by Van Reid
The officer considered the four men—Thump in the clothes of Thaddeus Q. Spark, Ephram and Eagleton in the togs of well-to-do gentlemen, and Jasper Packet in near rags. “You had better move along,” he said quietly.
“Dresden Mills!” said Eagleton, suddenly bringing the club’s collective mind back to their principal objective. He piloted the way up James Street with Ephram and Thump close behind. It seemed very natural that Jasper Packet should accompany them, which he did, waving back at the officer who watched them dwindle with the sidewalk traffic.
“So that man you indicated was not after you,” said Ephram, wanting to be clear on this subject.
Jasper Packet let out a short laugh. “I wouldn’t have been pawing after Sparky for protection if he had!”
“But this money?” said Ephram.
“Yes?” said Mr. Packet.
“You took it from Mr. Spark’s person,” said Ephram. They had stopped again on the sidewalk.
“Yes?” said the ragged man. “What? You’re not thinking of giving it back to him?”
“But he was owed five dollars,” said Ephram.
“Go ahead,” said Jasper. He looked grim. “Go catch him up. Maybe you can help him throw an old woman out of her house, or take the last piece of bread out of some kid’s mouth.”
The Moosepathians were horrified. Their mouths hung open and they gaped at one another. “We will follow this up,” said Ephram, “when we return to make things right with Mr. Siegfried.”
“Yes, Ephram,” said Eagleton. “Very good.”
They recommenced their progress down the street with Jasper in tow. Ephram gripped the money in his hands, and on the way to Bangor’s South Station, he threw it into the collection bucket of a Salvation Army sergeant.
“I am feeling a little peckish,” said Ephram.
“Hungry, are you?” said Jasper Packet, taking the lead. “We can do something about that,” and he began to sing:
“‘Turnips and taters and carrots for stew,
And dumplings and brisket will be in there, too;
Apples with nutmeg cooked up in a pie,
And heapings of hot-bread as tall as your eye!
Oooh! The goose is stuffing!
Oooh! The plum is duffing!
Gather round the table, gents, for so the vittles go!
Onions and scallions and sizzled up trout,
Sweet stuff and hard stuff to bring on the gout;
All you can eat is all you can get,
When Maudie’s done cooking and table is set!
Oooh! The turkey’s dressing!
Oooh! The waters cressing!
Gather round the tables, gents, for so the vittles go!’”
In the midst of this rendition, Jasper Packet marched to the fore of their little procession, delighting them with his stouthearted baritone and conjuring visions (which were, alas, visions only) of grand repasts with his verse.
36. Five Tins of Tecumseh
“Drat!” said Deborah Pilican. Her right hand was aching from gripping the pen so long. Well, I was in the midst of a gripping scene, she thought wryly as she tried to shake the pain from her old knuckles.
Fale’s voice came from the kitchen. “Is it my sister I hear begetting such language?” He’d been banging at something in there, and she was half curious to know what he was up to.
“Yes, it is,” said old Mrs. Pilican. She sounded about equal parts irritated and amused, but not very contrite.
“I wouldn’t put that in your next book, if I were you,” called Fale. “You’ll consternate your readers.”
“It’s my hand,” said Mrs. Pilican. She rubbed her swollen knuckles.
Fale came through the pantry and stood in the doorway. He was three years her senior and subject to his own bouts of rheumatism; it was not like Deborah Pilican to complain, however, and he viewed her with concern.
“And my handwriting!” she exclaimed, before looking up and seeing him. “These days it looks worse than hen scratch!”
“Maybe Dr. O’Hanrahan has something for it,” he ventured.
“Something to put me to sleep,” she replied tartly.
He made a short, low sound—sort of a chuckle—and said, “Old Dad used to use the hot wax treatment,” more by way of reminiscence than advice.
“I don’t remember.”
“Many’s the cold morning he stood out at the backdoor with a lighted candle dripping hot wax over his hands. I used to watch him from my window, wondering what he was up to. He saw me once and called me down, whereupon he lectured me on the power of hot wax and how he got it from his grandfather—Old Stout Paul, he used to talk about—who’d come over from Bristol.”
“It sounds painful,” said Deborah.
“That’s what I thought. I told him it was like pinching yourself to stop a toothache, and he drove me off.”
The image made Deborah laugh.
Deborah Ann Field Pilican was a button of a person, no bigger than a kitten when she was born (her father had claimed) and struck with poliomyelitis (as the affliction would later be termed) when she was nine years old. She had been sent to the country—the village of Albion—where her mother’s cousins might watch over her recuperation in the country air. Her mother died before she came home, and she was more or less adopted by her relatives, making occasional trips to Portland to see her father and siblings.
The young Miss Field regained her feet, after many months, through much struggle and heartache. The doctors had said she would never walk again, but Cousin Deborah, for whom she’d been named, wouldn’t hear of it. The girl became a young woman, limping only slightly when she met Judd Pilican at the harvest fair; she had regained her feet as a child only to be swept off them as a woman. She and Judd were married, and he took her to Dresden, where he built and repaired wagons, mended harness, and assayed related work among the locals. There were five children, four of whom survived an epidemic of influenza twenty-nine years ago. The lost child, their next to youngest, was up in the cemetery with Judd, who had also succumbed to the disease.
That was 1868, the year of the epidemic; her brother Fale had been home in Portland for three years, following his service in the Union Army, but he had yet to settle upon a steady trade. He had always been something of a dreamer, and though the grimness of war had not entirely changed him he came north to Dresden and struggled with his late brother-in-law’s trade till he nearly mastered it. Sticktoitiveness and the tolerance of local farmers for sometimes rough work, carried the family through lean years.
Deborah’s old sickness revisited her, and without her Cousin Deborah or her beloved Judd for inspiration and devotion she eventually lost her ability to walk. For years now she had lived in this house and in this wheelchair. For almost as long she had been writing—first for the local newspaper and then the Ladies’ Home Journal and the Country Gentleman, and finally for Siegfried and Son, in the guise of nine different pen names and, until recently, for the St. Nicholas magazine for children.
Deborah never tired of her work; each book was, if not like a child, then like a well-loved pet. Her pseudonyms had taken on lives of their own, too, so that she imagined Mrs. Alvina Plesock Dentin to be patrician, highly starched, with large teeth. Mrs. Rudolpha Limington Harold had a gorgeous mane of dark hair (not unlike Dee’s) and an evocative look in her eyes. Mr. Wilmington Edward Northstrophe had been one of her favorite disguises; a man could say things (or write them) that a woman never could. Mr. Northstrophe (she imagined) was a world traveler, dismissive of his own work, and wealthy enough so that it represented nothing more than a means to amuse himself between his jaunts to the wilder borders of the known world and beyond.
She sometimes talked to her family about these personages as if they were real women (and one man); to other folk in the village she rarely said a thing about her writing. Most people in Dresden hardly guessed that she had so many names. It was all something more than a lark, having kept her family in comfort for many years now, bu
t she hoped also that she thought of her writing (just a little) in the manner of Mr. Northstrophe.
Once, when being castigated for telling a fib, five-year-old Dee had scrunched up her face and asked her mother, “Why don’t you tell the truth about who you are?”
Deborah had been astonished at first but quickly recovered herself and promised Dee that someday she would reveal herself to the world.
“Oh,” Dee had said, and it was her turn to be astonished, “I don’t think you should do that!“
Deborah thought of this conversation rather often these days while she considered using her own name beneath a title for the first time. Thinking of Dee’s amazed expression made her laugh, and the laughter made the pain in her hand diminish. She flexed it to be sure of this interesting phenomenon; it was not the first time she had experienced it.
“You want me to get you a candle?” asked Fale, who looked half serious.
“No. But if I wasn’t almost sixty-eight years old, I’d teach myself to write with my other hand.”
Fale grunted. “That Stockbridge boy out by the corner throws a ball left hand and bats from the right.”
For some reason, this made her laugh again. “Where’s Dee?” she asked. Mother Pilican had been so in the grip of her writing that she hadn’t the slightest notion where her daughter was.
“She’s up the neighbor’s,” said Fale, “explaining what that cat of hers was doing chasing their dog.”
“The poor dog,” said Deborah. “It must embarrass him terribly.”
“Don’t worry,” said her brother, not forgetting their original subject. “No one but me heard you swear.”
Deborah was about to protest against this accusation when Dee came bustling in. She held Ezra Porch a little carelessly in the crook of one elbow. “I don’t know how Mrs. Burns knows who was chasing whom, when they were going around in circles!” she said, even before the door was closed.
“Dee!” said Mother Pilican. “She might hear you!”
Dee didn’t seem to think it was likely. She set the cat down in the hall and he slunk upstairs. “Are you feeling well?” she asked her mother.
“What?” said the old woman. “I’m fine.”
“You’re looking peaked.”
Mother Pilican waved a hand, but it ached when she did.
“Your mother’s been swearing,” said Fale with a straight face.
“She has?” said Dee. Uncle Fale’s mock solemnity made her laugh.
“Go on with you,” said Deborah.
“She said ‘Drat,’” he informed his niece.
Dee laughed again, but something else followed close on the heals of her amusement. “Is your rheumatism bothering you again?” She came up to her mother and took the delicate, knob-jointed hand in her own. She gently pressed her mother’s old knuckles, then rubbed them. “You remember what Dr. O’Hanrahan said about the farmer with rheumatism in his shoulder?”
“I’m not a farmer,” said Mother Pilican.
“A day’s scything will aggravate it.”
“I’m not going to do any scything.” The old woman waggled her hand experimentally. “Fale thinks I should drip hot wax on it.”
“Ouch,” said Dee. “Wouldn’t a bowl of warm water do as nicely?”
“He thinks you have to pinch yourself to get rid of a toothache.”
Dee didn’t entirely follow it all, but she was used to this sort of roundabout between her mother and her uncle; they were as close as brother and sister could be, though they liked to tease one another. “If you want me to stay home this summer, Mom—” Dee began, lending a surprisingly serious note to the proceedings.
“Not go to Portland?” said Deborah. “You look forward to it all year!”
“I can go to Portland anytime, but if you’re not feeling well—”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Deborah. “I’m fine!”
“It’s just Portland.”
“Don’t be silly. You spend most the year doing for Fale and me. Your cousins will be here, and I’m fine.” Dee had the healing touch, it seemed, for Dorothy’s hand didn’t ache while her daughter rubbed it. The old woman would never have said as much, however, as this would have given Dee more reason to consider staying.
Fale only shrugged when Dee appealed to him with a look.
They were suddenly aware of a skittering from upstairs. Fale squinted up at the air register that communicated to Dee’s bedroom. A dark form shot past his line of sight and there was a renewed scuffle.
“What is that cat up to now?” declared Dee, and she hurried up the stairs. Soon they could hear her scolding Mr. Porch as she marched across the floor above. Fale laughed quietly.
Mother Pilican shook herself from a brief reverie and turned back to her work, marveling at the vanished pain in her hand. She considered the page before her, half filled with handsome letters (no matter that she thought her handwriting had failed). She couldn’t remember where she had left off and read a paragraph twice without taking it in. Fale was back in the kitchen, banging at something, and she hadn’t thought to ask him what he was up to.
Of course she would have liked nothing more than to have Dee stay home. Mother Pilican’s other surviving children had scattered to the winds, one as far as Ohio, and she knew that she might not see any of them again, though they were dutiful when it came to writing.
She wondered (and not for the first time) what Dee did during her summers in Portland. Dee wrote when she was away, and her letters were filled with the day-to-day incidents of city life, with friends and social events; but Deborah had suspected for a long time that something else lurked beneath or beyond the safe and homespun prose of her daughter’s correspondence—or perhaps the old woman had simply been writing romantic notions too long.
Traffic was not exactly rare along the main street of Dresden, but outside of certain regular hours—often representing the arrival of the mail or the stage—the sound of a horse and carriage brought people’s heads up. Living so close to the road, the Pilican house was privy to every rider or set of wheels that trundled past, and Mother Pilican was still thinking about Dee when she heard the clop of hooves and the jingle of harness not only nearing the house, but pulling up before it.
“Who’s that?” she wondered. From her chair, she peered through the window and the stand of lilacs beyond but could only see that a rig had pulled up at the gate. “Someone’s here,” she said.
Fale came out from the kitchen again. He had an old bucket in his hand, and still Mother Pilican hadn’t a notion what he was doing.
“Is someone here?” Dee was saying as she sailed down the stairs. There was a knock on the door when she reached the downstairs carpet, and for some reason they were all startled. Dee pulled the door open, which in turn startled the man who was standing there with his hand raised to knock again.
“Oh,” he said.
“Oh,” said Dee.
“Good morning,” came the man’s voice. “I was on my way to Pittston.”
“Olin,” said Dee simply. Her hand went up to the back of her head, as if to test how wild her hair had gotten since she got up this morning. It was indeed a little disorderly and entirely pleasing in a windblown manner. Dee had stepped backward, more as an act of retreat than actually inviting the man inside, but he entered the hall and saw Mrs. Pilican and old Fale Field.
“Good morning,” said Olin Bell, and they exchanged pleasantries. “I was on my way to Pittston,” he repeated. “A fellow up there owes me for a cow, and he’s got a plow he’lllet me have.” This explanation suddenly shifted its focus to Dee, who looked perplexed and wide-eyed. “You said you hadn’t gone for a drive in some time, and though it’s a wagon and not a carriage I thought you still might like to—”
“Oh, thank you, Olin,” Dee interrupted before he was caught without anything more to say. “But I don’t think today—”
Olin was nodding almost before she began. He lifted his hat, as if to say good-bye and shifted his
feet.
“I’ve gotten so behind in my—” Dee continued, adding one unfinished sentence to another.
It was his turn to speak before she ran out of something to say. ”Just thought, as I was passing by—” Olin said. He was red to the ears.
“You know, Dee,” said Uncle Fale, “old McGoon up to his general store stocks my Tecumseh shag.” This was Fale’s favorite pipe tobacco, and he often complained that the local grocer couldn’t find it in his heart to carry it. “If you did go up, I’d be obliged were you to buy me a tin or two.”
“Oh, well—” said Dee. Uncle Fale had put her in something of a bind, and she looked a little helpless. It was clear, however, that she wouldn’t fail the old man.
“I’ll pick it up for you, Mr. Field,” said Olin. “I’ll be going right by McGoon’s.” He said this with an easy sort of expression on his face and a nod to Dee. “Can I get anything else for you?”
Quite without thinking, Dee put her hand on Olin’s arm. “No, Olin,” she said, “I’d like to go.”
“What?” he said. “No, really, it’s no problem at all. I’ll step into McGoon’s for a tonic and a little gossip, anyway.”
“No, Olin,” said Dee again, with quite a different emphasis. “I would like to go.” She touched his arm again and smiled.
If Olin’s ears could get any redder, they did. The older folk in the parlor relaxed, and there was a collective breath before Dee asked the blond farmer to wait a moment. She had an odd expression on her face as she hurried up the stairs. Olin stood in the hall with his hat in hand, shifting his feet. Fale said something about the weather, and Olin seemed to agree with him without really thinking about it.
“It’s a beautiful day for a ride,” said Mother Pilican.
“I hope so,” said Olin. “Mr. Mooney says rain is coming back, but not till late tonight.”
“It’s going to be a fine day,” assured Fale.
Dee came back down more quickly than any of them had expected. She had a pretty shawl around her shoulders, and was still in the process of pinning her hair back, which matter most women would have finished in private. There was nothing studied or premeditated in her behavior—it was just Dee; but this small domestic and very female sort of activity appeared to strike Olin Bell firmly.