Emily Dickinson Is Dead

by Jane Langton

  It was his own fault, Owen knew. His kindness was merely laziness. Laziness and timidity. Sometimes it was easier to give in than say no.

  But today he stood firm. “Now, Winnie, I know you won’t kill yourself. Listen, I’ve been talking to the people in the Public Affairs Office at the College. One of the guides at the Dickinson house is retiring. They need another one, and I think I’ve persuaded them you would be perfect for the job. They pay the guides now, you know. It’s not just a bunch of volunteers.”

  “But it’s not with you,” bawled Winnie. “I wouldn’t be working with you.” Her hold on his neck tightened. He was nearly strangled. She was rocking his frail body to and fro, so that he had to keep up a shuffling dance to stay on his feet. His ruthless conscience assaulted him. Why didn’t he feel more pity for the girl? Her misery lacked dignity because she was fat, that was the reason. It wasn’t any the less keen on that account, poor girl. “I’m sorry, Winnie,” choked Owen, struggling to breathe, “but there’s nothing else I can do. You’ll like the new job, I know you will.”

  Slowly he disentangled himself from the powerful embrace, and at last Winnie turned, gulping, and pulled open the door. But then, at the sight of Alison Grove waiting outside, waiting to take over Winnie’s job with Professor Kraznik, Winnie howled with rage and dismay.

  Owen stood rigidly at his desk with closed eyes, listening as Winnie pounded down the corridor. Only when her lamentations at last faded into silence, trapped in the descending elevator, did he open his eyes and take a breath.

  Then Owen did something he had never done before in all his life. At ten o’clock in the morning, he decided to get smashed.

  Picking up his coat, he left his office, marched blindly and unsteadily past Alison Grove, stumbled down the stairs, mounted his bicycle, and rode home to Spring Street. There, without even taking off his coat, he took a bottle of whiskey from the mantelpiece and poured himself a stiff drink.

  Therefore when Dombey Dell called to offer him the honorary directorship of the Emily Dickinson Centennial Symposium, and the privilege of delivering the keynote address, Owen said yes—partly because Dombey appealed so skillfully to his conscience, which was bleeding, but mostly from intoxicated befuddlement.

  “If I didn’t know any better,” Dombey said happily, reporting to Tom Perry, “I’d say the man was squiffy, absolutely plastered.”

  5

  The fire-bells are oftener now, almost, than the church-bells. Thoreau would wonder which did the most harm.

  The fire in Coolidge Hall was visible all over town from the cupolas of Amherst’s nineteenth-century houses. The screaming fire trucks kept coming, roaring through intersections, clanging and clamoring, masters of the night. In the fire house on North Pleasant Street, the dispatcher’s voice grew hoarse as he called for engine companies from Northampton and Hadley, Deerfield and Sunderland, ladder trucks from Chicopee and Springfield, rescue equipment from Easthampton, helicopters from the state police and the Coast Guard and Westover Air Force Base.

  Owen Kraznik had gone to bed early, in his big dark house on Spring Street, his head awhirl. Besotted with drink, he hadn’t, even bothered to worry about the bad dream that so often plagued his rest, that Vast Dark—That swept His Being—back. His sleep had been dreamless.

  But at eleven Owen woke up and lifted his head. A wild cry was trembling the window curtains, a rhythmical wail. It seemed to be coming from the direction of Main Street, but now there was another, whining farther away. While Owen listened, the caterwauling faded, then started up again. It sounded like a county-wide alarm.

  He got out of bed, feeling muzzy. Throwing on his bathrobe, he hurried up to the attic and looked out the window. To the northwest there was a red glow above the trees. Good Lord, it must be the University. Shivering, Owen hurried back to his bedroom and began flinging himself into his clothes. He got his pants on backward and had to take them off and start over, his fingers shaking.

  Winifred Gaw’s big van encountered the first engine companies from Belchertown on Route 9 as she drove home to Ware. They whipped past her, pounding down the road, heading for Amherst. Exhilarated, terrified, Winnie felt the blood rush into her face, flushing her big cheeks, pulsing in her fore-head. Then she grinned with excitement as another ladder truck thundered past her in the dark, its red lights flashing, its siren howling. For an instant in the flicker of her headlights Winnie caught a glimpse of the polished gold letters on the side as they whizzed past her—WARE. The truck had been summoned all the way from Ware, Winnie’s own hometown. Coolidge Hall must be burning down, it must really be burning down, the whole huge high-rise building. For an instant Winnie thought of people trapped in burning rooms, but then she put them out of her mind, and thought instead about what to do now. She was desperate to get home, to creep up to her room and hide herself in bed. But she couldn’t go home yet. She had to do something with the extra can of lacquer, the propane torch, the shopping bag. She couldn’t just put the stuff back in her father’s garage. She had to get rid of it.

  Well, there was a place. Winnie had thrown things to hell in that place before. She would have to get the key and go there, and throw the stuff down the hole. And that would take care of it forever. When things were thrown away in that special place, they stayed thrown away.…

  The rescue at Coolidge Hall was under way, and going well. It looked like chaos, but it wasn’t. The chief of the Amherst Fire Department and a quick-thinking major from the air base stood in the middle of the tumult, surrounded by fire fighters, police officers, University functionaries, and barking dogs. In short order they had the helicopters taking off from the playing field on the other side of Commonwealth Avenue and landing on the flat roof of Coolidge Hall to pick up batches of frightened students.

  Owen Kraznik waited at the edge of the field in a panic of concern, flapping his arms in the cold, watching the helicopters land and take off. He was inarticulate with anxiety. When he saw Tom Perry, he gripped him by the arms, unable to speak.

  Tom Perry, too, was frantic. “Listen, Owen, have you seen Alison Grove? She lives in Coolidge Hall, right up there on the fourteenth floor. Look, see there, where all those flames are coming out?” Then Tom’s face changed. “Oh, thank God, there she is.” Jumping over a rope barrier, he raced across the field and embraced Alison as she descended from the bubble door of one of the Coast Guard helicopters.

  Owen broke down and sobbed. But Alison was fine. She was rosy and clean. Her white sweater wasn’t even smudged with smoke. She had combed her red-gold hair in the air. Tom took her home, and she called her mother to tell her she was all right, that she wasn’t one of the kids who were being rushed to the infirmary or to the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital in Northampton to be treated for smoke-filled lungs or minor burns or simple hysteria.

  At the hospital, Dr. Ellen Oak was in charge of the emergency room when the first rush of ambulances pulled up outside. Ellen had been sleepily putting on her coat, thinking about bed. Instead she was up all night. By morning her staff had cared for nearly all of the Coolidge Hall residents who had come pouring in at midnight, carried on stretchers, walking, weeping, coughing. Dozens were put to bed on cots in the cleared-out cafeteria. Scores were calmed down and sent home. But no rescue techniques, no desperate lifesaving efforts, could revive the two sophomore men who had tried to descend the north staircase in Coolidge Hall, hoping to reach the ground in safety. Through one propped-open door the whole stairway had filled with smoke. For them it was a fatal mistake.

  Ellen watched the two covered stretchers disappear around the corner in the direction of Harvey Kloop’s pathology lab. Worn out and disappointed, she swore under her breath, then indulged in a quick fit of tears.

  The pathologist was not in the lab to receive the bodies. He was home in bed. No one had summoned Dr. Kloop. He slept through the whole thing. Not until five o’clock in the morning did his phone ring.

  Harvey was used to calls early in the morning. Automatically
he stretched out his arm to answer this one, keeping his eyes tightly closed on his dream, a vision of the shimmering surface of the Quabbin Reservoir. And on the shore—what a miracle!—a mountain lion was peering through the trees, the legendary catamount of old! They were rumored to be still lurking in the woods, but nobody was sure. It was Harvey’s lifetime ambition to see one in the flesh. And there it was, with its big body and small catlike head, right there in the—

  “Hello,” murmured Harvey into the phone, not wanting to wake up.

  It was the state police. “Hey, Harvey, big fire at U Mass, you should of seen it. Tower of flame, Coolidge Hall. A hundred students rescued from the roof by helicopter. Come on, you’re wanted at the hospital. Couple of kids died of smoke inhalation.”

  “My God,” said Harvey Kloop. For an instant his dream of the blue water of the reservoir remained upon the retina of his mental vision, and then it shriveled and vanished in the withering heat of the conflagration in Coolidge Hall.

  6

  The Horror not to be surveyed—

  But skirted in the Dark …

  Winnie couldn’t sleep. All night she floundered in her bedclothes. Not until dawn did she drift off at last. By the time she woke up, her mother and father had left for work and it was too late for the news on TV. Winnie was desperate to know what had happened. She wanted to go to Coolidge Hall and look for herself, but she didn’t dare.

  Instead she drove her van to the parking lot on the Amherst Common, and walked up to Amherst College to apply for the job at the Dickinson Homestead.

  The woman who took her request in Converse Hall was distracted. “Oh, yes, I have a recommendation here somewhere from Professor Kraznik.” She looked around vaguely. “Excuse me. This fire, it’s got me all flustered.”

  Winnie’s heart began beating furiously. “Fire? What fire?”

  “At the University. Didn’t you hear the sirens? They were going all night long. It was Coolidge Hall. Two students killed! It was dreadful, just dreadful.”

  Winnie stared at the woman and licked her lips. “Who were they?”

  “Who—? Oh, you mean, who was killed? Oh, I don’t know their names. A couple of boys. Sophomores, I think. Their poor parents! I’ve got a son at U Mass myself, only, thank heaven, he lives off campus.”

  “It was boys?” said Winnie, her heart lolloping in her chest. “Only boys?”

  “That’s right. Two sophomore men.”

  “But I thought there would be …”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” said Winifred Gaw.

  The fire in Coolidge Hall was big news. Television teams converged on Amherst. The president of the University was interviewed, and so were the helicopter pilots and the fire chief and the major from the air base and some of the students rescued from the roof and a bunch of miscellaneous people on the street and a handful of outraged parents who were calling for an investigation.

  On the day after the fire, Owen Kraznik decided the best thing he could do was stay out of everyone’s hair. He puttered around the house, trying to tidy it up for the arrival of Homer Kelly. The guest room was a problem. How could he make it look more comfortable? It smelled musty. It looked bleak. Owen didn’t have the faintest idea what to do. There was a badminton net wrapped around a pair of poles in the corner and a dead typewriter on the dresser beside a jug of antifreeze. Opening the closet door, Owen was shocked to find an old gardening shirt of Catherine’s hanging inside. It stopped him cold. He was still staring at it, wondering what to do, when the phone rang.

  It was Mildred Crape, the provost of the University. Mildred wanted Owen to read a prayer at the memorial service for the two dead students.

  “Oh, Mildred, I’m sorry,” said Owen. “I can’t do it. I’d break down in the middle. And that wouldn’t help matters, would it?”

  “Oh, honestly, Owen, it’s too bad. Who else can I get? You’re such an angel of light. That’s what I keep telling Dombey Dell. That Owen Kraznik, I tell Dombey, he’s an angel of light. Oh, that reminds me, Owen dear, Dombey and I have decided to enlarge your classes for next semester.”

  Owen gasped. “Enlarge my classes? But they’re already too big as it is.”

  “I’m sorry, but we’ve got to quadruple the size of your lecture course. I mean, it’s one of those famous courses everybody wants to take sometime in their college career. We’ll get you another dozen teaching assistants and move you into Mahar Auditorium. Now don’t groan, Owen. You’re stuck with it, and that’s a fact. Oh, by the way, I understand you’ve lost your secretary. Would you like a couple of new ones?”

  “Oh, no, thank you, Mildred. I think I’ll just carry on without a secretary for a while.”

  “Really? You mean it? Well, all right. It’s your funeral.”

  “Or salvation,” murmured Owen to himself as he hung up.

  Homer Kelly moved in on Monday, with his Velveeta cheese, his tortilla chips, his Pizza Snax, his kosher dill pickles, his SpaghettiOs with Sliced Franks, his frozen fish sticks, his Grandmaw Butterworth’s Homestyle Chicken Pie, his marsh-mallow cookies, and his instant banana cream pudding. He was full of news about the fire. “I stopped in at the police station to talk to Archie Gripp, an old friend of mine from Middlesex County. They’ve put him in charge of the investigation. Of course the insurance company will be looking into it too, you can bet on that. Hey, Owen, look at this. Mary sent along a pint of chicken livers. Fry them in butter, she said. I forgot to ask her how long. What do you think?”

  “Half an hour?” said Owen doubtfully.

  “Right-ho. Here they go. I’ll just turn the heat up, and then we can have our drinks in the front room. It was arson, Archie thinks.”

  “Arson!”

  “Strong smell of something flammable on the fourteenth floor, where the fire started. Couple of charred galvanized buckets.”

  “But why would anybody do such a thing?” Owen set a tray of drinks on the bench in front of the fireplace, moving aside a shoe and a tin of shoe polish. “Do they have any idea who it could have been?”

  “Well, they’ve got a list of people they want to find.” Homer consulted his pocket notebook. “The kids in the building saw various strangers in the corridors on the day of the fire—an old guy with a beard, a woman with a cat on a leash, a guy selling a saxophone, a fat girl with a paper bag, and—here’s the one I like—a gorilla.”

  “A gorilla?” Owen gasped. “Surely they must be joking.”

  “No, it’s true. There was a gorilla wandering around on the fourth floor of Coolidge Hall last Friday night. It was just a gag, naturally. There’s this guy who lives in the Orchard Hill student housing complex, owns a gorilla suit, his prize possession. He was just lallygagging around. But naturally he was dragged in by Archie Gripp and severely talked to.”

  “It occurs to me,” said Owen thoughtfully, “that Hallowe’en is coming.”

  “That’s right. That’s what the gorilla said.”

  “The parents of those two poor boys are going to sue the University,” said Owen gloomily, sipping his drink.

  “Yes, I saw that on the news this morning,” said Homer. “What’s the University going to do about housing all those kids who were burned out?”

  “Oh, everybody’s doubling up. I offered to take some of them myself, but they said no. They’re renting a couple of houses on North Pleasant Street to take the overflow.” Owen coughed. “Homer, do I smell smoke? Good heavens, I wonder if the stove—”

  “Good God,” said Homer, leaping to his feet.

  The chicken livers were tough black leathery nuggets. “I’m sure they’ll be delicious,” said Owen, scooping them onto the plates.

  “You just have to—chew quite a lot,” said Homer, chomping patiently. “Hmm, not bad—if I do say so—myself.”

  “Why, Homer, they’re—really quite—tasty,” said Owen, who had no taste buds at all, none at all.

  And that was just the beginning. Encouraged by this culina
ry triumph, Homer began experimenting, branching out. By Christmas he had boiled, scorched, charred, and incinerated some fifty-five pounds of beef, lamb, chicken, fish, and pork. After the Christmas holidays he came back to Owen’s house bearing a Christmas present, a French cook book, from his wife Mary. “From now on, Owen, it’s cordon bleu.”

  Owen was overjoyed to see him. “Oh, Homer, I missed you. Now things will feel normal again. And the University is back to normal too. I must say, it’s a relief to see the place looking more like itself. The kids are moving into Coolidge Hall again, did you know that?”

  “No kidding? Well, that was fast work.”

  “There was no structural collapse, as it turned out. Just surface disfigurement. A lot of smoke and water damage. I suppose young Alison Grove will be back there on the fourteenth floor where the fire started.”

  “Alison Grove?”

  “One of the students in our department.” Owen’s forehead wrinkled in guilty recollection. “She wanted to work for me last fall. I had to say no. I hope she found another job.”

  But Alison Grove had not found another job. She hadn’t needed one. Her wardrobe had been completely replenished free of charge. A special University fund had been set up to supply all the burned-out students in Coolidge Hall with cash for new clothing and new books.

  And there was a new ring on Alison’s finger. Tom and Alison were engaged now, officially engaged.

  There was no engagement ring on the left hand of Dr. Ellen Oak, resident in charge of the emergency room at the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital. But that was only because Ellen had refused to wear a ring in the first place. It was true that she was seeing less and less of Tom Perry. Tom was always calling up to apologize. “I’m sorry I’m still so damned busy,” he told her in February. “It’s this symposium of Dombey Dell’s. Dombey’s asked me to help him out with this Emily Dickinson centennial conference. It’s going to be a rat race, getting the thing organized in time.”