Steeplechase

by Jane Langton

  “Well, what would you rather do?” said Mary heartlessly. “Take off for Las Vegas?”

  “Well, no, that’s the whole trouble. I’ve lost the knack of wasting time and having fun.” Homer flung open the car door and climbed in behind the wheel. “It’s my doom, pursuing this foolish steeple chase to—what’s the next one called?”

  “Carlisle.” Mary consulted her notes. “The First Religious Society of Carlisle.”

  The old village of Carlisle lay northeast of Nashoba and directly north of Concord. The church stood high and handsome in the center of town. Homer parked across the street, and for a moment they sat staring up at the sunlit facade. It was a beauty.

  “James Gibbs,” murmured Homer.

  “Of course,” said Mary, because it was true. Faintly echoed in the design of the First Religious Society of Carlisle they could recognize the church of St. Martin’s in the Fields in Trafalgar Square. This small but elegant American building, fashioned from wooden posts and beams like a barn, was surely the remote descendant of the handsome steepled churches that had been hurried into being by Christopher Wren and James Gibbs after the great fire of London. This pretty building had no grand portico of Corinthian columns, but, like St. Martin’s in the Fields, its little tower boasted the same diminishing layers, the same Grecian pediment, clock, bell chamber, and steeple pointing skyward.

  “I wonder if they knew it,” said Mary.

  “Knew what?”

  “The carpenters. I wonder if they knew their own architectural ancestry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They knew how to put up a sturdy building, and they had pattern books to copy.”

  Mary mumbled the name of Asher Benjamin as they lifted the latch of the central door and walked into the vestry. From here, a stairway led up to the sanctuary on the second floor, but they were halted at once by the notices on the bulletin board. Addicted to print, they stopped to look.

  TABLECLOTHS—HELP!

  If you have taken tablecloths home to wash after the Easter luncheon,

  please return as soon as possible.

  GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION

  Sign up for workshops!

  Growth Resources for Small Congregations

  Wakening the Mind, Opening the Heart

  Embracing Life with the Heart of a Buddha

  RIDE FOR HUNGER SUNDAY, JUNE 15

  Join the bicycle tour for Project Bread!

  For a moment, they were mesmerized by this glimpse into the stomach, heart, and muscle of a busy congregation. Then Mary said, “Never mind,” and they turned to climb the stairs.

  Homer counted the steps as he gasped his way to the top. “Eighteen of them. No mercy on us old folks. Hey, will you look at that.”

  It was a bell rope, dangling from a hole in the ceiling of the narrow corridor at the top of the stairs. Impulsively, Homer reached out and gave it a jerk.

  Mary cried, “Homer, for heaven’s sake” as a loud jangle sounded from above. It was followed by a shriek from the sanctuary and a rush of pattering feet. “Now you’re in for it,” said Mary.

  A little woman burst out of a door and cried, “May I ask what you think you are doing?”

  Mary felt no pity, but Homer blushed. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, ma’am. I only touched the rope. I didn’t expect it to ring.”

  It was a lie, and they all knew it, but the woman’s face softened—the two tall strangers looked so extremely respectable. “May I help you? My name’s Milly Smith. I’m the choir director.”

  “We’re Homer and Mary Kelly,” said Mary, nodding and smiling. “We’re just so interested in the history of your church.”

  Homer smiled and nodded, too. “We’re just sort of looking into all the churches around here. Their histories, I mean.”

  Milly Smith narrowed her eyes and stared at Homer. “You’re not the Homer Kelly who wrote that bestselling book?”

  Homer beamed. “Well, yes, that’s me. How did you like it?”

  “Oh, I haven’t read it yet,” said Milly. “But of course I will, any day now. How delightful. Do come in and sit down.” Joyfully, she led them into the sanctuary, straight up the aisle to the pulpit and the low platform of the choir loft, where she sat them down on a bench beside the organ. At once, she began reciting the entire history of the First Religious Society of Carlisle. It was obviously her passion.

  But to Homer’s disappointment, there was only one scandal in the history of the church, and it was the same one that had happened everywhere: the split in the congregation at the time of the Unitarian heresy. The stalwart orthodox Congregationalists of Carlisle had walked out in the year 1829, leaving the building to the upstart Unitarians.

  “I’ll show you,” said Milly Smith as they stood up at last, faint with hunger. “The Congregationalists built a new church right across the street.”

  Descending the stairs, they could hear a wild clattering from outdoors. Kids on skateboards were plunging back and forth on the paved street in front of the church, executing heroic leaps and acrobatic turns. Milly dodged around them, followed by Homer and Mary, and they stood safely out of the way, staring across the road.

  Yes, there it was, another building with a steeple, a charming Victorian structure set in a green lawn. Along one side ran a row of churchlike pointed windows, but no proud sign stood beside the road, only a mailbox.

  “It’s been turned into offices downstairs, you see,” explained Milly, “and upstairs it’s a private house. The church was desanctified and sold in 1970. There’s a fine new building just up the road.”

  “Well, thank you, Milly Smith,” said Mary.

  “Yes, thank you very much,” added Homer. “Oh, Milly, I don’t suppose you know anything about—well, I know it sounds silly—a lost church?”

  “A lost church?” Milly shook her head.

  “Or anything about a tree? I mean some tree or other, way back when. Or any connection with Oliver Wendell Holmes?”

  “You mean Justice Holmes?” Milly looked bewildered.

  “No, no, the other Holmes.” Homer felt ridiculous. “The poet, the one who—”

  “Come on, Homer,” said Mary, tugging at his sleeve.

  “I mean Dr. Holmes, the father of the justice, the Oliver Wendell Holmes who wrote The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. You must have heard of that? And a lot of poems and so forth? You know who I mean?”

  “Well, I guess so,” said Milly Smith. “But I don’t think Dr. Holmes ever worshiped in Carlisle.”

  Whoopsie

  They were ravenous. Homer Kelly was six and a half feet tall and a trifle overweight. Without a regular succession of breakfast, morning snack, coffee break, lunch, afternoon snack, tea, happy hour, supper, and a final bedtime bowl of cereal, his legs went limp. “Hey,” said Homer, zooming the car around and heading south, “there’s a pizza place in Nashoba, right there on Route Two A, next to the witchy lady’s place.”

  “Great,” said Mary. “I could eat a hymnbook.”

  “Watch it,” said Homer. “Some of those hymns might be hard to get down—“Rock of Ages” for instance.”

  “Ouch.” Mary clutched her neck and then said firmly, “What I want is a hymn in the shape of a nice juicy pepperoni pizza with mozzarella. Hurry up, Homer.”

  Route 2A was a long, winding state highway. In East Cambridge and Arlington, it was known as Massachusetts Avenue; in Lexington, Marratt Road; and in Lincoln, North Great Road. In Concord, it had several names—Lexington Street, Elm Street, and finally Nashoba Road. In the towns of Nashoba and Acton, it was a suburban strip, a narrow scar through abandoned farms. Dignified old houses had been turned into furniture emporiums. Car dealerships were surrounded by glittering wreaths of Toyotas and Chevys, and beside the parking lot of an upmarket mall, trendy outlets stood cheek-to-cheek—Staples, Trader Joe’s, Pier 1.

  The pizza parlor in Nashoba was neither trendy nor upmarket. It fronted directly on the highway, and in the window the loo
ped letters of an old-fashioned neon sign spelled Nashoba Pizza.

  Homer pulled up beside a motorcycle in the weedy parking lot at the side, and Mary said, “It looks just right.”

  Indoors, the place was like an old-fashioned diner, complete with a long counter and twirly stools. There was even a jukebox glittering with plastic made to look like mother-of-pearl. The jukebox was howling and thumping with some kind of pop music, but Homer and Mary were too hungry to care. They sat down on the stools and waited to be noticed by the girl at the counter, who was deep in whispered conversation with a muscular kid in a pink tank top, obviously the owner of the motorcycle. The girl showed no interest in her new customers.

  Mary and Homer contented themselves with choosing from the pizza list tacked to a fancy board on the wall. Then they looked expectantly at the waitress, but she was still nose-to-nose with the motorcycle guy. Homer’s stomach clapped against his backbone, but he diverted himself by studying the pictures on the wall, a display of faded photographs tacked up between the list of pizzas and a large sign proclaiming NO REST ROOMS. One of the photographs showed a family standing beside a Tin Lizzie, mamma with bobbed hair, papa with cigar, two identical little boys in knickers, two identical little girls with bows in their hair.

  Without warning, the music stopped. Pink Tank Top departed, and the waitress moved languidly down the counter, staring out the window at the motorcycle as it zoomed onto the highway with huge blats of its exhaust.

  Mary and Homer ordered coffee and mozzarella pizzas and watched the girl unwrap two frozen objects and slap them in a microwave. Cars zoomed past on the highway, and then a rumbling procession of dump trucks. The rickety building trembled, and one of the pictures fell with a crash.

  “Whoopsie,” said the girl, stooping to pick it up.

  Homer had caught a glimpse of the picture as it fell, and he said, “Oh, please, may we look?”

  “Well, I don’t give a damn.” Sulkily, the bitchy girl jerked their pizzas out of the microwave, slid them onto paper plates, dumped them on the counter, then slapped the picture down beside them.

  Eagerly, Homer and Mary leaned over the old brown photograph. It was a faded image of a half-inflated hot-air balloon. Two young men in bowler hats stood beside it, their arms akimbo. Charmed, Mary asked the waitress, “Do you know who they are?”

  “Don’t ask me.” The bitchy girl was too listless to hang the picture back on its nail. Instead, she leaned it against a squeeze bottle of mustard on a tiny shelf attached to an elaborate cupboard.

  But there were many more pictures on the wall. Homer was delighted. He pointed excitedly left and right. “Maybe they show what old Nashoba was like. What about that one? Oh, please, might we see that one?”

  “Watch it, Homer,” cried Mary, but she was too late. Homer’s sweeping gesture had knocked over his coffee cup.

  “Whoopsie,” said the bitchy girl again, mopping up the slop.

  1868

  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

  … I have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in general, and have had several romantic attachments to certain trees in particular.

  —Oliver Wendell Holmes,

  The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

  A Favorite of Dr. Holmes

  In the bedchamber just down the hall from the bathroom that was so splendidly appointed with fixtures from the J. L. Mott Iron Works in New York City, Horatio Biddle could not sleep. He turned and tossed. Visions of Josiah Gideon and Samuel Bigelow tumbled in his head, and also the shocking sight of a favorite teacher in the Sabbath school snipping at twigs with her embroidery scissors. Professor Jedediah Eaton had not been snipping or chopping, but his very presence with the others had been a blow. Horatio pulled the pillow over his head, but he couldn’t banish the memory of Professor Eaton’s shiny spectacles, his scholarly whiskers, and the opening and shutting of his faraway mouth.

  These nightmarish images were bad enough, but at two o’clock in the morning, Horatio reared up in bed as another thought occurred to him, and it was far more horrible.

  Slipping out of bed, careful not to awaken his wife, Horatio crept downstairs in the dark. In his study, he lighted the lamp with trembling fingers, carried it to the bookcase, and moved it along a shelf until he found what he was looking for, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  Horatio set the lamp down on his desk beside the bust of Cicero, then leafed through the book, his heart thudding in his breast. Yes, here was the passage he remembered. Dr. Holmes was rambling on and on about his “tree-wives,” the great trees that were his special delight, the old giants he loved to measure with his thirty-foot tape: “… I shall speak of trees as we see them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand whispering tongues …”

  Nervously, Horatio turned page after page as the autocrat harangued the breakfast table on the subject of great trees. Paragraph after paragraph was devoted to his favorites, the Johnston elm, the vast elms of Springfield, Northampton, and Hatfield, and, good God, here was an alarming story about a tall poplar that had been criminally cut down.

  And then Horatio’s lifeless fingers nearly dropped the book as he came upon the paragraph he had half-remembered:

  Now let us glory in the great Castanea dentata that stands in the burial ground in the town of Nashoba. This magnificent chestnut tree is a monument to our national history, a survivor from the seventeenth century, when it began life before the village itself existed, when few settlers dwelt beyond the limits of the town of Concord. Who knows but that deep within its mighty heart lies buried an arrow shot from the bow of a Nashoba warrior, the last of the tribe of Nipmucks who claimed these woods as their native soil?

  Horatio closed the book, put it back on the shelf, and extinguished the lamp. Crawling back into bed beside his sleeping wife, he vowed never to reveal to her this painful news. At the same time, he prayed earnestly that Dr. Holmes might never again set foot in Nashoba to pay his respects to that “monument to our national history,” the magnificent chestnut tree in the burial ground, now cut down, destroyed, and vanished forever at the whim of Horatio Theophilus Biddle.

  Ingeborg Goes to Law

  It was infuriating to Ingeborg Biddle that her husband refused to take up the matter. What on earth possessed him? The case was perfectly clear. Josiah Gideon had violated an ancient grave and stolen valuable property belonging to the church. Justice demanded that he be prosecuted.

  Well, if Horatio lacked the backbone to go to law, Ingeborg did not. She could not forget the humiliation of her outhouse encounter with Josiah Gideon. She was determined to seek revenge. Next day, she prepared herself for a visit to the office of attorney Jarvis Brown by dressing with care in a new outfit, one that required a different sort of undergirding. The wide-spreading skirts that had been popular during the war were no longer in style. Postwar fashion called for a more slender silhouette that billowed out at the back.

  Ingeborg was a fleshy woman, but she pulled tight the strings of her stays and adjusted the new contraption around her waist. Then she hooked, snapped, and buttoned herself into her new gown, stepped out the door, and walked past the town green to the offices of Peabody and Brown. Of course, the name of the firm no longer meant an actual partnership, since Moses Peabody had passed away long ago. Stalwartly, Ingeborg mounted the stairs, eased her skirts into a chair, and explained to Mr. Brown the case against Josiah Gideon.

  “I see,” said Mr. Brown, although he was already acquainted with the matter. By word of mouth, news of the extraordinary events of the previous day had raced all over town. “This concerns an unauthorized reinterment in the graveyard as well as the removal of valuable timber, is that correct?”

  “Exactly.” Ingeborg edged forward on the chair. She was not yet used to the apparatus around her waist, and the bunched fabric took up so much room, she was afraid of slipping
onto the floor.

  If she expected Mr. Brown to seize his pen and begin scribbling a document couched in Olympian language, a lawsuit against that plundering bandit Josiah Gideon, she was disappointed.

  “The burial ground belongs to the church?” asked Mr. Brown mildly. “Are you completely certain?” And then he posed several other thorny questions: Did any interments in the burial ground antedate the founding of the church? Had every person interred on the premises been a professing Christian? Had every one of them belonged to the congregation of the Nashoba Parish Church? Had it occurred to Mrs. Biddle that the burial ground might actually be the property of the town itself, a secular body established by the action of the Great and General Court of Massachusetts?

  Taken aback, Ingeborg protested that although she did not actually know the facts in the case, it was common knowledge that the burial ground belonged to the church.

  Mr. Brown merely looked at her serenely and advised her to look into the matter. “If it can in fact be proved,” he said, rising to show her to the door, “that the ground on which the tree stood was indeed the property of the church, then I will be most happy to write up a suit of wrongful seizure against the Reverend Josiah Gideon. Good day to you, Mrs. Biddle.”

  Outdoors again in the harsh light of noonday, Ingeborg set off a little uncertainly for home. The street resounded with the rumble of farmers’ carts and the rattle of buggy wheels, but overwhelming everything else was a wild scream from the sawmill of Isaac Pole as the savage iron teeth of his steam-driven saw tore into the wood of the chestnut tree, transforming the logs into boards that were rightfully the property of Nashoba’s First Parish Church and its pastor, the Reverend Horatio Biddle.

  Program Chairman

  Eben Flint was a resident of the town of Concord, not Nashoba. But when the program chairman of the Nashoba Lyceum retired, Potter Viles paid a call on Eben to ask him to fill the vacancy.