God in Concord

by Jane Langton

  So Homer told Police Chief Flower about the hand he had seen in Gowing’s Swamp. Maybe, he said, it belonged to a man named Peter Harris who was missing from Pond View.

  At first Jimmy Flower pooh-poohed it, but at Homer’s urging he agreed to walk around the corner of the building and speak to the fire chief, because some of the fire fighters were scuba divers. It turned out that the divers were pleased to have an honest-to-God reason for putting on their rubber suits and testing their equipment. But when Homer told them what the problem was, they lost their enthusiasm. And then it took the rest of the afternoon because they had to borrow underwater lighting equipment from Cambridge.

  It wasn’t until late in the day that two divers from the Concord Fire Department eased themselves into the hole in the middle of the quaking bog with a lot of breathing apparatus and submersible lamps and grappling hooks.

  The whole thing was embarrassing. The divers found nothing in Gowing’s Swamp at all, not even a dead horse. Homer was mortified.

  57

  I am stranded at each reflux of the tide …

  Journal, January 17, 1841

  At Pond View the news of Pete Harris’s disappearance ran swiftly from one mobile home to another.

  Charlotte could feel the instantaneous loss of respect. A deserted woman has no dignity. She has been judged and found wanting. She could guess what they were thinking. Pete had run off with somebody else, somebody who appreciated him more than his snobby wife.

  “There, dear,” said Honey Mooney, coming over to comfort her. But there was condescension in Honey’s sympathy, and Charlotte didn’t want it. Instead of falling into Honey’s arms, she turned on the electric broom. It made too much noise for shared intimacies. Honey shrugged and went away. Outside in the driveway she raised her eyebrows at Stu LaDue and rolled her eyes. That Charlotte! You know what she’s like.

  Charlotte gave the whole trailer a thorough cleaning. She scoured the bathroom sink and polished the toaster and washed the windows and emptied the wastebaskets, feeling a little guilty, aware of her own trembling relief that Pete was not there. When all the rooms were sparkling, she took the trash bag across the grass to the two big barrels behind the laundry shack.

  As she tossed her bag into one of the barrels, she looked up to see Julian Snow approaching with his own small bag of rubbish. “Hello, Charlotte,” he said softly. “Has Pete come back?” But Julian was sure he hadn’t.

  Charlotte shook her head and clapped down the lid of the trash can. “Use the other one,” she said curtly. “This one’s full.”

  “Thanks.” Julian wrinkled his nose. “Awful smell.”

  “Yes,” agreed Charlotte, turning away.

  “Oh, Charlotte,” said Julian, his heart going out to her.

  But Charlotte was gone.

  Oh, Lord, why couldn’t they talk to each other? Ever since Julian had seen her half killed by the defective iron cord, his tenderness had magnified. This morning her desperate coolness in the face of disaster was like a match to his fuse. If Charlotte had shrewdly calculated how to work on his feelings, she couldn’t have done a better job.

  But she was not shrewd and calculating. She was merely preserving her self-respect.

  Left to himself, Julian lifted the lid of the empty trash barrel and dropped in his paper bag. Then he looked at the other one. It was part of his routine. Full barrels had to be emptied into the dumpster. None of the other people at Pond View had the willing muscle to do it. If Julian didn’t take care of it, the collection area would overflow with trash, and then the stuff would blow all over the park.

  He took the metal barrel by its two handles, meaning to lift it to his shoulder. But it wouldn’t lift. It was too heavy.

  Julian prided himself on his wiry strength. What was so heavy that he couldn’t lift it? Removing the lid of the trash can, he took out Charlotte’s bag and a couple of other small kitchen trash bags, then turned his face away from the overpowering smell of decay.

  There was only one other bag in the can, a single enormous awkward-looking bundle. Actually it was two bags attached to each other with staples and mailing tape.

  Julian was swept by a feeling of repugnance. The bulky package was folded on itself in a way he didn’t like. With his pocket knife he tore an opening in one end of the bundle and exposed the contents, then turned away with a moan.

  It was Pete Harris, with a hole in the side of his head.

  At once Julian thought of Charlotte—Charlotte, who had told him to use the other trash can; Charlotte, who had been “unhappy as Pete’s wife my whole married life.”

  Quickly Julian picked up the small bags he had tossed on the ground and dropped them back on top of Pete. He didn’t know how Charlotte could have lifted her two-hundred-and-fifty-pound husband into a trash can, but his heart misgave him.

  “Oh, ugh,” said Honey Mooney, coming up behind him. “What’s that smell?”

  “Meat papers, I guess,” said Julian, feeling sick.

  Honey too had a sackful of rubbish to throw away. “Not here,” said Julian, clashing down the lid of the barrel. He lifted the top of the other one. “Here, this one’s empty.”

  “Thanks,” said Honey.

  Julian walked stiffly around the laundry shack, then broke into a run.

  Charlotte seemed surprised to find him at her door. Her freckled face flooded with color as she stood back to let him in.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” said Julian.

  “Well, fine. Come in.”

  Julian sat down on the built-in sofa and looked around. He had always liked Charlotte’s place. It was sensible and neat, comfortable-looking without being crowded. Charlotte settled herself on a chair and looked at him with apparent calm.

  He returned her look keenly. “Where’s Pete?”

  “I don’t know,” said Charlotte steadily.

  “You really don’t know where he is?”

  “He’s been away almost a whole day. I can’t imagine what’s become of him.”

  Julian stood up uneasily. “Have you got a stapler? And some of that heavy tape for sealing packages?”

  Charlotte stood up, too. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  In spite of himself Julian was disarmed. Taking her by the elbows, he lowered her gently to the sofa. “I’m sorry, Charlotte. Pete’s dead.”

  “No, no.” Charlotte shook her head in disbelief. “He can’t be, he can’t be. It isn’t true.”

  “It’s true. He was shot. He’s dead.”

  Charlotte gasped and put her trembling hands to her face as Julian told her what he had found in the trash barrel.

  “What I’m afraid of,” he said huskily, “is they’ll think we had something to do with it. Because of—you know.”

  “Because of my letter.” Charlotte said it bravely, but then she lowered her eyes and began to cry. Her dreadful letter —once again the whole world hung on that single impulsive mistake. The letter had been like a tap on a tiny drum, and now the whole sky echoed it like thunder.

  Charlotte had wanted desperately to be free from Pete, but not like this, never like this. Her tears gushed, bursting the dam of her warring and impossible feelings. She couldn’t stop. Julian sat down beside her and put his arm around her. She leaned against him and sobbed.

  Over her shoulder Julian gazed out the window at the empty trailer that had once belonged to Norman Peck. Nothing was left of Norman now but the prize cup his pug dog had won in days gone by. Norman’s daughter had probably thrown the cup away. Nothing was left of people when they died, nothing at all.

  The woman weeping on his shoulder was mortal, too. Enfolding Charlotte, Julian kissed her hair and murmured her name. Charlotte went right on crying, but she clung to him and said, “Julian, oh, Julian.”

  Stuart LaDue burst in without knocking. “Oh, right,” he shouted, staring at them. “Oh, yeah, wouldn’t you just know. Well, I seen you. Honey told me, she says look in the trash can, I seen it with my own eyes. We already ca
lled the police.”

  Charlotte raised her head from Julian’s shoulder, but Julian held her tightly against him. “Fuck off,” he told Stu. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Stu backed out, still shouting. “I seen you. I’ll tell them I seen you.”

  This time the Concord police had no choice but to take the matter seriously. Homer Kelly’s story about the body in Gowing’s Swamp had been a ridiculous and expensive false alarm, but this was a gruesome actual murder, and no mistake. The fact that the body was soaking wet and dripping with fragments of sphagnum moss was not associated with Homer’s story until later, much later. But within the hour the investigating detective sergeant found a stapler in Charlotte’s possession, one that matched the staples holding together the plastic bags in which Pete’s body had been found. And in one of Julian’s kitchen drawers he uncovered a roll of mailing tape exactly like the tape reinforcing the staples. In another drawer Julian kept a package of trash bags of exactly the right kind.

  Only now did Chief Flower take seriously the possibility that Alice Snow too had been a homicide victim. It was beginning to look very much like a couple of lovers killing off their inconvenient spouses. Seldom had he seen such an open-and-shut case.

  Stu LaDue’s crude evidence was additional proof. “Hugging each other on the sofa,” he said with malicious pleasure. “I seen them.”

  “Is that so?” said the arresting officer, writing it all down.

  Roger Bland heard about the murder of Pete Harris and the arrest of the two suspects on the evening news.

  So there were only five residents left. “And if the two suspects go to jail, that will make three. Think of that! Only three people left in the whole park!”

  “How marvelous!” cried Marjorie.

  58

  Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet

  downward through the mud and slush of opinion

  … till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in

  place, which we can call reality.…

  Walden, “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For”

  Once again Homer Kelly was called upon to arrange bail. This time it was for his two favorite people at Pond View, Charlotte Harris and Julian Snow. By late afternoon he managed to spring them from the same lockup where Sarah Peel and her friends had been incarcerated.

  Afterward Homer and Julian and Charlotte sat in Charlotte’s kitchen and had a couple of drinks apiece and talked the whole thing over. Julian told Homer about the discovery of Pete’s body in the trash can. Charlotte was silent, but after Homer polished off his second whiskey, she smiled at him and said, “Call your wife. Tell her to join us for supper.”

  “Well, thank you very much,” said Homer, heaving himself out of his chair. “She’ll be delighted.”

  Mary was willing, if not delighted, but first she wanted to know where in the hell he had been. Homer explained, and she was mollified. “I’ll be right over. Would Mrs. Harris like some tomatoes from the garden?”

  Charlotte said yes, she certainly would, and Homer sat down again. Then Julian held up one finger and looked at him solemnly. “Listen, there’s something else I’ve been meaning to tell you. Maybe it’s nothing, I don’t know. The other day I was in Honey Mooney’s house because the air conditioner in her bedroom wasn’t working, and I saw something in there. She’s got one of Alice’s lamps.”

  “Honey Mooney? That little round woman?”

  “Right. Well, of course she’s got a bunch of Alice’s other stuff, too. I gave her a couple of things after Alice’s death. But I never gave her the lamp. I mean you couldn’t miss it, it was a flouncy one Alice bought from some catalog.”

  Homer looked at him, uncomprehending. “So Honey stole a lamp. Is that all?”

  Julian looked troubled. “It’s just that it has a heavy round base. I couldn’t help wondering …”

  “I see.” Homer’s face brightened. “You think it might have been used to kill your wife? The round base would fit the round depression on the back of her—” Homer glanced at the bereaved husband and winced at his own clumsiness. “Well, good for you. I never was happy with the idea that she struck her head on the edge of the step.”

  Julian threw out his hands in a helpless gesture. “I haven’t got any idea why Honey would do such a thing, but suppose, just for the heck of it, that she did. And then she was afraid the lamp was all covered with her fingerprints and bits of Alice’s hair and—”

  “I know,” said Homer. “All sorts of microscopic evidence that could be used against her after it was analyzed in some laboratory.”

  “Right. So she took the lamp away from my place to her own house.”

  Homer was baffled. “But why on earth didn’t she get rid of it?”

  “I know why.” Charlotte turned away from the counter with an onion in her hand. “Honey likes pretty things. She couldn’t bear to throw it out. She showed me the curtains you gave her, Julian, and that doll on the wall, and the lamp with the ruffled shade. She said you gave them all to her.”

  “Not the lamp,” said Julian grimly. “It’s funny I didn’t even notice it was missing until the other day when I saw it in Honey’s house.”

  “Wait a minute.” Homer held up a warning finger. “What if Honey bought one just like Alice’s from the same place?”

  Julian shook his head. “No, this is my wife’s lamp all right. Nobody but Alice would decorate the damned thing with artificial flowers. She pinned them all over the lampshade. I remember them particularly, because they really gave me a pain.”

  “You shouldn’t talk that way, Julian,” said Charlotte, but she smiled as she unhooked a frying pan from a rack on the wall.

  “After supper,” said Homer, “you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to pay a call on Mrs. Honey Mooney.”

  59

  What is the singing of birds … compared with the

  voice of one we love?

  Journal, April 30, 1851

  Hope Fry was back in the hammock on the sleeping porch. It was pitch dark on the porch, so dark that the ugly mesh of the black screens was invisible. Low in the western sky she could see the slender crescent of the new moon.

  Across the hall Ananda was moving around. Hope could hear his hurrying footsteps going up and down the stairs again and again.

  She was eager to tell him she had heard the wood thrush singing in Gowing’s Swamp. But she was angry with him for not being at home for the lovely supper she had made with such special care. If he had been too sick to go with them to Gowing’s Swamp this morning, he should have been too sick to go out for supper. He had spent the day with Bonnie Glover, that was obvious. Hope wasn’t about to coo at him about birds, not when she was so cross at him, so disappointed.

  And miserable, just miserable. It wasn’t only that Hope was in love with Ananda Singh. It was something more than that. She was beginning to see the world through Ananda’s eyes. She saw him moving along a path strewn with pine needles, waving aside a swarm of black flies, climbing a hillside lush with ferns, growing to the dimensions of a white oak tree, his arms poised like branches, his hands fingering out into leaves. Oh, what was he doing, running up and down the stairs like that?

  There was a grinding noise outdoors. Hope sat up suddenly, and the hammock nearly dumped her on the floor. She knew that noise. It was Ananda’s car. He was leaving.

  Oh, but she had to talk to him, she had to. She had to tell him about the singing bird and the garden in the swamp. Hope rushed down the back staircase, not stepping on each stair but dropping down in the controlled fall she had learned in childhood.

  Her father was alone in the kitchen. “Oh, where is he going?” cried Hope.

  Oliver Fry looked at her in surprise. “He told me to say good-bye to you.”

  “He hasn’t gone for good?”

  “Well, yes, I guess he has.”

  “But where? Where is he going?” Hope strained at the jammed screen door and jerked it open
.

  Oliver Fry stared at his daughter. “He’s moving in with a roommate. They found a place on Belknap Street.”

  Oh, it was Bonnie, of course it was Bonnie. Ananda was moving in with Bonnie Glover. A lump swelled in Hope’s throat. She cast a desperate glance at her father and ran out of the kitchen. The owl shrieked. The door of the porch banged shut.

  Oliver’s pity went out to his daughter. He wanted her to be happy—one’s children should not be wretched—but her present misery seemed better to him than her former bitter pride.

  Outdoors in the driveway beside the house, Hope stopped short. Ananda’s car was still there. The noisy engine had been turned off. The driver’s seat was empty. In the glow from the kitchen window she could see the suitcase on the front seat, the boxes of books in the back.

  Ananda had been about to drive to Belknap Street, and then he had changed his mind. He was nowhere to be seen. Where was he?

  Hope ran out to the sidewalk and looked left and right. Then she saw him in his long white Indian shirt. He was pumping a bicycle, moving away toward the center of town.

  She followed him. She couldn’t help it. As the narrow moon dropped out of sight behind the houses on Everett Street, Hope began to run after the dim white figure rising and falling on her father’s old bicycle, wheeling slowly in the direction of the Milldam.

  60

  … sometimes it has rained flesh and blood!

  Walden, “Spring”

  The Madwoman of Chaillot was opening in the theater at 51 Walden Street. The first act had been a smash hit. At intermission the audience flowed out into the open air and milled around on the sidewalk in front of the theater, smoking, sipping white wine from plastic cups, grinning at each other, looking conspicuously jolly the way one is supposed to look at such times, happy with an enviable gaiety that makes other people wonder why their own lives are so drab.

  Jo-Jo Field and her husband were there, talking rapturously to Roger and Marjorie Bland. Roger would just as soon have spent the evening at home, because theatrical productions bored him, but Marjorie had explained that he had to be seen by the voters, he had to introduce himself to strangers and be amiable to all and sundry. Besides, lots of these people were probably Harvard grads, too, Marjorie said, and they’d be helping to choose new overseers. So Roger was doing his best to be a hearty good fellow.