The Monsters of Templeton

by Lauren Groff

  I sat on the women’s side, my sister Sarah beside me. How I hated my sister that morning. Hatred like that had never been held behind the stomacher of any other delicate Quaker. Sarah was younger, she was more beautiful, she was light as a butterfly, she was to be married in two weeks to a wealthy Quaker from Philadelphia, and could not stop speaking of it. Even beside her in Meeting I could feel her dreaming of her wedding. It was I who should have been married, I who had made the trousseau that my sister was taking in its entirety, for Sarah was the younger sister and was meant to care for my father until he died. She was never meant for marriage. I was. When she was secretly courted by her husband and when she said yes, when my father agreed, my world shifted. I became the one who was meant to remain at home with my father. My sour-tempered father, Richard Franklin, wealthy, and mean, and gouty, who soaked himself in Madeira every night, but was not punished for it by the Meeting, as he was rich, and rich Quakers can have peccadilloes with no fear of punishment.

  I thought of the sudden desert of my life at that very moment, and the thought sinfully blocked the light of God. Anger rose in me so strong and thick I tasted it, and it was like molasses, like blood.

  In my anger, I looked up at the men’s section. In the great silence of the hall, filled with the small movements of cold bodies and breath, I looked up and found the heavy, handsome gaze of that rake, Marmaduke Temple, on my face. It was not in my nature to smile back, to flirt, but I believe my rage made me. It was brief, our look. But when, on Monday, I looked up from my novel, to distract myself from my sister, who was counting linens from my trousseau in my chamber, I saw Marmaduke, great and hulking, outside by the oak tree. He was looking into my window, forlorn as a dog.

  Such power I felt, and continued to feel as he returned, stood in the cold, every day for a week. The groomsman went out there to give him company, smoke a pipe with him, and came in, chuckling over some joke. The cook stole out with a steaming bowl of soup, and by her walk, I knew that there had been something between them once.

  I watched Marmaduke watch for me, and at the end of that week, as my father was in Philadelphia, finishing the preparations for my sister’s wedding, Sarah stole out to the oak and spoke to him. Cruel girl—I could hear her laughing when she came in and ran up to her room, and I was not surprised to find him in the parlor for tea the next day.

  Overlarge in the dainty chair, vulgar, and how terrible the yellow gloves on his hands. Poor boy. He did not know better. Later, he admitted that the haberdasher only had those gloves that were large enough for his bear paws, those hands so sensitive for casks and rondelets, those work-hard hands. By inviting him, how my sister made such a mockery of him. Of me.

  My teacup rattled in its saucer. I could not look. And after an especially bad gaffe of his, my sister could not hold her laughter—she pretended to fetch an album she wanted him to look at, and ran out to laugh. Marmaduke’s deep voice, shaking. Thy sister, Miss Franklin, is kind to invite me—but I interrupted.

  Cruel, Mr. Temple. She is cruel. She cares only to hurt us. Thou art far too vulgar to be considered and I am not meant to marry. I must care for my father until he is called to God.

  Marmaduke, frowning—even then impressive—But thou art the elder sister.

  I, raising my hand to stop him, hearing the nearing froufrou of my sister’s skirts. Leaning forward, within inches of his beautiful lips. Trembling like a bird in a hand: Marry me, Mr. Temple. And soon.

  My sister came back in. The clock on the Anglican church down the street chimed the hour. I could see nothing but the shine in his beautiful boots, the massiveness of those boots in our feminine parlor. And that night, the low whistle at the window. Sarah already in bed, dreaming of Philadelphia, my own candle quick-blown out. Below, Marmaduke with the rented horse. My trunk, my trousseau, pushed down. And then I stepped, my mother’s prayer book in my arms, the only thing I have ever had of my dear, dead mother, I stepped and fell through the winter air, clutching my calèche to my head, and I landed in Marmaduke’s iron arms. Marmaduke walking beside me on the horse, carrying my trunk on his back, glittering in the moonlight on his back like a beetle’s shell, the house growing smaller at my back with the immensity of every step, I imagining my sister’s screams when she discovered I was the one married that morning, my father’s shouting filling up the town, raising sparrows into the sky, trembling the ground so the cemetery’s dead raised their eyelids, my own dead mother spinning her skeleton in her grave, and I was glad. I laughed, then, in the night.

  And from that night, Marmaduke and I lived together in our many houses. That first terrible, hasty cottage with its sand floors and cook-stained walls (Marmaduke, seeing the horror on my face, making his jaw hard, making him frown, saying, Elizabeth, I promise I shall give thee a beautiful house someday). Then on to a better house in Burlington, but not much better. Then after a year to a house on the land my father gave us, which he meant for a punishment, for Marmaduke to farm (an insult), but which Marmaduke turned into a prosperous little town (the first Templeton, his first experiment in settling a town, before the second Templeton where we sit, now).

  Then on to a fine brick house in Burlington near the size of my father’s own, from which Marmaduke failed to carry me off one humiliating day. Later, I was extracted from that beloved house by a letter written in the hand of an adolescent Indian, Cuff. Telling me that wasn’t it lovely that the new slave, Hetty, such a pretty girl, was with child. That alone sent me to the last, to this, grandest, the Temple Manor, in which I was just then awaiting the news of my husband’s death, shaking with the terrible cold.

  BY THE END of my story that night, Remarkable had dozed off. It was very late. The fire in the grate was low, almost embers, and because of the low light, I could see the stars, the three-quarter moon, the snowy street an opal color. I imagined my husband standing, sweat russeling off of him in streams from yet another wrestling victory, clapping his broad hand on the shoulder of his foe. The old settler Solomon Falconer, a man almost as vast as Marmaduke himself, allowing himself to be defeated by the landlord.

  I saw Marmaduke draining a tankard to cool himself off, head spinning dizzy, staggering a bit. Richard and Kent Peck laughing together by the fire, men spitting and ringing the spittoon like a bell, Mingo drinking, surreptitious in the kitchen with a pretty cross-eyed cook who would fancy him, if he were only not black. Widow Crogan slamming another tankard before my husband, and he nodding at her, telling her to save it, he needed to cool off first. The noise of the many celebrating men unbearable, the pressure in his bladder unbearable, his conscience heavy with guilt, unbearable: picturing Noname, sleek and naked in the lake one day, stepping up to him in the trees, stepping up to him with a sly little smile, water coursing over her perfect, young body, the kiss, why not, then the dead girl in Shipman’s filthy cabin, the redhaired baby squalling in the drunken midwife’s arms. Perhaps he thought he would do something to make life easier for her, that poor child, his own daughter, still.

  I imagined him walking through the doors into the comparable relief of the night, feeling alone, feeling safe. What he did not see is that in the alleyways huddled separate dangers. The noise of the Bold Dragoon, the Anti-Federalists, riling themselves up with their fiddler for a fight. The Bold Dragoon louder than the Eagle Hotel, where the victors, the Federalists, were. I imagined Marmaduke drawn into Second Street by the hard glint of the moon on the ice of the lake, the cold of the night, the dark, the pride in this, his town, the one he made with his own two hands.

  And I knew the moment when the blow was struck. I knew that not just one person did it. It was also I. Through not warning him, through not commanding him to stay home. I, bone-cold in my big house, killed him.

  And then I waited for the discovery of the lump of him in the road. How the blood seeped into the ice-packed street and froze. I waited for the men to bring him home, for our bloodhound to boom his sorrow into the night, for Mingo to carry his vast and chilling body inside
, to return it to my house, which it never should have left, for my good servant to give him to me, like a present, his eyes to the ground so I wouldn’t see the victory in them. I’d keep my own down at the funeral so I wouldn’t see the victory in all of the faces, all of those terrible, hating faces. And that night, I waited for the knock, and I opened the door to the house, and let his body in. I opened the door of this house he built, the house he dreamed of giving me. The cooling husk of a husband, a broken and emptied ruin; a husband, in the end, who was never truly mine.

  Guvnor Averell

  CIRCA 1859. Family lore has it that Guvnor was wearing white gloves for this tintype and had carefully applied great masses of powder to his face before sitting. Note his wonky eye.

  31

  Rising from the Deep; The Sun; One Breath Beyond

  IT WAS ONLY a few hours, but it felt like an ocean of time.

  I sat at the kitchen table with my mug of cold coffee, looking at Guvnor’s little paper, my brain frozen.

  At some point someone knocked on the garage door, and then, giving up, went to the great front door and rang the bell. I imagined, as if in a vision, that Ezekiel Felcher was out there, shivering in the drizzle in his short-sleeved shirt, frowning. I saw every wrinkle in his jeans, every muscle in his back contract and loosen as he walked away.

  I couldn’t be bothered. Behind me, the great stretch of windows registered the slow close of this wet day, and the room grew dark as the lake grew dark, and then it all grew even darker.

  The rain stopped near eight, and the frogs emerged in lusty choir.

  I sat in the dark until the headlights pulled up and then the freeze in my brain thawed.

  There were voices in the night outside, Clarissa’s joyful laugh I could hear even from the table. But before the door opened and they clambered in, I held the paper up to the watery moonlight and read, again, what it said.

  TESTMENT FROM MASTER GUVNOR AVERELL, ON DECEMBER 24 1799

  I seen it Tonite the Death of Marmduke Temple and I cant get Asleep unlest I write it down and thats what Im goin to do and then put it in the Horse I stole from Little Jacob Temple so Ill get it outa me and dont have to worry no more. I wonder if I shoult tell my Father the Mayor the Sherif but no I cant I dont preciate the Temple Way and maybe Marmduke owns the Town (ownt I gess now) but he dont own me.

  Was a time I liket Marmduke he give me Coins when he seen me pat me on the Hed but what happent was on one day I look in the Winder in the Harnes Shop and seen the Reflecshin him and me standin there and a suddn I seen Somethin in me looks like him. Seen it and begun wondrin bout my Father Jedediah Averell and I dont look Nothin alike him and thinkin my Mama Hetty Averell was a Sarvent in the Temple Manor afore she was my Mama and I dont lissen Much in Scool but nuff to ken that One and One make Two and I cant look on my Mama no more after that. I got so mad. I uset to go into the Temple Manor at Nite and walk round and I got so mad at the skinny Little Jacob Temple for havein so Much that I stole Little Things from him a Slinshot a Led Solder a Ball made of Leather and Twine and the last thing was the Real Horseskin Horse Ima put this Testment into when Im finisht.

  No I dont like the Temple Way and so I have desidet I will not tell. And sides Im only ten years ol and I still can pretend Im just a Little Boy and was too scaret.

  Heres what happen Tonite I was out late wanderin because I was mad at my Father he wouldnt let me eat Mamas Trifle at Supper account a the bad Skinnin I done today account a me wantin to go out and play Ball with the Boys who was playin down by the Ise House and I ruint a fine Foalskin. So I was wanderin throwing Iseicles to see them smash sayin to myself my Father coult go to H***. And then I was comin up behind Second when I herd the loud shoutin and I remember it is the Election and account a the Eagle shoutin loudest I spect the Fedralists won. And I creep up and am watchin the fine Doins the Fiddler and the Men chawin Tobaccer and drinkin Mugs a Liker and then Marmduke Temple wrasslin with that great Bear for a Settler Solmon Falconer and Marmduke hes ol and he gets beat and there is Mazment for Marmduke Temple never was Beaten afore. And so he gets up and shakes Hands and says he needs some Air and that normally means a Piss and I scramble around the Corner cause I was standin on the fowl yaller Iseblock where the men pisst in the Ally so as I coult look in the Winder and see the Doins on.

  But no he means a Breather for real and he goes and stands in the middler Street the crossroads Second and Pioneer and just stands and looks at the froze Lake and the Settlment. Smilin like. And a sudden I see Movment. There was Little yaller Elihu Phiney comein from the Bold Dragoon with his bras-head Cane in Hand. Sneakin up out into Pioneer. Like to kill Marmduke. Dont know what hed a done tho cause there was also Davey Shipman comein out from the other Side near me and Phiney he saw and went back into the Ally by the Bold Dragoon. And dont know what Shipman a done with his long Rifle neither because up silent as Wind swift too comes ol Chingachgook over the Isey Street from Susquehanna way with his Tomahawk in Hand and Davey stops movin five Foot from Marmduke Temple and lets the ol Injun just smash Marmduke Temple on the Hed with the back a his Tomahawk. The ol Man he move unbelievable fast in his ol Blanket. There was a Melon Sound and Maraduke he crumplt like an ol Kwilt and a sudden there was Nobody in the Street. All the Men vanisht Phiney Davey Chingachgook. Jus Marmduke on the Ground a Black Puddle growin under his Hed. A minute or so goes by and Im so suprizet I dont do Nothin Im froze. And then out comes Mingo the Big Black from the Manor and goes shoutin in his Frenchy accent but speakin in posh Words and a sudden theres the whole World in the Street all the men from the Eagle and the Bold Dragoon and the great big Hairy Richard come out and begins to Weep over his Father like a big Babby and Mingo scoops up Marmduke like he wasnt Nothin to carry and takes him oft and all the men follow in this strange Silence save for Hairy Richards Babby cryin. And they all gone away.

  And I come out shakin because a Man died afore me and I see the big Bloodstane on the Ise in the Street and it was Much Much Blood. I come Home and cant sleep and so I wrote this. It was the Injun done it. And if what my Mama was whisperin to my Father Tonite about Chingachgooks Pretty Noname Granddaughter and Marmduke Temple makein that Babby a RedHed when Everyone knows there aint no RedHedded Injun Babbys well I unnerstand why ol Chingachgook done it. My Mama calld the Babby Euphonia, Euphonia Shipman, poor Babby. And Davey too I would unnerstand with Noname bein his Little Wife and all and that Damd Marmduke takin what int his. Honest since the Day I seen my Face in his I Hate ol Marmaduke Temple with a Hate so Fierce and tho Im not happy to a been there to seen it Im to be sure glad hes Dead.—G.A.

  I put the paper down and took one big breath. Guvnor’s words buzzed and flicked in me like bees in a hive, so loud I could barely hear the door open. The light flicked on in the mudroom. I stood in the kitchen and waited.

  Then the light snapped on in the kitchen and when I blinked, there before me was Clarissa, so beautiful. Her hair curled on her head, darker, like a cap: her face was flushed with fatigue. Something I’d held knotted within me since the day I’d learned about her sickness unknotted then.

  “Clarissa,” I said, and stepped to her and hugged her gently. She felt as delicate as a bird in my arms, but squeezed back.

  “Willie,” she said, but couldn’t say any more.

  I grinned down at her and said, “I’m glad you’re home, too.”

  And that’s when Vi and Reverend Milky came in the door, both struggling with Clarissa’s designer luggage, red-faced, puffing. I hugged Clarissa again, my mother blushing under the force of my gratitude, and in her pleasure, she began picking lint from Reverend Milky’s shoulder.

  FOR MOST OF dinner, Clarissa didn’t eat, but, rather, held my hand. Vi bustled about so merrily, and Reverend Milky told such a long, convoluted story about seminary school and the pranks they used to play there (darting his eyes between us, anxiously, as if gauging the rise in his level of coolness with each story) that we didn’t have much time to speak. At last, when Milky rose and waddled o
ff to the powder room, I took Vi’s hand as she reached for another white-top roll from Schneider’s Bakery. Her old eyes narrowed, and she tried to pull herself away, but I gripped her harder.

  “Vi,” I said, softly. “It’s Solomon Falconer, isn’t it?”

  “What?” she snapped, and looked away.

  “Vi,” I said, and let go of her hand. I lifted both the excerpt Clarissa took from Shadows and Fragments and Guvnor’s little parchment paper onto the table and began to speak so quickly my words tumbled over one another like wavelets. I said, “Look, Vi, I figured it out. Here,” I said, and shoved Guvnor’s paper before her, though her eyes darted away. “Vi, look. Guvnor Averell wrote this on the night Marmaduke died. It says here that the night of Marmaduke’s murder, there was a baby girl born with red hair, and because of the red hair, everybody assumed she was Marmaduke’s, though her mother was married to someone named Davey Shipman. In seconds, everybody knew Marmaduke had had a child with someone else’s wife; that’s why he was murdered that night. Listen, the baby’s name was Euphonia Shipman. Now, I remembered that name Euphonia Shipman from something else I’d read,” I said, shouting by now with elation, and then I shook in front of her Clarissa’s excerpt from Shadows and Fragments. “Now it says in Charlotte’s note at the end of this little piece here, ‘Euphonia Falconer, née Shipman, became a devout member of the Methodist choir ’…Vi, are you listening? It says Euphonia Falconer, née Shipman, and that means that she, Euphonia Shipman, Marmaduke’s illegitimate daughter, married some old settler named Solomon Falconer. Solomon Falconer! Everybody knows that Euphonia’s son was Solomon Falconer; his son was Solomon Falconer, and down the line it goes until Solomon Falconer the Fifth, the Running Bud, my friend, ends up being my father. Vivienne Upton, you slept with Solomon Falconer. My father is Solomon Falconer.”