Thoreau at Devil's Perch

by B. B. Oak

  “Sadly, I have no likeness of my father, either,” Adam said.

  “Ah, but you do. All you need do is gaze in a looking glass to see his features. Does not Grandfather Walker claim you are the spitting image of his beloved son?”

  Adam smiled at my attempt at a small jest. “I may look like my father, but I have always felt myself more a Tuttle than a Walker.”

  “Do not let Grandfather hear you say that. He is so proud you followed in his footsteps.”

  “In truth, I do not intend to follow him but to go my own way,” Adam said. “Dr. Silas Walker is of the old school. He still believes in ancient medical theories concerning the body’s humors. If purging doesn’t do the trick, he is ever ready to use his lancet and his leeches.”

  “Oh, those horrid leeches! The memory of them makes me shiver,” I said.“When I was out of sorts as a child, he would fish them out of the big Staffordshire jar in his office and apply them to my limbs.”

  “Gran would give me a dose of some bitter herb concoction to cure my ills, and ’twas then I missed my mother most,” Adam said. “Ma always dosed me with honey from her prized hives.”

  It must comfort Adam that when his mother fell off a high tree branch whilst trying to capture a swarm of wild honeybees, she died instantly. When I think of my own dear mother’s drawn-out, painful death from Consumption, my only comfort is the frail but persistent hope that a spirit as fine as hers must continue forth in some other blessed form.

  Adam and I soon left the little burial ground on the shady knoll and joined the others in Granny Tuttle’s kitchen. As she served up gingerbread and chamomile tea, she asked Mr. Thoreau why he had chosen to get himself carted off to jail last month.

  “I warrant you weren’t fetched up to be a jailbird,” she said.

  “As the bill, so goes the song; as the bird, such the nest,” he replied.

  Granny narrowed her eyes at him. “What sort of flummydiddle talk is that? I should think your Aunt Maria was mortified.”

  “You know my aunt, Mrs. Tuttle?”

  “As a girl I was pretty budge with her. And I know all the Thoreaus to be a fine, honest race. ’Tis no wonder then that I was flabbergasted when I heard one of ’em got hisself arrested.”

  “I preferred that to paying my poll tax,” he said.

  “Look-a-here, son. ’Tis every freeborn man’s duty to pay his taxes. How else can this Great Democracy function?”

  “Now, Gran, don’t get all brustled up about it,” Adam said, falling into her way of speaking as he rocked in the splint-bottomed chair his Grandfather Tuttle had made. “Henry surely had good reasons for refusing to pay the tax.”

  Granny gave one of her sniffs. “I can think of nary a one.”

  “Allow me to give you mine, ma’am,” Thoreau said, courteous as can be. “I was protesting the Mexican War. I will not pay a penny to support an immoral war designed to spread slavery.”

  “I don’t countenance slavery,” she muttered and changed the subject. “Anyways, I hear tell you are now residing in a shanty by some piddling pond, young man.”

  “Call it a shanty if you like, Mrs. Tuttle, but I live in a good plastered and shingled house entirely of my own building.”

  “Well, I should think you would feel mighty lonesome in it.”

  “No more lonely than a loon, ma’am. Nature keeps me company. It is the perennial source of life, is it not?”

  “What are you, a hermit?” Granny countered.

  “I think that I love society as much as most,” Henry replied, but his smile was most ironic.

  “So what do you do all day?” Granny persisted. “Anything useful?”

  “I support myself well enough by the labor of my hands.”

  “I wager yer family made sacrifices to get you a fine Hah-vahd education, young man. What good is it doin’ you?”

  “I still have the leisure for literary pursuits and the study of nature,” he answered. “If a man must have money—and he needs but the smallest amount—the true and independent way to earn it is by day labor. There is no good reason an educated man cannot work with his hands, Mrs. Tuttle.”

  Adam laughed. “Oh, I am certain Gran agrees with you on that score, Henry. Despite my own fine education, she asked me just yesterday to lend a hand with the apple harvest next month, and I would very much like to oblige her.”

  I was sitting in the high-back settle by the great fieldstone fireplace, sketching, and my ears pricked up like an attentive dog’s. Does Adam plan to stay in Plumford after our grandfather has mended after all? Not that such a decision on his part would change my own plans. Then again, what worthwhile plans do I have? Unless I go along with the terms stated in the letter I received yesterday and commence work within the week, I shall lose the portrait commission I had been promised before departing from New York. But how can I leave Plumford before Grandfather is well enough to do without me? I am afraid I shall have to forego the commission.

  Henry got up from the bleached oak table, most likely to avoid further questions from Granny, and strolled over to the fireplace to get a closer look at the old flintlock musket adorning the massive lintel.

  “That was my Great Grandfather Tuttle’s trusty weapon in the War for Independence,” Adam informed him.

  “Does it still fire?”

  “It does indeed,” Granny stated most emphatically. “I recently used it to shoot at a fox sniffin’ around the hen house. Just missed the critter, I regret to say.”

  “Well, I did not regret it,” pretty little Harriet said softly as she poured Adam another cup of tea. (She is always right there to serve him when he is in need of sustenance, I have noted.) “I would be greatly upset to see a wild creature killed.”

  “Then be forewarned to stay away from the Reverend Mr. Upson,” Henry said. “I am sure Miss Bell shall do her best to avoid him after peering into his sack of horrors Monday.”

  I went on drawing in silence, for I saw no reason to tell Mr. Thoreau that I allow Mr. Upson to call on me whenever he begs leave to. How can I be so uncharitable as to refuse a lonely widower such as he?

  “What are you scratching away at so industriously?” Thoreau asked me.

  “I am sketching, not scratching away like some chicken.”

  He left his position by the fireplace to come look over my shoulder. I did not mind, for my sketch was progressing quite well. I had drawn, with perfect perspective, the yawning hearth outfitted with a lug pole, a chain and pulley, and a long crane. A kettle, suspended by a hook from the crane, hung above a small mound of coals. I had managed, with the adroit use of a mere pencil, to make the coals glow.

  “Ah, a study of your cousin,” Henry said.

  Admittedly, Adam was also in the drawing, but well off to the side and sketched in lightly, without any of the attention to detail I had given the fieldstones and brick and cooking implements. He just happened to be in the outer edge of my viewing range, thus I had included him.

  “It is a study of a passing way of life,” I told Henry, perhaps a little primly. “More and more fireplaces are being blocked up and replaced by cooking stoves.”

  “You might consider such a convenience for yourself, Gran,” Adam said to his grandmother. “I would gladly buy and install a stove for you.”

  “You do that, dearie, and I will take a sledge to it, by gory!” she retorted. “There will be no iron monster in my kitchen, saturating the food with poisonous fumes.”

  Adam, not one to argue futilely, went back to sipping his tea. And Henry went back to studying my sketch. “You have talent enough,” he concluded.

  “More than enough,” I said, demonstrating my insufferable lack of modesty concerning my talent.

  “More than enough talent to do what?” Henry asked me.

  “Why, to make my own way in the world. I barely manage to support myself now by giving drawing lessons to silly girls who do not take art seriously. But my goal is to become a well-regarded and gainful portrait painter.”
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  Henry did not seem too impressed by this ambition. He suggested that I apply my talent to botanical drawings rather than portraits of vain people. Nature, he stated, was a greater and more perfect art than any that man—or woman, he hastily added—can produce. I challenged this, of course, claiming art to be the very measure of civilization.

  “It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue,” he allowed. “But it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look. And are we not all sculptors and painters? Our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.”

  “What sort of flummydiddle talk is that?” I asked him, imitating Granny Tuttle.

  He smiled. “At any rate, I am glad to see you are making use of one of my pencils, Miss Bell.”

  I looked down at the Number 4 in my hand. “You are that Thoreau? The one who makes the best drawing pencils in New England?”

  “In the world, I venture to say.” (Like me, he has no false modesty.)

  “Pray why are Thoreau pencils so much better?” I asked him.

  “Because of improvements I saw fit to make in my father’s established process. Such as using clay as a binder for the plumbago, which produces a better lead.”

  “Indeed it does,” I agreed. “Your lead does not smear as others do.Yet it remains exceedingly malleable. And I like that your pencils come in differing gradations of hardness and softness.”

  “Produced by varying the amount of clay in the mixture,” he informed me. “I also invented a grinding machine that collects only the finest particles of the ground graphite. Therefore, the lead has far less grit. We insert it in a hollowed-out cylinder of wood rather than two halves glued together as our competitors do.”

  “Well, Mr. Thoreau, I warrant I shall be a lifelong customer of your excellent pencils.”

  “Allow me to send you a box of them.”

  “Oh, I am afraid I could not afford an entire box.”

  “I am offering them to you as a gift, Miss Bell.”

  Thoreau & Co. pencils are not cheap. In fact, for one such as I, who receives such a meager income, they are very, very dear.

  “That is far too generous a gift for me to accept, Mr. Thoreau,” I said with regret. “We hardly know each other.”

  “Then I will renew my offer when we become better acquainted. Unless, of course, you do not wish to know me better, Miss Bell.”

  Henry Thoreau is such an odd combination of frankness and formality, shyness and boldness, that I confess I am charmed by him. “Of course I wish it,” I replied. “And I wish you to call me Julia.”

  He asked me to call him by his first name too. Thus we are now on easy terms with each other and may be on our way to establishing a true friendship. I would not be so ready to make friends with Henry, however, if Adam did not clearly hold him in high regard. I trust Adam to be a good judge of character. Did he not always know, when we were children, which dogs would bite and which would not?

  ADAM’S JOURNAL

  Thursday, August 6th

  As a physician I heartily subscribe to the notion that men need respite from their daily labors. Vigorous exercise with one’s fellows clears the mind, loosens the ligaments, and assists digestion. I vote a game of town ball a fine means to achieve those healthy ends. This evening’s game on the Green also showed that little reveals a man’s character as clearly as the manner in which he conducts himself at play. I am quite sure Henry would agree with this if nothing else regarding sport.

  Espied him striding down the road from Concord and heading toward the Green as we were loosening our limbs to begin our game. He walked with his usual purposeful air, paying little heed to the men on the playing field, as they shouted and ran and tossed and struck balls all around him. It appeared such activity was beneath his notice. When he reached me, he removed his straw hat and wiped his brow with his neck-kerchief, for the evening was close and the sun still shone through the elms.

  “I have news,” he quietly announced, and drew me away from the other players. “The murdered Negro came from Boston on the cars Sunday last. He sat in the same car as the owner of our gun manufactory and his wife. They remarked that he behaved in a mannerly way, without making eye contact or attempting conversation with them. After stepping down from the car in Concord, he made inquiry with the stationmaster, who gave him directions to Plumford. He spoke to no one else, but he was observed walking over the bridge toward Plumford by the cook at the Middlesex Hotel. He was not seen again till I found him dead.”

  I was most impressed with his report and had to confess that my own inquiries had resulted in nothing at all. No one I had asked in and around town had seen the man or knew anything of him. “I could go to Boston and inquire at the Causeway Street terminal,” I volunteered.

  “I am of the opinion such an inquiry would be futile, Adam, or I would have conducted it myself. Hundreds of travelers a day pass through a busy terminal such as that, and it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack to find one who was there four days ago and recalled our Negro. Henceforward we should concentrate our efforts in Plumford and try to discover who he had come to see here.”

  It was getting on seven, and the men shouted after me to play ball. Henry waved me off, declaring that he would linger awhile and perhaps glean something from the folk milling about.

  A goodly number of townspeople had strolled to the Green as it was a fine evening. Families were grouped around the town pump, waiting for play to commence, and patrons of the Sun Tavern had come out to watch with mugs of ale in their fists. They find these weekly games highly entertaining, for the men who play in them, of all ages and sizes and trades, are both enthusiastic and able. However, I have noticed upon my return that the games are much rougher this summer due to the influence of a few coarse players. Indeed, the fierce competition is so contagious the even Grandfather got swept up in it and hence did himself harm.

  I allow here that before I removed myself to Boston I was the town’s best thrower. I always demur when told so and attribute my results to good fortune, but there is no harm in boasting on these private pages. I have all the required skills, and, in addition, I know all the tricks. A hard and fast rule of town ball is that the thrower must give the striker the chance to hit, the point being to get the ball out into the field so all the players will have opportunity to run, catch, and throw. I try to do a fair job of it and can toss a meaty ball for the striker to take his cut at, but any sensible thrower gives less of a chance to the opposing team’s most powerful strikers. No need to let them knock a ball into the high elms and clear the stakes.

  There is considerable science in making a tricky throw. One must take care, for if the referee behind the striker determines a fair chance was not given by the thrower, he levies a fine of ten cents to be paid on the spot. To avoid such a penalty, I employ high and low speeds and stealthy forms of spin, confounding a strong striker without the referee knowing quite why it is so hard to make a really good knock at bat against me. Does this make me a practitioner of deception or a proponent of smart play? I believe my mates would call me the latter, for the first side to tally a hundred runs is the side that wins, and it is usually the side I am playing on that reaches the century mark first.

  My side of twelve this evening included our blacksmith and butcher, two of the most hale-bodied men in town, but the other side had on its roster several hulking drovers and a former Army sergeant called Rufus Badger, a bellicose lout always ready to participate in any form of mayhem that allowed him to use his fists. Badger is just the sort of man I enjoy confounding. He flailed at my first throw and missed by a rod. My second throw flummoxed him even more, and his lumbering attempt to hit the ball made some bonneted onlookers twitter. He appealed to the referee, who warned me to give the man a meaty ball. So I pitched a ball slow enough for a child to hit. I put a spin on it, however, that broke left as Badger swung, so that his mighty swat only nipped the ball, sending it lamely
toward the first stake. He heaved off toward the stake, and I got to the ball. My intention, of course, was to soak the man for an out, but he veered offline to make hitting him difficult. I allow that such a maneuver was within Badger’s rights, as a striker has no obligation to run straight between stakes. But he went well beyond the rules of good sportsmanship when he leaped over a seated mother and child, making the poor woman shriek in justifiable fear. Without a glance back at them, much less an apology, he lumbered, with all the grace of a dancing bear, toward the sycamore in front of Grandfather’s house. I was in hot pursuit of him, yet managed to observe Julia at the gate, smiling at our manly antics. The air was full of shouts for both Badger and me, and I admit the man showed surprising agility and speed for his bulk. I raced after him, running right between Henry Thoreau and Capt. Gideon Peck. They were having such an intense conversation that neither gave me any notice.

  And that was when I perhaps acted a bit hotly. Badger veered toward the stake. I did the same, and from twenty feet wound up and threw the ball with all my strength. The ball hit him square on a buttock so hard it sounded like the tail of a fifty-pound beaver slapping the water. The crowd roared with laughter, and Badger turned to glare at me. The ball is too light to cause physical harm, but his pride had been gravely wounded. He no doubt now harbors resentment toward me, for that and for what soon followed.

  We changed sides, and during a short interlude I walked over to Henry and Capt. Peck. The combination of the two appeared most combustible. Peck, as a retired Army officer, is a strong and vocal supporter of the Mexican War, and, sure enough, they were arguing about it when I joined them. Although Henry remained calm, Peck’s voice was raised to such a degree that it drew the attention of Sgt. Badger. He came over to his former captain and present employer, towering menacingly over Henry as Peck accused him of being a traitor.

  “Captain,” I said to Peck, “let us save such hot discussion for the tavern. I am sure the Plumford ladies have come out this evening to be entertained by sport, not loud political debate.”