American Morons

by Glen Hirshberg

  But it’s no trick. All these years he has been pulling books off the wall and somehow he has never noticed the long, rectangular panel cut into the back of this bookcase. He wouldn’t have noticed it tonight, except that whoever slid the door open last had closed it clumsily, leaving it slightly off kilter, not quite shut.

  Nagle pops the panel back into place and slides it open, then glances around fast, suddenly aware that his hostess might perceive this as snooping. She is nowhere to be seen. He should shut the door. Instead, he listens. He hears an owl, a dog, crickets, then loon call echoing over the water, not ghostly, just wild, a sound our throats simply cannot make. He hears his own breath, the ladder creaking beneath his weight. It has been so long since he has felt himself near the secret center of anything.

  He slides a hand into the space he has uncovered. For a second, he believes there is nothing, and then his fingers brush leather, and he pulls out three dusty, chipped leather hardbacks, washed-out green and lashed together with twine. The books feel light in his hands, the leather too soft, like embalmed skin. The covers are blank, and he finds only dates on the spines. 1840–. 1850–. 1870–. He sets them down carefully on the ladder’s top step.

  Reaching through the opening again, Nagle pads around once more and withdraws another set of books. The top volume is black and says C. Rossetti Poems in faded gilt lettering along the spine. The other is blue and badly foxed. The spine says, Holy Bible.

  “Ah,” says his hostess from the doorway, which startles him so badly that he nearly tips the set of dated volumes off the ladder and himself along with them.

  Blushing, holding his breath, Nagle waits. The feeling is considerably worse than—and really nothing like—being caught stealing from his uncle’s wallet at the age of twelve, a few years after his parents’ accident in the White Mountains, less than thirty miles from here. They’d been riding the sky-tram up a steep mountainside when the cables snapped and plunged their car—with the two of them in it, holding each other—two hundred feet into the gorge below. The cable company had furiously denied negligence in maintaining the tram, but the out-of-court settlement had bought his uncle’s house and paid for Nagle’s three years of college before he dropped out. Small compensation

  “I’m…sorry,” he finally stammers, “I was just—”

  “Better watch the scorpions,” she says, gazing at him steadily. Her eyes are actually more gray than blue. Frozen lakewater. “Book-scorpions. Nasty little spiders that rest in old bindings. I’ve got the bites to prove it.” She lifts one hand and waggles her long, graceful fingers, but whether she’s showing him bites or imitating spider legs, he can’t tell.

  Nagle’s smile is quick, rueful. He stares at the books, half-expecting little poisonous creatures to scurry out of them.

  “Tell you what,” she says. “Climb down and sit yourself in that chair, and see what you can make of those books. I’ll be back directly.” Then she leaves the room.

  Descending carefully with the books in his arms, Nagle sits in the recliner, places the stack on his lap, and unpicks the knotted twine. The rope is ancient, and comes apart in his hands, which makes him feel like a scavenger brushing the last bits of nest off eggs he has stolen. He has never heard of C. Rossetti, so he takes the Bible first and sets the others on the coffee table beside him.

  Right away, he notices the thinness, the lack of weight. The pages must be gossamer, he thinks, and gently pulls the covers apart. But the paper is sturdy, gilt-edged nineteenth century stock. There just isn’t enough of it. Most of the contents have been cut away. The first page opens not with, “In the beginning,” but with, “And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” The Book of Daniel, Nagle notes. The “two thousand and three hundred days” has been underscored in red ink three times, the third strike so emphatic that it stabbed through the paper. There is more underlining in verse 9:24, beneath the phrase “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people.” After the Book of Daniel comes Ezekiel, though Nagle spots no markings there. The rest is Revelation.

  Nagle closes the book. He has never been a religious man; he has always been wary of God and churches alike. Both have the power to get inside you and take over your life completely.

  The Rossetti book is also slim, slightly taller, and has been handled more gently or perhaps just less. Its cover is free of wear, of everything but dust. He opens to the title page:

  MARY FROM THE COUNSELOR. CHRISTMAS 1872

  So straight is the script of these words that Nagle squints closer to make sure they aren’t some sort of cryptic subtitle. The letters are handwritten, straight up and down and perfectly level. His hostess returns carrying a tray with a teapot and one teacup and sets the plain, chip-free white china beside the book on the coffee table. She turns, grabs a long, black poker and prods the fire awake, then settles herself in the chair across from him, the poker in her lap.

  “‘I nursed it in my bosom while it lived,’” she says, looking at Nagle. “‘I hid it in my heart when it was dead. In joy I sat alone; even so I grieved alone, and nothing said.’” She nods toward the book in his hands. Her smile is cold and impersonal; the smile she has always shown him. Nagle relaxes a bit.

  “Poetry is still hard for me,” he says.

  “Not hard, unfamiliar,” she says, her New England ‘a’ as tight and strangled as a constrictor-hitch. “All good poetry is: unfamiliar at first, but usually simple enough, once you sort out where you are, what sort of company you’re in. Take that one.” She points to the book in his hands.

  “Christina Rossetti.”

  She nods. “Sister of the much more celebrated Dante. He was one of those Pre-Raphaelites, lots of sylvan glades and shafts of sunlight, at least until his wife died. After that, he came a little unglued. Did you know he buried his wife with a sheaf of poems, then dug her up to get them back? He spent the rest of his days mourning and brooding and writing badly. But as for Christina…” His hostess traces the handle of the poker with her long fingers. “She was sane, even when she wrote about goblins. There’s no trick to reading her poems, they’re like watching her step naked right out of the book. Died horribly, though. Some kind of disease that twisted her up inside. They say she kept people awake for miles around, screaming in pain.” She hooks Nagle’s eyes with her own. “Still. It’s better to die horribly than live horribly, given a choice. Don’t you think?”

  Once again, he finds himself uncertain how to respond. Loon call saves him, slashing over the unseen lake just beyond the windowless walls. “Seems like a moot question,” he says when it’s quiet again. “No one I know gets to choose when they suffer.” He lifts his teacup and nearly drops it. Spiders unfold on the surface of the tea and then scuttle across it on their thin legs. Only they aren’t spiders, of course, and he blushes with the realization. Jasmine pods. Real jasmine. He and Elise had seen them once, when they took each other to the Russian Tea Room for their fifth anniversary. It was the sort of thing they’d always done, dared each other through doorways they never would have entered separately.

  “Of course, my great-great-great grandmother Mary loved Rosetti’s poems,” his hostess says.

  Nagle sips his tea, which is fragrant, strong. “How do you know?”

  His hostess taps the first set of books he withdrew from the hiding place, and pulls them off the table into her lap. “It’s quite a story. Would you like to hear it?”

  Nagle has the distinct impression that this is all for show, that she has told this story dozens of times, but he nods anyway.

  She slides a finger through the twine, which evaporates like smoke. Pulling the top volume onto her lap, she sets the poker aside and turns the pages. “There’s a reference to Mary,” his hostess begins, “in one of Thoreau’s letters to Emerson. She did not become his laundress by accident, you see. She was the best-read person in the area, and she dreamed of teaching at Dartmouth one day, but of course that was all but unthinkable
then. They heard tell of her, though—Hawthorne, Emerson, all of them—and she received a peculiar sort of advanced education through association. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful. Green eyes, white-blond hair, wild-looking for New England, and very small feet, which men always seem to find so reassuring.”

  Her glance isn’t accusatory; she’s just sizing him up. Nagle doesn’t know how he feels about women’s feet, but he has the disconcerting sense that his hostess believes she does.

  “What did Thoreau say about Mary?” he asks. “In the letter to Emerson?”

  “‘Good God, Friend, what nature of marsh-sibyl have you unleashed on me?’”

  Nagle laughs, though his hostess barely smiles.

  “Emerson introduced them, you see. I guess he didn’t mind straight feedback as much as your Thoreau.”

  “Or else small feet had a stronger effect on him.”

  At that, his hostess smiles, even inclines her chin. Then she drops her eyes to the book, and the smile disappears. Flatly, quietly, she begins to read.

  “April 11, 1842—Up they come from the Burned-Over District, more every year, until one wonders if they’re growing them down there. Amusing to think about, a little gaggle of Millerites in their dark clothes and dark hats bowing their heads and knees to receive their fire and brimstone in some little farm church, and then slipping out back in the upper New York slush to tend to the new ones, the next generation, all staked and trussed and sprouting limbs along the back fence behind the graveyard like tomato plants. Did you know Miller himself is a farmer, or was? Anyway, they’re here, and they’ve all but taken over the village, now. They’ve managed to enlist Tom Evans, the Whitesmiths, the whole Roberts clan, no big surprise there. Apparently, they know better than to come out here, or someone has told them. Maybe Little Ben Roberts is still reeling because I turned him down, and he’s spreading tales of the unbeliever-witch in the cottage in the woods. Or maybe he’s looking out for me. Either way, so much the better. Though I’ve seen one Millerite on the square over in Meredith, pointy black beard, wonderful black eyes, farmer’s shoulders and a dreamer’s face. Now there’s a holy man this particular forest witch wouldn’t mind luring to her lair. I’d be happy to give that one a taste of the End of the World….

  “All right, the spring night has officially turned me wicked, and so I close. New book package from Gotham soon, maybe even this week.”

  Nagle remembers that he is holding his teacup and sets it down with a clink, which nevertheless seems loud. His hostess doesn’t look up, just licks the end of a finger and turns the page. He shifts, winces as the chair squeaks, and decides he’s enjoying this, even through the persistent anxiety he keeps trying to suppress.

  “August 4, 1842,” his hostess begins again. “Saw Cady Stantor over at the college today, speaking outside in the pouring rain. She didn’t use an umbrella, but the rest of us did, and the drops sounded like drums beating right on top of our heads. She’s from the Burned-Over, too, and you can tell. She waves her voice around like a torch and lights everyone up, although she had trouble getting us good and fired today, too dreary. I wonder if she likes to read. I bet she talks to writers all the time. Doesn’t mean she enjoys books, though, and somehow it’s hard to picture her sitting still long enough.

  “The loons are leaving early this year. Too many Millerites, too much church bell ringing, I guess. So it’s just me and the oak trees and some recopying work for Collins over in New Sandwich. There are so many acorns right now, they fall like hail.”

  More page turning, and Nagle, feeling hypnotized, asks, “How old was Mary when she was writing this?”

  “Twenty-five, and she’d been on her own for the better part of nine years. Her parents were in the process of moving the family to one of those new Utopian experiments in Ohio, everyone living together in a big barn or some such, when they got sick and died on a farewell sight-seeing trip in the White Mountains. Not far from where your parents died, I believe.”

  Nagle grips the arms of the recliner. But he must have mentioned it to her at some point. Maybe that very first year. Even if he hadn’t, his hostess surely would have heard about it. She was living here, then.

  “February 27, 1843—A whole new batch of Millerites came pouring through the woods in covered wagons last night and descended on the town in the middle of a blizzard. I heard them in the notch not long after midnight, making such a clatter that I thought the moose, which have mostly disappeared from this forest, had come crashing back, and I rushed out to see them in my overcoat,

  “My black-eyed boy’s star must be rising, because he was the first one I saw, perched right on top of the front wagon next to the preachers in the big black hats. As they passed, he looked right through me as if I were a tree, winter-bare, not even there.

  “In town today, I rousted Little Ben Roberts from the grain store, and he didn’t want to be seen with me, but he told me why they’re all gathered here and buzzing about. Apparently, they have a date. Three weeks and two days from now, on April 3, 1843, the world will end by fire. Whether they’re planning on starting the fire themselves or just dying in it, no one wants to say. As for me, I think Waldo better get busy cleaning out all those self-congratulatory bons mots he’s been sprinkling into his letters, lest the cataclysm comes and the Four Horsemen show up and believe he actually wrote like that.”

  Desultory, his hostess turns another page while Nagle thinks of calling Elise. But he isn’t sure he wants to hear her voice. His own embarrassment, disappointment, and anger had been at least as acute as hers back in 1996, the year they received medical confirmation from two different doctors that the Nagle line would end, because he was incapable of producing the necessary sperm count.

  “April 3, 1843—Bright, slushy spring day. Black bears in the birches down by the river. More recopying to do. Four Horsemen, absent. Sheep, loons, Robertses, Evanses, Millerites all present and accounted for.

  “August 22, 1843—Mr. Miller, it seems, miscalculated. Counted Daniels as daffodils and daisies as days, and so came in a year or so wide. The actual date of our extinction is to be March 21st of next year. Much relief, bell ringing, and ceremonial robe buying amongst the Millerites.

  “February 1, 1844—Even earlier than last year, they are back, preparing.

  “February 22, 1844—He came. My black-eyed boy, in the flesh, at my door. Such a tormented face behind that pointed beard. Young Goodman B. himself, having walked straight off the page into my woods.

  “‘Come in,’ I told him, and I would have said it was impossible seconds before, but his face got even sadder out there in the snow. And then—he spoke! Good Lord, he sounded like an owl, his voice all round and dark, too full for his body.

  “‘You come out,’ he said. ‘Here, with us, where it’s safe.’’

  “I pointed out that, according to his people, the world was about to end, so how was that safe? If he saw a contradiction, he acknowledged none. But before he left, he turned around once more and looked at me, through me this time, and said, ‘YOU must come. YOU must see.’ And so I think maybe he has noticed me after all.

  “March 21, 1844—This time, the apocalypse started much more promisingly. I was awoken at dawn by lightning so vicious that it seemed to light the buds on the trees like candles, and the thunder that followed literally hurled me from my bed. I dressed, draped a coat over my head, and hurried through the woods, which rattled and rustled in the rain as though some great host had indeed arisen within it. I’ll admit, there was a single moment, as the loons lifted all together, wailing from the lake, when a tremor passed through me. But then, I got to thinking how all this wet would make a heaven-sent, world-ending fire that much more difficult to start, and I wanted to burst out singing. I ran through the downpour.

  “Town was eerily empty. I heard murmuring and chanting coming from the church, so over I went. But they weren’t inside. They were in the graveyard. In the graves. Lord knows what they did with the bodies, because they’d
dug up every inch of consecrated soil and then leapt into the earth to wait. Whole families. People I know. Little Ben Roberts and his sweet sister Sadie and his mother and father. It wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t really laughing, I just couldn’t think of what to say or do. Someone threw a dirt clod and smashed me in the ear, so I crouched in the mud.

  “In the grave closest to me, a man I’d never seen before sat with his children tucked against him, and to my astonishment, he had a dripping wet copy of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon open in his hands, and he was reading Rip Van Winkle aloud. He glanced up at me, not unkindly.

  “‘Not quite the Bible,’ I said.

  “‘It’s a long way to Heaven,’ he said. ‘I thought the little ones might get bored.’

  “For the first time, then, I really was afraid. I got up, slipping and stumbling away as fast as I could, and bumped headlong into my black-eyed boy. He grabbed me about the shoulders, and I believed momentarily that he meant to strangle me, but he steadied me instead and let go.

  “‘Will you join us?’ he asked, his owl-voice dazzling, mournful, overwhelming.

  “‘If you’re right,’ I said, ‘I’ll have no choice. For now, I still do.’ The sun had broken through the overcast even before I reached my cottage door.”