God in Concord

by Jane Langton

  The School of Philosophy lacked comfortable sofas and upholstered chairs, but it was delightfully airy and open. Emerson was there again in plaster effigy. The floor was uncomfortable to sleep on, but the place had an exalted aura, and they all enjoyed it.

  Palmer Nifto was the cleverest at finding a home away from home. A place had occurred to him immediately, the instant he saw the destination on the ticket handed him by Sarah Peel.

  It was a one-person dwelling. Palmer kept it in the back of his mind until they were thrown out of the library and the School of Philosophy. Then he resolved to try it.

  But first he gave himself a present, a splendid meal at the Colonial Inn, paid for with the piece of broken glass he kept in his pocket. The piece of glass had worn out its welcome in Boston, but out here in the boondocks it awaited its debut.

  The hostess found him a table in a prominent part of the big dining room, he looked so interesting and respectable in his seersucker jacket. His twenty-five-cent Morgan Memorial tie was limp, but it had begun life at Brooks Brothers. He looked like a young professor of the shabby genteel variety.

  The Colonial Inn specialized in hearty old-fashioned food rather than trendy gourmet stuff. Palmer ordered a charcoal-broiled steak.

  “Baked potato or mashed?” said the waitress.

  “Mashed, please,” said Palmer craftily.

  When his steak and mashed potatoes were put in front of him, he smiled at the waitress and struck up a conversation. “Not many places like this left,” he said, plying knife and fork, taking his first bite of steak, then shaking his head in appreciation. “Mmmm-mmm. Dee-licious.”

  Therefore when Palmer found a piece of glass in his mashed potato, his disappointment was profound. He beckoned the waitress to him, his face long with woe, and displayed the mashed-potato-smeared piece of glass, which he had pushed delicately to one side of his plate. “I must say, I’m surprised,” said Palmer sorrowfully.

  The waitress was stunned. She summoned the hostess. The hostess was horrified. She hurried out and returned with the manager. The manager was appalled. He spoke soothingly to Palmer and asked if he was hurt in any way at all. When Palmer said no, he was only very much surprised, the manager assured him that he, too, was completely astounded, because nothing like this had ever happened before in the entire history of the Colonial Inn. There would of course be no charge for the meal, and would he like anything else from the menu, courtesy of the inn, of course?

  “Well, that’s very kind of you,” said Palmer courteously. At once he examined the menu and ordered a second meal, even more luxurious than the first.

  Later on, as he consumed his lobster thermidor, the manager hurried over with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. “With our compliments,” he said, getting to work on the cork. There was a resounding pop. Heads turned. People smiled.

  Ah, there was nothing like virgin territory. What innocence, what charming naœveté in this idyllic rural town!

  After dinner Palmer walked off his heavy double meal. It was two long miles to Walden Pond. Was the little house still there?

  It was. The house was a replica of the one Henry Thoreau had built on the northern shore of the pond. The replica occupied a similar spot on the shore of the parking lot.

  The door was open. The parking lot was empty of cars. There was heavy traffic on Route 126, but all those people were going somewhere else. No one would notice a tourist walking into the house and not walking out again.

  The summer dusk cast a pleasant green shade through the windows. Except for the fireplace the room was bare. There was no stove, no bed, no table, no electricity, no plumbing. But there was something else, a faint whiff of the spirit of the man called Henry David Thoreau. Palmer had taken a course in American lit at Boston University. He had even written a paper on Thoreau’s poetry.

  Now he had a sentimental idea. Before going to bed he went out into the woods and gathered fallen branches. When he arranged them in the fireplace and touched them with a match, they flared up brightly.

  Palmer lay down and stared at the fire, remembering a verse of Thoreau’s:

  Go thou my incense upward from this hearth

  And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.

  46

  When heaven begins and the dead arise, no

  trumpet is blown.…

  Journal, March 13, 1842

  A wood thrush was singing beside one of the Andromeda ponds as thunder rumbled over the town of Concord. It was still singing as a ray of sunlight shot out of the clouds and threw a millionfold spread of color over the eastern sky.

  Homer missed the wood thrush, but he saw the rainbow as he came out of the Concord Public Library. He stood for a moment, gaping at it, and then it faded, and he walked to his car.

  If he had stayed in the library five minutes longer, he would have missed it. The trouble with nature’s spectacles was that they didn’t employ a public address system. Nobody leaned out of a cloud and boomed:

  NOW HEAR THIS: KINDLY DIRECT YOUR GAZE TO THE EASTERN QUARTER OF THE SKY AND YOU WILL SEE SOMETHING RATHER ATTRACTIVE, IF I DO SAY SO MYSELF.

  Actually Homer had stayed an hour longer in the library than he had meant to. He was late for the party at the Badgers’ house. As he parked in the Badgers’ driveway, Mary saw him from the porch, and she ran out and hauled him inside.

  “Everybody’s asking for you. Where were you?”

  “I just stopped off in a bar for a couple of quick ones. You know that famous saloon, the Concord Library.”

  “Well, come on in. Henry Badger is making a speech.”

  Homer ducked under the lintel of the French doors and joined the modest crowd.

  “In short,” said Henry, concluding his speech, “We’ve all got to do what we can to support Oliver Fry in his campaign, if we want to save Walden Woods from the bulldozers of the developer. Am I right, or am I right?”

  “You’re right,” cried Homer.

  “You’re right,” cried everybody else.

  Oliver Fry stood beaming in the middle, happily drinking his third glass of wine punch. The speech was over. The noise level rose.

  Homer looked around the room with satisfaction. These people were friends from way back. They were just what he needed, a captive audience for his investigation, preselected for their true-blue support of conservationist causes. There were loyal Thoreauvians among them, members of the Audubon Society, the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Wilderness Society, the Concord Land Conservation Trust.

  He buttonholed them one after another, while they laughed and filled their glasses and shouted to make themselves heard. Homer asked what they thought about Pond View. Did they think the state of Massachusetts should speed up the last days of the trailer park by moving the remaining residents out?

  “Oh, no,” said Elizabeth Bates, “they couldn’t do that. Those people were promised life tenancy. That would be terrible.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Marcus McDowell, “they don’t bother me. It’s the landfill that gives me a pain.”

  “Leave them lay,” said Steve Freiburg. “Bunch of old codgers. They’re not doing anybody any harm.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” said Wendy Chin. “Old saying of Confucius.”

  “Get them out of there by hook or by crook,” cried Oliver Fry. But Oliver was Oliver, and he didn’t count.

  47

  … trade curses everything it handles … though

  you trade in messages from heaven.…

  Walden, “Economy”

  The rainbow that dazzled Homer Kelly was within Jefferson Grandison’s line of vision when he came to town with Jack Markey.

  If he had been looking up at the sky, he would have seen the arching bands of color glowing behind the steeple of the First Parish Church. Unfortunately Grandison was staring at the sidewalk, where Carl Browning was taking a late afternoon nap. When Grandison walked into the fragrant ambience of Mimi’s Parfumerie,
followed by Jack Markey, he was in a sour mood.

  But he was ready to do his duty. He had agreed to address Mimi Pink’s Consortium of Concord Boutiques, and address it he would.

  Mimi came forward to meet him, her hand outstretched. “Mr. Grandison, we are so honored.”

  Grandison’s glance flicked over Mimi and flicked away. Then he looked back at her uneasily, reminded of something disturbing. Putting the thought aside, he took his place among the mirrored shelves at the rear of the store, while everyone stood up from the rows of folding chairs and clapped.

  “Mr.—Jefferson—Grandison,” said Mimi. No other introduction was necessary. The applause mounted, and then they all sat down and listened reverently.

  Grandison cleared his throat, opened his mouth, and began to speak. He spoke of his faith in the town of Concord, a population center where the standards of consumption were high, a village attracting customers from a wide geographic area, a suburb with potential as a world-class resort, inspiring a confidence on the part of the knowledgeable observer in the economic future of the locality which—for a moment the sentence seemed too entangled to be resolved. Grandison cut the Gordian knot and started over. “Concord, in my opinion, will someday be classed with St. Moritz, Vail, and Monaco.”

  Monaco. There were gasps. Excitement spread from breast to breast. They were all part of something important, something immense. They had known it dimly before. Now they were sure of it.

  Mimi led the standing ovation. Then, as her distinguished guest slipped out of the shop with Jack Markey, she darted after him and touched his arm. “Oh, Mr. Grandison, I wonder if I could have a private word?”

  The great man was annoyed. This afternoon he had already endured a conversation with the shyster lawyer who kept calling him about Lot Seventeen: “You hear me, Grandison? Time is going by. Would you like us to deposit Lot Seventeen on Huntington Avenue, Mr. Grandison? Because that’s precisely what we have in mind right now, Mr. Grandison.”

  “Well, what is it?” said Jefferson Grandison, glowering at Mimi. He was already doing as much for the woman as she deserved.

  “It’s simply a matter of cash flow.” Mimi went on to explain that people were reporting to her who were taking great personal risks, who, it was perfectly natural, deserved substantial financial reward. She didn’t speak for herself, although she had certainly done her part.

  “Certainly, certainly,” said Grandison smoothly, gliding away. Behind him Jack Markey grinned at Mimi, rolled his eyes comically, and followed his master to the car.

  But Mimi wasn’t finished. Leaning out the door of the Parfumerie, she called after Jefferson Grandison, “Oh, Mr. Grandison, give my regards to your wife.”

  He pretended not to hear. Then, flustered, he tripped over the outstretched leg of a woman sitting on the sidewalk. If Jack hadn’t caught him, he would have fallen.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re going?” cried Doris Harper.

  Regaining his balance, Grandison raised his eyebrows at Jack and murmured, “What’s all this?”

  “I don’t know what the hell.” Then Jack quickened his steps, because another shapeless person was leaning against Grandison’s Mercedes. The man looked asleep on his feet.

  Ignoring him, hoping he would wake up and go away, Jack unlocked the door for Grandison, then went around the car to let himself in. The person leaning against the radiator did not stir, although the car dipped heavily under Grandison’s weight and then under Jack’s.

  Jack started the engine. Still the object failed to move. “Sticky wicket,” murmured Jack. Slowly, very slowly, he edged the car forward. The object collapsed and disappeared.

  “Oh, shit,” said Jack. He stopped the car and got out. So did Grandison. Together they lifted Carl Browning from the street and deposited him beside the twisting candy stripes of the barber pole in front of Hugo’s Hair Harmonies.

  On the way back to Boston, Grandison went to sleep at once, but Jack remained alert. It was a terrible journey. Unseeing, he sped down Route 2, heading for Route 128 and the turnpike, driving mechanically, suffering from a conviction that had overpowered him many times before. It had been imprinted upon him during his Bible-reading infancy, this apocalyptic sense of approaching doom, of the coming end, of last and final things. “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils.” Those people on the streets of Concord were a sign. The whole thing was going to collapse. It wasn’t going to work. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death.” It was ridiculous, Jack told himself, this sort of premonition. It had nothing to do with reality. It was only a loathsome regurgitation of the mad incantations of his youth.

  He pulled himself together, but his driving was erratic. On the turnpike he kept changing lanes, dodging in and out. He almost sideswiped another car. It was a good thing Grandison was asleep.

  Mimi Pink observed the departure of Jack Markey and Jefferson Grandison from the window of the Parfumerie. She saw Grandison trip over a homeless person, she saw another dreadful-looking old man leaning on his car. She was deeply disturbed. Once again she called the police.

  “Well, I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the officer on duty, who had taken complaints from Mimi many times before, “what do you suggest we do with those people?”

  “Might I suggest jail? They are obstructing the free passage of pedestrians in and out of the commercial establishments of the town. Surely that is an infringement of the law.”

  “I’ve told you, ma’am, it’s a matter for social workers, not the police. I understand the churches are working on it.”

  “I suppose you mean the Open Table at the First Parish on Thursday nights? That free meal? I want you to know I regard the Open Table as an attractive nuisance. People come from miles away to hang around town and wait for a handout. Some of them wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for the free food.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “I pay a considerable sum in taxes in this town, and I expect police protection. I want those people off the street.”

  “I’m aware of that, ma’am,” said the officer dryly.

  Mimi hung up, dissatisfied. It was embarrassing that Jefferson Grandison had witnessed this plague on the streets of Concord. It was important that he should not discover the falling off of business in all her shops, the reduction in the number of well-groomed customers.

  It wasn’t only the trashy people who were to blame. This morning Mimi had been deceived by an attractive man in a good-looking sport jacket. He had stood at the counter in the Parfumerie as if he were ready to buy the most costly fragrance in the shop.

  It was his wife’s birthday, he said, and she loved some sort of perfume, but he couldn’t remember the name. He’d know it when he smelled it, because it was sort of like his wife’s trademark.

  Then he and Mimi spent an amusing quarter of an hour sniffing at this and that. But suddenly the man asked if he could use the rest room. Normally Mimi didn’t permit customers to use the little lav tucked in at the back of the store, but this man was so charming and sexy, she agreed at once and led him behind the scenes.

  And then he didn’t return. He nipped out the back door, taking with him a flagon of French perfume from the shelf in the storeroom.

  Actually this scam by Palmer Nifto wasn’t his own invention at all. He had borrowed his sudden need for a bathroom from Sarah Peel and Bridgie Sorrel. It didn’t matter whose idea it was. In a matter of survival it was share and share alike.

  48

  The life in us is like the water in the river. It may

  rise this year higher than man has ever known it,

  and flood the parched uplands …

  Walden, “Conclusion”

  The rocking seesaw of Hope’s emotional life went up and down all summer.

  Hearing the bang of the screen door and Ananda’s light step on the stairs of the back porch, she would run out to say hello, her pulse quickening, and
see in his face the bright reflection of her smile.

  But Jack Markey was a powerful presence, too, with his obvious competence. There was a forcefulness of argument in his professional success, in knowing that he was an important person in an important concern. Ananda Singh was not, after all, one of the richest bachelors in the world, or he wouldn’t be working in a hardware store.

  The fact that Ananda was her father’s friend and Jack Markey his enemy was upsetting, and Hope preferred not to think about it. But she was her father’s daughter. Her mind and heart and lungs, her ankles and knees, were steeped in the essence that was Oliver Fry. It was the element in which she had been raised. Turn against it as she would, she couldn’t get rid of it. It was part of her.

  But Jack was wearing her down. Lying beside him on the warm grass of the sloping ground above the North Bridge, Hope felt herself drifting into the acceptance of anything, anything, as he kissed her and kissed her.

  “Oh, look,” she murmured over his shoulder, “a falling star.”

  And then to her surprise he stopped kissing her and sat up and stared at the sky.

  “There’s another one,” said Hope.

  Jack seemed shaken. “I’ll take you home,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Well, all right,” said Hope, wondering what was the matter.

  For a lot of people the first week in August was the beginning of vacation. A great many Concord people went away. They were vacationing on Cape Cod, or sailing in Maine, or cruising among the Norwegian fjords, or digging up pottery shards in Mozambique.

  The town was left to the small grubby band Sarah Peel had brought with her from Boston and to tourists in brilliant summer togs.

  But one day Mimi Pink stood in the doorway of the Porcelain Parlor and beckoned to Bonnie Glover. “Come here a sec, Bonnie.”