The Transcendental Murder

by Jane Langton

  Of course, that was her transcendental ladies all over. They couldn’t jump. Emily Dickinson had refused to jump. Margaret Fuller had wanted to jump badly, but she didn’t know how, and she kept blundering clumsily all over the rope. There were the Parcae, those grim women in the Grecian robes, turning and turning the rope, setting a pattern for you to leap and jump to, chanting it for you—

  Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn out the light;

  Teddy bear, teddy bear, say good night.

  Then snip, with their big scissors, and out go you. And sometimes it was Double Dutch they swung for you, and you had to hop and leap, frantically, between two ropes at once.

  But you didn’t have to jump. The little girl who was leaning in, getting ready, could just turn away and run, with her arms over her face. That was what Emily had done. She had run away. And that was what Henry Thoreau had done, too, after all, when he went to live in the woods. He had refused to jump.

  Mary went upstairs and lay down on her bed and closed her eyes. The jumping rope disappeared. Instead there was that procession again, with the barrel-vaulted triumphal arch and the sublime figures and the glorious flags. She could see it clearly now, she could see it all so clearly! Now at last she could see what it was all about. It was a funeral, such a pretty funeral! Alice’s? Teddy’s? Ernest Goss’s? No. There was the glass box, like Snow White’s, with the little girl inside. It was herself, little Mary, the little girl who had refused to jump. She was asleep in there, she was dead in there—that’s what the procession was all about.

  Mary opened her eyes again, with the tears clinging top and bottom. Between the edge of the bed and the wall there was something wedged. It was Freddy’s teddy bear. Mary picked it up and laid it against her face. Teddy bear, teddy bear, say good night.

  Chapter 56

  There was displayed a Titanic force, some of that force which made and can unmake the world.

  HENRY THOREAU

  The wind was rising. “Oh, boy,” said John, “we’re going to have one after all.”

  “Well, I suppose it could have been a whole lot worse,” said Tom. “We’ve got all the Macs and Cortlands picked. The Baldwins are what will get it.”

  “Maybe it will go out to sea,” said Gwen.

  The weather bureau had given everyone plenty of warning. At Vanderhoof’s Hardware Store there were kerosene lanterns in the window and big bags of charcoal. Woolworth’s did a land-office business in candles. People with pump-driven wells started filling bathtubs and gallon jugs and washtubs with water. Tom routed his whole family out to pick the apples that were ripe. Harvey Finn drove over with his sons to help. There was no school, and the children ran up and down between the trees with bushel baskets, shouting with excitement, glorying in the holiday. “Silly kids,” grumbled Tom, ramming his ladder into the top of a tree, “it’s their college educations that are going to get blown all to hell.” Grandmaw was out in the orchard, too. She walked around the trees picking all she could reach from ground-level, her grey hair blowing out from her hairpins. Gwen stayed in the house fixing lunch and worrying a little. She had a suspicious backache, and the feel of her burden was different. Her center of gravity seemed lower, and she waddled around, leaning backwards to make up for it. How tiresome if she should have to beapest just at this time. As if Tom didn’t have enough on his mind. Tom came in to snatch a sandwich, and looked at her closely.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Oh, fine, fine.”

  Mary kept the library open until noon, then sent her staff home. Edith Goss lingered in the doorway. “Don’t worry,” said Mary. “Go on home. That brick house of yours is solid as a rock.” When Edith was gone, Mary wandered back to her new office and stood looking out at the storm. The high winds were only beginning to rise, and the brushing of the branches against Alice’s window was fumbling and ineffectual, like the hand of a wandering spirit desperate to get in. Mary turned away abruptly and went to the desk. The desk had been Alice’s, too, and it had cost Mary some pain to transfer her belongings to it. There was one large drawer she had left untouched. It contained Alice’s hat, the eruption of pink feathers she had worn so often in church. Mary looked at the drawer. Then she reached down and pulled it open, and looked at the hat. She took it out and put it on the desk-top. Alice had left all her worldly goods to Mary, and so she supposed the hat was hers, now. So was Alice’s house, down on Fairhaven Bay. So was the little rowboat tied at Alice’s landing. So were the wooden swing-seats in her front yard. Heavens, what would the storm do to them? There was no one there to pull the boat up and check the house against the strong winds that were coming. Mary pulled on her coat. She must go and take care of things herself, not because they were her possessions but because they had been Alice’s. She locked up the library and drove her car out Route 2 and down the mile-long dirt road that led to Fairhaven Bay. There was the fork where the road led to Teddy Staples’ place. So that was two houses down by the river that had no occupants any more. And Charley Goss was gone, too, to sit out the hurricane in jail. Jails don’t blow away. But lives do—they blow out. A mighty wind had picked up Charley and it was whirling him to destruction.

  The tops of the pine trees were swaying as Mary got out of her car. The water of the river was almost black, and small waves crowded its surface. She stared at the river. There was something odd about it. The waves were going the wrong way. The wind was coming from the wrong direction, that was why, and wrinkling up little white crests all over it. She turned and looked at the swings. They were rocking gently in the wind. She wouldn’t be able to move the frame, but perhaps she could loosen the swinging seats and drag them under the high front porch. But there was the rowboat, too. Better tend to that first. She walked down to the boat-landing and looked at the small grey-painted rowboat. It was bobbing up and down, tied to the dock with a sort of bowknot. Alice had tied that knot herself. Mary loosened the knot and looked out across the water. The river was high, there had been so much rain. The island was a real island again, the way it had been in the spring, with the water surrounding it even on its landward side, hiding all but the tops of the buttonbushes. Mary stopped still with the rope in her hand. Wasn’t that someone moving about on the island? Something had come between her and the sun, which was shining out now and then under the streaking clouds. She shaded her eyes. Yes, there was a figure there at the edge of the trees. Now it was gone.

  Someone must be camping there. There was no boat that she could see, but whoever it was must have come by boat. Was someone in trouble there? If they had been camping for more than twenty-four hours they wouldn’t know about the hurricane. Even if they knew, there was very little time for them to come away. Perhaps it was children, camping out. With a sudden movement, Mary pulled off her shoes and stockings, left them on the landing and waded out, pushing the little rowboat before her. If there should really be a high wind it would be the trees along the shore of the island that would be dangerous. They were partially submerged, and their roots probably all leaned one way, clutching the spongy soil for support against the southwesterly prevailing breeze. With the wind coming from the other side they would go over like candle-pins. She climbed into the boat, lifted out the oars one by one and inserted them into the oarlocks. Looking over her shoulder she started to pull. Keep abreast of the waves, now, and a little pointed into the wind. Don’t broach them sideways, or you’ll be swamped. Choppy going. Pull hard, hard. Overhead the clouds were in clots, surging like pulses, pulsing like throbs. There was no rain and no thunder, only the ever-rising wind, but the white birch trees in the dark woods were like forked lightning. The wind in her face began to be laden with torn leaves and pieces of twigs.

  And there was that sweet smell. Mary had forgotten that heavenly smell. With the dismemberment of the trees, the breaking off of branches, the sundering of leaf-stems, the snapping of the living wood there went a wonderful smell. Was it the bleeding sap from millions of open wounds? Mary drank it in—it was so sweet
, so fresh. One might not mind dying if from one’s broken body there arose so good a thing.

  Pull. Pull. Mary glanced over her shoulder again and adjusted her stroke until the boat was headed for the small sloping landing place there on the bay side of the island. The trees on this side were rooted on high ground. Their trunks swayed and their boughs pumped strongly up and down. The sound of the storm had risen to a roar, and above the roar there was the occasional snapping sound of slender branches breaking loose. Mary got out and pulled the boat up on shore and turned it over to let out the water that had slapped in over the gunwales. The noise of the wind was so steady and so loud that her own movements seemed soundless. Her bare feet were cold. She turned and hurried to the clearing where the giant pine tree stood. This was low ground, and the pine stood in water. There was no one here. Perhaps she had been mistaken, and there was no one on the island at all. A fool’s errand. Mary pushed through the blueberry bushes and sumac on the other side of the clearing. Then she fell.

  Chapter 57

  With Midnight to the North of Her—

  And Midnight to the South of Her—

  And Maelstrom—in the Sky—

  EMILY DICKINSON

  It was a deep hole. She hadn’t seen it because it was covered over with a broken branch. But her foot had gone right to the bottom, and down she went, falling awkwardly on top of something that lay in the hole. Her foot twisted viciously in the crevice, and she had a tussle getting it out again. There was something very wrong with it. Could it be broken? Perhaps it was only a bad sprain. Now she was in a fix, for sure.

  She must pull herself up and try to hobble. Mary reached one arm forward to lean on the great round boulder that filled the hole. But it wasn’t a boulder—it was something that felt like leather. Leather and metal. She brushed aside the hemlock branch that lay across it and looked at it.

  It was a chest. There had been the black box on Elizabeth Goss’s dresser, and the bait box with the letters in it, and now this—an old-fashioned round-topped trunk. It looked like the kind that Long John Silver would dig up on Treasure Island, all filled with pieces of eight and jewels and pearls. And this was an island, too. She was in a dream of Treasure Island. Mary leaned on one thigh on the edge of the hole, with the storm raging about her, the wind clawing and tearing at her hair, her wounded foot lying at an ugly angle beside her, swelling and throbbing broken, broken—and opened the chest.

  There were no jewels inside it. Just notebooks, ordinary three-ring school notebooks. Mary lifted them out, one by one, and glanced at them, wrenching her body around so that the rattling pages would be protected from the wind. How funny—someone was a student of Emily Dickinson. Familiar lines jumped out at her. The thickest notebook had a title, Rowing in Eden. That was Dickinson, too. (Rowing in Eden, Ah, the sea! Could I but moor tonight in thee!) There was a subtitle, too, written in by hand. Mary squinted at it. The light was bad and she had lost her glasses …

  The True Story of Emily Dickinson’s

  Romantic Attachment

  Oh, for heaven’s sake, another one of those things. It was probably another of Ernest Goss’s crazy fake documents, hidden like his letters beside the river.

  But then she read a little more and changed her mind. This document was very different. It was no clever mimicry or burlesque of the real thing—it was the real thing, a work of profound and careful scholarship. And the suggested lover was none other than Henry David Thoreau. Mary’s adventurous mind reeled and rejoiced, and she read on, hardly noticing the pitch and terror of the storm, brushing aside in annoyance the leaves that smacked against the page, heedless of the flailing fall of a tall pine tree behind her, although the dirt that was shaken from the snapped roots leaped upon her back! She neither saw nor felt nor heard …

  The paired symbols were so daring, yet so sound. Henry had had a dream of a mountain that was his life—and Emily was the daisy at the mountain’s foot. They had gone boating on the river (Rowing in Eden)—so Emily was the little boat, the little brook, and Henry was the mighty sea … it was enchanting. And to her flower he was the drunken, fainting bee …

  What other revelations were there? Mary reached for another notebook and opened the cover.

  Facing her was Elizabeth Goss. It was an old photograph, but it was Elizabeth without a doubt, as she had looked twenty or thirty years ago. And under it, in the same handwriting (Mary bowed over it, peering at it)—“a direct descendant of the union of Emily Dickinson and Henry Thoreau”—good God.

  But that was impossible. That Emily and Henry might have met one another was plausible—she would love to believe it—but this was going pretty far—Elizabeth Goss a direct descendant of the union of.… (Mary shifted her weight, and the hurt in her foot became a spasm of pain.) But, wait—wait! There was the black box in Elizabeth’s room, with the coil of red hair—Great-grandmother’s! Was it Emily’s? Could it be Emily Dickinson’s, that wealth of auburn hair, that was “bold, like the chestnut burr”?

  Revelation beyond revelation—then the box, the black box could itself be the Ebon Box in the poem, on the page that Elizabeth had torn out of the book because it came so close to her secret truth. Elizabeth’s box was black because it was ebony, and it had contained the “curl” and the “flower” and the “trinket”!

  But the poem had mentioned something else. Mary mumbled the words over, closing her eyes to the wind and the storm and the pain—

  To hold a letter to the light—

  Grown Tawny now, with time—

  To con the faded syllables

  That quickened us like Wine!

  Where was it then? Where was the letter?

  What, what? Someone was shouting at her. Mary looked up. There on the other side of the hole stood Howard Swan. Howard? What was Howard doing here? Then she remembered. She had come to take him away. But it was too late now. They must find shelter from the storm, from the falling trees. She struggled to her feet, shaking her head over her wounded foot, smiling at Howard, apologizing. She clutched the two notebooks under her arm. She couldn’t leave them behind.

  Howard had a shovel in his hands. He didn’t make a move to help her. He just stood with his mouth open, staring at her, his light hair streaming upwards around his bald head like a ghostly crown. Then he lifted the shovel over his head, as if he were going to smash something. He took a step forward. His lips were moving. Mary couldn’t hear. “What did you say?” she shouted at him. But she could read his lips. He was saying the same thing over and over, “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry, Mary …”

  He must mean, about her foot. But she could manage. She showed him, hopping a little way, holding on to a tree. It would be all right.

  Then suddenly she understood, and she faltered backwards. Howard jumped across the hole, and made a rush at her. The shovel—it was for her. He meant to kill her. He was sorry! Mary turned and scrambled into the clearing, running on both feet, hardly favoring her lame leg, ignoring the hideous broken pain. A livid scream arose in her throat. I’m sorry, Howard, I’m sorry, too. But I don’t want to die. I’m sorry, too. She rushed at the landing place.

  Oh, fool, fool. She hadn’t pulled her boat high enough from the water, and the boiling waves had caught it up again and claimed it. It lay rocking six yards from shore, upside-down. And Howard was at her heels. Mary turned clumsily and dodged along the shore. She heard a mighty snap, as a tree fell on the other side of the island. Run, run. But you have no chance, not now. In the end you’ll be caught! You are trapped. Trapped like a mouse some child has put into a cage with an owl. Run, mouse, run. Skitter on your small paws from side to side, dash in and out, let your small heart beat, beat, and your sides heave fear. You have no chance, you know, no chance at all …

  Chapter 58

  It needs a wild steersman when we voyage through chaos!

  The anchor is up,—farewell!

  NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

  It was a crazy time to get back. Homer drove up Walden Street, l
istening to the latest hurricane bulletin on his radio. The police station parking lot was full of cars. The police force was all there, a nerve center in crisis. The members of the fire department were bustling around on the other side of the building, ready for anything. Homer pushed open the door and went in. Bernard Shrubsole greeted him gaily. There was excitement in the air. All at once the Goss Murder Case seemed old hat.

  “Looks like you’re going to have some fun around here,” said Homer.

  “You bet we are. The eye of the storm is supposed to go right over us.”

  “No news?” said Homer.

  “News? Oh, you mean—no, nary a sign of him. He was at home this morning, but nobody’s seen him since. And he’s not at his office. Don’t worry. He’ll turn up.”

  “Everybody’s all right, I suppose? Nobody else has turned up stabbed or throttled, nobody’s tipped any more statues on anybody?”

  “Nope.”

  That was a relief. But he’d just make sure. Homer got back in his car. His fingers had to grip the wheel. It needed all his strength just to keep the car on the street. Along Barrett’s Mill Road the wind tried to blow it off into the Assabet. Homer decided that once he got to Mary’s house he might as well hole up and ride out the storm with the family. He bit his lip, struggling with the steering wheel. What would she say to him?

  He saw Tom first. Tom was dragging bushel baskets of apples off the truck and heaving them into the barn. He had sent the children into the house. Homer pulled up beside him. For some reason the question about Mary came out first. He had to yell to make Tom hear.

  “What?” said Tom. “Mary? I dunno. Is she up at the house?”