by Van Reid
“All aboard!” shouted the conductor one last time from the steps of a car further up the train.
“Take care,” they said to one another. Phileda’s expression grew mischievous and she blew him a kiss just as the train began to move. He was a little startled, as if something physical had actually been thrown his way. It was a moment before he thought to return the gesture. A gout of steam obscured his view and then her car was foreshortened by distance and her window was invisible to him.
“She wants to talk to me when she gets back,” said Mister Walton. He could sense rather than see Sundry Moss at his side.
“Does she?”
“That’s what she said.” Mister Walton had his hat on now and he took his spectacles off to rub them with a handkerchief. “For the first time since she and I met, I don’t feel down, now that we’re parted. I miss her already but I don’t feel sad, somehow. It’s not the same thing.”
“Maybe ‘when she gets back,’” suggested Sundry, “is a little like saying ‘when she gets home.’”
There had been something of that in her expression, thought Mister Walton, though he hadn’t considered it in so many words. Sundry’s construction pleased him. “Well,” said Mister Walton, “on to Uncle Cyrus.”
Sundry nodded once. “Barring unforeseen events.”
It took a mile or so for Mister Walton and Sundry to accustom themselves to the clickety-clickety of the Main Coast rails after the clickety-clack-clickety-clack of the Maine Central’s. It took more than a few minutes to accustom themselves to the lack of female company. The day had started well, with Cordelia and Priscilla and Mrs. Morningside, as well as Phileda McCannon; now they were two bachelors, and the rainy day seemed a little deficient.
Their car was largely populated by newspaper-wielding men in bowlers and stripe-vested drummers with sample cases at their feet, with only the occasional feathered hat to break up the monotony. Mister Walton and Sundry considered the passing scenery and the weather. Mister Walton quite liked the rain, but he was glad not to be looking out at it from his parlor window. Sundry was of farm stock, and rain was like answered thirst, but it matched a pensive mood all too well.
Some folk need the rain for the sake of the soul, and perhaps one of these people can recognize another or simply search for the face that is not glowering out at the storm. There were a lot of sour looks reflected in the train windows, ghostly frowns filled with the passing landscape, but one man, sitting across from Mister Walton and Sundry, appeared content, with a pleasant smile in a dose-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. Mister Walton took note of him and nodded to the fellow when their glances met.
“Good morning,” said the man with the pleasant smile.
“Good morning,” said Mister Walton.
“Yes, it is good.”
“I believe you,” said Mister Walton. “I like the rain myself.”
“My wife liked a rainy day,” said the old fellow.
As this last sentence was couched in the past tense, Mister Walton gleaned from it as much sorrow as serenity. He smiled softly and nodded.
“I was thinking of her,” said the pleasant man. He looked ahead again and seemed to forget Mister Walton across the aisle.
Mister Walton was a little stunned, and a little saddened. He directed a rueful smile toward Sundry and said, “Hmmm.” The young man, too, had been pulled from his own reverie and looked at a loss for words. “Hmmm,” said Mister Walton again, quietly so that he hardly heard himself, and looking out at the gray day he thought the rain looked colder.
The whistle rang out, announcing their approach to Bowdoinham, and Mister Walton unexpectedly found himself waking from a strange sleep. Sundry sat straight in his seat, looking ahead like a sentry. Mister Walton blinked and apologized to his friend for nodding off, but Sundry only answered with a short laugh. The man with the pleasant face was gone.
The outskirts of Bowdoinham village appeared. The fields closed in and folded round them. The whistle shrieked again and a trestle growled beneath the train as they crossed a branch of the Cathance River. Merrymeeting Bay hove into view. Steam billowed past the windows and the rain increased as the train chuffed to a halt. Mister Walton, who had traveled in many a railroad car, thought the arrival at Bowdoinham Station felt a little rougher and more precipitate than might be expected.
The conductor appeared at the end of the car and cleared his throat prefatory to an announcement. “We are having some difficulties that will delay us half an hour or so,” he told them, occasioning some groans and protests. “If anyone would care to stretch a leg,” he added, “we will voice the train ten minutes before departure. One of the boys has gone up to Fink’s Store to ask them to put a kettle on.”
Some of the passengers looked indecisive, but others rose. Mister Walton yawned. “I could benefit from a cup of something hot,” he said.
“I’ve never been to Bowdoinham,” said Sundry, which state of affairs seemed reason enough to step out and look around.
“Well, then,” said Mister Walton, “let’s find Mr. Fink’s store and see if the kettle is boiling?”
11. Oak and Elm
The oak in Mr. Thump’s yard was a perfect place to perch, the tree having recently leafed out to provide the sort of screen that a crafty Indian most preferred. When the street was clear and Mr. Thump had left the window, Tim and Mailon vaulted over the wrought-iron fence and scaled that tree like squirrels, scrambling into the highest, rain-soaked limbs.
“Are there Indians on India Street?” wondered Mailon.
“You don’t have Indians in India,” said Tim, a little exasperated. He threw the hood of his mackintosh over his head and squinted against the drops.
“No?”
“You have Hindoos.”
“Why do they call it India?” wondered Mail on. He wore one of Tim’s old jackets and he hunkered his head beneath the collar.
“I think they thought they were Indians when they got there,” replied Tim, not entirely sure who they were and hoping that Mailon wouldn’t ask.
He didn’t. Mailon was studying this lesson in geography. Tim hissed and pointed back toward the street. Mailon scanned the neighborhood but could discern no war parties or even a herd of deer.
“The elm across the street,” whispered Tim.
Mailon applied his hawklike gaze to the tree in question and glimpsed the figure hiding behind it. The kids lay upon their respective branches, their breathing all but stilled, their limbs frozen. It was almost too happy to believe: To spy a spy! But had they been seen in turn? Tim leveled his gaze along the stick he had carried into the tree till the man behind the tree leaned into view once more. Got him! thought Tim. He thought he knew the fellow, who was looking up at the elm, as if the tree, instead of the sky, were raining on him.
Wait out a storm beneath a tree and get wet twice, thought Tim. He had read this in a true account of Daniel Boone’s adventures in Africa. Tim wasn’t exactly dry himself.
“It’s Jimmy Fain,” whispered Mailon.
Tim wondered why Jimmy Fain would be spying on Mr. Thump. Jimmy Fain was one of Fuzz Hadley’s gang.
“What’s he doing there?” wondered Mailon.
Tim waved him to silence. Did the man see them in the tree? seemed the important question. But the Indian scout must first know patience. The quarry will reveal itself if only the scout waits, noiseless and still. Tim scanned the street, hoping to find other secretive figures peering from behind trees and bushes.
The voice of someone calling “Sir!” pulled Tim’s attention back to the elm across the way and the door of the house that it fronted. “Sir! You, there, sir!” A man of middle years—a butler or a servant—stood on the stoop. Tim and Mailon knew the man was speaking to Jimmy Fain before Jimmy did. The servant considered the rain as he might an obnoxious odor, then stepped down onto the brick walk and approached Jimmy at an oblique angle. “Sir!” he said again. “What are you doing there? You, there!”
Jimmy stepped from
behind the tree and pointed to himself.
“You, there!” said the servant.
“What’s he doing?” called an elderly woman at the door.
“I don’t know, ma’am,” replied the servant. “As to motive, he seems vague.” The servant then turned back to Jimmy, saying, “What are you doing? That is a private elm, you know,” but Jimmy had reached the sidewalk by this time and was walking hurriedly up the street.
The boys in the tree stiffened like cats, ready to pounce, and Mail on said, “Do we follow him?”
Tim wasn’t sure what to do, but following a spy seemed much more important (not to mention, more interesting) than waiting in front of Mr. Thump’s house on a rainy day.
The servant was returning to the front door of the house across the street, and the elderly lady was leaning out into the weather to watch Jimmy Fain disappear up India Street. The two boys came down the oak like jungle creatures and lit upon Mr. Thump’s lawn with less noise than the rain. They scurried across the lawn, over the fence, and up the street in the wake of Jimmy Fain (or the “spy,” or “that curious man standing by the elm,” according to a person’s point of view).
“Gracious!” declared the elderly woman. “What is the street coming to?”
12. Rain and Roof
Jimmy Fain charted a rainy, meandering course on his way to Danforth Street, and Tim and Mailon followed him every step of the way. It was a little strenuous keeping out of sight while trailing their quarry around the city. Jimmy wasn’t really dressed for a stormy day, but he did not hurry from shelter to shelter; he darted from one side of the street to other, as curious as a stray dog, peering into backyards and stopping to watch more industrious individuals at their labor. Tim wondered if Jimmy was deliberately attempting to throw them off his trail, but that was surely ascribing too much conscious motive to his wanderings.
“What’s he talking to him for?” wondered Mailon when Jimmy stopped to chat with a cabby on Middle Street. The boys peered through the rain, between the palings of a picket fence.
“What’s in there?” asked Mailon when their quarry strolled into a narrow alley off Plum Street. Tim and Mailon crouched behind a fish cart.
“Look!” Mailon almost shouted. Jimmy Fain appeared from between two buildings some distance up the street and they bounded after him.
On the corner of Danforth and Winter Streets, Tim tugged at Mailon’s sleeve and scrambled over a fence and up a shed roof. The rain had lessened, but the slates of the adjoining roof were still slick and Tim had to help Mailon along. They caught glimpses of Jimmy as they traveled the peaks and eaves, then they came to the widow’s walk overlooking Doten’s molding mill. Here they perched in the drizzle and watched for Jimmy on the street below.
A gull soared almost within reach. There were days, up here, near the sky, when Tim feared he might just try to touch one of those birds without thinking—just reach out and pitch himself over the rooftops. He looked away when this thought pinched his heart, and now he looked down at his feet.
Mailon’s stomach growled.
“I’m hungry,” said Tim.
Mailon glanced at Tim and gave a sigh. Mailon would never say that he was hungry, but he was always glad to join Tim for a meal. Tim always said he was hungry for both of them, sometimes when he wasn’t hungry himself.
The rain left off for a time and a streak of sun pierced the clouds, so that pigeons and terns and seagulls wheeled up from the eaves and rooftops as if they were starving for light. A steam whistle sounded from the docks. A schooner was coming in as the rain stood out to the harbor. From the roof, the boy’s sharp eyes could make out the very instant that the schooner passed out of the line of storm.
Without warning, the trapdoor in the middle of the widow’s walk came up and Mr. Ealing, who owned the widow’s walk and the surrounding rooftop as a consequence of owning the entire building and business beneath, tromped up the narrow stairs to view the water. He turned as he dropped the trap and looked at the boys.
He was not surprised to see Tim and Mail on. “I thought I heard prowlers up here,” he said. He had a large pipe, a raincoat with the hood thrown back, and a captain’s hat on his gray head; he was a man of business and not the sea, though the sea was his business. “Kind of greasy on those slates today, isn’t it?” Mr. Ealing had heavy features and bushy gray eyebrows.
An enormous bird lit upon the roof just below them, a Goliath of a black-backed gull, and Mr. Ealing did indeed call this creature Goliath. As was usual, the shipping magnate had a bag of peanuts in his coat pocket and he tossed one of these delights, still in its shell, to the bird. The gull hardly put itself out reaching for the gift, and Tim didn’t even see the bird swallow. Mr. Ealing held out the bag and Tim and Mailon each took handfuls for themselves. The peanuts were warm. Mailon even threw one to the gull.
The wind blew a little and the rain rose again to a slight drizzle.
Mr. Ealing squinted against the wet. “What brings you up here on a day like this?” he wondered.
“We were spying on Jimmy Fain,” said Tim. He seldom held anything back from Mr. Ealing.
“Were you?” said the man. He tossed another peanut. A smaller gull banked nearby but knew better than to attempt a catch or settle upon Goliath’s rooftop.
“He was spying on a friend of my father’s,” said Tim.
“Was he?”
“He looks just like my father,” said Tim.
Jimmy Fain?”
“No, my father’s friend. Mr. Thump.”
“Thump, eh? Do you mean the Thump’s over that way?” Mr. Ealing pointed east. “The Thump and Chaine Atlantic Corridor Shipping Firm,” he quoted as if he could read the sign from where he stood.
Tim didn’t know.
“So, where’s this Jimmy Fain now?” asked Mr. Ealing.
Tim shrugged. He had lost interest in the man. He couldn’t imagine that Jimmy had any important errand, wandering the city the way he did, but he’d been fun to follow.
“There he is now!” said Mailon. He was leaning against the rail of the widow’s walk and pointing down at Danforth Street.
“Who’s he talking with?” wondered Tim.
“A short fellow with a bad temper, by the looks,” said Mr. Ealing, who had his old spyglass trained upon the scene below. “Take a look.”
Tim loved the old brass instrument since that day when Mr. Ealing first caught him up here and finished reprimanding him by feeding him peanuts and letting him share in the long view of the harbor and environs. Tim placed the glass to his eye and swept the street below till he caught sight of Jimmy Fain cowering before a shorter, wildly gesticulating fellow. “It’s Fuzz Hadley,” said Tim. There were several men hanging about with Jimmy and Fuzz.
“Jimmy’s one of Fuzz’s boys,” explained Mailon.
“Fuzz is awfully mad about something,” said Tim.
“Only dogs get mad,” said Mr. Ealing.
“What’s that?” said Mailon.
Mr. Ealing changed the subject without announcement. “If you have an swered all the requisite questions, perhaps I may inspect the observatory and see who is coming in.”
Tim handed back the glass, and they waited on the widow’s walk while Mr. Ealing took in the flags on Portland’s beloved observatory tower. Built on Munjoy Hill in 1807, the lofty structure was used to sight incoming vessels and thereby report to the rest of the city, by way of flags and signals, the identity of the ships and the firms to which they belonged.
“She’s Burnham’s Revere Belle,” reported Mr. Ealing, “in from Hawaii.”
Tim turned back to Danforth Street. Jimmy Fain and Fuzz Hadley and the others were gone. He wondered what Fuzz had been angry about. Maybe he was giving Jimmy the devil for being caught by the old lady and her butler, or maybe Jimmy told him that he’d been followed.
Then Tim wondered what Jimmy was doing spying on Mr. Thump in the first place. Could Fuzz be thinking of robbing Mr. Thump’s house?
“
Maybe we better go back to Mr. Thump’s,” said Tim. “Dad said I should watch out for him.” Tim said to Mr. Ealing, “Mr. Thump saved my Uncle Gill from killing a policeman with a piano.”
“Tried to kill an officer of the law with a piano,” said Mr. Ealing thoughtfully. “I lived next to a little boy once who almost killed me trying to learn the violin.”
Tim appeared awed by this, but then a smile crept over his face. “We better get back to Mr. Thump’s,” he said again, then he remembered how Mailon’s stomach had rumbled and added, “after we drop by home for dinner.”
They were going to climb back over the railings and descend the roofs, but Mr. Ealing insisted they take the official route through the trapdoor and down the several flights of stairs to the street. (It was not the first time; Mr. Ealing’s employees could never figure where the kids came from and he liked very much not telling them.) In a few minutes, the man was standing on the front steps, eating the last of his peanuts and watching the Indian scout and his brave ally scamper in the direction of Brackett Street and the Faithful Mermaid.
13. Sus Scrofa in Melancholia
Mister Walton’s nose detected the recent use of the coffee grinder when he and Sundry entered Jonas Fink’s General Store and Post Office. Other smells lurked behind this welcoming aroma in the lamplit interior, perhaps betokening some fresh purchase—a bag of penny peppermints for the old man who sat beside the stove, his white beard waggling as he spoke or jawed one of the sweets in his near-toothless mouth; the scented oil in the dark hair of the young bachelor blacksmith, a tall, wiry fellow in his leather apron standing by the candy counter with a bottle of sarsaparilla; or the sharper presence of a pickle in the clutch of a red-shirted fellow, who made noisy work of his fat, green prize as he listened to local gossip from the proprietor himself.
The rain had brought several villagers, if not a lot of actual patronage, into the store, so that the addition of a dozen people from the train gave the long, low room the atmosphere of an unexpected celebration. Someone recognized an old acquaintance and launched into reminiscence and news, and a drummer cornered a suspicious farmer by the dry-goods shelf. Three women off the train joined a local wife to look over the yards of fabric and colored yarn at the back of the store. Mister Walton and Sundry came in from the rain and returned several friendly greetings.
