter lovingly churned, I should guess, by Harriet, a corked gallipot of fresh tarragon mustard, and a stoneware jar of fat little pickled cucumbers. All Adam's “favored vittles” of course.

Granny had also stowed deep in the vast hamper two big brown bottles of ginger beer. “Fermented with my good yeast,” said she, “so it should have a real nice kick.” Alas, the brew was not intended to be sampled by “the wimmen folk,” for Granny considers beer a manly beverage. I did my best to hide my disappointment. But I was not to be disappointed for long. Quick as a wink Granny extracted yet another bottle. “Ladies' tonic,” she called it. It turned out to be dandelion wine. I have tasted fine wines made from the grapes of Burgundy and Bordeaux, but this particular vintage made from the weeds of Tuttle Farm pleased my palate even more. Sweet dandelion wine is quite delicious when sipped in pleasant company.

Granny had sent over a wagon piled high with fresh hay to transport Grandfather, and Trump had cradled Grandfather's broken leg in his lap so it would not get too jostled during the short journey to the farm. For all his aloofness, Trump shows respect and even gentleness in regard to elders. More than once Granny remarked upon his graciousness, until he finally asked her, “Did you think I would behave like a savage, ma'am?” And leave it to Granny to reply, “Well, ain't you one?” He only smiled.

After the repast, Granny fetched a bucket from the wagon and declared that she was in dire need of huckleberries to make jam. She asked Harriet to go pick some for her. Harriet could not have been too pleased with this request, for it was obvious to me that she was taking great pleasure in our company, Adam's in particular. Nevertheless, she is a good, respectful girl and acquiesced. Granny, however, did not hand her over the bucket. She gave it to Adam instead.

“The little dear don't like going off on her own since that trouble at the sugar shack,” she told him. “You go huntin' berries with her, Adam.”

Harriet brightened up considerably when Adam agreed to accompany her, and off they went to do Granny's bidding. I spread a blanket in the shade for Grandfather, and he soon fell to dozing upon it. Trump pulled out a deck of cards from his waistcoat and started shuffling it. I know this deck well, for I found it in Trump's bloodied waistcoat, and along with the waistcoat, cleaned each and every bloody card with turpentine. I also restored the symbols I'd rubbed off with black and red paint. I am glad I took the trouble rather than throw the deck away, for Trump seems very attached to it. He has shuffled it endlessly since regaining his sensibilities and does not seem at ease without it.

“I don't countenance gamblin', young man,” Granny told him right off.

Trump widened his deep, dark eyes. “Why, I would never gamble with ladies,” he declared. “I merely wish to entertain you.”

Which he proceeded to do, flummoxing us with his illusions. First, he vanished a card and made it reappear by plucking it from the air. Then he transformed card faces from king to queen to jack without seeming to so much as touch them. He also made the very card Granny was thinking upon levitate from the deck. “Trickster, trickster!” she cried, her old eyes shining like a child's. Then she begged him to do his tricks all over again. Trump complied, going through his repertoire a few more times, but I observed his lids drooping and suggested he rest himself awhile. He protested that he was not some old codger, giving snoozing Grandfather a haughty glance, but I cautioned him that he could have a setback if he tired himself out too much. Don't forget, I told him, that you have a hole in your skull big enough for a mouse to crawl through. That convinced him to go to the other side of the oak tree for privacy and take a nap.

A short time later, as Granny was packing up the hamper and I was sketching, we spied a tall, lanky figure striding up the pasture toward us. Thinking him to be Lyman Upson, who has taken to tracking me down wheresoever I go of late, I tightly gripped my pencil in annoyance. But as the figure neared I discerned that he was not Lyman at all. This man was elderly, carrying a staff, and a pack lay across his wide shoulders. The most proper reverend would never go about burthened thus, and he most certainly would not be dressed in a bell-crowned hat, an ancient blue coat with long tails, and yellow nankeen trousers.

“Why, 'tis the peddler Pilgrim,” Granny said and waved to him. “Hain't seen the feller since summer last.”

And I had not seen him for over a decade, but I still remembered him from the time I lived with my grandparents in town. Pilgrim would frequently stop in front of our picket fence and sing out his wares—
bowls and beads, clocks and calicoes, scissors and saltcellars, and dainty dolls for the little miss—
but Grandmother Walker would never open her door to him, much to the disappointment of that little miss peering out the front window.

Granny Tuttle, however, seemed on much friendlier terms with the peddler. She greeted him cordially when he reached us, and he, in turn, doffed his hat and bowed to her with the grace of a courtier, despite his back pack.

“Take that load offen your back and rest a spell,” Granny told him. “Would you care fer some ginger beer of my own makin'?”

“No, thankee, Mistress Tuttle,” said he. “I am a man of temperance.”

She squinted at him skeptically. “Good fer you, Pilgrim. Care to show me yer wares?”

He unrolled his pack, and I was disappointed that he had so little to show—a few tin cups and plates, a jackknife, a ball of twine, a spool of black thread, and a scrap of lace. Where were all the wonders I'd imagined as a child? Where were the beads and clocks and saltcellars? And where, oh where were the dainty dolls I had so longed to inspect?

“Oh, my, ain't that pretty?” Granny said, taking up the limp piece of yellowed lace. “I'll sew it round the neck of your blue serge go-to-meetin' dress, Julia. Won't that look fine?”

I have no such dress. Nor could I imagine Granny Tuttle taking time in her busy day to work a needle on a piece of frippery for me, of all people. Besides, the lace was torn and soiled, and I would not have had it round my neck for all the tea in China. All this took but an instant to run through my mind before I caught on and replied, “It will look very fine indeed.”

Granny gave me a rare smile of approval and turned to the peddler. “Can I trade you fer it, Pilgrim? I have no coins upon me, but I can give you half a loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, and a nice slab of ham.”

The peddler accepted the trade and no wonder. The piece of lace was near worthless, whereas such a generous amount of wholesome food must be priceless to a man who looks so malnourished. I used to think him quite handsome when he sang out his wares in front of the Walker house, but since then his countenance has become gaunt and coarse. Despite this, his profile remains rather noble, the high forehead and straight nose and square jaw arranged in pleasing proportions. I was tempted to make a swift sketch of him there and then but feared it might embarrass him.

Indeed, he looked embarrassed enough as he watched Granny wrap the food in a large napkin. He must have known as well as I did that it was charity she was giving him.

“Have you traveled a good distance today, sir?' I asked to put him at ease with some small talk.

“No farther than I did yesterday,” he replied.

Granny laughed. “Pilgrim is as close-mouthed as a rock when it come to his travel circuit, Julia. He has appeared in these here parts every summer for at least a dozen years, but whence he came or whither he goes remains a great mystery. Nor has he ever mentioned his family name or birthplace.”

“Why, I was born and bred a Green Mountain boy and care not who knows it,” he said. “As for my birth name, I keep it to myself because I do not care to shame anyone who shares it.”

“No one should be ashamed of his kith and kin,” Granny said.

“And no one will have to be if the relationship remains my secret.”

“Have it yer way, Pilgrim,” Granny said.

“I did not wish to pry,” said I.

“Oh, it isn't prying to inquire about my travel circuit, miss,” the peddler told me, “for it is of no great mystery at all. My fellow trampers and I go south in the winter and return north in the summer, just like the birds do.” He looked up at the sky. “As much as I expect to see that warbler hereabouts this time of year, I expect to see a familiar tramper.” He looked back at Granny. “One I have not seen hide nor hair of this summer is a fellow called Roamer.”

Granny gave a start. “Roamer?”

“So he's called. Earns his way by fixing clocks. Has a real way with them. Or used to anyway, before his hands got too shaky. Short, stocky fellow, with smarmed down hair and—”

“Oh, I know who Roamer was, all right,” Granny interrupted. “I'm mighty sorry to be the one to tell you, Pilgrim, but he is dead.”

“Ah.” The peddler looked more resigned than surprised. “ 'Tis a rough life we vagabonds lead. Did the elements do poor Roamer in or was it devil drink?”

“He was hanged,” Granny stated flatly. “For the murder of Mrs. Upson, the reverend's wife.”

“No!” Pilgrim's long legs buckled under him, and he sat down hard on the ground.

“The sentence was harsh but just,” Granny told him. “Roamer broke the poor lady's neck in her very parlor. Makes me shudder to think how many other wimmen who let him in to mend their clocks he could have kilt. Made the jury shudder too, I shouldn't wonder. They deliberated less than an hour, for the evidence was conclusive. The reverend himself, poor man, saw Roamer running from his house right before he found his wife dead. Are you ill, Peddler? You look pale as ashes.”

“I would greatly appreciate that beer you so kindly offered me before, Mistress Tuttle.”

“And you shall have it.” She uncorked a brown bottle and handed it to him. He drank down the entire contents in one long guzzle as Granny looked at him with pity. “Better now, Pilgrim?”

He nodded and stood up shakily. I helped him arrange his pack on his back, and Granny handed him the bundle of food. Ever the gent, he gave her his heartfelt thanks and bid us Good Day. We watched him amble off, stumbling occasionally as he made his way back down the pasture and off through the newly mown fields.

“Drink has been that poor man's ruin,” Granny said. “That and changin' times. Before Daggett opened his store, Pilgrim used to do a right good business selling his wares. And fine they were in those days.” After a few clucks of her tongue and shakes of her head, Granny left off watching the peddler and beamed her sharp little eyes at me. “Well, missy,” she said. “Let's talk turkey.”

She took hold of my elbow and steered me a good three rods away from the two sleeping men under the oak tree. Turkey talk apparently required the utmost privacy. I stared out at the apple orchard and waited for her to begin. Granny Tuttle and I were never on easy chitchat terms. She did not like me much from the beginning of our acquaintance because of my city-bred ways and sharp tongue. She liked me less and less the more time Adam spent in town with me and away from Tuttle Farm. And when we ran away together she blamed me for it, as I suppose she should have.