Steeplechase

by Jane Langton

  “It seems to me,” said Mary kindly, “that Acton Congregational is distributing its prosperity pretty well.”

  “Thank you,” said their guide. “We try to.”

  “I like these churches,” said Homer as they drove away. “Sometimes their pious effusions seem a little silly, but where else, I ask you, can you find virtue all balled up in one handful?”

  “Nowhere,” said Mary stoutly. “Too bad Mr. Jones didn’t know anything about trees, lost churches, or Oliver Wendell Holmes. Honestly, Homer, all that stuff seems more and more absurd.”

  “If only,” said Homer, “we could talk to that old hermit lady in Nashoba, the one with the roots and berries. She’s our only hope in that department—I mean the Big Tree/Lost-Church/Poetical Department. Tell you what. I’ll call Joe Bold again. Maybe he’ll have some idea how we can sneak up on the old lady Fay Flint.”

  But Joe seemed confused by Homer’s phone call. “Fay?” he said. “Who’s Fay?”

  “You know, the old woman in the woods. You told me about her. You said she’d know everything.”

  “Oh, Miss Flint. Her name’s not Fay; it’s Julie. Where’d you get the idea her name was Fay?”

  “From you.” Homer was self-righteous. “You said she was Fay.”

  “Right, that’s just what she is. I told you that. I remember now.”

  There was a bewildered silence until it dawned on Homer that this was a semantic problem, like the joke about the baseball players whose names were Who and What. “You meant the adjective, not the name, is that it?”

  “Exactly.”

  Remorsefully, Homer remembered pressing his nose against Miss Flint’s window and shouting “Fay?” at her like an interfering fool.

  “It’s not her name,” he told Mary sorrowfully. “It’s her character. Miss Flint is fey.”

  The Madman’s Ax

  The door to the Nashoba pizza parlor was open, but there was no one behind the counter. As they settled themselves on the twirly stools, Mary and Homer could hear raised women’s voices in another room. The argument seesawed back and forth.

  “It’s trash. Dump it. It’s all just trash.”

  “No, it’s not. Give that back.”

  “Well, take it. I don’t give a damn.” There was a crash, followed by two simultaneous Whoopsies. After a pause, one voice demanded, “What’s the point? Who cares about all this stuff?” And the other cried, “I do.” Then the door to the other room burst open and the bitchy girl appeared. She slammed the door behind her and stamped along the counter, glowering.

  Humbly, they gave their orders, and then Mary had a bright thought. Smiling graciously at the bitchy girl, she said, “I wonder if you know your neighbor, Miss Flint? She lives in the woods behind your shop, Miss Julie Flint?”

  For an instant, the girl’s eyes met Mary’s, then flicked away. “Oh, her.”

  “You do know her?” said Homer.

  “Well, there’s this shortcut.” The bitchy girl jerked her head backward.

  “Oh, you’ve been there? You’ve seen her?”

  “Not me. My sister.”

  “Your sister? Your sister’s seen her?”

  “Stupid jerk, she takes orders—groceries and stuff.” The microwave beeped. The bitchy girl snatched out the pizzas, dropped them on paper plates, slapped them on the counter, and disappeared.

  “A shortcut!” Mary beamed at Homer. “Why don’t we try the shortcut?”

  But Homer wasn’t listening. In the absence of the bitchy girl, he felt free to lean far over the counter to look at the wall. The NO REST ROOMS sign was bigger than ever, but someone had tacked up a few more old photographs. One was a faded aerial view.

  “Look at that,” said Homer. “It must have been taken from a cliff over a valley. No, not a valley, a graveyard.”

  Mary put on her glasses and leaned forward, too. “What’s that big white spot in the middle?”

  By this time, the upper half of Homer’s torso lay on the counter and his bushy head was only inches away from the picture. Triumphantly, he cried, “A tree stump. By God, I think it’s a tree stump.” Grinning, he pulled back and plumped himself down on the stool. “Just cut down, you see? The rest is lying on the ground.”

  Mary whispered, “Do you think it could be—”

  “Look, never mind the roots and berries lady.” Homer pushed his pizza aside. “Take a look at this. I brought along an old friend.” He pulled a thin book out of his pocket. The title, Fireside Verses, was stamped in gilt letters on the limp leather cover.

  Mary leaned closer. “Oh, good, Homer, Oliver Wendell Holmes. What a nice old book.”

  Slowly, Homer turned the pages, shaking his head at “The One-Hoss-Shay,” “The Chambered Nautilus,” and “The Last Leaf.” Then he stopped. “Here we are. Look at this.”

  The poem was called “The Madman’s Ax,” and in that moment, as though struck by lightning, two of their queries melted into one.

  The verses began with a line from Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith,” but it turned into something else at once:

  Under the spreading chestnut-tree

  A vicious killer stands;

  He looks up at the branches free,

  A great ax in his hands.

  The tree flings wide its glorious crown,

  Its leaves the winds caress.

  Two hundred years the burial ground

  By this tree has been blessed.

  But now the madman lifts his ax

  To play the devil’s part.

  The keen blade strikes and strikes again

  To burst that mighty heart.

  Great nature weeps, Nashoba’s jewel

  Lies shattered on the ground,

  Broken, the hearts of young and old

  In all the country round.

  Let good men curse the vandal vile

  Who killed our ancient tree.

  May this foul deed afflict his soul

  Till he shall cease to be.

  Homer slapped the page in triumph, and together they looked up at the photograph on the wall, the aerial view of the giant stump in the graveyard. There it was, the tree itself, Dr. Holmes’s glorious tree, caught on a glass plate after the madman’s ax had cut it down.

  Only one question was left without an answer. What did the lost church have to do with the tree and the poet and all the other pictures on the wall of the Nashoba Pizza Parlor—the photographs of the hot-air balloon and the nineteenth-century faces and the twins in their bowler hats?

  Where was it, the lost church? Where on the face of the earth?

  1868

  “Three Billy Goats Gruff” and A Tale of Two Cities

  “Then tell wind and fire where to stop … but don’t tell me.”

  —Madame Defarge, in

  Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities

  The Limb of Satan

  The future of the new church looked bright. After the first service in the meetinghouse that they had built with their own hands, the congregation milled around the door in an orgy of mutual congratulation. The men of Nashoba’s Second Parish shook Josiah’s hand and promised to give of their treasure. The women vowed to arrange a Sabbath school.

  Isabelle was proud of her father, and even Julia Gideon smiled. Five-year-old Horace was overjoyed. He leaned against his grandmother as she sat at the organ, her knees swelling the volume to its loudest for the final chords of “Sweet Saviour, Bless Us Ere We Go.” When her feet stopped bouncing on the treadles, the bellows inside the organ whined down the scale and Josiah strode up the aisle to thank her.

  Laughing, Eudocia stood up and bobbed a curtsey, and Horace, perceiving that the preacher had come straight out of a storybook called the Bible, trailed after Josiah as he walked back down the aisle. At the other end of the church, Horace saw Uncle Eben climb a ladder with a rope in his hand and disappear through a hole in the ceiling. Cleverly, Horace guessed that Mr. Kibbee had pulled the rope so hard that it had fallen right off t
he bell. And Horace was right, because in a moment the bell tonked and Uncle Eben climbed down again. When his uncle grasped the rope and pulled, Horace put his hands on it, too, and sailed joyfully up and down as the bell began to ring in earnest.

  But it was time to go. Alexander spoke kindly to Isabelle, saying, “I’ll be back later this afternoon to see James.” Then Ida, Alexander, Eben, Eudocia, and Horace set off for home in the spring wagon. They were none too soon. Ida ran upstairs at once because Gussie was screaming at the top of her lungs. Ida’s sister handed over the baby gratefully. “I’m never going to get married,” said Sallie, “nor have a baby, neither.”

  In the kitchen, Eudocia went to work on Sunday dinner. “Horace dear,” she said, handing him a bundle of spoons, knives, and forks, “you can set the table.”

  Horace grabbed the bundle, hurried into the dining room, and began slapping them down on the tablecloth—here a fork, there a knife, there a spoon. When the cat bounded up on the table, Horace knew at once what to do. He said, “No, no, kitty,” and picked it up around the middle. At once, the cat screeched and clawed his face. Bawling, Horace tried to drop it, but its claws were hooked into his coat and he couldn’t wrestle free. Spoons, knives, and forks clattered on the floor.

  Eudocia came running, plucked away the cat, and consoled the weeping boy, murmuring, “It’s all right, Horace dear.” Horace whimpered, but soon he was thumping around on his knees, collecting scattered knives and forks.

  Eudocia was devoted to her grandson. Summing him up, she had a private list of Horace’s virtues and faults:

  1. Horace has a loving nature.

  2. He has a cheerful disposition.

  3. But he’s a limb of Satan.

  Well, “limb of Satan” was what everybody said about their little boys. “Oh, that child is a limb of Satan.”

  And yet it wasn’t really naughtiness when Horace climbed up on the mantelpiece and all the pretty vases smashed on the floor; or when he crawled into the clock case and bent the pendulum; or when he rocked so wildly in the rocking chair that it tipped over backward and went to pieces.

  Whenever Ida despaired of her only son, Eudocia said, “It’s just high spirits.” And therefore when Horace climbed into her lap after dinner with his favorite storybook, she gathered him close and said, “I know the one you want, Horace dear.”

  “The billy goats,” said Horace, beaming.

  For the twentieth time, she read him the story of “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” those good little goats who were afraid to cross the bridge because a wicked troll lived underneath. As always, Horace trembled and hid his face against his grandmother’s bosom when she turned to the picture of the wicked troll, a fiend with burning eyes and sharp, tearing claws.

  Then Eudocia opened a different book to another favorite, “The Three Little Pigs.” This one was enlivened by a picture of the wolf. Like the troll, it had sharp claws and a terrible jaw. Horace looked at the picture and hid his face, then looked again. When Ida came downstairs with Gussie in her arms, he bounced off his grandmother’s lap and ran to his mother, wanting to be picked up.

  “No, no, dear,” said Eudocia, but he clung to Ida’s skirts and whimpered.

  With the baby squirming on her shoulder and Horace clutching at her apron, Ida was distracted. When Alexander came running downstairs with his doctor’s bag, she pleaded, “Oh, please, my dear, won’t you take him along?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, please, sir, please, please,” cried Horace. He abandoned his mother’s apron and tugged at his stepfather’s coat.

  Alexander looked down at him doubtfully. “Will you promise me, Horace, that you’ll be a good boy?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, yes, yes, I will,” promised Horace, plunging away and reaching up to pull his coat off the hook.

  Eudocia buttoned the coat close under his chin and felt in the pockets for his mittens. They were not there. “Horace, what have you done with your mittens?”

  Horace laughed and shouted, “The three little kittens, they lost their mittens.”

  Eudocia smiled and shook her head. “Horace dear, this isn’t Mother Goose. It’s turned right cold out there.”

  “Come on, Horace,” said Alexander. “Just keep your hands in your pockets. Where’s Eben?”

  Not until Mab was harnessed and hitched up to the wagon again did Eudocia come running out with her hands tucked into her shawl. “Alexander, you’re not going to Nashoba to see James?”

  “Why, yes, I am,” said Alexander. “That’s just where we’re going.”

  Horace scrambled up to sit beside Eben, and Eudocia laid her hand on Alexander’s arm. “You won’t let him inside, will you, Alexander? Horace must not be allowed to go inside.”

  The Troll

  The wagon rolled smoothly along the road to Nashoba. It did not rattle and bounce. High up on the seat between his stepfather and his uncle, Horace had to do his own bouncing. The seat jiggled, but no one told Horace to stop. Alexander and Eben were lost in their own thoughts, steeling themselves for the visit to James.

  Mab could feel Horace’s jouncing through the trembling shafts. She cocked her ears, but her pace did not slacken. She trotted along easily toward the bridge over Nashoba Brook.

  The bridge. Horace had forgotten about the bridge. At once, he stopped bouncing, wrapped his short arms around his stepfather, and buried his face in Alexander’s whiskers. Was there a troll under the bridge? A monster with sharp, tearing claws?

  The southeast corner of the town of Nashoba displayed the predicament of the two churches in a simple right-angled triangle. One side of the triangle connected Josiah Gideon’s house with the unhappy church from which he had robbed the congregation. The line stretched uphill across the burial ground, where the stump of the chestnut tree stood like a memorial to the spitefulness of Horatio Biddle and the headstone of Deacon Sweetser rose like a monument to the fury of Josiah Gideon. The second side of the triangle joined Josiah’s house to the robber church itself, and the third ran straight through the woods from one church to the other.

  The charged geometry of the landscape was clear to Eben and Alexander as Mab pulled up at Josiah’s gate. Alexander leaped down and hitched her to the gatepost. Eben jumped down, too, and reached up for Horace.

  The late afternoon sky was sunny, but the air was chill. In the doorway, Josiah’s daughter, Isabelle, stood waiting to welcome Alexander and Eben, but when she saw Horace, she stepped outside and closed the door behind her.

  Alexander looked at Horace gravely. “You are to stay here, boy,” he told him sternly. “I won’t be long.”

  “Oh, Horace dear,” said Isabelle, coming forward and smiling down at him, “the sow farrowed yesterday. Would you like to see her little pigs?” She pointed. “They’re right there in the shed.”

  Horace stared at the distant shed. It was made of wood, just like the house of the second little pig in the story. Horace was a clever little boy, but he was still not clear where stories ended and true things began. What if the wolf was hiding under the barn? He shook his head at Isabelle and clutched Alexander’s hand.

  “He mustn’t come in,” whispered Isabelle, glancing at Eben.

  Eben nodded gravely. Alexander tweaked Horace’s nose, ruffled his hair, patted his shoulder, and walked inside with Isabelle. Eben smiled at Horace, and then he said it, too: “We won’t be long.”

  The door of the house closed behind them with a light slam. Horace looked around for something to do. He studied the gate. There was no gate in front of his grandmother’s house because there was no fence. Tentatively, he wrapped his cold hands around the top rail of the gate, set one foot on the bottom rail, and pushed off with the other. The gate swung, creaking, back and forth, banging as it struck the fence post, creaking open again as he rode it out.

  The house was silent. From behind it came a soft murmur that sounded like chickens. Horace liked chickens, but these were too close to the wolf, so he didn’t seek them out. A big two-horse wagon rolled by
, a school barge full of children. They stared at Horace. He stared back. The barge ran smoothly past the house, the children turning their heads to keep him in sight until it disappeared around the bend on the way to an outing in Concord.

  Horace stepped down from the gate and sucked his cold fingers. His stepfather and Uncle Eben had been gone a long time.

  While Isabelle and her mother made tea in the kitchen, Alexander watched Eben strap his new contraption on the stump of James’s right arm.

  “Try it, James,” said Eben. “It’s supposed to open and shut.” But when James lifted his arm, the gadget slid sideways and drooped. “Needs to be tighter,” said Eben, adjusting it. “There, try it now.”

  James tried it. Eben and Alexander watched him reach out to the table beside his chair and fumble at a book. When he succeeded in picking it up, Alexander murmured softly, “Good.” But when James tried to turn a page with the other hook, the book slipped and fell.

  “Can you pick it up?” asked Eben quietly.

  James could. He picked up A Tale of Two Cities and dropped it on the table. Then, chuckling, he reared up from his chair and stretched out his arms as though reaching out for something else to grasp and hold.

  Alexander and Eben laughed in congratulation, but when they heard the front door open, they stopped laughing and turned their heads. Isabelle ran out of the kitchen and cried out.

  Horace stood in the doorway, staring in at James.

  Horace Runs

  Horace turned and darted out of the house.

  Alexander jumped up, snatched his coat, and ran after him, calling, “Horace, wait.” Eben jumped up, too, and ran after Alexander. Isabelle wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and ran after Eben. Julia stepped out the side door to look in the henhouse and the frost-ravaged garden. At the front gate, Mab whinnied, as if she, too, were calling for Horace.