On Kingdom Mountain

by Howard Frank Mosher

  Forth from the projection booth issued the Duchess, to a storm of hooting jeers. She proceeded down from the balcony, along the faded crimson carpet on the stairs, past the frayed purple rope and NO ADMITTANCE sign, past the ticket counter and the soggy remnants of the Great Devonian Glacier. Without breaking stride, she switched on the house lights and started down the center aisle in her long black motoring coat, which resembled a cowboy’s duster.

  Someone sang out, “And then along came Jane.” Others joined in, “Long, tall Jane.”

  It was the hero’s refrain from The Perils of Pauline. Julia slyly accompanied the Dalton/James Boys on the piano. Popcorn and spitballs and hard candy poured down from above. The refrain rose to a thundering crescendo as Miss Jane walked up the steps to the stage, head held high, as stately as a condemned queen walking to her own execution.

  “Slow-walking Jane! Slow-talking Jane!” roared the hall.

  Henry, unable to bear another moment of this, rose to go conduct her off the stage and home. Then, in one motion, Jane Hubbell Kinneson of kingdom Mountain swept open her duster, produced Lady Justice, jacked a shell into the chamber, swung around, and, firing from the hip, put a fist-sized hole through the heart of Black Bart on the screen. The roar of the gunshot reverberated in the old town hall. Later it would be ascertained that the slug had passed through the back brick wall of the building and lodged in the trunk of an elm at the foot of Anderson Hill. Jane wheeled around to face the stunned audience as acrid smoke twisted out of the end of the rifle. She twirled Lady Justice half a revolution by its lever and tucked it barrel-up inside her duster. Then, in the total silence that had fallen over the hall, she walked back up the aisle, past the ticket counter, past the purple rope, up the stairs to the balcony, and calmly finished showing the movie.

  “What is it?” Henry said in an alarmed voice. “Are you all right?”

  It was several hours later, some time after midnight, and Jane had sat up in bed very suddenly, as if starting out of a nightmare.

  “I am not all right,” Jane said. “I am all wrong, Henry. I must go into On Kingdom Mountain and have a heart-to-heart talk with my dear people. I did a very foolish thing tonight.”

  She started to swing her legs over the side of the bed, but Henry reached out and put his hand on her shoulder. “What would you think,” he said, “about having your heart-to-heart with me? You could still talk to your puppets afterward.”

  “They are not puppets, they are family. Some things, you know, should stay in the family.”

  Henry let this go unanswered, and for a time Jane sat silently on the edge of her bed. Then she said, “Henry, you know and I know that I made a terrible hash of that affair tonight at the hall. I had no business discharging a weapon in a public place. Frightening the children and the grownups as well. If someone had been standing out behind the hall, I could have blown his head off.”

  “It was the only way to deal with that James outfit, Miss Jane. You did the right thing.”

  “Horsefeathers. Back when I was teaching I would have dealt with them before they got started. Oh, Henry, these days I scarcely know myself what the right thing to do is.”

  “Miss Jane, you are under a great strain with the high road and the trouble with your cousin and the town fathers. A very great strain. But you are holding your ground and you certainly do know what is right. Now come back to bed. Tell your pup—your people—tomorrow. They will no doubt approve of your actions at the town hall.”

  By degrees, Miss Jane allowed him to enfold her in his arms and draw her down beside him. After some time had passed, she said, “Henry?”

  “Yes, Miss Jane?”

  “Thank you.”

  33

  ROUND TWO TO JANE HUBBELL KINNESON read the front-page headline of the following week’s Kingdom County Monitor. In the accompanying story, Editor Kinneson facetiously suggested that the hole in the movie screen was the work of the village’s longtime apparition and mascot, Pilgrim’s ghost, who had manifested himself in the guise and service of the Duchess, Civil War rifle in hand, to put down the officially condoned insurrection at the Friday night picture show.

  “I am curious, Miss Jane,” Henry inquired on their way into town to open the Atheneum for its regular afternoon hours the day after Editor Kinneson’s spoof appeared in the Monitor, “to learn more about your uncle Pilgrim’s ghost. How has he come to be the village mascot? I’ve never heard of a mascot ghost before.”

  The Duchess explained that for many years, whenever anything unaccountable or untoward happened in the village, especially if the event had a slightly comic flavor, Commoners had attributed it to the ghost of her missing uncle. Sometimes there would be a spate of inexplicable happenings when Pilgrim’s spirit seemed especially active. Just the past fall, Judge Allen’s five-and-dime-store spectacles had vanished at one of Jane’s one-woman symposiums and turned up a week later on the oblong countenance of the Pretender of Avon. A book Jane had tried to get for years, The Penobscot Man, suddenly appeared on the shelves of the Atheneum, then disappeared the next day—no doubt Pilgrim’s doing.

  On Halloween Eve Miss Jane had brought her carved Pilgrim in his blue uniform, carrying his Aesculapian snake staff, from home and set him up by the punch bowl and the orange-and-black-frosted half-moon cookies she’d made for the children of the village. By candlelight she told them how her great-great-grandfather Seth, captured as a boy in Massachusetts by her Memphremagog ancestors, had seen his mother tomahawked before his eyes on the back side of the mountain below the devil’s visage because she could not keep up with her captors; how Robert Rogers and Seth’s father had, in retaliation, slaughtered a village of Memphremagogs, whose relatives, in turn, had chased and butchered some of Rogers’ men, including Seth’s father, on the shores of the big lake. The children loved these stories, the bloodier the better, and Miss Jane did not spare them the grisliest details. She ended the evening by telling how Pilgrim had vanished in Tennessee in the Civil War and how his seventeen-year-old brother, Morgan, had set off on foot to find him and had come home with Pilgrim’s staff but no Pilgrim, whose sweetheart had gone mad and drowned herself in the Great Northern Slang.

  Sometimes passing villagers, glancing in through the Atheneum’s mullioned windows late at night, claimed to see, by flickering candlelight, a studious-looking young man poring over Civil War books and letters or Morgan’s old law books. That, of course, was Pilgrim’s ghost. Miss Jane even hinted to Henry that from time to time, when she was occupied on her mountain, Pilgrim had opened the Atheneum and waited on a customer or two in her bookshop, tendering them their change in Confederate bills. Pilgrim’s ghost had even been blamed for the recent deterioration of the Atheneum, as nails continued to rust away, causing the handsome blue and gray roof slates to slide down and nearly brain the library’s patrons, as bricks fell out of the ancient chimney, and as floor joists sagged and split under the weight of the ever-increasing number of volumes Miss Jane added to the shelves. What was needed, she said, was a fundraiser, something like the Fourth of July gala but designed to refurbish the Atheneum before it collapsed of sheer neglect.

  As Jane and Henry turned left at the northeastern corner of the common and proceeded down the street toward the library, they saw ahead, on the green under the elms, what appeared to be a party of gaily clad picnickers gathered on the grass. It looked as if a group of traveling tinkers had camped on the village green. No—they were not tinkers. The picnickers, Miss Jane suddenly realized, were her own scribblers and scrawlers, who had been unceremoniously removed from the Atheneum and transferred to the common. At first Henry wondered if Pilgrim’s ghost might be up to his old pranks. Then he noticed that the front door of the library was padlocked, and nailed to it, like Luther’s theses, was an official-looking notice:

  THIS BUILDING CONDEMNED

  BY ORDER OF THE TOWN FATHERS

  OF KINGDOM COMMON UNTIL

  FURTHER NOTICE

  Henry had the presence
of mind to grab Lady Justice and empty the live shells out of its chamber and tuck them into the pocket of his white coat. Miss Jane was so beside herself that she hardly noticed. Henry had never seen her so angry.

  “I am sorry, so sorry, that it should come to this,” she told Dr. Johnson, the Pronouncer of Litchfield, as she and Henry and now Judge Allen, who had come hurrying across the street from the courthouse, lifted the Great Cham into the truck bed and roped him in beside Jane Austen. “You of all people, sir,” Jane said, “who as a starving young author with no place to spend the night walked the streets of London until dawn with Goldsmith and Kit Smart. Never fear. This won’t go unanswered. We’ll have our day in court. Even you, my poor misguided liege”—patting her great adversary, King James, on his gilded wooden crown—“even you will have your satisfaction.”

  “Jane, I’m so sorry about this,” the judge said.

  “Eben’s behind it,” she said. “He’ll pay and pay dearly.”

  “Maybe,” Judge Allen said. “But from what I’ve witnessed of the behavior of our good town fathers lately, I don’t think they need much abetting. Could an old friend offer a suggestion?”

  Jane nodded.

  “Move your books and your scribblers into my old law office above the hardware store. It’s yours, rent-free, for as long as you want it.”

  Moved by her friend’s kindness, Jane began to weep. “Maybe it’s time for me to give up the bookshop and the library, too.”

  “Nonsense. Think over my offer. It would be my great pleasure.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it, Ira. For now I’m going to move every one of my scribblers and scrawlers, and my books, too, out to the mountain, where I can keep track of them. Come along, Mr. Clemens,” she said, picking up Mark Twain and setting him in the bed of the truck. “Perhaps all this will give you an idea for another great book. Life, not on the Mississippi, but on Kingdom Mountain. As for Eben and the town fathers”—and here she seemed to be addressing her scribblers and scrawlers along with the judge and Henry—“I shall deal with them in a more fit season. Rely upon it.”

  Miss Jane was devastated. As she told her dear people in On Kingdom Mountain that evening while Henry tuned the engine of his biplane, since her retirement from teaching, much of her very identity derived from her occupation as a book-woman. With a book in her hands she felt connected to the story it told and its characters and the places where they lived, to the world beyond Kingdom Mountain, and to her scribblers and scrawlers. She loved the way a well-read old book smelled, loved the fading print on its spine and cover, the different fonts and styles of type. A life without books would be unimaginable.

  Yes, she could move her literary operations into Judge Allen’s former office, but what hurt her most was that the town fathers, and perhaps the village as a whole, simply didn’t care whether they had a library and bookshop or not, didn’t appreciate the work Miss Jane had done over the years at the Atheneum. She was surprised by her own vulnerability, her capacity to be wounded by what the village thought, she who had always held herself apart and perhaps regarded herself as indifferent to anyone’s opinion but her own.

  Later, when Henry tried to console her, she snapped at him, then turned coldly away from the bewildered man. Back off a mite, boy, the granddaddy suggested. A Yankee female is as unreasonable a species as God ever created. Give her a little room now. By and by we will strike behind her lines and take her and the gold both by storm.

  Then, as if to prove the adage that bad news comes in sets of three or even four, the very next morning, Miss Jane received two letters. The first was from the North American Bird Carving Contest award committee, informing her that she had won third place, behind Santiago and Jackson, for her “strange, prehistoric bird.” As far as Miss Jane was concerned, placing third was far more ignominious than not placing at all. She was particularly enraged to learn that her beautiful archaeopteryx, Noah, would soon be displayed with the birds of her rivals at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, for all to see that she had once again been bested.

  The second letter was from Judge Allen’s lawyer son, Forrest, confirming that the Vermont Supreme Court would hear the case of Jane Hubbell Kinneson v. Township of Kingdom Common the following Tuesday.

  Then on Sunday, Eben Kinneson Esquire came out to the home place for his annual chicken-and-biscuits birthday dinner. Over the coffee and apple pie, Eben produced a certified bank check, made out to Miss Jane from the town of Kingdom Common, for two thousand dollars, along with a waiver for her to sign granting the town permission to extend the Connector from the hemlock-plank covered bridge to the home place and the official Canadian line. Miss Jane glanced at the bank check and the waiver, then excused herself and went into her bedchamber. She returned with a sewing needle. She picked up the large, rectangular pink check and poked one corner of it at the eye of the needle. Then she handed the check back to Eben. “I’m sorry, cousin,” she said. “A camel won’t fit through and neither will a certified check for two thousand dollars.”

  “The Supreme Court will never rule in your favor, cousin. Your case is a lost cause.”

  “I love a lost cause. I always have.”

  “It is hardly something to boast of. This appearance before the Supreme Court in Montpelier will not be like your Pyrrhic victory in the backwoods chancellery of your crony Ira Allen. Rest assured that the justices, before whom I have successfully argued eight cases without a loss, will never in this world allow you to represent yourself. The Supreme Court in Montpelier will most certainly not permit you to transform its proceedings into a charade.”

  “The Supreme Court in Montpelier will be delighted to hear what I have to say, cousin. It will be a wholly refreshing change from listening to you pettifogging shysters.”

  “My arguments will smite down yours as the avenging she-bears smote the two and forty children who mocked Elisha for his baldness. Second Kings 2:24.”

  “The she-bears do no such thing in the Kingdom Mountain Bible, cousin. In the Kingdom Mountain Bible, the good bruins turn on King James’s Jehovah and put both him and Elisha to rout. In the same way, I’ll rout you and demolish your arguments in court.”

  “I implore you not to subject the Kinneson family name to further mortification.”

  “The Kinneson family name will survive very nicely. Look at it this way, cousin. Whatever the outcome, a Kinneson is bound to walk away victorious.”

  “Aye. For the ninth consecutive time.” Eben neatly folded his cloth napkin, folded it again, gave his lips a fastidious pat, and placed the napkin beside his pie plate. “A superior birthday dinner, cousin. I thank you. Your biscuits are unsurpassed. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Satterfield?”

  “I would,” Henry said.

  “Thank you for coming, cousin,” Jane said. “It is always a pleasure to entertain family.”

  “Thank you for inviting me, cousin.”

  On the way across the dooryard to Eben’s car, Henry said, “Meaning no disrespect, Mr. Kinneson, but how can you torment your own blood relation this way? She cooks you a tasty birthday dinner and then you abuse her hospitality by arguing with her. Why don’t you leave her be?”

  Eben gave Henry a wondering frown. “Why, sir,” he said, “don’t you know that Jane had the best time today that she’s had since the last time I was here? I’ve been venturing out to this fastness, checking up on your friend, and arguing her out of her most capricious follies for decades. Who do you think has saved Miss Jane Hubbell Kinneson from herself all these years?”

  Henry looked at the attorney. “So I am to understand that you are Miss Jane’s benefactor?”

  “Jane is a remarkable individualist,” Eben said. “Perhaps the last great individualist in Kingdom County. For that I admire her. But she cannot prevent this road from going through. Frankly, I doubt that her archenemy, King James’s Jehovah himself, could stop the Connector at this point. Progress has at last reached the Kingdom. It will not be stopped. It, I mean progress, is t
he one true perpetual-motion machine. In the meantime, who do you suppose persuaded the town fathers to offer Jane twice as much for the right of way as they originally intended to? For that matter, who do you think put Jane in the way of her little jobs as village librarian and projectionist? I respect you, sir, for standing by your friend. But when young lawyer Allen appears in front of the Supreme Court on her behalf, I shan’t spare him or her. Nor will the justices. This is no parlor game, Henry. Use what influence you have with the woman to dissuade her from her course of action. It can only end badly for her.”

  Amen, said the granddaddy in Henry’s head as Eben drove off down the lane. I am right glad to see, boy, that not all Yankees are complete fools. There is a man worth heeding.

  “I’ve asked you before to stay out of this,” Henry said.

  I cannot, said the captain. I have been in it for well over half a century. You have been in it since I told you the first part of the jingle when you was a tadpole in short pants.

  “Why did you give the second part of the riddle to Jane’s father?”

  To pit you and him against each other for my amusement, why else? But you, boy, are blood. Blood’s thick, thick. You and I are in this together. We are as alike as two peas in every way.

  “We are not, sir.”

  Who taught you to cast genealogies? Who tolt you to go into the banking profession?

  Henry decided to ignore Captain Cantrell Satterfield. He was under no obligation—he was not beholden to the old man, as the granddaddy would have put it—to reply.

  How is it you wear white? the captain said with a mean chuckle.