Emily Dickinson Is Dead

by Jane Langton

  who died in the line of duty,

  this tablet is dedicated

  by his fellow engineers.

  “Hey,” said Homer, “you don’t suppose he was Alison Grove’s father, do you? Her mother is a widow. That’s what Tom Perry told Archie.”

  Mary shook her head. “Couldn’t be. How old is she? Look, this man died fifty years ago.”

  “Oh, sure, right you are.” Homer smote his forehead. “Common name anyway. Millions of Groves, probably. Billions.”

  They left the cemetery and drove to Ware, the melancholy little mill town Winnie Gaw had called home. Beside the Ware River the old mill buildings were still in use, still manufacturing shoes and knitted yard goods. But the ponderous brick Town Hall in the center of town looked half derelict, and so did the big brick church beside it. In the empty lot next to the defunct Casino Theater, a dead truck was engulfed in weeds.

  The house belonging to Jesse Gaw was a sullen structure faced with asphalt shingle. The windows looked blind, their shades pulled down. The front yard was a litter of smashed cars.

  Homer sucked in his breath with pleasure. “Hey, look at that sign. Jesse Jack Gaw, Collision, Front End Work. It’s a body shop, by God. Not just a garage, a body shop.” Getting out of the car, he looked longingly at the garage window, but he didn’t have the nerve to go up close and take a look. He felt eyes on his back, looking out from the edges of the drawn shades.

  “Come on, Homer,” muttered Mary. “They’re waiting for us.”

  Homer looked up to see Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Gaw framed in the open front door, staring down at them.

  Mary walked up the porch steps and smiled ingratiatingly. “How do you do,” she said. “I’m Mary Kelly. This is—”

  “We already been interviewed,” said Mrs. Gaw.

  “I been up there already,” growled Jesse Gaw, yanking his head over his shoulder. “I already talked to the police.”

  Homer fumbled in his pocket for an old card, dating back to his years of service in the office of the District Attorney of Middlesex County. He flashed it, then pocketed it quickly. “I just wondered if you would be so good as to answer a few more questions.” Gently he moved forward an inch.

  Jesse Gaw stood his ground, but Mrs. Gaw dropped back. Then, with a surly shrug of his shoulders, her husband gave in. Limping ahead of them into the living room, he sat down in a vinyl-covered lounge chair. Mrs. Gaw smoothed her thin hair and sat down too, on the edge of another overstuffed chair.

  Her eyes were red. She was a sharp-featured rawboned woman. Mary guessed Winnie’s clumsy frame came from her father. Jesse was a big man with thick muscular arms and a loose belly.

  The Gaws’ living room bulged with showy furniture. It was crowded with knickknacks. Mary hesitated, then sat down on the sofa, sinking in deep. Homer sank down beside her. Their knees were high. They didn’t know what to do with their hands. The formality of the encounter struck both of them dumb—Strangers Confront Bereaved Parents In Darkened Parlor. Mary was desperate to say something, anything.

  She turned to Mrs. Gaw. “Tell me about Winnie. I’ll bet she was a good student. I mean, as a little girl.”

  Mrs. Gaw’s eyes slid sideways to her husband, then returned to Mary. “Oh, sure, Winifred always liked school. Except she was sick all the time, you know?”

  “Sick?” said Mary.

  “Oh, you know.” Mrs. Gaw had a flat, unblinking gaze. “Viruses, they used to settle in her chest. She was absent a lot. You know.”

  “Who you kidding?” Jesse Gaw spoke up roughly. “She run away. Kid was always running away.”

  “But she came back?” murmured Mary.

  “Oh, sure. Police, they’d bring her back.”

  “And then he’d get out the strap,” said Mrs. Gaw, looking peevishly at her husband.

  “Well, what you going to do with a kid like that? Got to teach ’em. Listen”—Jesse Gaw sat forward in his chair and spoke with passionate resentment—“if the police was really going to do their duty, they’d find out who the hell is ripping me off. Shaft Twelve, my key to Shaft Twelve, somebody stole it off the wall of my garage.”

  “Shaft Twelve?” Homer’s interest was suddenly engaged. Shaft Twelve! Somewhere there were a lot of shafts, twelve of them, twelve bottomless crevasses plunging into the bowels of the earth, twelve boiling pits with devils brandishing pitchforks. “What do you mean, Shaft Twelve?”

  Jesse Gaw jerked his head backward. “Gate Forty-three, up Greenwich Road. Or you go out Route Thirty-two. It’s where the water comes into the tunnel from the reservoir, goes to Boston. You know, sixty miles blasted through rock. No amount of money they wouldn’t spend, build a reservoir, take the water to Boston. Do we get any water around here? Not on your life. All goes to Boston. All those millions of dollars they spent to build it, how much for the houses they tore down? Couple a thousand, that’s all they give my father for the house his family lived in, you know, all their lives, going way back. Lousy couple a thousand. And look at this here, you see this here?” Jesse Gaw stuck out one leg. “That ain’t my leg. That there’s a prosthetic leg. One of them did that to me. You know. I was just a kid, playing around the old schoolhouse. I was picking up stuff, you know, the way kids do, and a wall fell on me. This big shot drove into me with his bulldozer. Didn’t see me, he says. Well, my dad took care of him.”

  “You lost your leg?” Mary’s self-possession had vanished. In the face of so much misery she felt like a callow ladylike fool.

  But Jesse Gaw was off on another tack. “And how about the axe? And my bell? They took the axe and the key to Shaft Twelve and walked off with my bell.”

  Homer sat forward and looked mournfully at Jesse Gaw. “Your, bell? Somebody stole your bell? What bell?”

  Jesse fell back in his chair, his passion spent, and waved a surly hand.

  Mrs. Gaw licked her upper lip and explained. “It’s his old school bell. They knocked down the school. I mean, we both went there, the Greenwich Village School. When they knocked it down, he found the bell, only the thing that holds the clapper—you know—it broke, and yesterday, he—” She stopped and looked at Jesse.

  Her husband spoke up again, with venom. “I fixed it. Welded a new piece on the inside. You know. And then somebody swiped it. Must of been still warm. Hardly even cooled off. I told the police just now, I told ’em, they don’t find the shit stole my bell, I’ll—” A nameless threat hung in the air. “They don’t give a goddamn shit about my bell.”

  Mrs. Gaw picked nervously at a fold of her dress. “See, he really cared about that old bell.” Suddenly she turned to her husband and whined at him. “More than about Winifred! He don’t seem to care what happened to Winifred!”

  “You shut your trap,” said Jesse Gaw, without looking at her.

  Mrs. Gaw’s eyes were wet. She closed her lips and said nothing more.

  Mary and Homer sat silent too, unable to inject any pious thoughts into the poisoned air.

  But then the atmosphere changed. Jesse Gaw looked at his watch and stood up. He had become a man of affairs. “I got to go to Oakdale, throw the switch. It’s my job, see, throw the switch. Chief engineer, he called me. Got to shut off the Ware River outlet, open the valve at Shaft Twelve. Oakdale, that’s where it’s at. Got to go throw the switch.”

  “Open the valve?” said Homer. “You mean it’s been shut? Boston hasn’t been getting any water?”

  “Oh, Boston don’t need no water. Not all winter long. See, all winter, Quabbin fills up at Shaft Eleven-A from the Ware River overflow. Only today you stop your flow that way, and you open up your valve at Shaft Twelve, so all summer the water goes to Boston. Four hundred billion gallons.” For the first time the querulous note in Jesse Gaw’s voice was gone, replaced by prideful know-how.

  “Four hundred billion gallons?” Mary couldn’t believe it. “You mean, all at once?”

  “Oh, no, that’s the head of water, see, in the whole reservoir. Eighteen miles long, the whole thin
g. Six hundred million gallons a day going through the pipe, after I throw the switch.”

  The man was a paradox, thought Homer. On the one hand there was his background of seething family resentment, on the other his pride in the massive statistics of the Metropolitan Water District, and in his own importance as the man with his hand on the switch. Homer had a vision of the entire population of Boston reaching out to Jesse Jack Gaw, millions of parched throats and open mouths, gasping for the water only he could supply.

  And now he was departing, to throw that switch, to satisfy that thirst. Lifting and swinging his game leg, Jesse Gaw left the house. In a moment they heard his car start up and zoom backward out of the driveway.

  Mrs. Gaw’s hunched shoulders relaxed. Mary sensed her relief. Jesse Gaw’s presence was the kind that filled a house, that bore down heavily on everyone else, no matter where one might hide, from attic to basement.

  Mrs. Gaw was looking at Homer. For the first time there was a light in her sharp eye. “You want to see Winifred’s darkroom?”

  “Her darkroom?” Homer glanced at Mary. “Oh, that’s right. Owen told me Winnie liked to take pictures.”

  “Down cellar,” said Mrs. Gaw firmly. “Winnie did everything herself. Taught herself, you know, how to do it.” Opening a door, she pulled a light string and led the way downstairs. “Come on, take a look.”

  The darkroom was a walled-off section of the basement. The space inside it was orderly and narrow. The three of them crowded in. Mary wondered how Winnie had managed to turn around. A camera was fixed to the stand of an enlarger. There were photographs pinned to a bulletin board, Winnie’s work, obviously, mostly snapshots of a startled Owen Kraznik. Clothespins held negatives on a string over the set tubs. The overhead bulb shone through one of them, illuminating an image Homer recognized. “May I?” he said to Mrs. Gaw, reaching to take it down. Holding it carefully by the edges, he. held it to the light for Mary to see. “It’s Peter’s photograph of Emily Dickinson, the one he talked about in his lecture.” Homer turned to Mrs. Gaw. “I wonder why Winnie was copying this picture?”

  Mrs. Gaw squinted at it and shook her head. She didn’t know.

  Homer hung the negative back on the line, then poked furtively in a small cardboard box. The cover had a label, PROF. KRAZNIK, but inside there was only a miscellany of worthless objects, ends of pencils, rubber bands, bits of eraser, and a collection of little notes asking Winnie to do small errands or go to the library. Homer put the top back on the box. Winnie’s crush on her boss was apparent. She had collected pieces of Owen Kraznik like fragments of the True Cross. Gloomily, Homer followed Mary and Mrs. Gaw upstairs.

  Then he remembered the garage. “Oh, Mrs. Gaw,” he said, “do you think we might look in the garage? You know, your husband seems to be having trouble with theft. I just wondered if—?”

  “Oh, sure, help yourself. Wait a minute.” Mrs. Gaw picked up her pocketbook and scrabbled inside. “Here’s the key to the side door. Just stick it under the shingle when you’re done, see? Loose shingle beside the trash can.”

  “Oh, thank you. Good-bye, then. Thank you again. Goodbye.” Homer and Mary nodded and smiled, backing out the door.

  But Mrs. Gaw seemed reluctant to let them go. “Winnie’s finger,” she said, whispering, glancing behind her as if her husband might suddenly reappear. “He done it.”

  “He—?” Mary blinked at Mrs. Gaw. “You mean her father? You mean there was an accident, of some sort?”

  “Wasn’t no accident.” The resentment in Mrs. Gaw’s voice transcended the virulence of her husband’s smoldering anger. “He got into this really bad mood, once when she run away and they found her and drug her home. He done it. He had this axe. You know. The one they found with Winnie.” Homer and Mary stared at Mrs. Gaw, too stunned to speak.

  “And then he wouldn’t let me take her to the doctor.”

  There was nothing more to be said. Mary wanted to put her arms around Mrs. Gaw, but the woman wasn’t inviting comfort. Her eyes were dry. There was a fierce look of triumph on her face. She stood aside, and Homer and Mary left the house.

  But on the front porch, Homer turned to ask a final question. “Mrs. Gaw, do you think your daughter killed herself?”

  “Winnie?” The look of triumph disappeared. The corners of Mrs. Gaw’s mouth turned down and quivered. “Honest to God, I just don’t know.”

  They were glad to get away. Homer unlocked the side door of the garage and pushed it shut behind them. “My God,” he said angrily. “I don’t believe it. His own daughter.”

  Mary could hardly speak. “Maybe—maybe it was Jesse this time too. Maybe he killed Winnie. It was the same axe.”

  “But don’t forget, the axe didn’t kill her. And anyway Archie says no. They’ve looked into it. They know where Jesse was the whole time.”

  Glumly they examined the crowded interior of Jesse Jack Gaw’s garage. A Chevy Impala took up most of the space. It was waiting for a paint job. Its windows were blanked out with cardboard. Against the wall a couple of narrow tanks stood beside a cluttered workbench. The floor was a tumble of chains and hoses and instruments for clutching metal.

  “Tut, tut,” said Homer in pious disapproval, picking up a greasy shirt, dropping it again. “The man doesn’t know how to keep himself tidy. Where’s the paint? That’s what I want to know.”

  Mary pointed to the back wall. “There’s a cupboard. Could that be it? Look, it’s locked.”

  “Sign on it too,” said Homer. “‘No Smoking Private Keep Your Fucking Hands Off.’ Well, isn’t that nice.” Stepping over the snaking tangle of hoses, Homer looked through the heavy wire grille. “It’s paint, all right. Automotive lacquer. All kinds of colors, aqamarine bronze, apricot-pearl fleck, opal gold. Hey, that’s the color of the can they found in the bushes, opal gold, I’ll swear it is.”

  Mary sniffed. “That smell, it reminds me of high school. I used to paint my nails in the girls’ room. This place smells like nail polish.”

  “Nail polish? Say, that’s exactly right. Nail polish is lacquer.” Homer picked his way back across the floor. “So maybe the fat girl in Coolidge Hall was Jesse Gaw’s own daughter Winnie. Maybe she started here, right here in her father’s garage. She unlocked the fucking cupboard with the fucking key, swiped the fucking can of lacquer, took it to Coolidge Hall, poured it into the buckets and set fire to it, and nearly burned down the fucking building. But, Christ, whatever for? Come on, let’s get out of here before the fucking man gets back.”

  Dismally they got back in Homer’s car. And then Mary had another idea. She fumbled in the glove compartment. “Homer, where’s that map of the Metropolitan District Commission we used to have? Oh, here it is. I just wonder if we could find our way to Shaft Twelve.”

  Homer darted her a keen glance. “Shaft Twelve?”

  Mary nodded. “I really think we should take a look at it. Look, Homer, somebody stole a can of paint from Jesse Gaw, and tried to burn down Coolidge Hall. Somebody also stole the key to Shaft Twelve, and—what’s the name of that missing girl?”

  “Alison Grove? My God, do you think she might be down the hole?”

  “Well, why would you steal the key to a hole in the ground unless you wanted to get rid of something? Something big?” Mary jabbed her finger at the map. “Here it is, I found it. Gate Forty-three, that’s what Jesse said. Where’s Route Thirty-two? Oh, here it is. You’ll have to turn around.”

  Route 32 was a paved country road, running in a straight line past forests and empty fields and signs advertising bait for sale, and small houses tucked into pockets in the woods. Homer gripped the steering wheel and stared at the road rushing toward him, struggling with a depression of spirits, thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Gaw.

  Somehow they threw everything into question. Oh, it was all very well, reflected Homer, for Miss Emily Dickinson of Main Street in Amherst to sit in her garden, basking in eternity, but what about the Jesse Gaws of the town of Ware, and people like th
at? They had surely done very little basking. For the working people of Ware, life must have been an endless succession of long days in the mills, fastening heavy soles to leather uppers, or endless days at home, weaving palm-leaf hats by hand. Of course, sometimes the monotony was varied by national strife. Homer winced, remembering all the gold stars on the memorial tablets in the Quabbin Cemetery. In the grim company of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Gaw, the ethereal respectability of Emily Dickinson seemed a cruel irrelevance. For an instant Homer saw a new Emily, cross-eyed with mystical rapture, clasping her hands at butterflies while her brother paid a substitute to fight in his place in the Civil War and her father drove hard bargains in his office in the Palmer Block. Homer snarled, and wrenched the car to the side of the road. “This doesn’t feel right. I’ll bet we’ve gone too far.”

  “Oh, Homer,” groaned Mary, consulting the map, “we missed the fork.”

  Homer swore, and jerked the car into reverse. Swooping to the left in a clumsy curve, he careened back down the road the other way.

  38

  Death’s tremendous nearness …

  Blood was seeping from a great swollen bruise on Owen’s forehead, but he was breathing. He was not drowned. At first Ellen wore herself out trying to tread water and keep him afloat at the same time. But then something nudged at her shoulder, and she grasped at it gladly. It was the trapdoor. It would do for a life preserver.

  Heaving and hauling at Owen, Ellen managed to drag the upper part of him onto the trapdoor. Then she reached one arm over his chest, gripped the rope handle on the other side, and hung on.

  It was a stable arrangement, decided Ellen gratefully. They could stay this way forever. And Owen was opening his eyes.

  He seemed blissfully deranged. Rolling his head to one side on the trapdoor, he smiled at her and said, “My dear.”

  “We’re all right,” said Ellen, grinning back at him, tossing the wet hair out of her eyes. “No, don’t move. Just lie back. Can you bring up your legs and let them float? Good for you. Peter’s gone for help.” She was speaking softly, almost whispering, to diminish the echo, the booming reverberation against the curving cast-iron wall. “Does your head hurt?”