by Van Reid
“What did he say?” asked Thaddeus’s cousin Ira when the father and son reached the sidewalk. “Does he live alone?” wondered Ira’s wife, Minnie, and half a dozen other queries were registered from the relatives and acquaintances in the crowd gathered outside Mr. Thump’s house.
“He’s a very private man, our Mr. Thump,” said Thaddeus as he and Tim came through the gate, “and we will reciprocate in a likewise manner.”
“You should see the place!” said Tim to Mailon, who had been standing in the rain and looked a little better laundered than sometimes. “He does look just like you, Daddy,” said Tim. “What does reciprocate mean?”
“It means ‘Do unto others as they have done unto you,’ which is a very Biblical phrase and much sought after among Christian people. Good morning, Calvin,” said Thaddeus. Officer Drum was striding up the sidewalk.
“Thaddeus,” said the policeman. “What brings you here?”
“We came to pay our respects for Mr. Thump’s quick action.”
Calvin Drum was on more or less friendly terms with the Sparks, but he never imagined they valued him so. He knew immediately why they would be thankful to Joseph Thump. “Right you should,” he said with a nod. “Gillie would be up to his neck in it if Mr. Thump hadn’t acted as he did.”
“We are quite aware, Calvin, and also pleased that you were unscathed.”
There was something a little backhanded about this, but Calvin Drum had a sense of humor and he grinned with one side of his mouth as he turned into the gate. “I am much obliged,” he said quietly. “Half thought you and Mr. Thump were brothers, for a bit.” He paused then, on the sidewalk, his face screwed up into sudden thought. “You’re not related, are you?”
“We both descend from Adam, I suppose.”
Officer Drum nodded. He marched up to the front door of the house on India Street, put his hat in the crook of his elbow, and swung the knocker.
“Do we?” asked Tim.
Thaddeus patted his son’s shoulder with a high chuckle, saying, “You keep about, Tim. Stop by here now and again and you’ll have reason to reciprocate before you know it.”
“What should I do?”
“You might just hail him a cab or ... well, I don’t know. Something will occur. Trust that it will.”
“Can Mailon help?”
“Yes, if needs be. Pay for some of his meals, I dare say.”
“Should we follow him?”
“Mr. Thump? You might. But remember, he’s a private fellow. The less he knows you’re about, the happier he’ll be.”
The front door to the house opened and Mrs. Wilbur stuck her white head out to inquire who was knocking. Calvin Drum greeted the woman. Thaddeus looked up at the house and thought he could see Mr. Thump standing at a window. There were some interested comments along the sidewalk, and they all waved. After a moment the figure in the window waved back with a small gesture.
Across the street, standing almost behind the trunk of a giant elm, Fuzz Hadley’s boy Jimmy Fain forgot that he was supposed to remain unseen and waved to Mr. Thump, too. He thought for a moment that it was Thaddeus up there, which was confusing since the taverner had come out of the house and gone down the street.
Thump saw Jimmy across the street and included him in his wave. Turning away from the window, he felt peculiar. In hand was the cherished object from his wallet—a small white card upon which a particular signature had been affixed. He considered it now, as he had a thousand times since he first discovered it so mysteriously. In January, he had thought there was the faint aroma of rosewater about it, and though he knew there was no scent left now (if there ever had been any), he held the card beneath his nose, almost in the attitude that a courtier might have taken to kiss a lady’s hand.
9. Letters from the Wide World
Ezra Porch peered narrowly through the upstairs railing to the hall below and blinked. His sharp ears caught the sound of rain at the door. The tall clock ticked just beneath him, but out of sight from where he crouched. Mother Pilican was in the parlor, puttering at something in near silence; Ezra caught only a faint glimmer of sound, a mere suggestion of movement. She might have set an overstuffed pillow onto the sofa, but such was his complete understanding of the house about him that he knew it, even in a lazy drowse.
His eyes widened suddenly and his heart took an irrational leap. The front door opened with a woosh! and he knew it was Dee, who often entered like a gust of wind. Weather puffed in with her, and it was something more than that gentle spring rain poets speak of, yet Dee had only a short wool jacket and a scarf over her head. She shut the door with a thump, pulled off the scarf, brushed some stray drops from her hair, and shook the jacket when she had got it off. She was damp all over but unperturbed.
A bit of dark brown hair had fallen from the bun behind her head and she brushed this behind an ear. “Ezra Porch,” she said, for she had caught sight of him now. He knew his purr could probably be heard in the next room and was not ashamed of himself. He flexed his yellow paws beneath him and almost closed his eyes. “Ezra Porch,” she said, “you got into my wastebasket this morning and strewed paper all over the floor.”
He did close his eyes then. There was nothing that gave him more pleasure than to have Dee scold him.
Mother Pilican could be heard “tut-tutting” in the parlor. “Mr. Porch, what have you been up to?” she said.
“He’s been a naughty boy,” called Dee to her mother. “Where’s Uncle Fale, Mom?”
“He’s out in the barn, dear.”
“There’s a letter here for him.” Dee realized her boots were wet and she made a face. Ezra Porch purred. Dee considered her feet for a moment, then decided to chance her mother’s eyesight.
With her wheelchair pulled up by the parlor fire, Mrs. Pilican was sewing a patch on a pair of Uncle Fale’s trousers. She looked up over her glasses when Dee came in and said, “You’ve let your feet get wet.”
“Yes, Mom,” said Dee. It might be presumed that a thirty-four-year-old woman would know this, but Dee had expected her mother to mention it. The older woman’s eyesight was not keen, but she had put two and two together, so to speak. Dee had never been one to hurry in from the rain.
Dee looked handsome, if not beautiful, in her white blouse and tartan skirt of blue and green. She had a large cast to her features that had not drawn suitors, though there was a presence to her otherwise, in the physical sense, that other women might have envied. She was perhaps as comely as she had ever been as she neared middle age, and Mrs. Pilican knew that even the young minister at the Methodist church was pleased (in a not entirely ministerial way) to shake Dee’s hand after services of a Sunday.
“It’s taken the men here these thirty-odd years to see her,” Dee’s Uncle Fale had said to his sister only a few days before.
“They’re all head down at their labor,” Mrs. Pilican had replied.
“I was much the same,” he admitted. “If she had been in the wide world she’d have married a count or a duke or something.” Fale Field himself had not been in the wide world for many years, but he gleaned what he could from the newspapers and magazines.
Mrs. Pilican had smiled down at her own work. “I don’t suppose Portland counts for the wide world these days,” she said. The old woman had come from Portland, many years ago, but hardly remembered it now, past the greater events of her life. The thought had made her sigh, though, for in another month or so Dee would be summering, as she always did, in the city.
“Something from Mr. Siegfried,” said Dee. She had been to the post office and carried two or three envelopes and a magazine.
“Oh?” Mrs. Pilican was pleased. There would be a royalty check against her latest work, but what she most looked forward to was Mr. Siegfried’s accompanying letter, which was always courtly and old-fashioned. She took the envelope from her daughter and considered the elegant handwriting.
Dee settled into the captain’s chair on the other side of the room. An issue o
f St. Nicholas magazine dropped from her lap and fell open, and when she picked it up, something on the contents page caught her eye; she wasn’t even sure what it was until she opened the periodical again and found the title The Mystery Behind the Myth of Persephone. It was a children’s journal, despite this profound article; the Pilicans still subscribed, though Dee and her siblings were long grown and, save for Dee, scattered by work and fate, and though Mrs. Deborah Pilican seldom wrote for the magazine anymore.
“My, it’s a day for letters,” said Dee. “Teddy and Bill,” she said, holding up the envelope.
“They’ll be here next month,” said Mother Pilican. Life was a mixed blessing: Teddy and Bill (her niece and nephew Theodora and William Field) would arrive for the summer and Dee would leave a week or so later.
The sound of hooves on the main street of Dresden Mills gave Dee reason to look up from the letter in her hand and peer out the window across the room. A horse and carriage clopped by in the mud and rain. She always liked to imagine where people were going. “Dr. O’Hanrahan,” she said.
“Mrs. Beal is due,” said her mother.
A door at the back of the little Cape shut and Uncle Fale strode in.
“The Grand Army of the Republic calls again, Uncle Fale,” said Dee. She handed him the third envelope.
“Thirty-two years this month,” he said. He thanked his niece, retrieved a pipe from the mantle, and sat down with the news from the G.A.R. that was sent out to veterans four times a year.
Mrs. Pilican opened her letter from Mr. Siegfried. He asked after her and those close to her with all best wishes and compliments. She remembered meeting him and all the fuss they’d made and how gracious he had been. It had only been that once, but she imagined she knew him well. Only after she had read the short letter two or three times over did she think to look at the check that accompanied it. “Oh, my!” she said aloud. “Mrs. Babbington is doing quite well.”
“And you thought she was overwrought,” said Dee.
Mrs. Pilican laughed. “I gave her reason, I suppose. I am trying to be nicer to Melanie Bright. I may use my own name for this one.” Deborah Pilican liked to alternate her pen names, since she was a swift writer. She had grown fond of these alter egos, and the author of The Misery of Millicent Babbington, known to the world as Mrs. Rudolpha Limington Harold, was an especial favorite since she was the smallest bit scandalous.
Dee shivered suddenly. She brushed at the damp on her sleeve.
“Out without your rain gear again,” said Uncle Fale, nodding toward her wet hair.
“It wasn’t raining very much when I left,” she said, which was a reply that had been heard before today.
“There’s not much to a snowstorm when the first flake falls,” he countered, and this had been heard before as well.
“I will get the slicks out next time,” she said. It might have been a conversation two weeks ago—or twenty years.
Uncle Fale chuckled. The idea of Dee in anything so cautionary as a slicker amused him. “Maybe in a hurricane,” he thought aloud.
The rain chose this moment to rattle the window behind him.
“It’s not too early for tea, is it?” wondered Dee’s mother.
“I’ll get it,” said Dee.
“No, you come over by the fire and rehearse Teddy and Bill’s letter. I’ll get the tea, and then you read their news to me. Toast and jam?”
Dee and Uncle Fale agreed to this plan, and Mrs. Pilican wheeled herself into the kitchen. Dee stood before the hearth and read the letter.
There was the sound of padding down the carpeted stairs and Ezra Porch appeared from the hall. He almost fell over, nuzzling the doorpost, then he let out a birdlike chirrup and went over to Dee. She let him rub against her skirts for a moment before she sat and pulled him onto her lap.
She shivered again and thought of Persephone, rising every spring and returning every fall. How very unlike the Underworld was Dresden, Maine, which Dee loved and lived in for nine months of the year; but how very much like Persephone she felt when July drew close and she left for Portland. How very much she loved her mother and her uncle, how very satisfied to be a doting daughter and niece for three-quarters of her life, and how very much she looked forward to becoming someone else when she spent her summers away.
Last night she dreamt that she was flying, and even now she could close her eyes and recall the effortless sensation, the darkness of town, the night forest rushing beneath. She stroked Ezra Porch, and the yellow cat rumbled in her lap. Like all animals, he was mad for Dee, though her attentions were often delivered without conscious motive. She was drawn to stroke his back even as the wind was to ruffle the oak tree before the house.
Uncle Fale watched her. He had seen Dee “disappear” like this a thousand times. She had only to stroke a eat’s fur, or a horse’s muzzle, and an odd expression came over her—something between happiness and loss. “Errol Rusting died,” said Uncle Fale.
“Oh?” Dee came out of her trance.
“Last Christmas Day.”
“Oh, dear,” said Dee. “I am sorry. Did you know him well?”
“Not at all, dear,” he said. “But we fought against him and his Georgians back in “63. He was a canny soldier and a grand gentleman.” Uncle Fale looked up from his letter, but he was lost in the past.
Dee stroked the eat’s silky back. In her silence, she slipped forward again, toward summer, so imbued now with her dream of flight.
10. Not Quite Good-bye
As the train pulled into Brunswick, Mister Walton gazed from the window with the sort of interest that can only be aroused by prior experience. The town of Brunswick has come in for its share of significance in the history of the Moosepath League, and by the spring of 1897 it had already provided the backdrop for an auspicious meeting that led to a gun battle upon the Sheepscott River and the rescue of a child, and also for the first (but not the last) Moosepathian attendance at the elusive Merrymeeting Tavern.
Pulling into Brunswick Station, it was natural that Mister Walton would see in the broad main street and the handsome white homes leading toward Bowdoin College a possibility of adventure (with rain to add a sense of mystery), and that the impish glint he and Sundry had spoken of the previous night would be evident in his bespectacled eyes. The expression made Phileda smile, though she would be quitting Toby’s company for several days now. He let out a sigh that belied his fascination.
As for Sundry, he was of a thoughtful mein these last miles.
The interior of the train darkened as it chuffed to a halt beside the station house. The rain at the windows increased. Steam and mist mingled on the platform, and the conductor waited beneath an umbrella while people got off. Phileda came out with Mister Walton despite his protests.
“I won’t melt,” she insisted. They watched two or three men board the train while Sundry claimed the baggage. Phileda touched Mister Walton’s cheek with her gloved hand. “I am quite jealous of Sundry’s uncle just now, meeting you for the first time.”
“He hasn’t had to put up with me these past few months,” he said with a smile on his face.
She smiled wryly and narrowed one eye at him. “That’s not what I meant,” she said. He must know this, of course, but she was learning that sometimes it profits one to be sure.
“I know,” he said simply.
Then she undid one of his coat buttons, simply so that she could button it again. When she was done she brushed at her work. Something filled her when she looked back at him. “We must talk when I get back,” she said, and the look upon her face needed no further explanation or assurance.
Toby nodded. Something had filled him as well, and he sighed.
“The June Ball, then?” she said.
“Yes,” he replied, which syllable used about all the air left in him.
Then she kissed him softly and gave him one more glance that would have done a flirtatious schoolgirl proud. She exchanged a wave with Sundry, who was hurrying the bag
s inside. When she was in her seat again, she pulled down her window and said to Mister Walton, who was standing below, “You’re being rained on.”
He was indeed, with his homburg in hand, his overcoat damp, and his bald pate shiny. “I am impervious,” he said contentedly.
“You’ll catch a cold,” she replied with mock severity.
“All aboard!” called out the conductor as he strode the length of the platform. The litany of stops tumbled out of him like a chant. He glanced from Mister Walton’s hat to the pleasant face of Phileda McCannon at the window. “I met my wife on the train,” said the conductor.
“Did you?” Mister Walton had not taken his eyes from Phileda.
“She was the engineer’s daughter. There was a carload of us coming home just after Appomattox, and she was with some girls who sang patriotic songs for us on the stretch from Belfast to Bangor. I struck up some talk with her when they were done, thinking I might impress her in my uniform, but she hardly noticed me till I fell into a rhododendron outside Bangor station.”
“It is an unusual form of courtship,” said Mister Walton mildly.
“Her father liked it, too,” said the conductor, then he shouted, “All aboard!” He climbed the nearest steps, held the rail, and leaned out to see if any straggling passengers were hurrying to make his train.
“What was he saying?” asked Phileda, who did not fear the appearance of curiosity.
“He met his wife on the train,” called Mister Walton.
She mouthed an O, then said, “Was he the conductor, then?”
“No, but he fell into a rhododendron.” Mister Walton smiled up at her, and added, "It made her laugh, too, evidently.”
Phileda sat back in her seat, face forward, almost as if something shy had come over her. Mister Walton was thankful for this brief moment to watch her with impunity.