God in Concord

by Jane Langton

  Bonnie obeyed.

  “What’s different today?” said Mimi.

  Bonnie looked up and down the street and shrugged her shoulders. “God, I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you tell? Doesn’t it look better? They’re gone. They’re all gone.”

  “You mean …?” Bonnie brightened. “You’re right. I don’t see a single homeless person.”

  “Let’s hope they’ve gone back where they came from.”

  “How fabulous.”

  It was true. Sarah Peel was gone, and so were all her friends. They had not gone back to Boston. They too were taking a vacation. Theirs was a holiday from sleeping in Monument Square and bedding down in suburban garages, it was a vacation from barking dogs, a furlough from surviving without help from anyone except the good women of the Open Table, who by now had increased their schedule of free meals from one day a week to three.

  On the morning of the first day of August, Marjorie and Roger Bland drove to the airport and flew to Nantucket. On the afternoon of the same day Sarah and her friends moved into the spacious house on Musketaquid Road.

  It was securely locked, but locks didn’t stop Sarah Peel. Sarah had a way of leaking in through the cracks. She could dissolve herself on the outside of a building and rematerialize within.

  This time she got in through a cellar window.

  There was a washing machine under the window. Sarah heaved herself down to the floor and called to the others, “Wait a minute. I’ll open the front door.”

  Obediently they ran around the house and walked into the front hall as Sarah grandly swung the door open.

  “Oh, isn’t this nice,” said Dolores Mitchell. “Look, Christine, they’ve got a piano.”

  Christine sat down at once on the piano bench and played Chopsticks. The rest of them dispersed all over the house. It was a dream of sudden possession like the granting of three wishes, like winning the lottery.

  Palmer Nifto had a nose for good things. He ferreted out the liquor cabinet right away, because it was locked. The lock was no problem. Palmer went downcellar with Carl Browning to look for a crowbar. In the basement they found Roger Bland’s well-appointed workshop, with a drill press, a shaper, a couple of fancy table saws, a band saw, and a planing machine. A row of bins held lumber.

  “Hey, this here piece is teak, I’ll bet,” said Carl. “And look at this one, bird’s-eye maple.”

  The tools hung neatly on a pegboard. Palmer found a crowbar, took it upstairs, inserted it under the padlock of the liquor cabinet, and gave it a couple of strong jerks. The cabinet opened with a wrenching squeal.

  “Hey, Carl, look at this,” said Palmer, reaching past the wrecked door. “Nothing but the best. Beefeater, Jack Daniel’s, real Russian vodka.”

  There were cries of rapture from upstairs, where Almina Ziblow had unzipped a garment bag in Marjorie Bland’s closet and discovered a mink coat. Almina came down the stairs majestically, her hand sweeping the banister, the long coat flopping behind her on the stairs.

  Dolores and Christine and Bridgie and Bobbsie settled down in the family room in front of the TV to watch a soap opera. “Oh, I remember her,” said Dolores. “That’s Vanessa. What’s happened? She must be sick.”

  They all stared avidly at Vanessa, who was lying unconscious on a hospital bed. Her boyfriend, Dirk, was shouting at the doctor, insisting on her right to die, but the handsome doctor refused to pull the plug because he had fallen in love with Vanessa himself. Well, no wonder. She really did look beautiful, lying there with her long lashes sweeping her cheeks and her lovely hair tumbled on the pillow.

  The doorbell rang. Everybody froze. Dolores switched off the TV. Sarah went to the door and opened it cautiously.

  A little girl stood on the porch. “Oh, hi,” she said. “I’m Emily. Hasn’t Mrs. Bland gone yet? I’m supposed to take care of her horse.”

  “Oh,” said Sarah, thinking fast, “didn’t she tell you? I’m house-sitting for them and taking care of the horse. And, you know, the plants and all.”

  “Oh, okay.” Emily looked pleased. “That’s great. My best friend, she invited me to Lake Winnipesaukee, only my mother said I can’t go because Mrs. Bland was counting on me. Oh, boy, now I can go after all. Gee, thanks.”

  Sarah closed the door and grinned at the others in relief. “Hey, everybody,” said Palmer Nifto, coming in with a bottle and a tray of glasses, “how about a little Chivas Regal?” Then he looked up. “Good Lord, who’s that?”

  Somebody else was coming down the stairs. It was Audrey Beamish, the silent woman. Audrey had discovered a bureau drawer full of Marjorie Bland’s nightgowns and negligees. She had torn off all her clothes and gowned herself in the laciest, the filmiest. She had pulled her hair out of its prim little clips.

  “Well, say now,” breathed Palmer, handing her a glass.

  49

  What is the price-current of an honest man and

  patriot to-day?

  “Civil Disobedience”

  “I’ve got the whole town to myself,” said Oliver to Ananda. “My opponent is vacationing in Nantucket. Why don’t I start my campaign?”

  “Excellent,” said Ananda. “What can I do to help?”

  “Write a letter for me. We’ll get out a town mailing.”

  So Ananda spent a couple of days composing earnest paragraphs at the dining room table, surrounded by a gloomy sideboard, a wicker plant stand, a tarnished tea service, an iridescent art nouveau vase, and two large brown pictures of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

  There were helpful interruptions by Oliver. “Hold it,” he would cry, running in with another passage from Henry Thoreau. “You’ve got to get this in.”

  “Of course,” Ananda would say. “How splendid, how appropriate.”

  In the end they handed the letter to Mary Kelly, who cut it in half. Then Homer got busy on the phone, rounding up signatories, a nicely balanced selection of West Concord and Concord Center citizens, old residents and young professionals, people from the temple and all the churches, a good mix of town employees, and one very special farmer.

  The farmer was Paul Rivelli, whose father had come to Concord from Italy in the 1920s. Paul’s signature was so valuable, Homer buttonholed him in person at his produce stand on Bedford Street. Paul turned out to be an admirer of Oliver Fry’s, and he agreed at once. Homer brought the signature back to Oliver’s house with a sack of Paul’s early corn.

  “Here,” said Homer, “this is your half. Has Ananda ever tasted corn on the cob?”

  Ananda hadn’t. At suppertime he sat at the dining room table with Oliver while Hope rushed in with a platter of corn plucked from a pot of boiling water.

  “You roll them in butter like this,” explained Oliver, “then sprinkle them with salt and pepper.”

  “How interesting,” said Ananda politely, picking up a steaming ear.

  Oliver had consumed two preprandial whiskeys. He was euphoric. “I’m going to win this election,” he said, brandishing the salt shaker. “You see if I don’t.”

  “Oh, Father, how can you be so sure?” Hope sat down at her place with a thump. It was another hot day. Her face was flushed from bending over the kettle. Her feet were bare. She was wearing shorts. Her plump thighs and long calves were hidden under the table, but Ananda was aware of them. He listened to Oliver’s cocky exuberance and tried not to think about Hope’s legs. When she leaped up to run back to the kitchen for more corn, he got a good look, but when she came back he riveted his attention on Oliver’s rubicund face.

  “What about the young people, Hopey dear?” said Oliver. “What about all your friends? And Ananda my boy, what’s the name of that girlfriend of yours? The one who keeps calling? Bonnie somebody? Do you think she …?”

  “She is not my girlfriend,” muttered Ananda, casting an agonized glance at Hope.

  “But doesn’t she work in one of those fancy stores on the Milldam? She could get after all those shopkeepers. That woman Pink, for insta
nce.”

  Ananda’s embarrassment turned to melancholy. “Alas, I fear the woman Pink is hopeless.”

  Oliver beamed. In his cups he was indomitable. “Oh, my young friend, I love the way you say ‘alas.’ I haven’t heard anybody say alas for thirty or forty years.”

  The phone rang. Hope leaped up to answer it, and Ananda got another look at the twinkling legs.

  It was Bonnie Glover. “It’s for you,” said Hope, handing him the phone with cool fingers.

  After supper Hope went grimly upstairs and opened the door to the sleeping porch. She felt terrible. She batted the hammock. A cloud of dust flew up. Climbing in, she lay on her back, her hands folded over her copy of Walden, her eyes gazing at the big hooks from which the hammock hung. Then she wrenched herself sideways and stared at the porch screens. They were black and bulging.

  Languidly she opened the book and turned to the chapter called “Higher Laws.”

  … the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.

  Purity and devotion! Hope was filled with bitter cynicism. How much transmuting of sensuality into purity and devotion was Ananda practicing, that eager disciple of Henry Thoreau?

  Faintly from the deep well of the stairs the phone rang once again. It rang and rang. Why didn’t somebody answer it? Slowly Hope got up and pattered downstairs, expecting to hear Bonnie’s voice on the line.

  It wasn’t Bonnie, it was Jo-Jo Field.

  “Hope, this is Jo-Jo. How are you, dear? I’m calling on behalf of Roger Bland. I’m helping with his campaign for the opening on the board of selectmen. You know, in the special election in October.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Now I know, Hopey, that your dear father is running against him. But a little bird told me you might actually be supporting Roger.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.”

  “Of course not. But we loyal campaign workers have to busy ourselves so early. We have to collect signatures for a town mailing. Now, dear, might I read his letter over the phone? It’s not very long.”

  “Well, okay, I don’t see why not.”

  Roger Bland’s letter was very different from the one concocted for Oliver by Ananda Singh and Mary Kelly. Roger’s was the standard candidate’s letter, reciting his solid qualifications, his devotion to the town and its history, his concern for the preservation of its rural character, his awareness at the same time of the fiscal crisis in the commonwealth, affecting all the cities and towns in Massachusetts. It was a time, said Roger’s letter, when state support for local needs was at rock bottom. Thus it was a time for imaginative responses to modern pressures. Roger’s supporters too quoted Henry Thoreau—oh, that was clever of them, thought Hope—“Alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”

  “So you see, Hope, dear,” said Jo-Jo, “it’s really the same things your father stands for, but with—forgive me, dear—just a bit more practicality. We feel Roger will accomplish more in the long run, if you see what I mean.”

  “Oh, yes, I see.”

  “Now, to get to the point,” said Jo-Jo, suspecting that Hope’s resistance was softening, “we just wondered if by any chance you would lend your name to the others.” Swiftly Jo-Jo ran through the list of highly respected Concord citizens who had already agreed to sign Roger’s letter.

  There was a pause. Hope thought it over. Actually she wasn’t thinking of the different points of view of the two candidates. She wasn’t even thinking of her father. She was thinking angrily about Ananda Singh. “Well, okay, I guess so.”

  “You darling! You’re sure now? We can really use your name?”

  “Why not?” said Hope, recklessly burning all her bridges, taking up a sledgehammer to destroy those made of stone, tearing apart with savage fingernails the cobweb threads she had flung out into empty air.

  50

  There is indeed something royal about the month

  of August.

  Journal, August 18, 1852

  Roger Bland’s campaign letter was ready, but Jo-Jo Field knew better than to send it out. Too many Concord people were away. The town was deserted.

  But only by two-legged citizens. The raccoons of Concord had not abandoned their favorite garbage pails for faraway realms of milk and honey. Wood thrushes remained in residence, singing to proclaim this or that patch of forest as their own. Coyotes loped along woodland paths. White-tailed deer plunged out of roadside thickets and paused in the middle of Lowell Road to stare at oncoming cars. In the open fields Monarch caterpillars inched along milkweed stalks to feed among the fragrant flowers. Cutworms ravaged neglected tomato vines, beetles wandered unchecked among the beans, borers tunneled into fattening ears of corn.

  At the high school the lacrosse field lay quietly waiting for whatever action might be taken by the voters in October. In anticipation of the vote at Town Meeting, tens of thousands of bricks were stacked on pallets in Marlboro. At a cement factory in Chelmsford limestone rattled down chutes to be crushed into powder by steel drums and heated in kilns and cooled and poured into sacks. Screaming saws in Oregon milled logs into clapboards.

  The land itself lay dormant, warm beneath the August sun. The backhoe had a flat tire, and it leaned to one side with feathery heads of grass springing up between the bucket and the hydraulic cylinders. A sweater Jack Markey had torn off his back one broiling July day lay forgotten in the woods. Below the playing field the train roared between Boston and Fitchburg thirty-six times a day. Traffic on Route 2 was perpetual, clogging the highway during morning and evening rush hours. One hot morning a black snake laid a clutch of eggs in the sandy kettle hole where Thoreau had once seen the carcass of a dead horse. Before the day was out a raccoon ate the eggs, only to be killed a moment later on the highway. At once a crow flapped down to examine the crushed furry object on the road.

  Another predator was hard at work in the commercial center of Concord. Mimi Pink was not taking a vacation. Every day she laid cunning traps for the tourists flooding the streets. The homeless people who had disturbed the smooth flow of pedestrian traffic were still missing, and the turnover of merchandise in Mimi’s stores was brisk. People from New Jersey and Michigan and South Carolina and California visited the old North Bridge and Orchard House, then drove back to the Milldam to buy ice cream at Brigham’s and saunter among the gift shops.

  Roger and Marjorie Bland stayed only a week on the island of Nantucket, but they came away refreshed. Driving back to Concord from the airport, they avoided the cluttered center of town and approached Nashawtuc hill by way of Simon Willard Road. Marjorie was nicely tanned. A patch of pink showed under Roger’s thinning yellow hair. His knees were fiery red.

  During the week, tumult had prevailed in the house on Musketaquid Road. Sarah Peel’s friends had made good use of every room. The master bedroom was Doris Harper’s as her own fucking right. Dolores and Christine Marshall slept in the bedchamber belonging to Wally Bland. The three other bedrooms were occupied by Carl Browning, Bobbsie Low, and Almina Ziblow. Bridgie Sorrel slept on the daybed in the family room, and Sarah settled down on the living room sofa. Audrey Beamish and Palmer Nifto shacked up together in Roger’s den.

  “What the hell’s going on in there?” said Doris Harper, staring at their locked door. “What kind of shit is that?”

  But nobody else seemed to mind that Audrey and Palmer were happy.

  The house was a mess. For a while Sarah Peel tried to keep things under control, but it was soon beyond her power to tidy things up. Before long she abandoned the attempt and lived for the moment like the rest of them, giving no thought for the morrow.

  Fortunately Bridgie didn’t disconnect the freezer in order to plug in Marjorie’s blow dryer until they had all gorged themselves on the four gallons of ice cream—chocolate chip and black raspberry and butter pe
can and strawberry swirl. When little Christine dropped a dish of chocolate chip into Roger’s compact-disc player, Dolores did her best to swab it clean, but the player didn’t work very well after that.

  The freezer warmed up so fast that everything thawed before they knew what was happening, but Almina got to work and cooked up a storm with the sirloin roast, the turkey, the leg of lamb, and the six cans of lobster meat. Nobody bothered to clean up the kitchen afterward because Marjorie had an awful lot of dishes, and they just moved on from Lenox to Royal Copenhagen.

  Something crucial happened to the washing machine when the soap powder ran out and Doris Harper did her laundry with bubble bath. The teeming bubbles rose up in airy towers and filled the cellar with frothy foam. After that everybody had to wash their stuff by hand.

  And it didn’t do the dining room table any good when Audrey Beamish dropped a big bottle of perfume on it, the Parfum Shalimar that Palmer had stolen from Mimi Pink.

  In fact, everything was going to hell. But Sarah was content. Her dream of living in the country was fulfilled. She spent hours every day sitting on an overturned bucket, just looking at Pearl. She fed her and watered her and brushed her coat. When Pearl was tormented by flies and stamped her feet and flicked her gray-white hide, Sarah borrowed one of Marjorie’s filmy negligees and draped it over her back.

  Sarah was happy. Pearl was happy. Never again would they be parted.

  The next happiest squatter in the Blands’ house was Palmer Nifto. Not only had Palmer found himself a girlfriend, he was also the best-equipped person among them to exploit the contents of the house. In Roger’s workshop, for instance, he knew how to use the equipment. There were great whanging and screaming noises from the basement. Palmer and Carl Browning tracked sawdust upstairs and down. They soon had the teak and bird’s-eye maple cut up into interesting shapes. Palmer made holes with the drill press and screwed the pieces together into a sort of sculpture.

  And Palmer was the only one who understood Roger’s personal computer. He was delighted with it. Palmer had been a computer hacker in high school, a whiz kid who had sent a virus raging through the files of the Worcester Trust Company. Now he penetrated Roger’s memory bank, and before long he had the key to Roger’s connection with his broker. Inquisitively he ran down the record of all Roger’s recent transactions.