by Van Reid
“My father had not gotten far in packing his things, unfortunately, when he found himself surrounded by his new acquaintances. Standing in their stocking feet, some in their long-handled underwear, they declared that his was the meanest behavior they had ever encountered. Tom Fern—all two hundred and fifty pounds of him—was hurt to the core that my father would leave without a congenial farewell, and the leader of this motley band decided that they’d teach this young heathen a few manners by hanging him then and there.”
“Well, my old Dad used to say, ‘I was bereft of arms, but I had my shoes on.’ Off he tore, into the woods and he got a considerable jump on them. He could hear their shouts as they attempted to follow him over a patch of rocky scree in their stocking feet, and then more shouts still as they hurried to get their boots and shoes on. He glanced back from the top of a slope to see that one of them had fallen into the fire and the others were chasing him about in an attempt to put him out. Then he was off, charging after the sound of the Mattawamkeag River.”
Mr. Buchanan’s pace of eating kept up with his tale, and the more exciting that tale grew the more excited his mode of devouring. He was positively throwing his meal into him at this point and the three men were as astonished by the rapidity of his eating as they were by his story.
“Soon he heard the pounding of hooves cresting the hill behind him,” said the man between mouthfuls, “but the way was difficult and the trees were close so they had a time following where he went. His pursuers roared and hooted and mooed and snorted like beasts and the awful noise only served to drive my father’s feet the faster.
“He had nearly reached the river when they caught him, and he decided to take his chances with the rush of the stream and simply jump in, hoping to lose them in the twisting and turning of the river and not freeze to death in the meantime. But they caught him several yards short of his goal and he stood by a stand of large boulders as they dismounted and surrounded him.
“They approached my father cautiously, in case he had a weapon with him. He glanced about but couldn’t find a rock small enough to throw. He did see, however, a large hole in the ground, hidden by the shadow of a boulder. It occurred to him that he might have fallen into that hole quite easily, and then it occurred to him that—if he had to die—he could at least take one of these villains with him. When Tom Fern got close enough to make a grab for him, my father simply side-stepped toward that hole in the ground and the two of them pitched into it.
“They sort of rolled as they fell and Tom went first, screaming all the way. They tumbled for some distance till Tom fetched up at a narrow place with a thud and a grunt and my father landed on top of him. It was as dark as a wolf ’s mouth down there and darker still when the other men shadowed the opening above with their faces as they peered down. Tom Fern was cursing and swearing something terrible, and struggling and kicking while my father looked for a ledge to stand on or an outcropping to grab hold of.
“He had just wedged himself with his feet and back against the sides of the pit when Tom slipped through the gut beneath him and continued his fall with a great cry and a splash. The men above began to shout for Tom, but he must have been long past answering. Then they shouted for my father, but he said nothing for fear that they might throw rocks down on him.
“All the while, my father was tiring pretty rapidly in that position, and he was beginning to have other worries as well. A sort of rumbling sound came from beneath him, and he was aware, suddenly, of warm moist air rising up past him.
“Then—without further warning—a great shot of steaming water charged up that hole and picked my father up with it as it came. The next thing he knew, he was bouncing at the top of that spout like a ball on the feet of an acrobat!
“You’ve never seen such astonishment as on the faces of those men watching him, unless it was on his own face, of course. Soon he got quite used to it. The water was warm and comfortable and he found a way to balance himself so that he sat atop of that geyser with little more shaking than you’d get in a carriage on a muddy road.
“He was almost enjoying himself when he heard a sharp report and realized that the bandits were taking pot-shots at him. It was difficult, under the circumstances, for them to get a good bead on him, but sooner or later, he knew, one of them had to hit the mark. And there he bobbed, like a duck in a shooting gallery, as they fired away.
“Help appeared soon enough, however, in the form of a large contingent of Indians. My father could not know it, just then, but here were the last remnants of that long lost tribe—the Damariscottas.
“Now, as well as a good sense of humor, the Damariscottas had a highly refined sense of fair play, to which the scene before them did not appeal. It made them a bit cross, in truth, and they drove Tom’s gang off without much difficulty—the best bullies, you know, always make the best cowards.
“And there they stood and sat, the last of the Damariscottas, watching as my father bounced atop of that geyser. Now that the danger of someone being shot was done, it struck them as extremely humorous how he sat at the top of that column of water, and in appreciation for saving his hide, my father attempted two or three tricks—like standing on his hands, or curling himself into a ball. With each new caper the Indians laughed harder, till they were absolutely hysterical, rolling about the scene like a crowd of happy otters (which was their tribe’s totem, as it happened).
“Eventually my father sensed the power of the geyser waning a bit and as it declined in power and height, he just sort of stepped off and landed amongst his new found friends like a cat on his feet. They were quite taken really and, as the geyser subsided, they took turns greeting him and one witty fellow dubbed him Water-Top.
“He never liked a nick-name better and went by it the rest of his life. Water-Top Buchanan. They called him Colonel Water-Top in the war.” Mr. Buchanan polished off the last of his meal, pushed his plate away, leaned back in his chair and picked at his teeth with a table knife. “Yes,” he said. “The Damariscottas had a very good sense of humor.”
For several moments, Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were too astonished by the fellow’s tale to express themselves. Ephram shook his head, and Eagleton smiled happily. Thump simply said, “Hmmm,” several times while Mr. Buchanan digested his meal. Their own dinners were forgotten.
“Did he regain his belongings?” wondered Eagleton finally.
“Pardon me?” said Mr. Buchanan.
“His gear, his horse and mule?”
Mr. Buchanan seemed to have forgotten these items, and he considered them for a moment before answering. “Sorry to say, he didn’t. Tom’s gang had gone back to get their own things and taken my father’s gear and animals as well.”
“Oh, dear,” said Thump.
“The Damariscottas were quite sympathetic, however, and set him up nicely for his return trip to camp.”
“Did they ever catch them?” wondered Ephram.
“The gang? Not to my knowledge. But Tom Fern came out of a hole down river somewhere and was sent to jail for stealing a pig in West Enfield.”
“I hadn’t realized that geysers existed in the State of Maine,” said Thump with a look of wonder.
“Few do,” said the story-teller. “Certainly my father hadn’t suspected their existence. This particular specimen only blows about once in a generation, but Tom Fern’s bulk, thrown into the pit of the geyser, somehow disarranged its time schedule.”
“It is extraordinary!” pronounced Ephram as they bid Mr. Buchanan good day and thanked him for his story.
“How very fortunate it all was!” declared Eagleton as they descended to the main street.
“We’ve just heard the most extraordinary tale,” said Thump to a man standing outside the doorway of the Maine Hotel, “concerning the Damariscotta Indians.” The sun was setting behind the buildings across the street and long shadows fell upon the face of the block.
The man to whom Thump had spoken frowned and crossed his arms. “Damariscotta In
dians?” he said. “There’s no such thing.”
“Yes,” said Thump, sadly. “I understand they have disappeared.”
“I think I will put Mr. Buchanan’s story to paper,” said Eagleton later that night. “What do you think, Thump?”
“First-rate,” said that worthy. Standing by a window, overlooking Damariscotta’s Main Street, he turned slightly and raised his chin so that his prodigious beard preceded him slightly. “I was very fond of it,” he continued, looking thoughtful, “and I am sure that future members of our club will be glad to have it passed on to them.”
“Exactly!” said Eagleton. He had purchased pen and paper earlier in the day, while his ideas were yet vague. “What do you think, Ephram?” he said. “I am going to record Mr. Buchanan’s remarkable tale.”
“I understand that you are,” said Ephram, “and it is a worthy notion. Perhaps,” he added, looking wise, “we should record Mister Walton’s heroic ride through Portland. Certainly we should include the newspaper description in our archives.”
“Yes!” agreed Eagleton.
“And there is the courageous action of our own Thump—undaunted in the midst of two angered politicians, struck down by a parachutist.”
This reference to the lovely Mrs. Roberto (in her attractive suit of tights) gave rise to a large sigh in Thump’s breast, after which he informed his friends that any mention of that collision must in no way impugn Mrs. Roberto’s (here another sigh) motives or parachuting skills.
“Hear, hear!” exclaimed Eagleton. He sat at the desk in Ephram’s room and peered at the first piece of blank paper, ink bottle and blotter set carefully to one side, pen dipped and poised. There was a moment of silence. Forming the points of a triangle with him, Ephram and Thump stood at opposite sides of the room, shoulders straight, hands clasped behind them. They desired to record this event indelibly upon their minds; perhaps they would even write about it—this first writing-down of their experiences.
They continued to wait. Hand raised, Eagleton peered at the paper, as if words might fall upon it from his hovering pen. He was attempting to conjure a sentence deserving enough to inaugurate such a literary event; and when a sentence did not present itself, he considered a simple phrase; and when no worthy phrase came to mind, he attempted a single word. He shifted slightly in his seat, unable to decide between The and A.
He pondered the top of the page, breaking the silence and startling his friends by saying: “You know, I wish I knew what the name of our club was to be so that I might use it for a heading.” He turned in his seat to look at Ephram, then Thump.
“Hmmm,” said Thump.
“A name,” said Ephram gravely. This was a sticking point.
“Perhaps I could simply write the Club,” suggested Eagleton.
Ephram and Thump came over to the desk and peered hard over his shoulders at the blank piece of paper; the Club did not seem to answer.
“Hmmm,” said Thump.
“A name,” said Ephram again. He shook his head.
“Perhaps, for now,” said Eagleton, “I should leave it blank.”
“Yes, yes,” said Ephram and Thump, with such conviction that Eagleton found himself joining them. “Yes, yes, leave it blank for now. Only thing for it. Something will present itself.”
38 A Message Decoded?
“WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THIS BENNING FELLOW?” ASKED JAMES OF HIS wife, when they had retired to their room at Morningside House that evening.
Mercia could smile at his choice of words—this Benning fellow—since she was looking away from her husband, letting her hair down at the dresser. “You mean John, dear?”
James knew what his wife was up to and he smiled himself. “Yes,” he said, the word long and dry.
Mercia turned in her chair, letting her hair fall as she did—a precisely calculated movement. “He is rather taken with your only daughter, if that is what you’re asking.” She shook her head now and her hair tumbled about her shoulders.
James laughed. In the lamplight, with her hair down, he thought that she looked twenty years old again. “So far we’re on the same track,” he said.
“Do you like him?” she asked, before he could.
He stood there in his stocking feet and shirtsleeves, one hand poised in the midst of loosening his tie. “I don’t dislike him.”
“He will be relieved.”
“Don’t you dare tell him I said so. I’m behind in this round so far, and a little fear of the old man might not be out of place.”
“John Benning doesn’t strike me as the fearful type . . . I’m afraid.”
James grunted as he stepped into the next room in search of his pajamas. When he returned, he had them on, and he stood in the doorway, a piece of paper in his hand. “Of course, any fear I managed to invoke would be quickly dissipated by your aunt Delia. Or should I say: Cordelia’s great-aunt Delia. There is an appropriate namesake, if ever there was one.” The humor hadn’t left his voice, however.
Combing her hair, Mercia gave him a raised eyebrow in the dresser’s mirror. “She handled Grace very nicely, I think.”
“She handled us all very nicely.” He sat on the edge of their bed, tapping at the paper in his hand. “Clever, these septuagenarians.”
“He’s not a shy boy,” said Mercia, turning to her husband with the belated answer to his question. “But then I wouldn’t give him much credit with Cordelia if he were.”
“No, shy is not a word that comes to mind.”
“He’s intelligent, he’s well mannered, he seems to come from a nice family—if what we hear about him is true. He is very handsome. What do you have there?”
James looked down at the paper in his hand as if he had forgotten it. “Our Minmaneth,” he read aloud from the piece of paper, “is a young goat.”
“Ah, the note from Basil’s chest.” Mercia took the paper from him and looked at it as if something new might suddenly appear. “I hadn’t noticed this before,” she said, pointing at a brown discoloration in the very middle of the paper.
“I was looking for invisible ink,” said James, half amused with himself and half embarrassed. “You take lemon juice, you know; and write with it. Then the person receiving the note holds it up to the heat of a candle and the writing turns brown.”
“Unless it disappears again, I would say that you didn’t find anything.”
He shook his head. Round about the middle of the day, Mercia had realized that something was troubling her husband. It meant nothing that he concealed his thoughts so carefully—that he smiled as easily, and behaved as evenly, as ever; she knew him too well. “You know,” he said, “that I don’t keep things from you.”
“What is it, James?” She turned in her chair and placed a hand on his.
“Oh, nothing very serious, I think. Just puzzling.” He shook his head again, then raised his eyes to hers. “Do you remember Mr. Stimply?”
“Why, of course. Here we are, because of him.”
“Well, something odd happened last night, at the station.”
“Here in Ellsworth?”
“Do you remember, I stopped to speak to an old gentleman on our way to the carriage?”
“Yes. Captain Coyle, you said.”
“Basil’s commanding officer during the blockade.”
“I remember.”
“Captain Coyle knew Charles Stimply.” James said this carefully, as if laying out the boundaries of a logic problem—and, indeed, perhaps he was.
“Yes,” said Mercia, when she thought she had considered this statement long enough.
“Charles Stimply sailed with Captain Coyle on his last voyage out.” Again the pause, and Mercia’s acknowledgment. “Charles Stimply died . . .”
Mercia’s face fell. “Oh, no! He was such a nice old fellow! What happened to him?”
“ . . . eight months ago.” Now, Mercia paused till James repeated himself. “Mr. Stimply died eight months ago.”
“Eight months ago?”
&nb
sp; “Captain Coyle buried him at sea.”
“But how can that be?”
“If Captain Coyle is right, and this is the same Mr. Stimply who sailed with my brother, then the man who so nicely delivered Basil’s sea chest was not who he claimed to be.”
“But, why?”
“Exactly! Why would he claim to be someone else if his motives were honest? And if his motives were not honest, why would he so conscientiously deliver Basil’s sea chest at all? There was no fortune lying there, to be sure, but several of the items were of some value—the ivory figures, the brace of pistols.”
Mercia thought back to the night of the old mariner’s visit. “Mr. Stimply . . . or whoever he was, did say that Mr. Pue took charge of the chest when he tried to take it off the ship.”
“There are ways around such things,” said James. “He had to bring it aboard in the first place, and at some expense to himself, taking on extra personals. And why did he make such an effort to tell us about it? And that story about Basil saving his life? It might even make sense if he had expected some reward for his efforts, but he refused when I offered.”
From behind drawn curtains came the muffled tap of light rain upon the windows. Mercia experienced a slight shiver. She took the shawl that she had placed on the back of her chair and pulled it over her shoulders. “He seemed so . . . right, our Mr. Stimply.”
“I am not convinced that he wasn’t, in his own way. Certainly he did us a good turn, delivering Basil’s chest. The question, more than ever, is why?”
Mercia looked again at the piece of paper in her hand.
Our Minmaneth is a young goatt.
“So now you have returned to this,” she said.
“It seems a difficult sentence to parse out, at first glance.”
“But on the second glance?”
“The third or fourth, actually. I had a notion about it, even before I spoke with Captain Coyle. But his surprising news didn’t make my speculations any more comforting.”