by Van Reid
“Gory!” said the burly redheaded man. He made that small gesture before his own face again, saying, “I thought you were Thaddeus!” Clearly he was amazed at the likeness, and when he let his mouth hang open he revealed a great gap between his upper front teeth. “Are you Mr. Thump?”
The bearded man turned about and looked at the newcomer. “I am,” said that worthy in a deep voice.
“I could hardly miss you, could I,” said the unshaven man. “I’m Thaddeus’s cousin. He wired me and said I was to do what I could to help you. Couldn’t imagine what was up when I got a telegram! I thought someone had died! It must be something doing. I haven’t heard from Thaddeus in three years. He said I’d find someone that looked like him, but I never imagined. I never imagined.” He passed Thump a piece of yellow paper. The blond man and the man with the black mustaches leaned forward and considered the telegram. Messrs. Pottage, Pale, and Clive crowded closer themselves.
PORTLAND TELEGRAPH COMPANY
Office: Grand Trunk Depot
MAY 29, AM 3:45
SYDNEY STREET 5A
MR. LEANDER SPARK
MR. THUMP MR. EPHRAM MR. EAGLETON WILL BE ARRIVING BANGOR ON 8:24 FROM PORTLAND. IMPORTANT YOU HELP THEM AS YOU CAN.
MR. THUMP FAVORS ME.
THADDEUS
“You are Mr. Spark?” asked Eagleton.
“What’s that?” snapped the burly fellow. He glanced from face to face as if he’d been suddenly threatened. Mr. Pottage guessed that the local constabulary had put that very question to him more than once.
“Leander Spark?” said Eagleton.
“Well, yes—” said the fellow, his voice trailing off on an unfinished note. “They call me Sparky,” he added after a moment of silence. The railroad men gave the brute a collective squint, and with a gapped-toothed smile and a bashful swing of the head the broad fellow admitted (and with all due humility), “I’m a bit of a hand with the women, you see.”
Mr. Thump nodded, though he perhaps did not quite understand what the man was expressing. Thump considered the telegram once more, then glanced at the railroad men, who each in turn looked as if he should be doing something besides looking over his shoulder.
“Everything in order,” said Mr. Pottage. “I hope you gentlemen enjoyed your trip.”
“Yes, yes,” assured the blond man.
“Did we?” said the man with the black mustaches. “Yes. I am sure it was very nice, thank you.”
“Siegfried,” said Mr. Thump darkly, and he stood; one could almost see the sense of mission filling him.
The blond man stood; with only the smallest of creaks and groans, his companions followed him onto their feet and down the aisle. It seemed unfair to the railroad men that these three would leave just as the nature of their business might be revealed. Broad as a barn, Sparky lumbered after them (pausing at the door to perform his finger-shaking gesture), and the four men conferred by the siding (and very seriously) before striding in the direction of the station house and disappearing among the traffic on the platform.
“They’re as purposeful awake as they are asleep,” said Mr. Clive.
“Mr. Thump,” said Mr. Pale. As a reader of books, he would have occasion to see that name in print one day.
“I don’t mind admitting to great curiosity,” said Mr. Clive.
“I suppose we’ll never know,” said Mr. Pottage. He’d seen many a slice of other folks’ dilemmas pass through his passenger cars between here and Portland in the past twenty-two years.
29. Hercules Unbound
Sundry surprised himself and Mister Walton by sleeping so soundly. Mister Walton had to shake him, finally, and even then Sundry sat up feeling dull and sluggish. He yawned magnificently and did his best to concentrate on what his friend and employer was saying. “Excitement?” said Sundry. It was the only one of Mister Walton’s words that he had properly understood.
“Yes,” said Mister Walton. “I heard a terrific thumping from outside, and then a man’s shout. There have been footsteps and running all through the house for the past five or ten minutes. I am sorry to wake you but I fear something terrible has occurred.”
Sundry swung himself out of bed and cast about for his shirt and pants. Mister Walton was already dressed, though hastily; what is more, his face was unshaven and yet he was contemplating going out into the day. Sundry rubbed his own chin, which was considerably less fertile of beard. “I’ll get dressed and see what’s happened, if you want to wash up and shave.”
“Oh, yes!” said Mister Walton, suddenly horrified at the thought of meeting people in his present state. “Thank you, Sundry. But if you would like to tend to your morning toilet—”
“I am that curious that I will put it off,” promised Sundry, pulling on his boots and hastily lacing them.
Growing up outside of Mister Walton’s realm of city and society, the thought of appearing before the world unshaven did not distress Sundry as it did his friend; perhaps, too, he thought it amenable to arrive in the midst of whatever excitement while it was yet at its height. He did not encounter anyone in the hall, nor on the stairs. The parlor and the kitchen were empty, and yet he had no premonition of disaster or peril. He did hear some excited voices rising from the barnyard, and he followed these directly.
What he discovered when he came around the small shed was anything but terrible. The children were leaping and dancing and shouting with laughter; Mrs. Fern almost danced herself, she was so happy, and Madeline was clapping her hands. None of them had taken any more time than Sundry in pulling on their clothes or organizing themselves for the day, so that the children were barefoot, and Madeline was in her slippers, her hair unbound and flying.
During all of this giddiness Mr. Fern was laughing and scratching the ears of Hercules. Hercules himself sat up like a giant dog, looking happy, if not completely recovered, and someone had gathered a bunch of dandelions and placed these about his head so that he might have been a porcine Caesar returned from victory.
Sundry let out a laugh, and when Madeline realized he was there she ran over to him and threw her arms about his neck.
“Oh, Mr. Moss! You’ve done it! You’ve cured Hercules! Daddy hasn’t been so happy for weeks!”
Sundry’s heart performed several significant somersaults, but he cautiously patted Miss Fern’s shoulder rather than return the hug in all its sweet splendor. She kissed his cheek then and he was all but done in; any native wit or power at his command left him and he gazed down at his feet like the rankest clod.
Madeline took Sundry’s hand and pulled him toward the celebration. “Daddy!” she shouted. “Mr. Moss is up!”
“Mr. Moss!” shouted the father; the features that were by nature so long and dolorous had lifted into the peaceful expression evident in the portrait in the parlor. Mr. Fern gripped Sundry’s hand like a vise. “I must confess I had my doubts about you and Mister Walton when I laid my head upon the pillow last night. I must ask your forgiveness for a lack of faith in what seemed a feeble prescription. Mister Walton must explain to me what has been remedied here.” The farmer swept a hand to indicate the feted pig. One of the boys returned from the cellar with an apple, and when the oinking ungulate scoffed this into him, the family erupted in renewed cheers and gales of laughter.
The farmer thumped the pig affectionately on his massive white side. Hercules grunted contentedly—a low, earthy sound that carried through the human gaiety. Sundry meanwhile had hardly recovered from Madeline’s gratitude.
Mister Walton arrived among them, and, truth to tell, he might not have tended to his morning rituals as cautiously as was his custom; there was a spot of alum on his chin, and Sundry thought the grand fellow had not quite leveled the growth of beard beneath one ear. To say that Mister Walton beamed, however, would hardly have described his expression. Madeline hurried to his side, but she did not quite throw her arms around their portly guest as she had with Sundry, nor did she buss him on the cheek.
Mr. Fern greeted
Mister Walton, pumping his arm and thumping the man’s shoulder so that the guest’s spectacles joggled down his nose.
“You must speak to Sundry,” insisted Mister Walton. “It is his remedy. He’s a farm boy himself, you know.”
“You are too modest,” declared their host.
“He will be too hungry, if we don’t supply some breakfast,” said Mrs. Fern. “Imagine a guest getting up in the morning without so much as a soul in the kitchen or a cup of coffee to greet him.” She may have thought it proper to make up for her daughter’s recent neglect, for she pecked Mister Walton’s cheek on her way back to the house.
Mister Walton accomplished an admirable shade of vermillion, and he threw attention away from himself by laughing as the children danced a ring around the giant pig. Hercules lifted his snout, his tiny eyes squinnied into delighted slits, and he grunted with such a smile that one could imagine that he was laughing, too. Sundry and Mister Walton could hardly conceive of the family leaving Hercules now, and they might have wondered if he would come in to breakfast with them, but he looked ready to lie down, after a little more celebration, and it was agreed that he needed a rest.
“He appears tired but not forlorn,” said Mr. Fern before returning to the house. “Aunt Beatrice!” he announced when they came into the kitchen and saw the elderly woman at the table. “Hercules has recovered!”
“Great day in the morning!” she replied. “You’d think he was going to save us all!”
“He did save Homer from that stray dog, Auntie,” said Madeline.
“Save one of us and you do save us all,” declared the father.
“I’m not sorry he’s better,” said the old woman grudgingly. “The lot of you have been walking about like condemned men.” Aunt Beatrice was the only one among them that appeared to have taken the requisite time and effort to ready herself for the day. Her hair was in a practical bun, her bonnet was on straight, her clothes were neat, and every button was hooked.
“What was the matter with him?” asked one of Madeline’s sisters.
“What was the birch-bark tea for, Mister Walton?” asked the other
“That was Sundry’s remedy,” said the bespectacled guest.
“I don’t honestly know,” said Sundry before the question could be put to him. “It is a remedy for glumness in pigs, is all I can tell you.”
“I didn’t realize that pigs were famous for being sad,” said Madeline. She glowed beautifully this morning, and her hair was still undone and a little reckless. Sundry’s head swam to be the focus of her happy regard.
“You said it was a cure for headache and arthritis,” he offered. “He may have suffered from one of these.”
“It worked,” said Mrs. Fern, indicating that they should not badger Mr. Moss for an answer; either he did not know or was unwilling to tell. Conjurers were to be granted their secrets.
“Should we give him another dose tonight?” asked Mr. Fern. “Will he get worse again if we don’t?”
“I would keep him indoors at night for a while,” said Sundry. “And I shouldn’t wonder if he was eating something wrong for him he won’t eat it again once he’s improved, don’t you think so, Miss Beatrice.”
The elderly woman looked completely startled at first but then recovered herself, put on a frown, and said, “Great day in the morning!”
30. The Former Mailon Ring
Mailon couldn’t tell what time of day it was from his corner of the tiny room beneath the remains of the old shipping agency off Sturdivant’s Wharf. He sensed that he had slept late; it was his stomach, perhaps, that told the hour. The room was pitch black, having no windows, and the walls themselves were black with coal dust. Years ago this had been the coal room for the Chalmers and Holde Shipping Firm, though presently it was the tentative residence of Burne Ring and his one surviving child. Above them (and unknowing of their presence), Pearce Eddy ran his flophouse of the last resort.
Burne Ring was beyond the last resort; he had fallen upon hard times, but that was years ago, while Mail on was still a baby. The child’s mother was dead, and the child’s recollection of the mother pale. Life was a hand-to-mouth proposition for Mailon, but he had landed on his feet the day he met Timothy Spark. As he survived into his sixth year—largely due to his meals at the backdoor of the Faithful Mermaid—Mailon’s principal goal was to please Timothy Spark and, by extension, Timothy’s family.
His father had not met anyone of equivalent virtue, but Mailon sometimes snuck some of the food Mrs. Spark gave him back to Burne, who sometimes ate it. Burne’s primary concern came out of a bottle, the very instrument that had led him and his boy—by way of a twisting and muddled path—to this blind compartment. Burne was not an unkind man, even when drunk, and there were days when his predicament and that of his only living child weighed heavily upon his besotted heart, whereupon he simply grew quiet and remorseful.
Now Burne was breathing quietly on a plank he had dragged in from the wharfside some weeks ago; Mailon could hear him from the pile of rags in the corner. Sometimes Mailon heard other things, too, and not just the footsteps and general commotion from the flophouse above but the chatter and scuttling of other creatures endemic to the waterfront. Mailon hardly knew enough to be afraid.
It was cold in the old coal room, and damp. Sometimes, at the full of the moon, Mail on could hear the rim of high tide lapping only a foot or so below their door, and the one time that men came down to investigate strange noises they were turned back by the nearness of the water. Some folks who frequented the flophouse thought there were ghosts of drowned men below, and no one ever came down again.
On the alley side of the room there was an old coal chute that Mailon could clamber up and down, and he found this a swifter means of egress than the door and the series of ledges and plank switchbacks beneath the wharves that his father used. Mailon could scramble up this narrow passage like a spider, and, as he neared the tin cover at the top, he received his first real indication of the hour and weather; lifting the cover, he peered out like a rat from a drain. Often as not, he could slip into the alley without so much as a cat taking notice.
A narrow length of blue sky glowed brightly above the shadows and dank brick; it hurt Mailon’s eyes, and he hurried up the hill toward Brackett Street with his head down and his shoulder barely grazing the corner when he turned onto the busier thoroughfare. He crossed the street, darting among the rigs and cabs, with more instinct than awareness, and hurried to the back door of the Spark family’s tavern.
Things were not in their usual order at the Faithful Mermaid that morning; the door was opened wide, and the kitchen seemed more hectic and less organized. Mrs. Spark was not at her counter—hands kneading dough or cutting vegetables, arms covered with flour, and her gray-speckled hair tied back beneath a calico scarf. The older children were moving with unwonted quickness and determination in the absence of their mother’s industry.
“We need more sugar,” said Annabelle.
“The second cupboard,” came Mrs. Spark’s voice, and Mailon realized that she was seated on the other side of the room. He could just make out the top of her kerchief as she looked down once again.
Mailon waited for some time to be noticed, his stomach grumbling. He even waved at Minerva as she rushed past but didn’t obtain so much as a glance. Not thinking about what he was doing, Mailon stepped inside the kitchen as he had done the night before, and, when this raised no objection, he wandered across the room and stood for a moment at the door to the backstairs. From this vantage he could catch a glimpse of Mrs. Spark meticulously sewing the rent seat of a pair of trousers. Tim’s brother Davey shouldered his way in from the tavern, a stack of well-cleared plates in his hands.
Just as if he’d done it many times before, Mailon opened the door to the backstairs and climbed to the second story. Here the paying residents and guests of the tavern kept their rooms. The child peered from the landing at the comfy-looking hall, marveling at the dark carpet upon the flo
or, the brass sconces on the walls, and the foreshortened sight of a bucolic print hanging in its false-gilt frame on the right-hand wall. Mailon knew that the family rooms were on the third story and he recommenced his ascent.
Soon he paced the close-walled, low-ceilinged hall that bisected the third floor, peering past half-opened doors at neatly made high-posted beds and short piles of newly folded laundry on low dressing bureaus. The rooms and their furniture would have appeared simple and even crude to someone used to Mr. Thump’s apartments, but the sense of permanence, the tidy warmth of these surroundings, affected the child with a hushed amazement.
Mailon stood at the threshold of a small bedroom and looked past the open door at the figure of Timothy Spark curled insensibly in his bed. It was a moment before Mailon noticed someone’s feet on the floor, pointing at the bed, and when Mailon leaned a little to one side his eyes followed those feet to a pair of trousered legs, and those legs to the thickset form and bearded face of Mr. Thaddeus Q. Spark.
Mailon had some moments to observe Mr. Spark, and he thought the man appeared troubled as he watched his son sleep. Mailon stood at the threshold, and finally the man looked up and greeted him as if it were not unprecedented to have the dirty little urchin inside the house.
“Mailon,” said Thaddeus.
“Good morning, Mr. Spark. Is Tim still asleep?”
“He’s been stirring,” said the man.
“That was some business last night,” conjectured Mailon.
Thaddeus nodded. In retrospect, it had been a little more business than he was ready for when it came to his children, and he had been sitting in this chair thinking on the matter between dozes since he came upstairs early this morning. He hadn’t rested much and looked a little billowy around the eyes.
“Good morning, Daddy,” said Tim.
“Good morning, Chief,” said Thaddeus.
“Good morning, Tim,” said Mailon.
