The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  “Will you be having your dinner here tonight?” Dorothea asked.

  “I will.” The inn was a cross between a full-service hotel and a bed-and-breakfast. The kitchen prepared a meal each evening, and Dorothea did her best to get a head count on who would and wouldn’t be eating. Waste not, want not.

  “Hettie’s making chowder.” She pushed her mob cap off her forehead. “A good dish for a cold night. Shall I have some extra blankets brought around?”

  “I’ll pick up a couple after dinner.”

  “Would you like Patrick to lay a fire for you?”

  I considered. “Yes. That would be nice.” I often wrote and read into the wee hours, and a blaze would be cheerful company. The fire would help chase away the morbid thoughts that sometimes dogged me. I couldn’t afford to waste time to the inertia of depression. Besides, the trip to the woodshed on a dark night made me uncomfortable. I’d escaped the Cahill Curse, but my imagination was my own worst enemy. Sometimes it caught me by surprise.

  While dinner was being prepared, I started out for the cabin. It was older than the inn, which was saying something. Caulked with mud in the old style, it was snug and perfect for me. A fair distance from the inn and roadway, the log structure sat back in woods that crowded close to the narrow lane. On sunny days, I enjoyed the multitude of hues in the trunks of the quaking aspen, yellow birch, maples, and a scattering of oaks, red and black. The trees were slender but numerous and, even without leaves, created a place of shadow, especially on an overcast, leaden day. The path took a turn and the inn disappeared behind me. I faced a wall of woods, silvery trunks blending into black. So different from the green of Kentucky, where even in winter something alive could be found. I kept walking, uneasy due to my foolish fancy that the woods closed in behind me. An active imagination was a bane, and mine was more active than most. Growing up, I’d imagined all sorts of impossible things.

  As I used my key to open the door, the first snowflake drifted onto my mittened hand. Large and fluffy, it was a tiny speck of perfection. The gray sky’s promised snow had arrived. I paused at the door to watch the flakes thicken in the air. I loved the way snow wrapped around a place and snuggled it into silence. It would be a good night.

  Stepping into the cabin, I caught movement at the edge of my vision. Something larger than a fox or dog. I stopped. I wasn’t afraid, but I was wary. The forest surrounded the cabin on three sides, and the path that led to the inn had been empty when I traveled it.

  “Who’s there?” I spoke firmly.

  The wind was my only answer, rattling a few dying leaves in the branches of the trees.

  Could it be Patrick, the inn’s bellhop/errand boy? Though he was younger than me by a handful of years, he’d flirted when he’d carried my bags to the cabin. He was a handsome young man who no doubt saw plenty of action—as long as Dorothea didn’t catch him. She’d pinch his ear off, repressed schoolteacher type that she was.

  “Patrick? If you’re up to a prank, this isn’t funny.”

  I shifted my body toward the open cabin door and heard what could have been a smothered sob, or maybe a small creature frightened by a predator.

  “Stop clowning around, and step forward.” The warm air from the fireplace coursed out around me into the cold night.

  Enough foolishness. Pivoting on my heel, I caught sight of a childlike form rushing into the woods on the west side of the cabin.

  “Hey!” I stepped out onto the porch. A kid shouldn’t be out in the cold and the dark. “Wait up!” I jogged to the edge of the woods and stopped. It was futile to chase the child. Maybe it was a guest of the inn, or a grade-schooler from a nearby street. There were plenty of neighborhoods filled with Boston commuter families just a few miles from the inn.

  Whatever the circumstances, I would do no good flailing about in the woods. When I went back to the inn, I’d mention it to Dorothea. Chances were high she’d be able to name the child and family. One phone call and she’d sort it all out.

  I returned to the cabin and closed the door, sorry so much warmth had fled into the night. I’d postpone my shower until after dinner, when the cabin had had time to reheat.

  I walked to the window and looked out upon the snow, now coming down thick. A light dusting already covered the ground. Soon the snow would insulate my world. It was perfect weather for writing.

  At my desk, I jotted down a few notes and observations from my venture around the pond. My daily notations honored Thoreau—observations of nature and the weather, but hunger fractured my concentration. With little accomplished, I made the trip back to the dining hall, my mouth watering at the scent of bubbling soup and home-baked bread that drifted on a breeze.

  The ring of an axe diverted my attention to the large woodpile behind the inn. Patrick worked with quick efficiency as he split firewood.

  He caught sight of me and grinned, resting a moment on his axe. “I’ll take care of your fire while you’re eating. I’ll bring in enough wood to keep you warm all night.”

  “Thank you.” I watched him return to chopping, his lithe body making short work of the chore. The complaints of my stomach drove me in to the feast Dorothea set in front of me, and for half an hour I lost myself in the simple pleasures of a fine meal.

  2

  I have begun a new journal, a new page, because I have begun a new life. From banishment to a welcome homecoming. From rejection to acceptance. From solitary to united. How quickly my life has changed, and all because of him. Yes, I am impetuous. He has changed me from a cautious woman to a wanton. He has taught me that risk is the measure of a living heart. And I have taught him that solitude does not preclude companionship. In the short time we have known each other, we have taught each other so much.

  But let me start at the beginning. I am Bonnie Cahill, nineteen years old this past April. I have left my home in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, and moved inland to Concord, Massachusetts, to save my body and soul from the misdeeds of my family. We are a clan cursed by previous generations of bloodlust. The Bible predicts my fate if I do not escape my family. Exodus is clear. The iniquity of the fathers will be visited on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.

  And so I have fled. In doing so, I have found a man who touches me to the bone. I once disdained the lovesick musings of the poets, and now, joyfully, I have been proven wrong. My heart has been awakened from an icy pit, and I am alive in a way I never believed possible.

  I met Henry David Thoreau strolling along the streets of Concord with his friend the philosopher and intellectual, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. I had heard Mr. Emerson speak at the McGill home where I had taken a job as a governess. His talk was not necessarily religious, but it offered me a freedom I had never dared to dream of. He ignited a spark in my soul, a need to step out from under a God always angry, always looking for a reason to punish. I am tired of retribution and suffering, especially as I have done no wrong. In Mr. Emerson’s estimation, each person is responsible for his own actions—and for no one else’s.

  My admiration for Mr. Emerson knows no boundaries.

  I stopped to speak to him on Post Road, and he made the introduction of Mr. Thoreau. I am only a governess, but Mr. Emerson does not make such distinctions. We chatted for a moment and I was terribly distracted by Mr. Thoreau’s presence. He, too, was agitated. We never looked at each other directly, only those silly glancing looks I’d chastised my fourteen-year-old charge, Rachel McGill, for practicing. Ears burning and cheeks flushed, I bade the gentlemen farewell and we went our separate ways. But I had learned Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau would be at the McGill home that very evening for a discussion group. I was invited to attend. Not as a governess, but as a member of the audience.

  All day I thought of the slender gentleman with the burning eyes and bashful glances. There was something about him. That night, he did not speak to me, nor I to him, but our awareness of each other was acute. Mr. Thoreau’s presence, and the dangerous ideas put forth
by Mr. Emerson regarding individual thought and responsibility, fired my desire to live a full and complete life. I recognized the truth of Mr. Emerson’s lecture. We are all bound to nature, to each other, to a moral responsibility to uphold right and good. He is considered dangerous by some, especially those who want to lull the population into complacent sleep. I have been awakened, both in spirit and in my heart.

  I knew that night—my destiny was linked with Mr. Thoreau.

  I put the leather-bound journal aside. That was Bonnie’s first entry. And from there, she recounted the time she spent with Thoreau on Walden Pond. Their love was no secret. Emerson knew of it and, if Bonnie’s journal entries could be trusted, approved of the liaison. The romance that blossomed between Thoreau and Bonnie was apparently championed by all of the Transcendentalists. The Alcott family invited Bonnie to their gatherings, and she documented conversations with Louisa May and her father, Bronson Alcott, another great thinker of the era. Surely I would find the evidence of these meetings I desperately needed.

  My forefinger traced the gold-embossed lettering on the journal, an expensive thing in the mid-1800s. Thoreau gave it to Bonnie, and it in turn came into my possession. What I held in my hand was more than just a remarkable account of a romance and life; it was my destiny. Bonnie had found hers beside Walden Pond, and I would do the same.

  Turning on my computer, I continued the work of condensing and outlining my dissertation. It would follow the natural flow of Bonnie’s journal, bringing into sharp focus Thoreau’s habits, thoughts, and writing. I had been gifted with a unique lens through which to explore Thoreau—the magnifying glass of love.

  At half past nine, I put my writing away and found my coat and mittens to go back to the inn for a book on local history I’d seen in the inn’s front parlor. Dorothea had offered the use of any of the books in her specialized library. I hoped by now all of the dinner guests would be gone. I didn’t dislike the residents of the area, but they distracted me. They claimed Thoreau as if he were their own flesh and blood, even those who hadn’t a clue to his philosophy. They told their tired old stories as if they were truth.

  I found it annoying and a bit tedious. Most of the anecdotes were hogwash, because none included the mysterious woman who shared his life. Bonnie had been totally excised from his biography. It was as if Thoreau’s family had accomplished exactly what they’d set out to do. Not even in memory were they allowed to be together.

  My doctoral thesis, and the ensuing publicity I expected, would change that forever. Bonnie Cahill would get her due.

  Before I left, I tossed more logs on the fire. Patrick had left me well supplied. He was taken with me and made no secret of it, though it would come to nothing. To the dismay of the giggling teenage girls who took tea at the inn hoping to catch his eye, he ignored them but would sit for a moment and chat with me. I admit that I liked his bravado and his brash attempts to flirt. I was pleased that he tried. I was nothing more than a challenge, but it made me feel young and desirable.

  Stepping out onto my small porch, I paused. Snow blanketed everything, at least an inch thick in the short time I’d been writing. But it wasn’t the snow that stopped me, it was the set of little footprints, child-sized, that ended right at the porch. As if a child had come out of the woods and stood on the top step, watching me through the window while I worked.

  3

  “No, dear, no children in the inn this week.” Dorothea dusted a tiger oak sideboard as she talked to me. Never one to waste a moment, she always did two or three things at once. It was a truly annoying habit. “Footprints? No right-minded mother would let her brood out in this weather. It’s a blue nor’easter headed right at us, if you can believe what Patrick has been spouting. He watches the weather channel back in the pantry. He says that bald-headed weatherman is headed our way because they’re predicting a record snowfall and a drop in the temperatures. Black ice. That’s what the highways are going to be. Good thing you’re tucked in for the holidays.”

  “The shoe prints were small.” I was concerned. “Maybe a young child. Nine or thereabouts.”

  She paused and the queerest expression shifted across her face. “Really.”

  It was a flat statement, not a question. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She stood up, wadding the dust cloth into a ball. “You wouldn’t recall, but a decade back there was another bad snowstorm and a local youngster, a little girl, went missing.”

  A chill climbed my spine. “Was she found?”

  Dorethea gazed into the distance, and I was aware of the clatter of plates and flatware, a bit of laughter from the bar where old Cooley Butler played some 1940s love songs on the piano.

  Dorothea spoke at last. “No. She was never found. The not knowing drove her mother insane. It broke Helen. Just broke her in two like a rotted stick. Can’t say it wouldn’t have done the same for me.”

  I leaned closer to the desk where Dorothea’s electric heater churned at full blast. “How old was the child?”

  “Third grade. A lovely child. A bonnie lass, as my dad would say.”

  “You knew her well.” It was written clearly on her face, the loss and the sadness.

  “Dig around at Henry David, but leave this alone. Bad memories. That child went into the woods and never came out.”

  The creepy sensation crawled along my back again. I didn’t care for it. “People don’t just disappear.”

  Dorothea’s lips thinned and straightened. “You’re welcome to use any of the books in the parlor. Just return them when you’re done. You might want to wait here for a bit. I’ll put in a call to the police chief. He should get over here before the snow covers everything. If there’s a child about, the authorities need to know.”

  “Do you think it’s really a matter for the police?” I was a bit taken aback. I didn’t want to be involved in even the most benign investigation. I had work to do. Grinding work that required my total concentration.

  “Chief McKinney will want to know. He’ll check it out. No bother to him or you.”

  The color rising along her throat revealed her thoughts. “Those prints don’t belong to your missing child from ten years back. She’d be grown by now.”

  “I know.” She pushed away from the desk. “Help yourself to the books.” She hurried to the office where she could talk privately on the phone.

  Will McKinney was a stout man with a walrus moustache and heavy jowls reddened by the cold. He found me at the inn, arms loaded with books. He’d already been to my cabin.

  “No footprints,” he said without preamble. “Snow’s coming down like a mother. Covered everything by the time I got there. Even your prints.”

  “I saw them.” The instinct to defend myself made my voice more strident than I intended. This wasn’t a case of my overactive imagination.

  “Don’t doubt it, but they’re gone now. Damned snow. Morons who shouldn’t be driving will be wrecking everywhere. This is no weather for grown-ups to be out, much less a kid. Folks today don’t mind their children.”

  “I saw someone in the woods earlier, and I thought it might be a child. It was just a flash of a figure moving through the trees.”

  “You seen any young’uns hanging around your cabin?”

  The question felt loaded. “No, should I have?”

  “Last year, when the cabin was empty, Dorothea discovered a group of middle-school kids hanging out there. They’d busted the lock. Smoking cigarettes, likely dope. They drank the liquor she’d stored there.” He pursed his lips and his moustache jumped like a caterpillar. “Might be they were hoping to use the cabin again.”

  “How old were these kids?” A ten-year-old was a different matter from an eighteen-year-old. I could handle the younger ones. The nearly grown ones could be treacherous.

  “Twelve and thirteen.” He sighed. “Kids today get into stuff that wasn’t around when I was growing up. Both parents work, they’re left to their own devices. Too often that means drugs or alcohol, o
r both.”

  “Did Dorothea press charges?”

  “No need. The two ringleaders went off to military or boarding school. A hard decision for the parents, but it was the right one. They were headed for trouble, and if Mom or Pop can’t watch over them, paying a school to do it is the next best option.”

  In theory I agreed with him, but I knew first-hand the brutality of boarding schools. Rich kids with money and no moral compass tortured the weaker, more sensitive kids. Some grew out of it, others grew into it.

  “I’ll keep an eye out. Chief, Dorothea mentioned a young girl who went missing years back.”

  The smile faded from his face. “Doesn’t take much to bring back that bad memory.”

  “Dorothea said she disappeared.”

  He rolled his shoulders and stood straighter. “That little girl vanished. We searched high and low for weeks. Dogs, helicopters, volunteer searchers. It didn’t make sense then and it doesn’t now. She was just gone.” His bleak expression told me how much the past troubled him.

  “Do you think a predator picked her up?”

  “I don’t want to think that, but she sure didn’t hitch-hike out of town. Someone had to take her.”

  “That must have been horrible for her parents.”

  “For all of us,” he said. “For every single person in town.” He inhaled. “Give me a call if you see or hear anything that troubles you.” He gave me a card. “Winters here are usually calm. The weather causes problems, but none we haven’t handled for years. Dorothea tells me you’re a writer.”

  I shook my head. “I’m a doctoral student at Brandeis. I’m writing my dissertation.”

  The first genuine grin crossed his face. “And here I was hoping you’d be the next Stephen King. I like a good ghost yarn on a cold winter night.”