Thoreau at Devil's Perch

by B. B. Oak

  I automatically pointed down the road toward Mr. Beers’s shoe shop. “Pray why is my cousin in need of a constable?” I demanded. “And how do you know who I am? I am sure I have never met you before.” I would not have forgotten such striking features, especially his inordinately large eyes and nose.

  “No, we have never been introduced,” he replied, ignoring my first question and removing his straw hat. His thatch of light brown hair could have used a good trim and combing. “My name is Henry David Thoreau, and I met up with Dr. Walker this morning by the Assabet River. He informed me that his cousin Julia Bell was an artist.” He gestured toward the sketchbook I was clutching to my bosom. “I deduced from the way you hastened to the doctor’s gig with such concern upon your countenance that you were she.” His intonations had a lofty, educated ring, at odds with his countrified appearance. “Dr. Walker also told me you were in possession of a supply of plaster of Paris you might put at my disposal.”

  That Adam would suggest such a thing rather astounded me. “For what purpose?”

  “One that need not concern you, Miss Bell.”

  “On the contrary, anything to do with my cousin concerns me, Mr. Thoreau. And if you want me to give you the plaster, you must tell me why he wants Constable Beers.”

  “The reason may distress you.”

  “You are distressing me far more by keeping me ignorant!”

  “Yes, I believe that I am.” He gave me an appraising look, his orbs like luminous convex lenses. “You seem a stable enough sort,” he concluded. “Therefore I will be frank with you. Dr. Walker and I discovered the corpse of a young black man at the foot of a local cliff he referred to as Devil’s Perch, and I have come to fetch the constable.”

  “But why the plaster of Paris?”

  “To make casts of footprints we observed on the top of the cliff. We believe they were left by the murderer.”

  “The murderer?” I took a step back. My foot landed in a rut in the road, and I stumbled.

  “Hold on if you feel faint,” Mr. Thoreau said, extending his arm toward me.

  Ignoring his offer, I regained my balance and gave him a level look. “I am not in the habit of fainting, I assure you. Tell me more about this murderer.”

  “I have already told you more than your cousin would care to have you know. Now I must go inform the constable. Might I pick up the plaster of Paris upon my return?”

  “Have you ever made casts before, Mr. Thoreau?”

  “No, and I would much appreciate instructions from you before I depart.”

  “Better yet, I will accompany you to Devil’s Perch and make them myself,” I said. “I am proficient at it.”

  “I have no doubt you are. But this is no job for a young lady. Just ready the supplies for me if you please.” After issuing this curt directive, he turned and walked off in the direction of Constable Beers’s shop.

  A short time later he came back to the gig and did not look too surprised to see me waiting in it, reins in hand. Neither did he look too happy about it. “I would prefer that you did not come with me, Miss Bell,” he said.

  “And if I preferred that you did not come with me, Mr. Thoreau,” I countered, “I could have driven myself to Devil’s Perch without you.”

  “So you could have,” he allowed. “I suppose there’s no need to waste time discussing it further.”

  With that, he climbed into the gig so quickly I barely had time to make room for him on the seat. I handed over the reins to him, for in truth I was not sure how to get to Devil’s Perch, much less how to drive a carriage. “Huddup!” he told Napoleon, and off we went. A short time later, after taking a meandering country road and then a narrow cart path that wound round and up a steep hill, we arrived at the top of the cliff. Adam was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is my cousin?” I demanded.

  “He is with the body below,” Mr. Thoreau said. “It would be best if you did not venture to look down there.”

  Ignoring his advice, I alighted from the gig and went as close to the edge of the precipice as I dared to. Looking down from such a great height made my head all swimmy, but I quashed my qualms as my eyes searched for Adam. When I spotted him I felt the urge to cry out to him, but it did not seem fitting to break the almost palpable quietude. Sunlight lay over the scene below like a glaze of varnish, making the river shimmer and Adam’s bared head of auburn hair glow. He was kneeling before the corpse, his broad back blocking my view of it, except for the legs. The sight of the dead man’s boots, shiny as seal skin, made me exceedingly sad.

  I wondered if Adam was praying over the body. I still do. How odd that I do not know what beliefs my cousin holds concerning God and the Afterlife. As close as we were as children, now we are almost strangers. Even so, I feel as though I know Adam to his marrow and always will. He is, after all, my nearest and dearest kin, and nothing can ever change that.

  I left the bluff, and Mr. Thoreau and I unloaded the supplies I had brought: a large bag of gypsum powder, a jug of water, a bowl and mixing spoon, and a small shovel. I then commenced mixing the plaster, stirring the gypsum with water until the composition became as thick as cream, with nary a lump in it.

  “I wager you make excellent pancake batter,” Mr. Thoreau said.

  Had the circumstances been less somber, I would have laughed. “I have no culinary skills whatsoever,” I admitted, carefully pouring the mixture into four footprints. “It will take a while for the plaster to harden.”

  As we waited I attempted to engage Mr. Thoreau in polite conversation. “Where do you reside?” I asked him.

  “By a pond,” he said.

  “You are being very mysterious, Mr. Thoreau.”

  “I do not mean to be.”

  “Then pray tell me the name of this pond of yours.”

  “Walden Pond is not mine, Miss Bell. I do not even own any land surrounding it. I built my cabin on a friend’s woodlot.”

  “I have never heard of Walden Pond,” I said. “Where is it located?”

  “In the township of Concord, only a few miles from the railway depot.”

  “Ah, that I am familiar with. I debarked at the Concord depot less than a fortnight ago,” I said. Mr. Thoreau did not ask me what brought me to the area, but I told him anyway. “When I received a letter from my cousin Adam informing me that our grandfather had been seriously injured, I immediately set forth from New York City to help nurse him. Have you ever been to New York, Mr. Thoreau?”

  “Yes, a few years ago,” he said. “I did not think much of it.”

  “Most people find it a most impressive metropolis. But I am inclined to agree with you. Too much bustle, too little charm. I prefer Paris. Do you know it?”

  He shook his head. “I have never traveled abroad.”

  Since he did not appear to be more than thirty I ventured to say, in perhaps a slightly condescending tone, “Well, you have time enough ahead of you to do so.”

  “But not inclination enough,” he said. “For me, it would be a wretched bargain to accept the proudest Paris in exchange for my native village. As much as I might gain from going abroad, I would lose far more from being away. The sight of a marsh hawk in Concord meadows, for example.”

  Despite his serious expression, I discerned a twinkle in his eye and surmised he was amusing himself by pretending to be more provincial than he actually was. “Whether you are jesting with me or not, Mr. Thoreau, I am disposed to agree with you,” I replied.“I am sure I would have been content to stay in Plumford for the rest of my life if my father had not seen fit to take me away when I was eleven. I have traveled the Continent over the last ten years, on account of Papa being a portrait painter who must go to his subjects, but I have always longed to return to America. So I parted ways with him and removed to New York. I teach art there.”

  “I too have been a teacher,” Thoreau said, but he did not elucidate.

  Weary of asking him questions, I fell silent, much to his relief I am sure. He looked up
to the heavens to follow the flight of an oriole, and I too became captivated by the gorgeous winged creature as it glided past us. Suddenly a gun bellowed, and the bird plunged from the sky, followed by a puff of bright orange and black feathers. I cried out in dismay, and Mr. Thoreau sadly shook his head.

  Shortly, a hunter came up the path, clutching the dead bird in one hand. In the other he held a fowling piece. From his smooth stride, superior height, and tall beaver hat, I recognized him to be the Rev. Mr. Upson. He recognized me in return and hurried forth.

  “I hardly expected to meet up with you here, Miss Bell,” he said, looking from me to the man at my side. His scowl made it clear that he disapproved of finding us alone in such a secluded spot.

  I, in turn, looked disapprovingly at the dead bird Mr. Upson held by its feet. He opened the leather sack hanging from his shoulder, and I saw that it was stuffed with feathery carcasses and furry pelts. I gasped.

  “The necessary means to a noble end,” he told me, adding the oriole to his grisly collection. “I need feathers and fur to make my fishing flies.”

  “You call it noble to slay creatures out of the water to better kill those in it?” Thoreau asked him. They glowered at each other.

  I quickly made introductions and gave the reverend a succinct summation of what had brought us to Devil’s Perch. We then went to the summit’s rim and saw that Adam had been joined by Constable Beers and members of the Coroner’s Jury.

  “I must go testify,” Thoreau said and nimbly clambered down the steep path to join the men below, leaving me alone with Mr. Upson.

  Staring down at the group of men who had collected around the body, he heaved a great sigh. I wondered if he was recalling the day townsmen had formed such a jury to view his beloved wife’s remains. I could not ask him, of course, since he has never spoken of her tragic demise to me during our conversations since my arrival in Plumford. Indeed, I would not even know of Mrs. Upson’s death at the hands of a wretched tramp last summer if Molly had not told me. I glanced up at Mr. Upson’s quite distinguished profile and thought I discerned a tear dampening the outer edge of his eye. My heart went out to him, and I touched the sleeve of his black broadcloth coat to comfort him. He covered my hand with his own and pressed it so hard against his arm that I could feel the heat and muscle of his flesh through the woolen cloth.

  I tugged my hand free from under his and said, “Perhaps your services as a minister could be of use below.”

  He looked at me in disbelief. “Are you suggesting I pray over the body of a Negro?”

  “Is it not your duty as a clergyman to pray for all souls?”

  “Prayer will not help those who have not been chosen,” he said gravely.

  “I am sure God bestows his love on us equally, Mr. Upson.”

  “Indeed God does not,” he replied. But after regarding me most severely for a moment, he offered me a thin smile. “Very well. I will do as you suggest, Miss Bell. My presence will give comfort to the living if not the dead.”

  He went down the same path Thoreau had taken, and I remained where I was. Should I have been so bold as to join the men below, I would have been asked, politely but very firmly, to leave for the same reason I am not allowed to serve on juries. The Female Sex is far too delicate for such profane proceedings, and men are duty born to protect women from the sordid side of life. I would have accomplished nothing by challenging such humbug. Moreover, I had my own job to do right where I was.

  When the casts had set, I took up my shovel, dug them out of the ground, and conveyed them to the back of the gig. My tight bodice hindered my movements, and I rent a seam in the process, but I did not care. That my efforts might help catch a murderer was far more important than a mere tear in my garment.

  After the Coroner’s Jury had disbanded, Adam came up the cliff trail alone. He told me Mr. Thoreau had tramped off to Concord in disgust because the jury’s verdict was Death by Accident and further inquiry was deemed unnecessary.

  “Then we must be the ones to probe further,” I said.

  Adam gave me a look more stern than I have ever seen on his visage. His expression is usually most pleasing, but I did not much care for the stubborn set of his mouth at that moment. I am more accustomed to a smile hovering at the edges of his lips when he turns his attention upon me.

  “You must have nothing more to do with this nasty business, Julia,” he said. “I am very sorry you came here with Thoreau.You should have stayed at home.”

  Well! Since when does my cousin tell me how to properly conduct myself? As children we dealt with each other as equals, but it seems the equation has changed. Have I become a lesser person in his eyes since becoming a full-grown woman?

  “Come now, Lewis, don’t speak to your doughty mate Clark like that,” I said, attempting to cajole him. “Have you forgotten how I held my own when we fought wild dogs and bully boys?”

  His expression remained stony. “This is not a game, Julia.”

  “Nor was that! Leastways not for me. I truly believed we would cross the continent together.”

  “As did I,” he said gruffly. “But I was only a boy and did not know the ways of the world yet. Or the proper place of women in it.”

  “And what is their proper place, pray tell?”

  “Home!” he near shouted back at me.

  I did not argue with him further. Instead, I left him to his glowering ruminations all the way back to town. When he stopped before the front gate to let me out I cautioned him to be careful unloading the casts.

  “The plaster has not yet cured,” I told him. “When it does I will clean off the casts with a wire brush.”

  “I can do that,” he said.

  “But I started the process, and I would like to see it through to completion.”

  “You have already seen too much, Julia.”

  “If you are referring to the body, I barely glimpsed it. Mr. Thoreau told me that the poor soul was a young man of color. What was he doing in Plumford, I wonder?”

  “That is what I intend to find out,” Adam said, still regarding me most austerely. “Without any help from you, I should add.”

  No, he should not have added that. It only made me more determined to stay involved in the investigation.

  ADAM’S JOURNAL

  Monday, August 3rd

  It is near midnight, and the only sound I hear is the scratch of my pen nib. I am tired but sleepless as I puff on my father’s meerschaum pipe. Julia found it on a high shelf in the study a few days ago, amidst a dusty collection of ivory and scrimshaw carvings. The bowl is burnished gold from use, so it must have been one of his favorites, left here in safekeeping when he went to sea for the last time. Sadly, I lost him too young to have any memory of him, but as I regard the visage of Neptune carved into the bowl and the light teeth indentations in the curving amber stem, I conjure up my own image of him. And as I watch the wafting tendrils of smoke rise and curl away, I imagine they connect me in this world to him in the next.

  A sense of disquietude has followed me all afternoon, but I took care to hide it from the patients I attended. As soon as my doctoring duties were done, I headed for Tuttle Farm, hoping to calm my thoughts and lift my spirits with a visit to Gran and then some mild sport. Soon as I stepped into Gran’s kitchen, she remarked that I looked peckish and insisted on frying me up a batch of doughnuts. Ate six of them and, thus fortified, gathered my bow and a sheaf of arrows and walked out into the field in back of the barn. Archery proved to be the right prescription for me. As usual, aiming, drawing, holding, and loosing my arrows, then watching their arched, hissing flight into the coiled grass target made me more tranquil.

  As I was shooting, I was once again taken unawares by Henry Thoreau. How he just appears as if risen from the grass or dropped down from the tree boughs, I know not. He told me he had first stopped at Grandfather’s house and been directed by Julia to the farm.

  “I am delighted to see you practice an aboriginal art,” he said. As he heft
ed and examined my bow, he described at some length his extensive collection of Indian arrowheads as well as tomahawk and war club heads.

  “How did you come by so many relics from the past?” I asked him.

  “Why, I found them.”

  “But where?”

  “Indian artifacts are everywhere hereabouts,” Henry said. He glanced around. “Right here would be a good place to look for them. It’s a perfect site for an Indian camp or village. Level ground. A river nearby that used to be filled with so many salmon they could be caught by hand before white settlers fished it out. And that ancient stand of oaks just yonder would have yielded acorns to attract the deer that thrived here before the white man killed them all off with his musket.”

  He kicked about for a moment or two, then stooped and picked up something. He showed it to me, a black granite arrowhead resting on the calloused bed of his palm.

  “You amaze me, Mr. Thoreau,” I said.

  “As I have many a friend on many a walk,” he replied with a smile. “It is as if I am a magnet drawing the buried remnants of Indian civilization out of the ground. I do not find it so amazing myself, however. I simply look. And the observant eye sees what easily passes unnoticed by most.”

  He inquired about my yew bow, and when I told him it was of English manufacture, he went into a rather lengthy discourse lauding the power and efficiency of an Indian bow over a modern one. He cited one of elm he had seen in a Harvard collection that he had no doubt would outmatch mine in power and accuracy. But despite his disparaging remarks concerning my English bow, he seemed eager enough to give it a try. We paced off a fair distance from the barn, and I shot several arrows so he could grasp the rudiments of proper form. I then showed him how to hold the arrow on the string by using three fingers.