The Edgar Pangborn Megapack

by Edgar Pangborn

  “Oh—a few drinks with Shawn—dinner at a tavern—I don’t seem to remember all of it.” But he did.

  Reuben studied his finger tip that was scratching Mr. Eccles’ chin. “You brought home some books. Over there on your dresser.”

  “They’re for you.”

  “What!” Reuben was a long time at the dresser, his back turned, his hands on the books not turning the pages. “Ben—how did you know?”

  “I guessed right, then?”

  “Yes! Yes, but I—why, I only gabbled. I don’t see how—”

  “You did. Came to me later, what you must mean. Is it a call?”

  Eyes wet, face shining and troubled and amazed, Reuben turned to him and started once or twice to speak, then said only: “Yes.”

  “You can—oh, damn my head!—you can be certain?”

  “I’m—certain. I did go to see Mr. Welland again yesterday. He spoke of an apprenticeship.”

  “Oh.… Well—well, good, if it’s what you wish. What about Harvard, Ru?”

  “I don’t know.” Reuben sat on the floor by Ben’s bed, a motion of effortless grace that made Ben’s head throb to watch it. “I must speak to Uncle John of course. Maybe I can go to the college and study with Mr. Welland at the same time. There’ll be the summers.”

  Ben groped at it uneasily, with some small confusion of envy. “Pills—pills and sick people and—”

  Reuben shook his head. “It’s not like that, Ben. I mean, that is only one part of it, and for the rest—I can’t explain it because I don’t know enough, but of a sudden, after a long time of not knowing what I desired, there is this, and I do seem to be certain.”

  “But for myself, I’ve not found it.”

  “You will,” said Reuben quickly. “It’ll come to you, as it has—as I know it has to me.” He reached for Ben’s empty cup and poured a drink for himself, sitting cross-legged, intent, a small man with a boy’s face. “Ben, I think—so far as I can explain it, I think it’s a desire to know.”

  “To know?”

  “About human creatures. How they’re made, why they feel, think, suffer, act as they do. I wish.…” His face tightened in distress, and Ben, with some insight, knew it was merely the distress of a search for communication among inadequate slippery words.

  “But medicine—that’s healing the sick. That’s going about—”

  “It’s that, and that I accept, that I desire too, but it’s more, Ben, it’s study. Mr. Welland says a doctor must remain a student or die on his feet. And the study is not only sickness, remedies, surgery, the study is human beings—men, women, children, in all their ways—and that I desire.” He smiled suddenly, vulnerably, holding up his little finger. “There are creatures so tiny—Mr. Welland showed me a book, the Micrographia—so tiny there might be hundreds, nay thousands of them there on the space of my little fingernail. Too small to see without the lens, but living things, Ben—separate living beings, no fancy at all but the discovery of sober men—and he says, Mr. Welland says, why mayn’t these animalculae have something to do with the mysteries of disease? They’ve been found everywhere—pond water, earth, the surface of the skin. Why mayn’t they enter us sometimes, causing the ills we can’t explain? It’s a speculation, Mr. Welland says—he found it not in the books, only had the thought, and now and then (he said himself) from such thoughts come discoveries. I must—know,” said Reuben. He jumped up and crossed the room swiftly to examine the books again. “One thing I know: you wasn’t drunk when you bought these.”

  “No, I didn’t drink until supper at the tavern, and then later.”

  “Later?”

  “Well, Mr. Shawn took me to a—place. A house, Ru—one of those.”

  “Oh?…” Ben wondered why he had been moved to speak of it at all: there was no need. But even now, aware of something tight and painful in Reuben’s silence, he felt and suppressed a continuing impulse to brag, to invent for Reuben a story of what never happened. “Was it—any good, Ben?”

  “I can’t say it was. I think I’d had too much ale, and then something more there—buttered rum. That was my undoing.” His laughter sounded to himself feeble and unwelcome.

  “You mean nothing happened?”

  “Nothing much.… No, damn it, nothing—I spilled at the gates. I think maybe I didn’t really wish to go. Mr. Shawn—”

  Reuben’s words raced and ran together: “Well, the devil fly off with your friend Shawn, and couldn’t the son of a bitch stand by you and you so drunk? Do you know you was stepping direct for that quicksand?”

  “I—was?”

  “We might have gone down in it.”

  “Well—wait, Ru! It was no fault of Shawn. I left him at the house. He was still with his wench when I was ready to go, and some-way I didn’t wish to see him then, so I came off alone.”

  “Oh.” His face still averted, his thin hands motionless on the books, Reuben muttered: “Sorry, Ben. The cork popped out of the bottle and I spattered. My regrets.” He started getting dressed, and Ben knew his chatter was mainly for his own benefit: “Beware the lightning after breakfast—Pontifex is not wholly pleased with our Benjamin, and will be summoning the cohorts of Ovid, his Tristia; Ramus, his Logic; Cicero, his honorificabilitudinitatibus.”

  “Ow-ooh!”

  “What—coach wheels?”

  “I thought that was my head.”

  “No,” said Reuben, and flung open the window. “Something’s afoot.”

  “If on wheels, how should it be—ow! Shut that arctic window, you bloody worm!” But as Ben tried to creep under the covers, Reuben hauled a corner of them over his shoulder and marched to the door with it, his good humor restored, peeling Ben raw to the April breeze. He wadded the bedclothes into a spherical snarl out of Ben’s reach, heaved that into the closet, barked in some satisfaction, and ran downstairs. Ben could plainly make out the squeak and rattle of coach wheels from the driveway before the house. He leaped for his clothes—unwisely, considering his head—and paused to reflect on the uses of sobriety.

  * * * *

  The fat horses were lathered, blowing in relief at the halt. From the parlor window Reuben saw the girl alight before the coachman’s hand could aid her, a square small maiden in a hurry. As Kate Dobson opened the door he heard fright, determination and embarrassment in the throaty voice: “I must speak with Mr. Kenny—’tis most urgent.”

  Kate was fluttering. “He’s at breakfast, my dear.”

  Reuben intervened, startled as she abruptly swung to him, a miniature whirlwind with sea-blue eyes. Some blurred yellowish phenomenon passed her feet—a dog apparently, not relevant unless Mr. Eccles should choose that moment to come downstairs. “I’ll take you to him,” Reuben said, and Kate relaxed at the authority of a man in the house.

  “You are Mr. Cory’s brother.”

  “Madam, the charge is well founded.”

  “This,” said Charity, “is no time for schoolboy levity.”

  “Ow-ooh!” said Reuben, and stood to attention by the dining-room doorway as Charity passed, and the dog. In a woolgathering way, the animal acknowledged Reuben’s feet, but had no time for them. It was mere carelessness, not sin, that made Reuben leave the door open as he followed Charity with all the meekness of Sultan.

  Pleased and then alarmed, Mr. Kenny jumped up, winced at his bad foot and clutched the table-edge. “Charity, my dear, what lucky wind—”

  “Sir, Faith said I’d best be the one to bring word, seeing Mama is prostrated and—and so—so I—” she lapsed into stuttering confusion and stamped her foot in rage at her own behavior.

  “Breathe slow, my dear,” said the old man, no longer smiling. “Count to four, my dear, then to eight by twos. Now: two, four, six—”

  “Eight, ten, twelve,” said Charity, and shuddered. “Pray
don’t be prostrated, Mr. Kenny, the way Mama said you was sure to be. I’d not know what to do.”

  “Now sit thee down,” said John Kenny. “I shall undertake not to be prostrated, and a’n’t thy bonnet-strings a little tight?”

  Standing by her chair, Reuben briefly recalled the sensation of living as a pigmy in a world of giants. “Mama saith, never no such thing happened here in all her time. My father—he—well, when they brought the news he heard something and came downstairs, but he—but he.…”

  Reuben noticed her fists pressing on the table. On impulse he lifted one of them. “Allow me,” said Reuben, urging the fingers to open and relax. They did so, as Charity stared up at him in a trance of observation. He patted the hand and set it back on the table. “I think, Charity, my Uncle John would prefer not to have bad news broken gently. Am I right, sir? Better to hear it quick and plain?”

  “Much better.” John Kenny spoke absently, watching him and not Charity, who would have accomplished her errand then, Reuben guessed, but hell broke loose.

  Reuben glimpsed the preliminary tableau—Sultan in the doorway, frozen in unbelieving horror at a ball of golden evil which advanced on stiff legs directly toward his nose. Reuben had time to lay a private wager entirely in favor of Mr. Eccles, but was too late for anything else—the golden ball rose up straight, reversed itself in mid-air, and dropped on Sultan’s back with the ineluctable certainty of the Puritan Hell.

  “Oh!” Charity cried. “Oh, the horrid beast!” She jumped up on her chair, maybe to see better. “Sultan, stop it!”

  Sultan would have loved to, if he could. John Kenny swung up his aging feet as the storm swept by.

  Reuben followed.

  “Sultan!” Charity wailed. “Come here this instant! Sultan, shame! Abusing that poor cat!”

  Mr. Kenny lifted his feet again.

  Reuben followed.

  A chair toppled over. If Sultan had nourished any hopes at all, they had centered around that chair. He might, like Milton’s Lucifer, have had none—Which way I fly is hell, myself am hell.… Reuben followed, dimly aware of his brother in the doorway and Kate Dobson behind him, both shouting encouragement. Uncle John seemed rather happy too, but was preparing to lift his feet a third time. Reuben observed that everyone, in fact, was laughing except himself, and he would too if he could only gain a little.… At last he was able to swoop down and grasp the loose skin of a rigid yellow neck. He hoisted it; Sultan shot away from under it. A good deal of Sultan’s hair came up on the claws, but the essential dog was then able to flee under Charity’s chair and leave all the rest to the judgment of history.

  Reuben secured Mr. Eccles’ threshing hind legs and bore him to the kitchen door. Ben dived to open it for him, doubled over and hooting but aware of the flashing forepaws.

  “Ben!” said Mr. Kenny—“Ben, you a’n’t got sea-room. You, Reuben, I mean Mr. Cory, do you tack a mite to la’board—la’board, sir! There—now, Ben, now you can cross his bow.”

  “’Sbody!” said Kate. “I wouldn’t trade ’im for a mastiff!”

  “Best not leave him alone out there, Kate,” said Mr. Kenny. “You hear that?” Reuben had flung Mr. Eccles into the kitchen and closed the door just in time, but he could be heard marching up and down, blaspheming. “He’s lonely, the little thing.”

  Kate bounced away whooping. Mr. Kenny wiped his eyes and finished a buttered bun. “I suppose,” said Reuben, “it happens to the best of dogs.”

  “Why,” said Charity, “he was overtaken by surprise.”

  “Of course he was,” said Mr. Kenny. “Come, Sultan! Come here, boy, good boy!” Mr. Kenny chirped, but though Sultan was willing to explain everything in a long undertone, he was not at the moment coming anywhere, for anyone.

  Charity exploded in fresh cries. “I can’t stop laughing!” she wept, and dropped her head on the table. “I can’t stop it!” Mr. Kenny bent over her, concerned; her laughter had gone shrill and sick. “Dreadful news, and I—I can’t stop laughing! Help!”

  For Reuben, the worst of Mr. Eccles’ dangerous writhing had not obscured a second’s glimpse of Charity in the moment when she discovered that Ben was in the room. Under cover of her wailing laughter he muttered in Ben’s ear: “Can’t you see she loves you? Do something!”

  He knew Ben did not quite understand nor believe it, but Ben took an uncertain step toward the chair where Charity struggled with the demons of her laughter, and that was enough. Charity flung herself at him. Reuben saw his brother’s arms close around her with a natural kindness, and heard him say: “Now, now! What’s the matter, Mistress Charity?”

  “Cousin Jan—Mr. Dyckman.” She spoke quietly into Ben’s shirt, all laughter spent.

  “Dyckman?” John Kenny came to them, and touched her shoulder lightly, as if it might burn him. “What of Mr. Dyckman, my dear?”

  “He is dead.”

  “Dead! But—”

  Her cheek over Ben’s heart, Charity was able now to deliver plainly and bleakly the words she must have rehearsed a dozen times during the journey in the coach. “The men of the watch discovered him in an alley off Ship Street a little before dawn. Faith bade me take the coach, seeing you might wish to return in it with me. Our servant Clarissa is seeing to the house while Faith cares for Mama, so—none to send but me.”

  “Of course, my dear,” said Mr. Kenny vacantly. “I’ll go with thee at once.” Mr. Hibbs had come down for breakfast, but stood apart gloomily, apparently not presuming to hope that anyone would explain matters to him. “I’ll go with thee, and—and my two sons.”

  “I was to say, sir, that the Constable Mr. Derry hath undertook to be at your office at the warehouse this forenoon, and will summon back the men of the Select Watch if you wish to question them.”

  “Mr. Derry?—the watch? What art thou saying, Charity? Mr. Dyckman was murdered?”

  “I alway do everything wrong!” Charity mourned, but Ben patted her shoulder and she quieted again. “Yes, and they said, sir, his wallet was gone—some footpad of the water front, but Mama will have it that it was the French. She will have it that Frenchmen are a-prowl in the streets of our neighborhood seeking opportunity to murder my father and herself. Could—could it be so?”

  “It could not,” said Mr. Kenny, and managed a wavering laugh. “Your mother is fanciful.”

  “She speaks of selling our Clarissa, and away from Boston, for that Clarissa was bred and born in Guadeloupe.”

  John Kenny snorted; Reuben hoped he was recovering his firmness. “I trust Mr. Jenks will forbid any such thing—meaning no disrespect to your mother, Charity.”

  Charity sighed, burrowing her nose deeper. Reuben supposed that for her the worst was over. She went on in a brittle but steady monotone: “Cousin Jan—Mr. Dyckman was—they said he was yet alive when he was found, and must have been lying there untended for many hours, for blood was dry on his garments.”

  “Alive? Could he speak then?”

  “He told the watch his name. And then begged that he might speak with my father, and said somewhat more of justice being done, and they said he commended his soul unto God, and there was some other word, but not clear, and when they would lift him to carry him the blood came up in his mouth, they said, and he choked, and died. He was stabbed, they said, stabbed in the back, stabbed in a dozen places.”

  * * * *

  Constable Malachi Derry, a sad man with excellent muscle disguised by a concave chest, a willowy neck and a jaw like a pick-axe, commonly described himself as slow to wrath, but he could be angry, and Ben saw that he was now, as he drooped on a three-legged stool in Mr. Kenny’s office and tried to find space for surplus leg where the uncompromising feet of Captain Peter Jenks allowed not another inch of it and would not budge. Mr. Derry was a ship chandler by trade. Chosen for the thankless position of constable, he
had done his level New England best to wriggle out of it, until informed by Governor Dudley himself that he would serve, or else pay a fine of not less than ten pounds, possibly more. Faced with that, Mr. Derry did the next best thing—tried to be a good constable.

  It came hard, leaving him scant time for his rightful labors. He must waste hours in the courts, bustle about serving warrants, seeing to the daytime peace of his district, while the chandlery went to ruin. On the Sabbath, engaged in preventing others from ungodliness, how could he find proper time to look to his own soul? The supplementary emoluments, in view of the damage to his trade, were dem’d low. Besides, the work was dangerous. Still trying to find room for his legs, he rumbled on to a peroration: “I was compelled, Mr. Kenny, to say this morning to Madam Dyckman herself, poor woman: ‘We do what we may, more we cannot.’ I have heard Judge Sewall himself declare that disorder increaseth continually, but doth the power of my office increase also? Not at all, sir, the while this very air of the water front, as it were, spawns evildoers, the cutthroat, the footpad, the blasphemer, the piratically inclined—mostly foreigners, you understand.”

  “I understand,” said John Kenny, “that you hold out small hope of discovering the ruffian who hath murdered the mate of my ketch Artemis and so taken from me and my captain a good friend.”

  Captain Jenks slammed his fist down on his knee and said nothing. To Ben this morning he was almost unrecognizable as the same man who had come ashore in a flood of sunlight. His whole broad face was darkly flushed, the red skin raddled with a thousand lines. When his thick hands were not jumping like those of an old man with the palsy, a fine tremor possessed them. Bags hung like flabby udders below his bloodshot blue eyes, and the eyes were cold with wrath and confusion: a man goaded by much pain, unable to understand the source of it; a stricken leviathan unable to see the harpoon that has pierced it.

  “That’s true,” said Mr. Derry—“small hope, I fear. You understand, sir, a cobblestone takes no footprint, a knife-blade leaves no signature. We know he was scurvily set upon, robbed, slain. But are you aware, sir, there may be as many as two or three hundred evil livers in and about the city who might have done this, and for no reason but the scent of whatever money or goods he had upon him?”