God in Concord

by Jane Langton

  He was in a state of shock. Through a haze of heat and dust he saw the caravans at the place called Pond View, and the old man sitting on a chair beside the road.

  Stuart LaDue saw him coming and prepared himself for a peevish exchange. The kid had those dangerous-looking foreign eyes with that liquid look, like he could mesmerize you. His skin was dark and ashen at the same time. He looked sick, like he had some tropical disease.

  “Excuse me,” said Ananda, pausing in front of him, desperate for enlightenment. “I have come ten thousand miles to see Walden Pond. I am surprised to find it so different from what I had imagined.”

  “Hey, listen,” said Stu LaDue, “you should of knowed better. That Henry Thoreau, he wasn’t no great shakes. Womanizer. He used to have women every night while he was here, that’s what I heard. Drinker, too, that’s what they tell me.” Stu watched with satisfaction as the foreigner blinked and winced. “Hey, I tell you what. You should talk to Norman Peck. Real Thoreau freak.” He pointed. “Blue home, down the driveway. You can’t miss it.”

  Stu watched the foreign kid start down the drive, congratulating himself on spoiling Norman’s day.

  Ananda’s suitcase weighed him down. In the last hour it had grown very heavy. Which place was Mr. Peck’s? Staring ahead, Ananda heard a woman scream, and then beyond the last of the caravans he saw the bushes swaying wildly left and right. Ananda had once seen a herd of elephants crashing through a forest in southern India, and now for a moment he imagined an elephant trampling this American woodland. It amused him to think how pleased Henry Thoreau would have been to see an elephant in Walden Woods. Thoreau had played with the conceit that someday he would find every kind of flora and fauna within the confines of the town of Concord, even the alpine edelweiss. If the edelweiss, why not the elephant?

  There was another cry, a different voice, a man shouting, “Hey, what’s going on up there?”

  Ananda walked around the last caravan to the far side and looked down at the ground in consternation. A woman in a pink wrapper lay on the steps before the open door. Her feet were on the top step, her head rested on the cement slab below. Her eyes were open and unblinking.

  Dropping his suitcase, Ananda knelt beside the woman and lifted her wrist to feel for a pulse. There was none.

  A shadow fell across the woman’s face. Ananda looked up to see a big man standing beside him, breathing heavily, looking down.

  “I fear she is dead,” said Ananda.

  Homer Kelly got down on his knees. “There’s a terrible wound on the back of her head,” he said softly.

  “Perhaps she fell and her head struck the step.”

  “Perhaps.”

  They both turned at the sound of breaking crockery. A small round woman stood staring at them. At her feet lay a broken pitcher and a scattering of ice cubes.

  “Oh, poor Alice,” cried Honey Mooney. Waving her arms, she ran away, screaming along the driveway. In a moment she was back, trailing a parade of elderly men and women.

  “Jesus,” puffed Stu LaDue. He looked accusingly at Homer Kelly. “Who the hell are you?” Narrowing his eyes, he pointed a finger at Ananda Singh. “I knew this kid was up to no good. Somebody call the police.”

  The others ignored him. They ignored Ananda Singh and Homer Kelly. With exclamations of sorrow they bent over Alice Snow. One of the women was crying.

  “Where’s Julian?” said Norman Peck.

  “He went off in his truck,” said Stu. “Kind of funny. His wife dies and he drives off. I call that mighty peculiar, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody’s asking you,” said Norman.

  Charlotte Harris was the last to arrive, running awkwardly along the driveway, her arms and legs stiff, her head forward. At the sight of Alice’s body on the ground she stopped short and put her hand to her face. Norman Peck put an arm around her, but Charlotte pulled free and stalked away as though she didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “You know,” Honey Mooney said sorrowfully, “it’s like I had a premonition. We were watching TV in Alice’s bedroom this morning, and I remember thinking, Maybe we’ll never be all together like this, watching ‘The Young and the Reckless,’ not ever again.”

  “Now she’ll never know how it comes out,” said Shirley Mills.

  “How what comes out?” said Norman Peck.

  “Vanessa and Angelica. They’re both in love with Dirk, only Dirk can’t make up his mind. But I think Angelica—”

  “Shirley, honestly,” said Honey. “At a time like this.”

  Then Homer Kelly touched Ananda’s arm and nodded at the truck that was pulling up beside them. “The husband, I think.”

  Julian Snow got out of the truck with the bag containing Alice’s ice cream and looked at the neighbors gathered beside his house.

  They stood back sorrowfully so that he could see Alice lying on the steps of the trailer in her pink bathrobe.

  Thereafter, for the rest of his days, Julian Snow associated the death of his wife with the scent of elder flowers opening in the woods around Goose Pond.

  8

  If a man does not keep pace with his companions,

  perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

  Let him step to the music which he hears.…

  Walden, “Conclusion”

  As Hope Fry climbed into her father’s car at the depot, she glanced back at the man who had come ten thousand miles to visit Walden Pond.

  There he was with his suitcase, striding along the sidewalk, smiling, full of eager anticipation. The poor guy, he was bound to be disappointed. Her father should send out a worldwide notice, Beware! Concord is going to the dogs.

  Hope was living at home for the summer with her widowed father after her junior year at Boston University. She liked the house on Walden Street, which had been in the family since the turn of the century, but she was sick and tired of living there with Oliver Fry. His testy affection was almost more than she could bear.

  Her father was spending his middle age in a state of wrath. Hope was bored to death with the hissing steam of his anger against the Concord selectmen, the planning board, the finance committee, the world at large. Oliver Fry was a steam locomotive stoked with burning coals, driving at full tilt with shrieking whistle against all the other trains on the track. Hope had heard her father’s friend Homer Kelly offer him useful advice—“Listen, Oliver, you’ve got to be more tactful. You should come up behind those people and go through the little door at the back.”

  Hope knew it was useless. For her father there was no little door at the back, it was front-end collisions every time.

  She had fought many a battle with him herself. “Listen, Father, you can’t save all the land in Concord. Just because Henry Thoreau walked on some field or waded in some swamp, my God, he walked on every field and swamp in town. You can’t save it all.”

  And then her father would pound his fist on the table and glare at her. “Why not? Why ever not? It’s sacred ground, the whole entire town.”

  Today it was the Burroughs farm, on Monument Street. “George Burroughs is subdividing it into fifteen lots. He ought to be strangled.” Oliver Fry bared his teeth. His eyes bulged. “Fifteen houses down there by the river. It’s sacrilege.”

  Fortunately there were three things that kept Oliver Fry’s boiler from blowing up altogether.

  The first was strong drink. Oliver took a dollop of cheap whiskey every single night before supper—a measured amount, four ounces, more or less.

  The second was his job. Oliver taught natural science at the high school. Even this was a source of disagreement with his daughter, because the house had become a zoo of living creatures. Opening a kitchen drawer, Hope would find it full of mealworms, white and wriggling in a nest of bran. There were frozen frogs in the freezer, garden snakes tangled in an aquarium on the kitchen counter, a cage of shrews on a shelf over the radiator, and a wasp nest above the living room mantel. One of the pantries was crowded with a failed skunk cabbag
e experiment. All the little snoutlike plants were deliquescing in their pots. As a small child Hope had accompanied her father on field trips, catching butterflies, scooping up pollywogs in Fairyland Pond, paddling down the river to catch turtles. She had loved those expeditions, but now she had forgotten how closely they had bound her to her father.

  Oliver had not forgotten, and his heart was bruised whenever Hope complained about his collection of living things.

  For Hope the worst was the caged barn owl. Sometimes when she went out on the back porch it was disemboweling a live mouse. The owl had a broken wing. Oliver had tried to set it, but the owl had cruelly torn his hand, and the wound had festered. “It’s making a fool of you,” said Hope.

  The owl was still there, awaiting repair.

  The third saving passion in Oliver’s life was his tender feeling for his daughter. It was a strained affection, because of the way Hope combated him at every turn. But he adored her. Except for a few silly notions, the girl was perfect. Oliver worried about the unknown young man who was out there somewhere, waiting for Hope, the one who would carry her off someday. How could anyone be worthy of her? None of the callow young men she brought home ever seemed good enough.

  Oliver had sense enough not to discuss her marriage prospects out loud. He knew what Hope would say: “What makes you think I want to get married? What’s the matter with being single?”

  But the truth was, Hope did cast a careless glance around, whenever she was in a crowd of miscellaneous strangers, looking for someone, sifting and rejecting.

  Today, after his fury about the Burroughs farm, Oliver tried to calm down. “Well, Hopey, dear, I’ll make lunch. That chicken I boiled yesterday is in the refrigerator. I’m going to take it apart and wire the bones together.”

  “Oh, good,” said Hope, “I’ll make a chicken salad.” Running to the refrigerator, she threw open the door, then yelped and jumped back. Something was heaving on the bottom shelf.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Oliver. “It’s that big snapping turtle Homer Kelly gave me. It’s all right, it’s dead. They go on . wriggling like that for a day or two. Here, I’ll get the chicken.”

  The moment of calm was over. Adrenaline pulsed through Hope as she stirred mayonnaise into the shredded chicken. Her father had started in again on Mr. Burroughs, and soon he was attacking the chairperson of the planning board, Roger Bland, for permitting this vile molestation of Henry Thoreau’s countryside. “I’ll sue them,” he said. “I’ll sue the whole board for failing in its duty.”

  Hope mashed the chicken and mayonnaise together and tried not to listen. Who cared about famous people after they were dead? Henry Thoreau was dead, Ralph Waldo Emerson was dead, they were all dead, dead, dead, and she, Hope Fry, was alive, alive, alive! And she meant to wring the most from this fact, right here and now. Turning on her father, Hope cried, “I’m leaving,” and snatched up her pocketbook.

  Openmouthed, chagrined, Oliver watched his beloved child storm out of the house. What had he said? Nothing that wasn’t true! Solidly, factually true!

  The Frys’ house on Walden Street was near the center of town, only two blocks from the Milldam. Hope stalked to the intersection of Walden and Main and plumped herself down on a stool in Melanie’s Lunch Room.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” said Melanie, slapping down a knife and fork. “Liverwurst as usual?”

  “Yes, please,” said Hope.

  Melanie’s was a down-to-earth lunch room with an old-fashioned menu of sandwiches with coleslaw and pale tomato slices served on thick plates. The jar of mustard and the bottle of ketchup stood on the counter next to the paper-napkin holder. There were no fashionable vegetable salads or oatmeal croissants or spinach soup at Melanie’s, no alfalfa sprouts or arugula.

  “I love this place,” said Hope. “It ought to be a national landmark.”

  Melanie was working fast, slathering Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. She looked worried. “Well, I’m sorry, Hopey, but I don’t know how long I can hold out. That Mimi Pink, she’s bought the whole building.”

  “Mimi Pink?”

  “You know. She runs those stores with the awnings, the gift shops. And you know what? She don’t like this place. She came in here one day, looked around, read the menu, and flounced out.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Shrink-wrapped. You know, sort of shiny.” Melanie shook her head. “She don’t like me. And you know what? The feeling is mutual.”

  “Well, hang in there, Melanie. Everybody loves your place.” Then, as Hope bit into her sandwich, someone sat down beside her.

  “Hey,” said Jack Markey, turning to her at once, picking up the menu, “what’s good to eat in this place?”

  “Everything,” Hope said, smiling at him and flourishing her sandwich. “I happen to be partial to liverwurst.”

  “Local girl?” said Jack, looking at her. “I’m a stranger here myself. I’m out here working for Grandison Enterprises.”

  Hope couldn’t help being intrigued by Jack’s bright blue eyes and curly yellow hair. And he looked old enough to have done things, accomplished things, beyond the narrow little world of Concord, Massachusetts. “Grandison Enterprises,” she said, “what’s that?”

  “Oh, you know. Big development firm. We’re doing a feasibility study on some of the high school property out by Route Two. Walden Green, that’s what we want to call it. Shopping mall, condos. You know.”

  Hope stared at him. She couldn’t believe it. “But can you do that? Have you got permits—you know, from the town fathers?”

  “Permits? Christ, no. Oh, the school committee says we can do the study. I mean, of course we have to do the study first. No point in trying to change the town zoning if the soil won’t perc.”

  “Perc?”

  “If the percolation tests show that rainwater won’t drain away. Got to look into that before we even make an offer.”

  Hope put her sandwich down and began to laugh. She had a hearty laugh, and the other people in the lunch room glanced at her and smiled. “My father,” she said, hardly able to speak, “he’ll have apoplexy. You should see him when he drives past that intersection where the high school is. He shakes his fist at the landfill. He curses that trailer park called Pond View. Sometimes I think he’s going to run down the people crossing the road to the beach at Walden Pond.”

  “My God,” said Jack, looking worried, “is your father a member of town government around here?”

  “Oh, no, just the reverse. If he’s opposed to it, the town boards will love it, I swear. But I’m surprised you’re even thinking of building over there. Listen, it isn’t just my father. A lot of people won’t like the idea of changing the zoning so close to Walden Pond.”

  “Walden Pond? Hey, you’re the second person today who’s brought that up. I know, you don’t have to tell me. It’s a book. I should have read it in school.”

  Hope was drawn to the healthy ignorance of this outlander. “What a nitwit,” she said, grinning at him.

  Jack looked at the way Hope’s sunburned throat ran down into the neck of her shirt and wondered how much more of her had been exposed to the sun.

  They sat companionably side by side on Melanie’s stools, and before they finished their sandwiches they were exchanging phone numbers. Before they began eating their lemon meringue pie Hope was promising to help Jack Markey persuade the town boards to accept Jefferson Grandison’s development project, the mixed-use complex to be called Walden Green.

  For Jack it was a stroke of luck, a bonanza, free of charge this time, unlike the costly expertise he was hiring from Mimi Pink.

  For Hope it was an excitement charged with guilt. She saw herself with perfect clarity. She knew what she was doing. She was agreeing to be an informer, a spy in the camp of this new enemy of her father’s, an enemy he didn’t even know existed.

  “I’m just so sick of it all,” she told Jack. “I don’t care if I never again in all my life hear the name of Henry David Thore
au.”

  9

  What if you or I be dead! God is alive still.

  Journal, March 13, 1842

  Julian Snow stared down at the body of his wife. When Homer spoke to him, Julian looked up, and Homer saw in the pale irises of his eyes the reflection of the moving treetops like landscapes rushing away. One of the men put his arm around Julian’s shoulders.

  There were murmured introductions. “My name’s Homer Kelly,” said Homer. “I was bird-watching down there at Goose Pond.” He looked questioningly at Ananda.

  Ananda raised his eyebrows, feeling too insignificant to be a person at all. “Ananda Singh,” he whispered, and Homer noted the name in his mind. It sounded familiar to him, but probably thousands of young men in India were called Ananda Singh.

  “The police,” said Stu LaDue again. “Why don’t somebody call the police?”

  “We don’t need the police,” said Norman Peck sorrowfully. “She fell, that’s all. She fell down the steps.”

  “She shouldn’t have got out of bed,” said Honey Mooney. “I told her, over and over, I told her she should stay in bed.”

  “Let’s take her inside,” said Homer softly.

  Alice Snow was too heavy to be carried by one person. Julian Snow picked up his wife’s shoulders, and Ananda grasped her by the ankles.

  “Wait,” said Homer. “Back up.” Bending over the metal steps, he looked at the treads, examining them swiftly for splashes of red, for clots of blood and hair. He could see none, but he took off his jacket and draped it over the side of the steps where Alice’s body had fallen. Then he snatched up a folding lawn chair and set it over the bloody patch of concrete where her head had lain. “All right,” he said softly, “you can go in now.”