Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  They had walked some distance from the general press of human society. Nature had replaced the sounds of man with its own deceiving quiet—the trill of songbirds and the sift of an idle breeze through the grass. The club members had imagined themselves alone, in fact, and so their attention was quickly taken by this cry.

  Thump saw the woman first and pointed toward a rise in the land, west of them. A small figure in a plain dress and apron stood looking away from them down the opposite slope, one hand raised in a fist, the other resting demandingly upon her hip.

  “Drop it, I tell you!” came the voice again, and each of the men looked briefly at his own hands. A sound of disgust exploded from the woman, and she turned about, as if the sight before her was more than she could stand.

  The three men might have been schoolboys caught in the neighbor’s apple tree, their faces revealed such horror. There was an overwhelming sense that to fall under this woman’s baleful eye was to be implicated in whatever had raised her ire. Thump wheeled about, still pointing, as if he had suddenly remembered a pressing engagement in the opposite direction; Ephram decided that the shell heaps could wait no longer; and Eagleton physically expressed a sudden desire to retrace his steps entirely.

  If the woman had not already seen them, the sound of their foreheads colliding would have quickly marked their presence.

  “You!” she shouted. “You, down there!”

  “Yes?” said Ephram, facing the wrong direction and gripping his brow. “Yes? Where did you go?”

  Thump, who had received a knock on the noggin from Mrs. Roberto’s shapely heel only days before, was experiencing a sort of flashback. “High tide at eighteen past six!” he shouted. There was a beatific expression on his face. Eagleton, in an attempt to reverse his reverse in direction, fell over him.

  Eagleton struck his chin, and the consecutive blows caused him to imagine that his mental capacities had been compressed somehow—a peculiar sort of perception oddly augmented by the foreshortened appearance of an ant at the end of his nose.

  “I feel quite unusual,” he said aloud to himself. “I really do.”

  Thump recovered quickly, all considered, and with Ephram’s help he lifted Eagleton to his feet.

  “What are you doing?” the woman was shouting throughout this display. “Come up here! Can’t you see I need your help? Come up here now!”

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump staggered hardly at all as they made their way up the short slope; Eagleton’s path was a little circuitous, but he straightened his walk as he neared the top.

  “Please, you have to get that pair of flannels for me,” she was saying as the object of her difficulties came into view. And so that instant in time that club members often call The Moment came to pass.

  They stood upon a rise of land, with an inlet of the river before them, and the view was picturesque in the extreme. Most of the acreage within sight was cleared of trees, though certain stands of birches did dot the landscape, their pearly barks glowing as with a light of their own. Where white clapboarded houses stood along the river banks there were often maples and oaks, or stands of lilacs and rosebushes. Everything between was lush with summer grasses and wildflowers; the river glistened in the sunlight.

  But the only thing to impress itself upon them was that a moose was trotting about in the hollow below them, with what appeared to be a suit of red flannel underwear flying like a pennant from his antlers.

  Eagleton concluded that his mental functions were still slightly abbreviated. He blinked several times, during the course of which neither the moose nor the red flannels disappeared. The moose did stop trotting, however, and stood for a moment to contemplate the people above him. Eagleton felt that a stationary moose with red flannel underwear was preferable to one in motion, and so continued to blink, hoping that he was causing the creature to go away. The moose blinked back at him.

  A breeze came up and gently pulled at the red flannel sleeves. The suit had been caught by one of its legs so that it seemed to wave for help. The moose munched heartily upon a clump of dandelions, the flowers of which hung decoratively from the end of his bulbous muzzle.

  A moose is a cumbersome beast without a pair of red flannel underwear, but with such an accoutrement it is almost impossible to look at politely. Mrs. Maloney, who had been looking at the creature for some time now, still gaped. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get those back!” she declared. “My husband only has the one suit, and he won’t get dressed without it!”

  “Oh, my!” said Ephram.

  “I had them out on the line, and that fool just walked through and picked them up as he went.”

  Ephram didn’t know what unnerved him the most—the proximity of this wild beast, or the prospect of discussing undergarments with Mrs. Maloney. She was daunted by neither moose nor underwear, and continued to remonstrate to the three friends for their failure to act upon the situation.

  “You!” said she to Thump, gesturing emphatically. “Get those away from him!”

  It was unfortunate that she singled out Thump for this dictate, since he was the shortest among them; but he had set a standard for himself and could not forsake a woman in distress. Ephram and Eagleton stood as still as trees, watching with amazement and admiration as he took a single step forward.

  “Hmmm,” said Thump cautiously. He waved a hand inconclusively at the animal. “Yes . . . well, come, come,” he said.

  “Good job, Thump!” whispered Eagleton.

  The moose, below them on the slope, showed neither hint of compliance nor change of expression. The dandelions had vanished, and they could hear the animal chewing.

  Thump’s shaking was barely visible as he took a second step down the slope. “Here, Bossy-Bossy-Bossy-Bossy,” he intoned.

  The moose, if anything, looked confused by this mode of address. It paused in its ruminating and watched Thump, as if he were the one sporting a suit of underwear upon his head.

  As the man progressed into the hollow and neared the level place where the moose stood, the difficulty inherent in his lack of height became clear to the onlookers. “Here, Bossy-Bossy-Bossy-Bossy.” Thump drew near enough to the moose to smell its moosiness, which was rather more pungent than a cow in its stall. Once he was within a yard or so of the animal, his options seemed narrow; indeed, without a stepladder or a good running jump, he was reliant upon the moose to bend its head.

  Something of an impasse occupied the next several moments as these two regarded one another with varying degrees of uncertainty. Those above them on the slope stood motionless; even Mrs. Maloney held her breath.

  With an impulsive toss of its antlers, the moose broke into a short trot. Ephram and Eagleton let out shouts of surprise, and Thump was so startled that he regained the top of the slope before the moose had covered half the ground.

  The moose paused again. Shaking its antlers had only tangled the red flannels further; they were wrapped about the animal’s right antler like a great turban.

  Mrs. Maloney scolded the men as they assisted each other to their feet. “Great goodness sakes alive!” she shouted. “You there!” she demanded of Eagleton. “You’re tall! Now quick, before he’s gone!”

  “Yes, well . . .” said Eagleton. “A plan, I think . . .”

  “Strategy,” declared Ephram, a finger in the air to stress the point.

  “Approaching a moose!” said Eagleton.

  Thump had not yet fully recovered to participate in this Lockean association of ideas. His beard, disarrayed and splayed out in numerous directions, had picked up diverse natural objects during the course of his retreat, giving him the appearance of Rip Van Winkle after his twenty-year sleep.

  Ephram and Eagleton exchanged several more fragmentary thoughts while Thump recovered. The moose watched them with kind attention.

  “The obvious approach has not succeeded,” stated Ephram.

  “Obviously,” agreed Eagleton.

  “And this in no way impugns our friend’s g
allant effort.”

  “Assuredly not!” declared Eagleton.

  “And without the obvious, there is . . . ?” Ephram looked about for the appropriate word.

  “There is . . . ?” echoed Eagleton.

  Mrs. Maloney had retied her apron, and was now stomping down the slope in the direction of the moose.

  “There is . . . ?” repeated Ephram.

  “ . . . that which is not obvious!”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Diversion, perhaps.”

  “Bravo!”

  “Diversion!” said Eagleton again with more confidence.

  “We will divert the moose!” declared Ephram.

  “Gentlemen!” said Thump, his faculties returned, his dander up. “We must not make the same mistake twice.”

  Mrs. Maloney was in the hollow, some distance away, shouting at the moose.

  “Indeed,” said Ephram.

  “That would be repetitious,” asserted Eagleton.

  “Did we make a mistake?” wondered Ephram.

  “It was myself,” admitted Thump. “Ephram.”

  “Yes, Thump?”

  “Eagleton.”

  “Yes?”

  “It seemed fitting and even sporting to approach the problem by thinking like a moose.”

  “Indeed,” chanted Ephram and Eagleton together; they had seen nothing mooselike in Thump’s attempt to retrieve the prize, but were willing to take his word for it. They waited for his pronouncement, keen not to fall into the same miscalculation, but he did not immediately expound his theory. His bushy eyebrows bunched together in a thoughtful frown. Perhaps he was occupied by the sight of Mrs. Maloney clambering over a stone wall in her pursuit of the recalcitrant beast. “Hmmm,” he said.

  “Perhaps,” suggested Eagleton helpfully, “perhaps we need to outthink the creature.”

  “Exactly!” said Thump, and he waggled a finger in the air to indicate that he could not have said it more plainly.

  “I think you have it, gentlemen!” announced Ephram, his expression enlightened, his voice filled with admiration.

  There was another silence between them as they watched Mrs. Maloney’s figure dwindle. Her voice continued to reach them intermittently as they strained to hear what she was saying.

  50 History Beneath the Heaps

  MISTER WALTON CAME TO DAMARISCOTTA WITH NO SUSPICION THAT momentous circumstances awaited him. There was one strange phenomenon that he was able to recall years later, but too much should not be made of it. It happened upon the bridge, where he and his companions waited for the steamer that traveled to Damariscotta Mills.

  It was a trick of the light, perhaps, or a condition of geometry—the product of a mind keen to observe and a personality fertile with enthusiasm. The sun had nearly reached its zenith, shining upon the objects of the day as if the works of God and man alike had been recently polished. People strolled by, or paused upon the bridge to peer out over the powerful current: women with their parasols and men in their straw boaters, parents grasping their children’s hands as a cart or a carriage or a horseman clopped by. There was no shade at the end of the bridge.

  The town of Damariscotta itself seemed almost of another world, its tree-lined Main Street stretching away to the church at the top of the hill. Shadows filled the atmosphere between the white houses and the brick buildings, and the relative darkness set the town apart so that he imagined it as a painting, a photograph, or a scene upon the stage.

  Years later, he found it a difficult sensation to describe, but best approximated it by comparing Damariscotta’s Main Street, at that moment, to the corridor Alice discovers when she falls down the rabbit hole. It was such a brief sort of main street, but rife with possibilities as it turned past the church and disappeared. Side streets beneath the boughs of leafy elms and maples and oaks called to the curious like paths in the forest, and he was not at all sure that—had he walked in the direction of the town—he wouldn’t have run into a canvas or a stage flat.

  It was a strange presentiment, but one that he enjoyed, and he was sorry when the vision ebbed away and the town was simply a pretty place to pass the time.

  Sundry noticed his employer’s momentary abstraction, and it occurred to the young man that Mister Walton was thinking how to politely leave him behind for a while so as to have Miss McCannon’s company to himself. Realizing that his presence might make a romantic afternoon less so, Sundry offered to leave the expedition and take their bags to the hotel.

  “Oh, no, no,” said Mister Walton, suddenly animated. “We will hire someone to take our things. This oyster bank sounds too fascinating to miss!”

  “If you’re sure,” said Sundry. “I just thought that you might. . .” His voice trailed away with an uncertain wave of a hand. He looked at Miss McCannon, who understood quite well what he thought and questioned him mischievously with her eyes. Sundry’s ears turned red and he quickly went in search of someone to transport their bags.

  “He is a gallant boy,” said Miss McCannon with feeling.

  “Yes,” said the bespectacled gentleman, not understanding her entirely, but pleased to hear praise of a friend. “He is a wonderful fellow!”

  It was not a long trip from the bridge to the shell heaps, where a crude dock—populated by a single rowboat—reached out from the bank. The shell heaps gleamed from both sides of the river, and upon the eastern shore they were shorn into small cliffs where recent excavation and commerce had taken tons of the ancient accumulation away. From the deck of the boat Mister Walton saw tall grasses waving above the middens, and dandelions bobbing their heads against the blue sky. Several yards north of the plundered heaps, and barely above the high water mark, crouched a small hut.

  The steamer pulled in to the dock, her stern coming about, her wake advancing before her and breaking against the landing piles and the shore beyond. A flurry of swallows swooped past the white banks and disappeared around the next bend with a sudden and unanimous change in direction. Two men stepped from the little shack, their sleeves rolled past their elbows, their wide-brimmed hats shadowing their faces. Miss McCannon waved, calling out her brother’s name, and the taller of the men shouted happily as he hurried down the bank.

  “Phileda!” he said as he met her at the shore end of the dock. He lifted her ashore and embraced her.

  Jared McCannon brimmed with youthful intensity as he smiled up at his sister’s companions. “Let me take that,” he insisted, reaching for their picnic hamper. It was heavier than he had expected, and he laughed with a sort of whoosh as Mister Walton and Sundry passed it to him. “My goodness! Who else are we expecting?” he said with good humor.

  The two men stepped ashore and Jared laughed again when he realized that he hadn’t a hand free to shake with them. “Oh, scoot!” said his sister. “Find a place for us to eat. I’m hungry.”

  The second man from the hut arrived—an elderly fellow whom Mister Walton was surprised to recognize. “Professor Chadbourne!” he declared.

  “Who’s that?” asked the older man, lowering his own spectacles. “What? Toby Walton, is it? Good heavens!”

  “What a great pleasure to see you!” said Mister Walton, grasping the professor’s hand warmly.

  “Toby and I know one another through a mutual acquaintance,” explained Professor Chadbourne to Jared McCannon.

  “And how is our friend?” inquired Mister Walton. “Not well these days, I fear,” replied the elderly man. “Old wounds haunt him still.” Mister Walton’s face clouded with this news, though it did not seem to surprise him.

  Lunch was laid out upon the grassy bank, overlooking the shell heaps from the north. A bright red blanket made for a cheery tablecloth, and from her picnic hamper, Phileda produced plates and cups and silverware, boxes of sandwiches and bowls of cold salads and pitchers of tea and lemonade.

  Before settling himself to their picnic, Mister Walton gazed about him, and Phileda pointed southeast at a farm beyond the neighboring fields. “It’s named Roun
d Top,” she told him. “The two brothers who built it fought at Gettysburg with the 20th Maine, and they named the farm after the famous hill that they helped to defend there.”

  Mister Walton could not reconcile such a violent event with the peaceful vision before him. Sheep grazed on the near side of a low stone wall, and cows stood in sociable groups beneath the shade of the elm trees that flanked the barn. He turned back to his fellow picnickers and, catching sight of Professor Chadbourne, he smiled. “I could not have imagined, Professor, when I rose this morning that I would be sharing a picnic lunch with you this afternoon.”

  “The world turns on surprises, Toby,” said the professor.

  “Did you attend Bowdoin, Mister Walton?” asked Phileda’s brother. He handed along a bowl of stuffed eggs.

  “I did not have that honor, sir,” replied Mister Walton. “Though I have had the pleasure of attending several of the professor’s lectures, years ago.”

  There was something wry in the bespectacled fellow’s declaration, and Professor Chadbourne chortled to himself, but neither offered an explanation for their humor.

  “His famous lectures on the folkways of the Micmac?” asked Jared.

  “No, his famous lectures on political ethics.” This topic surprised Jared, and Mister Walton looked abashed. “Please forgive a private joke between the professor and myself. It was not proper to bring it up amongst company.”

  “There is a story here,” said Miss McCannon, dolloping her brother a large portion of potato salad.

  “But one, I fear, that Mister Walton is not at liberty to share,” said her brother.

  “Someday, perhaps,” said Mister Walton, sorry to have been impolite. “Please, forgive me.”