by John Pipkin
She sifts blindly through the ankle-deep ash with her toes and clutches the reins of the sled, as if the thin leather strap anchors her to the rest of the world. She is reminded suddenly of a small toy that her father made for her when she was scarcely old enough to speak, a little wooden dog that she had pulled around on wheeled legs. It was strange how these memories announced themselves, rising from beneath the ruins of other experiences too bleak to admit memory's grasp. The recollection makes her clutch the reins all the tighter. Zalenka sometimes upbraids Anezka for allowing her heart to harden, but Anezka can never find the words to express that this is not the case at all. Given the enormity of the past and the future, she simply finds that there is more to care about in the world than there are hearts to bear the weight; picking and choosing is a matter of surviving.
Anezka strikes something hard with her foot and retrieves a good-sized chunk of wood on her own, but she can tell by feeling along its length that it is burned beyond use. She hears the amazed voices of the tourists as they climb back into their carriages and set off. Strange, she thinks, how this new world, as yet inexperienced in the tragedies that wearied the Old World centuries ago, seems to inspire an insatiable hunger for disaster. These Americans seem to think that the horrors endured by others are spectacles for their entertainment. Their own terrors will come soon enough—terrors that will leave their storybooks and walk among them, through their streets, into their homes and bedrooms. She does not wish this sad knowledge on them, but she knows it is coming. She shudders when she hears men talk excitedly of the war they believe is on its way, a fight that will be waged not against a foreign invader but between the Americans of the North and the South. Some men say the fight is inevitable, though Anezka does not believe that the terrible things men do to one another should ever be thought of as unavoidable. If the New World does not grant men the freedom to rise above the dark paths mapped by fate, then what is the point of coming here?
Anezka squints into the darkness but cannot tell which of the shadows belongs to Zalenka. She starts to call out but stops. She knows Zalenka is there; she knows that she will never again be alone. Anezka ventures forward a few steps, dragging her feet through the ashes until they strike another fallen tree. She kicks along its side to determine whether there is a branch small enough for her to lift without Zalenka's help. Something seems unusual about the tree. She kicks it again, and her jaw falls open in amazement.
Too far away to see what Anezka has found, Zalenka drops her armload of wood as soon as she hears Anezka's shout and stumbles toward her as fast as she can, swinging her stiff legs over the blackened debris. It is not quite a scream but something closer to startled amazement. Zalenka finds Anezka standing next to the upturned roots of a large tree trunk half buried in the ashes.
“Co se děje?! Jsi v pořádku?!”
“I am fine,” Anezka reassures her friend. “But please, you must watch. Amazing things. These American woods, they live.”
Anezka reaches out for Zalenka's support, then she swings her right leg with as much force as she can muster and kicks the fallen tree. The mound of debris stirs and a weak moan rises from under the ashes.
Anezka smiles. “It is a miracle, this moaning tree, yes? An American golem.”
Zalenka drops to her knees and claws through the charred earth until her fingers strike something soft in the soot. She pulls her kerchief from her head and wipes at the soft black mound until something pale emerges—a round opening that moves, opens and closes—a mouth—then a nose, a pair of eyes. The moaning increases, the eyes flutter open, and Zalenka sees in them the unmistakable shock of recognition. Zalenka grabs Anezka's arm.
“It is the priest.”
“The priest for the new church?”
“He.”
Together they dig through the ashes. Caleb Ephraim Dowdy is pinned under the massive tree, his right leg twisted at a telling angle beneath the weight of the trunk. At least one bone is broken, Zalenka can tell, but the size of the tree has saved him from the fire. Most of the heavy trunk is burned away, enough that Zalenka is able to rock it back and forth while Anezka pulls at Caleb's left arm until he is out from under it.
Caleb's lips work and he coughs; he tries to speak. He has not had a pipe in three days, and the effects on his brain are even more devastating than the hunger and thirst and pain that hold the rest of his body in thrall.
“The leg is broken,” Zalenka says, examining the twisted limb.
Anezka disappointedly kicks the fallen tree a final time. “The tree, it is not living? Pity.”
Instinctively, Zalenka has already begun to tie a straight branch around Caleb's broken leg with her kerchief. He writhes in agony as Zalenka works; a dry hiss issues from his lips.
“We must care for him,” Zalenka says. “He will need food and drink, and much rest.”
Anezka feels a heavy weight in her chest. “The church builder? No. To the road we can take him. Someone will find him.”
“Anezka! How can you say such a thing? What would God in heaven think?”
“It is God who should worry what I am thinking,” Anezka says, surprised at herself for uttering the thought out loud.
“I will not hear it,” Zalenka snaps. “This is for us to do. We must repay the kindness we receive.”
Anezka shrugs in submission. “You can help his wounds?”
“There are broken bones only, I think.” Zalenka tightens the splint, and Caleb moans under the pressure, then he laughs deliriously.
“He is mad with the pain. We must take him home.”
Anezka sighs. She will make room in her heart if that is what Zalenka wants. And she knows Zalenka is probably right, even if she is reckless with her sympathy. If this new country is ever to escape the nightmares of the old, its new inhabitants must become a kinder race, recklessly so.
Together, they drag Caleb onto the sled and secure him with the ropes they brought to tie down their firewood. He moans but does not struggle. His body lies slack as Anezka feels along the lengths of the ropes and checks the knots with nimble fingers.
“Here,” Anezka says. “This one will come undone. If we are to help, we must not do worse.”
Zalenka smiles as she tightens the sloppy knot. “You do not have the cold heart that you pretend.”
Anezka grunts dismissively and fishes around in the sled for the reins. “I hope he will not be eating much.”
The two women pull the sled back to the road, pausing several times to catch their breath. Caleb continues to mumble incoherently. Getting the sled into the wagon is a difficult business, and he cries out as they jostle him up the inclined gate.
“Can he live, do you think?” Anezka asks.
“There is not much bleeding, and there is yet color in his face. It is rest that he needs. To mend is all.”
Caleb lifts his head far enough to look into the faces of the two old women, and then he begins to cackle weakly.
“At long last,” he croaks.
“What does he say?” Zalenka asks.
Anezka leans closer to his face, picking out the shadows of features. “You are building the church of bones, yes?”
Caleb looks back and forth between Anezka and Zalenka, and his eyes roll wildly. Zalenka has seen the reaction before in desperately injured men.
“Is it true?” Caleb moans. “Am I come to hell?”
Caleb watches hopefully as the two women confer.
“We must be swift,” Zalenka says. “He has a brain fever, I think.”
“Am I come to hell?” Caleb asks again, weak laughter rattling in his parched throat.
“Ride with him,” Zalenka says. “I will walk. Václav cannot pull us all.”
Anezka climbs into the back of the wagon and Zalenka hands her a flask of water.
“Give him this.”
Anezka dribbles the cool water over Caleb's lips, but he sputters under the flow, flinching as if the water were acid.
“Is this my punishment at
last?” Caleb pleads as the wagon begins to move forward.
“Rest,” Anezka says.
“Am I come to hell? Tell me!” Caleb stares at Anezka's milky eyes; the sinews in his neck strain like taut ropes as he struggles to hold his head up.
“Am I?”
Anezka considers the question for a moment and leans close to his ear.
“Yes,” she says softly. “Yes. You are in this world still.”
35
Eliot
The fire is hot enough to blacken, and it will burn if they are careless. The secret is to regulate the temperature with distance and motion. Constant motion. The boy seems never to remember this last part, and the skillet inevitably burns, ruining its valuable contents, filling the place with an acrid stench approximating singed fur. Why is it, Eliot wonders, that some edible stuffs seem to demand inexact comparisons to what they are not: animals, plants, seasons, feelings, an unnecessary surfeit of words? Eliot will make it a point from now on to describe things as they are, to eschew metaphors for a more economic language.
“This way,” he instructs his son.
Eliot feels the muscles in his forearm swell against his rolled sleeves as he shows the boy the circular motion that keeps the hard yellow beans shuttling around in the skillet. Then he hands it back.
“Have you ever tasted them uncooked?” The boy struggles with the heavy skillet.
Eliot nods. “I do not recommend it. It is fire that imparts the flavor.”
Wearing a clumsy pair of thick gloves, Josiah holds the blistered iron handle in both hands. He is small and thin and probably weighs little more than the skillet he counterbalances by leaning back into his hips, projecting a center of gravity into the space in front of his knees. The skillet traces a tight ellipse above the fire as Josiah's narrow hips orbit in the opposite direction. Eliot barely keeps from laughing at the innocent, indecent dance; he doesn't want to confuse the boy. Roasting coffee beans is a serious task.
Sounds of hammering echo from the other side of the room, where workmen are installing tables and booths. In the middle of the room, a carpenter works on the empty frame of a new doorway to be set into the wall when complete. Eliot straightens and steps back from the fire. He sees tiny beads of sweat appear on the boy's forehead and watches his hips rock in wider circles, as if he were desperately trying to conjure a host of libidinous demons from the flames.
“I think I've got it, Mr. Calvert.” So eager to please, this boy. They had agreed that it would be proper for Josiah to refer to him as Mr. Calvert while they were in the place of business, and Eliot has never had to remind his son, not once.
“You're doing fine, Josiah.”
Eliot turns and steps through the rubble into his bookshop. He would have to remind the workmen again. They broke through the wall last week; more than ample time has passed for them to sweep up the debris. He is making changes, just as he promised himself. The shelves that once held books by Emerson, Hawthorne, Irving, Alcott, Longfellow, are empty now and the bare planks stand propped against the wall. There is empty space only where the shelves once hung, the brick wall punctured by a toothy hole opening into the building where Josiah gyrates with the skillet of smoking coffee beans.
Eliot looks in the boy's direction, but he is staring at the empty space itself. He has no plans to relocate the displaced American authors. None of Eliot's regular customers would miss them. Let them gather in Ticknor's bookstore with their pockets turned inside out and their heads full of idle thoughts. Let them chatter around Mr. Fields as if ideas alone had force enough to shape the world. The best literature has already been written. The best words were committed to paper well before literate men set foot on American soil. America does not need more books. The New World does not need to re-create the literary accomplishments of the Old. What it needs is commerce. It cannot survive on dreams and words alone. Trade, goods, business—these are the tangible things that will fuel the engines of America.
Eliot decided against opening a bookshop in Concord, but he found another way to expand his Boston business. What he needed was a change. Upon his return, he took the money he had set aside for producing The House of Many Windows at the Boston Museum, purchased the shop next door, contacted Mr. Durham at the suggestion of Margaret's father, and set about establishing a coffeehouse on the premises. The decision immediately proved to be a good one. There was always much to be done, and he threw himself into the distracting labor wholeheartedly. He has recently ordered a new sign, simpler though more prominent than the former: “Calvert Bookshop and Coffeehouse.”
The expanded business requires a greater amount of his time than the bookshop alone ever did, but he fortifies himself with copious amounts of the stimulating black liquid, and he often works well into the night, long after other merchants have closed their shops. The new business means more of everything. More stock, more invoices, more bills, more employees, more profit, more worry, and dealing with coffee merchants was a far trickier matter than dealing with printers and publishers. Coffee beans are subject to the capricious whims of the marketplace, prices fluctuated wildly, and Eliot was forever on his guard against paying the inflated prices of yesterday or tomorrow. He hopes that the increased profit from the coffeehouse might make possible the country cottage that he and Margaret have talked about building near Walden Pond, a place where they might get away from the city and entertain friends from time to time.
The work is satisfaction in itself, and whenever his thoughts wander back to the plays that remain unfinished he works harder, medicating himself with the numbing exhaustion of labor. He learns to ignore the pointless yearnings that do little to advance his business. Lately, he has begun to feel an almost constant pressure behind his eyes, a black pain that never seems to dissipate. And at times he detects a heaviness in his chest, but these sensations he attributes to the misfortunes of age. Hard work is not without its penalties, and he knows he must accept the costs with the rewards.
Eliot returns to the room next door to check the progress of the roasting. He pushes his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing a shiny, scarred patch of skin on his right forearm. No one could accuse him of not being a man. Everyone knows that he fought the great fire of the Concord Woods; he runs not one but two businesses here in this modern Athens; he provides for his family, and he will leave a legacy. He is one of the bedrocks of America, a living force in its young economy. Eliot pulls out his pocket watch to remind Josiah of the appropriate time to keep the beans over the flame. He can see the boy's skinny arms trembling from the effort, struggling against their own weakness, and he feels a sadness mingle with his sense of duty. He will teach this boy about the world, about hard work, sacrifice, and compromise.
Margaret does not like that Eliot makes Josiah work like this. She does not think it at all appropriate, but there are things his son needs to know, lessons he must learn, and he is certain that Josiah will become a better man for it. Eliot will see to it that Josiah chooses a narrow and definite path and remains faithful to it. He will teach him that the world demands arduous labor from men who would be successful, that every pleasure in this life must be earned. Eliot taps the glass of his watch and then indicates the iron stand where Josiah is to set down the heavy skillet once the second hand completes its agonizingly slow sweep. The red light from the fire flickers against the gold watch in Eliot's palm and, farther down, the light twinkles over the polished gold fob, shaped like an open book, that hangs decoratively from the chain.
36
Henry David
It happens again, almost exactly as before.
Only this time it is not lockjaw but fever that seizes him.
For a full week after the last flame flickers out, Henry is weak with it. He cannot determine the fever's cause, and he tries to keep his ailment secret. He places clammy fingers to hot cheeks. He wakes to cool spring mornings wrapped in sheets dampened to translucence by his own poisoned sweat. He marvels that he does not drown in perspiration; yet ev
en these prodigious night sweats cannot extinguish the fire that he feels dancing beneath his skin, along his arms, down his legs, roiling within his torso. He cannot tell anyone. Not this time. His family has not forgotten the counterfeit symptoms following his brother's death. He cannot again call upon their sympathies until he is certain that this time his disease is real. But he feels that he is burning up. He can hear the faint crackling of flames consuming his ligaments and tendons, feel his bones baking brittle, smell the faint wisps of cooked flesh issuing from his pores. He knows that his blood is very nearly on the point of boiling in his veins. He is convinced that the sharp pain in his head is the result of his brain, swollen with heat, pressing against the inside of his skull. But he tells no one. He drinks copious amounts of water to flush the fire from his body. He applies cool wet cloths to his forehead. He avoids exertion and keeps his breaths shallow, lest he fan the flames. He creeps into the cold room off the kitchen and sits on the block of Lake Concord ice purchased earlier that spring. He sits on the ice every night, letting it pull the heat from his body. For weeks, his family wonders aloud about the half-moons melted into the top of the block.
And then one morning, for no apparent reason, the fire in his veins abates, the fever breaks.
His health is restored, but little else changes. The world to which he returns is just as he left it. He learns that much of the devastated land in the Concord Woods is the property of A. H. Wheeler and the Hubbard brothers, Cyrus and Darius. The Concord Freeman publishes a castigating article that does not mention Edward or Henry by name, but Henry takes offense that the editors of the paper think he merely sought recreation in the woods. Edward Hoar tells him that his father has promised to make restitutions on their behalf, though it is not enough to cover the loss in its entirety, and it cannot restore what has been taken.
