by John Pipkin
They were still sitting by the fire, Odd's wet jacket dripping from the screen in front of the hearth, a blanket hanging from Emma's shoulders, when Mr. Woburn unexpectedly returned. He stood silently before them, lit by the fire and framed by the blackness of the open door. A flash of lightning made him double in size for a second. He held his fists at his side, and swayed slightly, as if he were trying to contain the building rage that flickered across his face in the firelight. He mumbled, stopped, then sputtered.
“Bloody hell.”
Odd did not move, Emma pulled the blanket tightly over her bare arms, and Mr. Woburn stared past the two of them at the fire. He leaned forward and stepped toward Odd, then seemed uncertain, as if he thought the floor might be dropping away in front of him. He stepped back and almost fell over.
Emma stood slowly. “Mr. Woburn, come to the fire. You look ill.”
It occurred to Odd that he had never actually heard Emma call her husband by any other name, and now he wondered if such informality existed between them. Mr. Woburn removed his dripping hat and dropped it where he stood while he groped the air for support. Emma stepped forward and grabbed his arm. At the same time Mr. Woburn reached out, looked Odd straight in the face, and cupped his wife's breast roughly, as if he were appraising its heft. Emma slapped his hand away.
“Not here.”
Her voice took on an edge that had not been there a moment earlier. She turned Mr. Woburn around and led him away from the fire while Odd clumsily pulled on his wet boots and grabbed his jacket. His hands moved like bricks as he thought about what Mr. Woburn had just done, and he fumbled hopelessly with the tangled sleeves of his jacket. Emma smiled at him over her husband's shoulder and nodded toward the door, but before Odd could hurry off Mr. Woburn spun about on his heels and bellowed.
“Hussss!”
“Sir?”
Mr. Woburn broke free from Emma and charged toward him. Odd backed toward the open door, nearly tripping as he stepped out onto the porch. Mr. Woburn kept coming, and he caught the edge of the door to keep himself from falling. Odd could smell the liquor on his breath.
“Mnninthellbrrr! Dvillivll!”
Odd said nothing. He looked past Mr. Woburn's swaying form and caught Emma's eye before she cast her gaze to the floor in shame.
“Many thanks, Hussss! Looking after missussss. Devil's night out.”
Mr. Woburn leaned heavily against the door, slamming it shut, and Odd heard the bolt slide into place on the other side.
Odd remembers the restrained elation he felt once he stepped out into the rain, a feeling like a trapped bubble that seemed to lift his feet from the earth. She had slapped his hand and called him Mr. Woburn with a voice that sounded as distant as last year. Odd had never known hope like this. Mr. Woburn was a drunkard. All he needed from her now was a sign that she was waiting to be rescued. They still had no children. He had no idea how he would go about it, but he felt as though a door had been thrown open to him, a possibility existed where he had felt no reason to expect one.
Then he heard a crash and a muffled scream from the back of the house, and Odd's fleeting hope collapsed. It had not occurred to him that he ought to be worried for Emma. Her husband had returned home, drunk, to find her sitting by the fire with another man. What would any husband likely think? The rain splattered his face and ran down his neck. He heard another cry and made his way around to the back of the house, sick with himself for allowing his desire to push aside the concern he should have kept foremost in his thoughts. He should never have allowed his selfish wants to jeopardize Emma's safety. What husband would not react violently to any man who so poorly concealed his feelings for his wife?
Odd sank to his ankles in the mud as he crept alongside the house, and he crouched low when he reached the window, where the cries were audible through the bubbled panes of glass. He hesitated, and hated himself as he did so. Emma cried out again. He knew what he was likely to see—Mr. Woburn, the drunken brute, striking his wife for her disobedience. But what should he do? Break down the door? Crash through the window and run to her aid? Would that not make matters worse? What if, in the gallant act of rescuing Emma, some evil that lingered in the blood of the Hus family drove him too far? What if his rescue turned to murder? Emma's cries soared louder, and Odd grabbed the splintery wood of the window frame and peered into the room.
At first, he could not see Mr. Woburn at all. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp on a bedside table. The rain ran into Odd's eyes, and he held his hands at his brow and saw that Emma lay on the bed alone beneath a dark shadow. In the narrow slice of watery lamplight he saw that her head was turned away from the window, facing the sputtering shadows on the wall. Then he realized what was happening. The shadow was Mr. Woburn, still in his wet coat and boots, hunched over Emma with his breeches at his knees, his hips thrusting awkwardly. Emma squirmed; she swung at his jacket and grabbed at the bedclothes.
Then Emma turned her head toward the window. Odd clutched the windowsill and tried to pull himself closer. He heard her cry out again. He pressed his forehead against the glass and saw her face half hidden by shadows, saw her neck curved back, and saw her lips, dark red and rounded, in what he could only guess was the inscrutable shape of pleasure.
23
Henry David
The wind surges and stutters, and in the gaps he hears the faint progression of tinny hiccups that an unfamiliar ear might mistake for the remote clatter of pots and pans. The bells tell Henry that news of the blaze has finally reached Concord, and he imagines Edward reporting their carelessness to the gathering crowd, though it is possible, he thinks, that word may have come to them by some other means.
Henry sights his hand against the leaping flames on the horizon and tries to measure the expanse of the burning between thumb and forefinger. More than two hours have passed since he and Edward attempted to cook their chowder. He knows men are readying to battle the flames, but it will take time for them to assemble, time to gather weapons and plan the assault and march from town. And the fire knows this, too. For now it rejoices unthreatened. It flows like water, eddying, swelling, carrying along forest detritus in its path, burning waves of flotsam. Fierce plumes surge in extravagant display. Great arms of flame reach out and sweep over treetops. Henry watches as the fine needles of a towering pine, hundreds of thousands of green spikes, ignite all at once and leap from their branches, tracing thousands of fiery tangents, swirling erratically like the swarms of locusts he saw in New York City the previous summer. Those buzzing mammoths helped persuade him not to remain in New York—if locusts were content to frequent the city once every seventeen years, he reasoned, the same would do for him.
Henry closes his eyes, senses hot red fingers pressing against his eyelids, starbursts of orange, gold, the unexpected colors of ripe fruits and vegetables: pumpkins, squashes, melons, carrots, tomatoes. The wind comes in hot blasts, propelled by the pressure of the flames. Henry smells the calamint that covers the hill in scraggly patches, its crisp scent released by the heat. From deep within the woods, a loud rumble sends tremors through the ground, then there is a flash, another roar, another thunderclap— the fire makes its own weather; it is both part of and opposed to the natural world.
The fire hesitates when it nears the bottom of Fair Haven Hill, like a weary traveler contemplating a steep grade. It pauses, deliberates, decides. It splits and moves around the base of the hill, consuming grasses, bushes, small wind-bowed trees. Henry knows what it is doing. A dense massing of trees stretches from here to Concord, but the fire must be clever. It must move slowly, consume gradually, portion out its fuel if it wants to unleash its destruction on the dwellings of men. The possibility makes Henry shudder. He places a hand on a stone next to him and finds that it is growing warm on one side.
His legs feel rested, but they are still unfit to challenge the flames; he might easily be overtaken, or crushed by a falling tree, or suffocated by the blanket-thick smoke. Or he might break a leg in t
he soft terrain of ash and cinders. Even if it were possible to run away, he dares not leave his post for fear that the fire's boldness will only increase once it realizes it is no longer being watched.
One by one, the trees submit to the burning as if this process were merely the rampage of another season. Henry has trod through the muffled gray of winter, witnessed the jubilant eruptions of spring and the riot of summer, felt the brilliance of autumn quicken his blood, each season bringing outrageous transformation in answer to the season come before. But what answer would follow this transformation? Every season in nature destroys to transform, Henry thinks, but the season of man brings destruction alone.
Henry has always felt welcome among the trees, not as a visitor who comes for sport but, rather, as one returning home after long absence. But he wonders if some portion of the woods will understand that it was his careless hand that struck the match. Is recollection a faculty of man alone, or do all things in the world bear the imprint of what has come before? The mark of his deed, he thinks, might forever reside in the deep-ringed memories of the woods, entombed in the striated record underfoot. And after the fire—his fire—has finished its rampage, will the blackened survivors of this once green expanse ever again welcome his homecoming? Henry spots charred clumps of grapevine hanging dead like tangled fishnets from scorched maples and alders. He sees ospreys and teals, winged titmice and shelldrakes careening through the smoke in mad flight, their iridescent feathers dulled with ash. They who sit in parlors, dreaming of acreage and wilderness unmapped, cannot imagine the terrible loss.
Is there a way, he wonders, that he can make reparation or atonement, a way that he might prove himself solicitous on nature's behalf? Perhaps he might raise a tent amid the ruins and sit in wake beneath the shriveled branches. He could return, he thinks, and make the poverty of this ravaged place his own, join the dumbfounded animals in their homelessness. Or, better still, he will build a small cabin with his own hands, a simple structure assembled from dead limbs, to stand like a forgotten guardhouse in a plundered city. The cabin will have no adornments, not so much as a doormat, so that he need not waste in housekeeping time better spent documenting nature's slow recovery. His door will be open to the mice and squirrels and woodchucks whose dwellings have vanished; his roof will offer its perch to birds searching for stolen boughs. He will make these creatures his neighbors by encaging himself in their midst.
As penance, he will sleep on a bed of ashes, cover himself with boards instead of blankets, and wake to soot-filled mornings, a parent nursing a sick child through long nights of slow healing. He will watch the grasses return, blade by blade, and he will rejoice when the first sapling forces its way through the charred forest floor to seek alms from the sun. And he will remain the patient guardian of this vulnerable world, a steward content to spend his days in penitent isolation.
Henry reclines on the crest of Fair Haven Hill and imagines this new life. After months of loud confusion, thought contesting thought, he feels some small relief in knowing what he must do. In the midst of chaos, he is suddenly calm. The patch of sky directly overhead is a pale, translucent blue, the color of glass buttons he once saw used for a doll's dress. When he closes his eyes, the fire returns. He sees its dark ghost, and he envisions its aftermath. Fire purges all, leaving only the things in themselves, stripped of former attributes. With eyes shut, he senses a presence, a spirit from the woods, bringing forgiveness and seeking his protection. It touches him, then seizes his forearm; the grip is strong, and it yanks him forward from his back onto his knees.
“You are saved, sir!” proclaims a voice that is, unfortunately, very real.
Henry opens his eyes, sees the pale blue sky roll past, and then the face of a man, bespectacled with tiny rectangles of glass that flash orange in the reflected light. Henry winces from the slingshot of pain in his neck. He sinks back from his knees and sits on the ground.
“Your terror is at an end,” the man says. “I have come to your rescue.”
Henry's surprise fades into annoyance. He raises a hand to block the glare of the fire and to better view this assailant who has interrupted his epiphany. The man stands with one hand at his hip, the other atop a shovel upright against his leg like a staff. The man thrusts his chin forward, as if he were trying to appear as large as his thoughts. It is all too common a sight in the city, Henry thinks, except for the shovel. He assumes that the man has lately arrived from Boston, though why he is now standing above him is less clear.
“Do I strike you as one in need of a savior?” Henry asks.
The man seems confused. He points in the direction from which he has come and says, “You are exposed to the flames, and very nearly surrounded.”
“And now, sir, so are you.”
Henry watches the man rub the soft line of his jaw, watches the toll of understanding exacted.
“Oh …”
The man drops to his haunches but does not sit. He squats with his weight on his toes; the tips of his boots crush the strong-perfumed calamint and press it into the earth.
“How long have you been on this hill?” the man asks.
“I cannot say,” Henry replies, rubbing the back of his neck. “I exhausted myself trying to contain the blaze.”
“Alone?”
“The fire was in its infancy.” Henry shows him the blackened soles of his boots.
“The town is coming,” the man says. “A hundred men or more. And they are equipped.”
Henry tries to hide his disdain for this man who has intruded upon his solitude. He hopes he will return to the others and leave him to finish his thoughts.
“I suppose there is nothing for us to do but await their arrival,” the man says. “You needn't worry. I should think them no more than a quarter hour distant.”
Henry watches the man survey the burning expanse with a hand at his brow, like a general reviewing his troops. The man smiles and nods, as if to express his satisfaction at having brought himself so close to the line of battle.
“I confess I had not expected the fire to be quite so impressive as this,” the man says. He pats his coat, pulls out a small book and a pencil, and begins writing.
“You might obtain a better perspective over yonder,” Henry suggests, pointing to an outcropping of rock fifty yards away.
The man does not hear him, or perhaps ignores him altogether. He continues writing, then says, waving his pencil, “I must beg your indulgence. I am a writer and, as such, a willing slave to the Muse. When inspiration arrives, I must obey.”
“I fear I have burned my muse,” Henry says under his breath. But again the other man does not look up from his earnest scribbling. Henry rotates his head slowly, rolls it against his chest, feels the tendons click and pop at intervals of discomfort. He sends an exploring finger to the back of his neck and identifies the troublesome spot, a point of focused pain like a railway switch.
Henry has given up hope that the intruder will leave him. He watches him gnaw the pencil's blunt end and offers advice. “You wouldn't do that if you saw what we put into their manufacture.”
The man looks at the name stamped on the pencil and regards Henry with sudden appreciation. “You are John Thoreau and Company?”
“His son. Henry David.”
“What strange fortune! Your father makes excellent pencils indeed. My best customers write with nothing else. I am Eliot Calvert, of Calvert's Bookstore, in Boston.”
Henry nods and rubs the knot of pain at the back of his neck.
“I could wish the circumstances of our meeting different,” Eliot says, pointing to the fire. “Although it is another of fortune's curious turns, I am only in Concord today because I plan to open a second bookshop. Otherwise, I might have missed this spectacular conflagration entirely.”
Henry is surprised to feel suddenly possessive of the fire. Moments ago he had wanted to share its beauty with another, but now he feels jealous of this man's admiration for the flames. He does not want to discuss
the fire further, knowing where such a conversation will inevitably lead.
Eliot writes in his little book and then muses aloud, “I should hope there will still be a town remaining in which to open my shop, when all of this is done.”
Henry wonders if Eliot has any idea that he is speaking to the person who started the fire, which—if indeed it reaches Concord— may have no small effect on his business. But then Henry asks himself what claim this man has to bring his business to Concord, and he grows more annoyed with him still.
“I have little to do with bookshops,” Henry says, trying to contain his irritation.
Eliot rolls his pencil between his fingers. “That is a peculiar statement for a man who makes pencils.”
“Why should I give money for a book containing thoughts that occur as freely to its author as they do to all men?” Henry had not meant to speak quite so vehemently, but then he sees that his words have little impact upon Eliot Calvert, who looks at him blankly, as if he were a bit of fauna waiting to be classified. He wonders if the man has willfully ignored his point.
“You do not read, then?” Eliot asks.
“There are libraries,” Henry says.
“Certainly there are books you might care to possess.”
“Why would I want a book once I am finished with the reading of it?”
“I am at a loss, Mr. Thoreau. This is not an argument I have ever needed to make.” Eliot chews his lip, thinking. “Books—they make a fine ornament for one's shelves.”
“I have no shelves,” Henry replies.
“You might lend them.”
“My friends can afford their own books.”
