The Deserter

by Jane Langton

The surgeon had treated Patient 2070 since his admission to the hospital. When the boy’s sister appeared, he had given her the task of sponging her brother with cool water to reduce the fever.

  Happily the boy now seemed to have passed the crisis, but his sister was in extremis. The surgeon felt utterly helpless. He was used to the groans and screams of wounded men, but Ida’s whimpering unmanned him. He knew all there was to know about battle wounds and the dangerous diseases contracted in crowded campgrounds and airless prisons, but he was unacquainted with female problems. About childbirth he knew nothing at all.

  Of course Ida herself knew a good deal more than the surgeon, having assisted the midwife when her mother had been brought to bed with Alice. But now she was too humble and in too much anguish to make suggestions to Chief Surgeon Alexander Clock.

  Gritting her teeth, she stared at the object in the glass case beside her bed, trying to understand how it worked. The little contraption was a model of Elias Howe’s sewing machine. As her pangs grew worse she forced herself to concentrate on the in-and-out trajectory of the thread. Gasping, she asked the doctor, “Oh, sir, how does it make a loop?”

  But willy-nilly, babies always manage to be born. Shortly after five o’clock that afternoon, Mary Morgan Kelly’s great-grandfather emerged, howling, into the world.

  But not before a tall woman wearing a rusty black bonnet and carrying a large canvas umbrella came storming up the aisle. It was Ida’s mother.

  PART XIX

  THE LAST

  SKEDADDLE OF

  OTIS PIKE?

  THE NEEDLE’S EYE

  It was Gwen on the phone. “You’ll never guess what’s happened. Ebenezer’s back.”

  “Who?” It took Homer a minute to remember. “You mean that crazy cousin of yours? He’s back? Whatever for?”

  “I can’t explain. You’ll have to see for yourself. And hurry up, because he’s about to set out.”

  “Set out? What do you mean, set out?”

  “You’ll see.”

  They went at once. The family homestead, occupied now by Tom Hand and Mary’s sister Gwen, was only three miles away as the crow flies, but Mary and Homer were not crows. For their two-thousand-pound Toyota there was no airy flight from Fair Haven Bay over Adams Woods—sacred to wood thrushes, red-tailed hawks and Henry Thoreau—and over the six lanes of Route 2 and the Concord prison and the Assabet River, and no gentle descent to the grass in front of the old house on Barrett’s Mill Road.

  No, instead of flying they had to bump along the dirt road from Fair Haven Bay to Route 2 and then go right instead of left on the highway in order to make a U-turn at the intersection with Route 126 and head back all the way to the traffic circle where they could at last make the turn onto Barrett’s Mill Road and pull up beside the old family farm.

  Gwen was there on the lawn, and so was Ebenezer. He was, indeed, setting out.

  “Ebenezer, wait,” cried Gwen, running after him, dodging around the U-Haul truck parked in the driveway.

  Homer and Mary leaped out of their car and ran too.

  Ebenezer was a hundred yards ahead of them, striding along the road with a staff in his hand, a bewhiskered pilgrim in shorts and Birkenstocks. When they caught up with him he continued to march steadfastly, staring straight ahead. They had to hurry along beside him like fellow wayfarers to a distant shrine.

  “But listen, Ebenezer,” panted Gwen, “how are you going to live? You can’t abandon everything, not absolutely everything. No, no, wait, I know what you’re going to say about the lilies, how they toil not, neither do they spin, but really, Ebenezer, you’re not a lily.”

  Ebenezer bowled along, his face radiant, his eyes glittering with a saintly light. The jab of his staff in the weedy shoulder of the road was the proclamation of a new life. “Verily I say unto you,” he began, beaming at Homer.

  “Oh no you don’t,” interrupted Homer. ‘You don’t verily say anything to me. For God’s sake, Ebenezer, what are you up to?”

  Ebenezer wasn’t listening. He had been programmed by the little old lady in Gettysburg to obey the parable of the rich young man (Matthew XIX: 1630), and everything else had vanished from his mind. “Oh, my friend,” he babbled to Homer, “why wouldest thou not be perfect?”

  “Because I’m perfect already,” gasped Homer, but he was falling behind.

  “He’s penniless,” said Gwen to Mary as they galloped along together. “They’ll arrest him as a vagrant.” She called back, “Homer, have you got any money?”

  Homer pawed in his pocket and produced a ten-dollar bill. Mary grabbed it and tried to thrust it into Ebenezer’s hand, but he tossed it in the air, bawling something about the needle’s eye and the elephant.

  The ten-dollar bill rose like a butterfly and fluttered back into Homer’s hand. “Elephant?” he said to Mary. “Did he say elephant?”

  “Oh, you know about the elephant, Homer,” said Mary. “It’s easier for an elephant to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

  Gwen dropped back too. “Everybody knows that, Homer. Elephants are even bigger than camels. They simply will not get through that skinny little hole in the needle, no matter how hard they try.”

  The three of them slowed to a stop and watched Ebenezer’s white legs twinkle away in the direction of the traffic circle.

  “They’ll pick him up,” prophesied Gwen. “And then they’ll call us and we’ll have to bring him home and it will be a colossal pain. But first”—Gwen turned briskly and began jogging back along the road—“quick, quick, before he zigzags in some other crazy direction. When he drove up just now, he had all our stuff packed in his U-Haul truck. If we hurry we can get it all back in the attic before he turns up.”

  THE QUESTION MARKS

  Nothing more was heard from Ebenezer. Perhaps on his strange pilgrimage, he had actually stumbled upon the kingdom of Heaven.

  In any case, he did not come back to claim the trash in the back of his U-Haul truck. So that same afternoon the four of them—Gwen and Tom, Mary and Homer—carried every one of Ebenezer’s plastic bags up the two flights of stairs to the attic.

  Here they were soon organized into a threefold system of containers. Mary taped labels on all of them. The first was a set of plastic trash barrels labeled OUT, and the second, SORT. The cardboard boxes for the third category were labeled simply?

  Gwen devoted herself to the SORT trash cans, trying to put back in order the memorabilia of two centuries of family life. Before the original appearance of Cousin Ebenezer everything had been neatly arranged in separate boxes. Now it was a jumble.

  Tom dumped out the contents of Ebenezer’s first bag on the floor. It was a wild miscellany from ages past—an album of scratchy 78s, including Beethoven’s Fifth, a packet of letters from Great-Uncle Bob and Great-Aunt Bea on their trip to Alaska in 1887, a photograph of Grandmother and Grandfather Morgan on camels in front of the Pyramids, ninety-five color slides of Old Faithful and Yellowstone Park, a crumbling wad of newsprint from November 1918—GREAT WAR ENDS—a moldy collection of science fiction paperbacks, a tangle of failed Christmas lights and a plastic Santa.

  While Gwen began her sorting, Tom contributed to the organizational procedure by carrying all the cans marked OUT down to the road to be picked up by the town collection service. When that was done, he was smitten by an unhappy thought about Ebenezer’s U-Haul truck. The cost of its rental must be increasing every day. Since the fool had so devoutly rejected all treasure upon earth, perhaps he had also rejected the bill for the truck.

  Grumpily, Tom drove it to the nearest U-Haul place and learned to his horror that there was no record of any original payment by Ebenezer Flint to the outlet in Washington. He had to pay the whole thing himself with a large check.

  In the meantime, Mary and Homer winnowed and sifted, selected and rejected.

  “All we care about,” said Mary, “is stuff from the 1850s and ’60s.” She held up a shiny pink shell in
scribed Saint Louis Exposition, 1895, and handed it to Gwen.

  In the end they brought all the question marks downstairs in a couple of cardboard boxes. Compared with the amount of stuff going out and all the miscellaneous things to be sorted, the question-mark collection was small.

  But it was crucial.

  THREE STITCHES OF

  DOUBLE CROCHET

  Homer had given his all. He helped Mary bring the question-mark boxes into the house, and then he left for a faculty meeting in Cambridge, complaining as he ran down the porch steps, “I approve of genealogical research on the whole, but ye gods.”

  Mary was happy to carry on by herself. She took out the bundles of papers and letters and spread them on the table. As she noted them down she told herself firmly, These came from the attic. They have nothing to do with Bart and his bloodstained coat and all the rest of his so-called Otis Pike collection.

  She loved making lists. She began with the letters. Some of them looked more interesting than others:

  1. Two letters in lavender envelopes addressed to Mrs. Seth Morgan.

  2. An official-looking letter also addressed to Mrs. Seth Morgan.

  3. Another letter without an envelope—a tender missive beginning My dearest husband and ending Your loving Ida.

  4. A bundle of letters postmarked Washington, D.C., from A. Clock, USA, Asst. Surgeon, addressed to Mrs. Seth Morgan.

  5. Miscellaneous letters from Mrs. Seth Morgan to Mrs. Eudocia Flint and from Mrs. Eudocia Flint to Mrs. Seth Morgan.

  6. Other letters to and from various Flints and Morgans.

  So much for the letters. But there were other papers, as well. Mary began another list:

  1. A printed sheet:

  Order of Exercises for Commencement

  August 30, 1860

  (NOTE Item 8! Literary Disquisition by Seth Morgan)

  2. Farm records for the year 1855—Reckoned with James Luce accts balanc’d to date hereof, sick Cow slaught’d, rec’vd of Samuel Nation 3000 Shingle Nails.

  3. A book, Odes of Horace, Seth Morgan’s name on flyleaf.

  4. A bundle of marriage, birth and death documents, NOT including a death certificate for Seth Morgan.

  5. Five vandalized playbills from theaters in Washington, D.C. (Why do they all have pieces cut out of the middle?)

  6. Pamphlet from the American Tract Society:

  Lost—until by thee restored,

  Comforter Divine!

  There was one other piece of printed matter, but it seemed to belong in the other cardboard box. Mary started a third list, after putting the first item on her head.

  1. Straw Shaker bonnet in terrible condition.

  2. Child’s nightdress (smallgown with embroidered neckline).

  3. Scottish-looking cap.

  4. Tattered silk envelope containing six white handkerchiefs—one with a bloodstained hem!—all of them embroidered in the corner with the initial S.

  The extra piece of printed matter was an 1861 ladies’ magazine called Peterson’s. The word Ida’s had been written on the front, as though the magazine had been handed around among the women of a sewing circle.

  Mary was entranced. Peterson’s was full of elegant fashions for men, women and children, with accompanying pages of patterns. One of the pattern pages had been crisscrossed with penciled squares.

  Mary decided at once that the squares were a means for enlarging the pattern, so that Ida could make the “Knickerbocker Suit for a Boy.”

  Abandoning her lists, she sat down with the magazine, spellbound. There were designs for pillows, bonnets, knitted shoes, pincushions and beaded mats. The dresses had names: “The Clothilde,” “The Etruscan,” “The Polonaise.” There were directions for crocheted edgings: “3 chain,” “3 stitches of double crochet.”

  When Homer walked in, he laughed at the Shaker bonnet and said, “How demure.”

  “It was Ida’s, I’ll bet. Isn’t it sweet?” Mary stood up and showed him the old copy of Peterson’s. “Look at this. She must have made this little suit.”

  “Charming, but I don’t see how it helps. What else have you got?” Homer leaned over the table. “My God, there’s so much. Where do we start?”

  “With these.” Mary picked up the lavender letters. “One for you, one for me.”

  They were the right place to begin.

  DARLING IDA

  Both envelopes were addressed in the same looping hand to “Mrs. Seth Morgan, Concord, Maschu’ts,” but their postmarks were different. One had been mailed from Washington, D.C., the other from Oshawa, Ontario. The postmarked date on the envelope from Washington was sharp and clear: “3 Dec. 1863.” The other was smudged. It was either “12 Feb., 1866,” or “12 Feb., 1868.” The envelope from Ontario had been crudely blackened around the edges as though it contained bad news.

  “Perfume,” said Homer, holding it to his nose.

  “This one, too,” said Mary. “Just a whiff.”

  “You first.”

  Mary struggled with the curlicues of the handwriting in the letter from Washington. “It begins, ‘Darling Ida,’ and it’s signed ‘Lily’ You don’t suppose it’s Lily LeBeau, the gorgeous creature in the tasseled panties?”

  “Could be,” said Homer. “Mine’s from Lily, too. Carry on, what does she say?”

  Mary read her letter aloud, struggling to distinguish the swooping p’s from them’s, and the h’s from the b’s.

  Darling Ida,

  Well dear girl I have yr adresfrom Mizzus Broad who tells me you are safe at home with baby. She says the blessed event ocured in the patent Orfis of all playces because it was one of the hosp’ls you vizited in your ridicolos search for your husband I never was so ashamed in my life it was all because of my Fib when I said he was wounded in battle. Now Ida this is the truth on a stak of Bibles he was ashamed to face you altho I tell him it is no shame because these days the Capt’l is jamful of these sort of Peeple (skeedadlers). You will be Amazed the pres and Wife witnissed the marble Heart the other night. O Ida you shud see y’r bwewtious old friend, I have got me a Zouav jkt all over braid. But there! My little epissel is too long!

  Love, dearest Ida,

  y’rAffec Lily

  Mary looked up, eager to make flabbergasting deductions, but Homer said, “Wait.” He was staring at a newspaper clipping from the other envelope, the one that had been mailed from Oshawa, Ontario. Silently he handed it to her.

  “Oh, dear,” said Mary, reading through it quickly.

  DEATH OF A HERO

  Oshawa, Feb. 1, 1866. Mr. Seth Morgan, 25, unemployed resident of this city, yesterday plunged into the freezing waters of Lake Ontario to rescue 4-year-old Thomasina McFarland, trapped beneath the ice. After lifting the child to safety, Mr. Morgan was unable to extricate himself. This morning his body was pulled from the lake by Engine Company #1 of the Oshawa Municipal Steam Fire Department.

  Though he was a newcomer to Oshawa, we are informed that Mr. Morgan was celebrated in theatrical circles as a dramatist and composer of amusing ditties. Familiar to our readers will be the ballad “Lilybelle.”

  In gratitude for his heroic sacrifice, Mr. Lysander McFarland has contributed to the Fund for Indigent Thespians the sum of 15 dollars.

  “There’s a letter too,” said Homer. Grimly he read it aloud.

  Darling Ida,

  As you can see by the inclosd our dear boy died a hero! I am convoked with tears and greevefor you as well. I leave Oshawa tonight bowndfor city of San Francisco having been ingaged as a dancer by a famous impesario. I don’t think dear Ida you ever saw me in preformance on my toes but I asure you I am now a Star having been hired by the great impisario Theodore DeSanto. Alas to my profond distress I cannot stay for the funeral as mr DiSanto desires me to accompany him at once in his diluxe RR sweet. I will write again from the Wild West!

  Yr loving Lily

  P. S Seth’s pitcher was in the paper I know you will forgive me for keeping it as a tender momentoe.

 
“Bitch,” said Homer.

  The official letter from the War Department was brutal too.

  Dear Madam,

  I regret to notify you of the death in Oshawa, Ontario, of your husband, 1st Lt. Seth Morgan. Since his departure from the service on 3 July, 1863, took place at a time when his regiment was critically engaged, there will be no widow’s pension.

  Brig. General James B. Fry,

  Provost Marshal General

  U. S. War Department,

  Washington, D. C.

  The letters from Assistant Surgeon Clock were more pleasing. The first was a polite inquiry into the well-being of mother and child. The rest were progressively warmer, the last a proposal of marriage.

  FLABBERGASTING

  DEDUCTIONS

  The unraveling of inferences from all of the letters and documents and the making of flabbergasting deductions was instantaneous.

  From the correspondence between Ida and her mother it was clear that Great-Great-Grandmother Ida Morgan, probably seven months pregnant at the time, had rushed to Gettysburg to look for her husband Seth, missing in action.

  Failing to find him, she had traveled to Baltimore and then to Washington.

  Somehow she had tracked her husband down in the theatrical circle of the actress Lily LeBeau, but she had not been permitted to see him—Now Ida this is the truth on a stak of Bibles he was ashamed to face you altho I tell him it is no shame because these days the Capt’l is jamful of these sort of Peeple (skeedadlers).

  It was also a fact that Mother Flint had sent Ida’s brother Eben to find her and bring her home. I know you are a grown woman, wrote Eudocia Flint, but I request nay order you to come home at once.

  Then, failing to find his sister, Eben had joined the army instead.

  In the Patent Office hospital Ida had found him at death’s door. She had stayed to nurse him and then she had at last given birth to her baby in the same hospital—the blessed event ocured in the patent Orfis of all playces.