Mrs. Roberto - Or the Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

Dee put her hands out to signify that it was not a large matter. I asked him to Christmas dinner, she was thinking. Perhaps two invitations in one day would be too much.

  “Where’ve you seen him lately?” wondered Dee’s uncle.

  “Fale!” said Mother Pilican, though she was curious herself.

  Dee said, “We just happened to meet yesterday, when I went for a walk.”

  “And you happened to mention that you hadn’t been for a ride for years,” said Mother Pilican, who couldn’t help herself.

  “Not in years, and it was simply in conversation that I brought it up.”

  “He’s a nice fellow,” said Uncle Fale.

  “I hope so,” said Dee impishly, “if you let me take a ride with him.

  “Much I could have done about it,” he chortled. He ambled back to the kitchen for his mad money. “How much did McGoon go you for that tobacco?” he called back.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Dee, lost in her own thoughts. She did not want to appear like a schoolgirl come home from her first spoon, but she did want to deliberate on what had happened that afternoon, plain and uneventful as it was. “Where’s Mr. Porch?” she wondered.

  “He got put out when you left,” said Mrs. Pilican—meaning that the cat had been out of sorts. She liked the double meaning of what she had said, however, and added, “And then Fale put him out.”

  “I suppose he’ll be chasing Rex again.”

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  “I’ll go out and call for him,” said Dee.

  Mother Pilican went back to her magazine with a “Yes, dear” and didn’t even look up as Dee went out the door. She was listening, though, and did not hear the cat’s name being called.

  “What are you brooding about?” asked Fale when he came back in with money to pay back Dee.

  “I’m not brooding,” said his sister. “I was thinking of Judd.”

  45. The Inn at Blinn Hill

  It was odd how the Moosepath League didn’t find themselves quartered in a comfortable inn or boardinghouse when day was done and they were ready to lay down their heads. It was Eagleton who suggested that the hour was growing late to intrude upon Mrs. Pilican (whoever she was). She might be sitting to supper, or even readying herself to retire for the night, by the time they arrived.

  “Say no more,” Big Eye said. The train had taken them almost to Head Tide, and they were skirting a hilly meadow, the smoke and cinders from the engine billowing and ticking at the windows. “We’ll advance upon the errand first thing in the morning,” said the hobo. “We know a marvelous place to bed up, when we get to Dresden. It’ll be two or three miles’ walk from Head Tide, but we’ll get there before things are very dark.”

  “Perhaps we should hire a carriage,” said Eagleton.

  The village of Head Tide, hard upon the banks of the Sheepscott River, was the picture of a snug New England hamlet, with a church spire rising above the roofs and maple tops. From the station, a plank bridge ran across the river to a tidy street flanked by white clapboarded homes. The place is well named, for it is indeed the head of the tide, where the authority of ocean currents gives way to the gravity-fed stream of hill and spring. Here, the Sheepscott River, so potent and broad near Wiscasset, takes to meandering among gravel shallows and between banks no further apart than a stone’s throw.

  When they pulled into Head Tide, the conductor was quick to step from the train and greet the stationmaster; clearly, he wanted to make his excuses for his species of passenger this afternoon. Other travelers, getting off or waiting to board, craned their necks and chattered among themselves as the hoboes spilled onto the platform. There was a livery near the depot, and the Moosepathians were quickly outfitted with horse and rig. A wagon was hired as well to carry the burdens of the troop, and the other men drew straws to see who would ride with old Blind Po.

  It was late afternoon and a dark sky mounted in the east long before the waning sun should have left such a shadow. Big Eye squinted at the clouds but said nothing. Eagleton sat beside him. In the back seat, and facing backward, Ephram and Thump watched the wagon bring up the rear. Already the small army of hoboes was scattered along the road, and the members of the club waved to the fellows as they went past.

  “I hope the vehicles will be able to negotiate a rabbit path,” said Ephram, remembering the hobo chief’s report of their itinerary.

  “What?” said Big Eye. “Ah, well. Not to worry.” He executed a reverse nod, drawing their attention to a sign at a crossroad that said: RABBIT PATH. The hobo turned them down this way, which was more of a thoroughfare than the wilderness trail its name might suggest.

  “You are very good to join us, Mr. Pfelt,” said Eagleton.

  After a moment Big Eye said, “I haven’t championed a cause since the war, so I might be overdue.”

  “You fought for the Union?” asked Ephram.

  “I cooked for it,” answered the hobo. “There were some,” he said with a wild leer, “who thought I’d have served the cause a good deal better had I cooked for the Rebs.” He laughed then till he almost choked, and finally wrestled a flask from a pocket and took a pull from it. He almost capped the flask but remembered his manners and held it out to Eagleton.

  “No, thank you,” said the blond Moosepathian, though he hardly knew what he was being offered.

  Big Eye looked back at Ephram and Thump.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Ephram.

  Thump said, “Hmmm?”

  “I did see conflict before I was done,” continued the older man as he returned the flask to his pocket. “We were near Chickamauga, just days before the battle, and one night our corp commander got his hills fouled up. He had us planted securely behind enemy lines, which fact we discovered the following morning when the smoke from my fire drew a battalion of hungry Rebels.

  “The first of them came through like a hurricane, but a little louder than that, and they came all of a sudden. I had just enough time to dump over my big old cast-iron pot and climb beneath it. Shot was whining through the encampment like ten nests of aggravated hornets, and soon I understood that some Johnny Reb was using the overturned pot for cover. Every time the lead hit that cast-iron pot, it rang out like a bell. I was pretty near deaf before long and hadn’t a notion that the rest of my corp had been driven off the ridge and into the woods beyond.

  “When I felt the pot being turned up on its side, I pressed myself against it like a clam in its shell. The sounds around me were less muffled, then, but kind of tinny. My ears were ringing, you see, but I thought I could hear some southern accents. Then I glimpsed a pair of tan pant legs.

  “Well, I figured I was for it, and about two second of breathing left before I was taken prisoner, but the fellows who had pulled the pot onto its side had other plans. A handful of my troop was firing from behind a ledge just below the ridge of the hill, and those Rebels were having the devil’s own time getting a shot at them. So they propped that kettle up with a grunt or two—one of them did remark that it was heavier than he would have guessed—and they pushed it down the slope, never knowing I was in it.

  “A bowling ball never turned so neatly! Why, that pot blasted down the hill like a bad dream, pitching off the ledge below and scattering the last of my comrades-in-arms the way the first shot of the season scatters ducks. I landed between two trees, bounced a couple of yards, knocked down a sassafras bush, and continued down the slope, end over teakettle, caroming off a rock here and clipping a tree there, spinning faster and faster till I was mostly blind as well as deaf and hardly knew to swim to the surface when the whole kit, me and the pot, took a dunk in the Tennessee River.”

  It was a marvelous bit of news, and Eagleton took a notebook from his coat pocket and jotted down the tale. “Good heavens!” he said several times over while he wrote.

  “I stayed well away from the lines, as a general thing,” said Big Eye. “Certainly they kept me away from them after that.” The carriage was slowly climbing up a hill
, and the hobo shook the reins just to remind the horse that he was there. Big Eye wore an expression of great philosophy and finally he said, “I met an old gunnery sergeant a few years ago who maintained that my presence in the pot might have saved those men below the ledge. He was quite sure that my added weight, as I understood him, helped to increase the pot’s trajectory so that it carried over the ledge rather than tumble down it.”

  “Your fellow soldiers must have been very pleased,” said Eagleton.

  “They didn’t give me a medal,” said Big Eye.

  It was not long before they were passing Pinkham Pond on their right, and a few minutes later there was Dresden Bog on their left. Big Eye spoke of it as the Great Dresden Bog and it did seem extensive to the Moosepathians—not to mention boggy; they saw a small brown creature (a muskrat, Big Eye informed them) and a great blue heron fishing the plant-choked waters.

  They continued along the Rabbit Path till they came to the Blinn Hill Road, and, on this track, they passed several houses and farms, eventually stopping before one of them. Big Eye handed Eagleton the reins before he hopped down. For a moment the Moosepathians thought they had come to the boardinghouse or inn of which the hobo had spoken, but he only frowned when they asked him, and he went to the farmhouse door.

  After some discussion with a man from the farm, Big Eye climbed aboard the carriage once again and took the reins. Soon they were trundling round to the back of the house, down a short hill, and toward an aspect of long, rolling meadows.

  “There’s no road to this place?” asked Eagleton.

  “Thank goodness, no,” said the hobo.

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump grew more curious with every fall of the horse’s hooves, wondering what sort of establishment they must reach by way of a series of fields.

  “We’ve nearly boxed the compass, here,” said Big Eye. “Some of the fellows will be along pretty quick, as they’ll have hiked it cross country.”

  Soon they were mounting a short, wood-covered hill, at the top of which there stood a clearing that bore the signs of previous occupation. There were crude lean-tos among the trees and several stone-ringed plots upon the ground where fires had once burned. Collectively, the Moosepath League was puzzled, and then amazed, to hear Big Eye announce that they had arrived.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Eagleton. He strained his neck looking for some sign of domicile or house.

  “What’s that?” said Big Eye.

  “The inn,” said Eagleton. “I don’t see it.”

  “Inn?”

  “Well, the boarding house. The place to stay the night.”

  “Your sitting in it!” declared the hobo.

  Again Eagleton looked around, joined this time by his fellow Moosepathians. “Sitting in it?”

  Thump looked behind himself. They were all standing and the phrase puzzled him.

  “Mother Nature’s your landlady tonight, gentlemen!” Big Eye threw his arms wide as if he were sharing his own personal estate. “The forest floor will be your mattress, the boughs your cover, and the moon your lamp—well, if it doesn’t storm.”

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were astounded.

  “Good heavens!” said Ephram.

  They stared about themselves. The newly leafed trees were tall and glorious, barely shaken by a breeze from the east. The sun was low in the west and the shadows of the forest long and complex. Big Eye took them to the southern edge of the hill and pointed to a village in the distance lying close by a bend in the Eastern River.

  “There’s Dresden Mills, gentlemen,” said their guide. “And, presumably, come the morning, we will meet your Mrs. Pilican there.”

  “Whoever she may be,” said Ephram.

  “Blind Po said Mrs. Roberto would not turn up there,” said Big Eye, “and he isn’t far wrong, as a general thing, but I’ve an inkling myself now and again, and I’ve got the feeling you’re going to find what you’re looking for, one way or another, when we rise up tomorrow.”

  46. Watchpig on Duty

  Anyone who has lived long within weather distance of the coast of Maine will have experienced the ambushlike reversal of the nor’easter, when a storm gathers power above the turbulence of the ocean, amassing itself into something angry and unstable. A weak weather system, lingering behind such a resurgent storm, has no authority to deny it, but if a second powerful front is following the prevailing weather patterns those two can meet like charging bulls over the land. Betwixt such potent elements, and even near to them, weather and life can become strange and unpredictable. People, too, have been known to do surprising things under the influence of such weather, and lightning can strike ten miles from the storm that produces it.

  “Something has halted it up there,” said Mr. Fern when they went outside to check on the animals. The sense of impending weather was oppressive somehow but perhaps they were simply feeling the effects of Mrs. Fern’s story. Certainly Sundry appeared preoccupied, and even a little wary. The animals, too, were awake and watchful; they started when a person touched them, and even the normally sanguine Hercules grunted nervously at their approach.

  “He’s not sad,” said Mr. Fern, “but he’s on the edge of his nerves tonight.”

  “It’s the weather,” said Madeline. “It will have us all on edge.”

  Sundry silently agreed. He had been expecting something—not weather, really, and not anything he could have disclosed like a tale or a specific prediction; the business of the gloomy pig had seemed to him neither beginning nor end but the very middle of something that would come to a simple and unexpected head. He was quite convinced that someone had been responsible for Hercules’s recent affliction, and he wondered if the pig’s recovery, and his and Mister Walton’s presence at Fern Farm, were a source of worry for that someone. It was, he would say later, a pretty dire business to sicken a pig.

  The outing above the river, the suspense roused by Mrs. Fern’s story, perhaps even the relief over Hercules’s recovery, contributed to an early evening at Fern Farm. The little boys fell asleep on the parlor floor, while the older folk talked and the two middle sisters were yawning up the stairs soon after. Mister Walton excused himself before it was eight o’clock, and Sundry went up as well. Only Aunt Beatrice was untouched by the general weariness, and Mr. and Mrs. Fern and Madeline left her tatting lace in the parlor when they climbed the stairs.

  Sundry said good night to Mister Walton, went to his room, readied himself for bed, and turned his shoulder to the night.

  In his own room, Mister Walton lay in bed and looked up at the ceiling. Light from somewhere gave rise to an amorphous shape among the shadows in the further corner, but he turned his attention from this and thought of Phileda, which led him to think of the coming ball, which led him to think of Sundry’s unexpected announcement this afternoon that he would be attending.

  The night was uncommonly silent. There might have been the distant call of some night bird to jar the stillness, but not a breath more. Mister Walton thought such quiet might keep a person awake. Then from another quarter of the house, there came the rumble of stentorian snores—the very same he had mistaken for thunder the night before. The portly fellow pulled the covers over his shoulders and smiled as he closed his eyes, thinking wryly that this was not the sort of lullaby he would have chosen. Then he fell asleep.

  Then he woke with no sense of how long he had been asleep or of what had wakened him and even a brieflack of knowledge concerning where he was. There was lamplight beneath the door and the sound of movement in the hall.

  An alarming clamor came through the window—an animalistic babel, fit to noise the forest primeval or perhaps a modern jungle but not (thought an astonished Mister Walton) to occupy the gloom surrounding a farm in Maine. It was a savage sort of sound—a long angry grunt, almost a roar—and it was followed hard upon the heels by a similarly savage crash.

  With a shout, Mister Walton sat upright. There was a knock at his door and he said, in a gasp, “Come in, come in!�
�� and, “Sundry!,” when the young man stuck his head into the room. “What is it? What time is it?”

  “It’s just by one o’clock.”

  “But what’s the matter?”

  “I think Hercules is trying to get out of the barn.”

  “Good heavens! The watchpig!”

  The angry bellow and the crash came again. Now Mister Walton could hear other voices—the uncertain lowing of the animals in the barn. Sundry was pulling on his boots and throwing a shirt over his shoulders, and, for a portly, middle-aged gentleman, Mister Walton proved swift at dressing. There was a bang and a shout from inside the house, and then the bellow and crash from outside again. Sundry threw open the door to look into the hall.

  “Mr. Moss!” came a feminine voice in a near whisper. Madeline stood at the other end of the hall with a nightdress clutched tightly about her, her face pale in the light of a candle, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “That shout,” said Sundry.

  “It came from my parents’ room.”

  Sundry strode purposefully down the hall. “Which door?” he said, and Madeline was in the midst of a gesture that would answer his question, when they heard a second, less emphatic shout and one of the doors to the hall flew open. Mr. Fern appeared, half dressed and hopping on one foot.

  “Daddy! What is it?” called Madeline.

  “I stubbed my toe!” shouted the father.

  The next crash that came from outside sounded different and they could imagine that something had broken loose or shattered. There was a piglike squeal.

  The children began to appear in the hall.

  “Is something trying to get in at him?” Madeline said aloud.

  Sundry shook his head. He thought he heard a man’s voice shouting angrily. Mrs. Fern appeared in the hall with a “What is it, dear?” and then Mister Walton hurried out from his room, calling, “Sundry! Where are you?”

  But Sundry was charging down the stairs, and Mister Walton and Mr. Fern hurried close behind, Mr. Fern casting assurances back to his wife and children, as well as contradictory warnings to stay away. “He’s gotten loose!” said Mr. Fern, and indeed they could hear a triumphant squeal and another piggish roar followed by the shouts of both a man and a woman.