Steeplechase

by Jane Langton

  “The pig shed,” cried Isabelle, running that way. Eben set off down the Acton Turnpike, shouting, “Horace, come back.” Alexander took a flying leap over the stone wall into the burial ground to search among the tombstones, calling, “Horace, where are you?”

  But inside the house, looking out from the dining room window, James saw Horace tumble over the back fence and scramble into the woods on the path to Quarry Pond. James ran into the kitchen, threw himself against the screen door, and plunged outside.

  The troll was at his back. Horace could hear the pounding of its terrible feet. Ducking frantically under a thorny tangle of blackberry canes that tore at his hands and stabbed at his face, he heard the sharp claws of the troll tear them out of its way.

  In the distance, Uncle Eben was shouting, “Horace, Horace,” but the shouts died away and the snarling howls of the troll grew louder. Horace ran faster, afraid to look back, then screamed and fell on his knees because something burst up in his face with a rush of wings. But it was only a bird like an enormous chicken. Sobbing, Horace stumbled up and scampered forward, his short legs flying.

  There was an opening ahead, a piece of sunset sky and a gleam of water. The water was a pond. Horace knew the pond at once because there had been a picnic there last summer, and his mother had told him not to go near the edge because the water was so deep, and he had stood on the rocky shore with Josh, throwing stones into the water, trying to make them skip the way Josh’s did, once, twice, three times, but Horace’s had all sunk.

  Now, Horace took heart because he knew the way, but the troll seemed to know the way, too, because it was thrashing around in the woods, running sideways to head him off. Horace despaired, understanding at once that you couldn’t fool a troll. Turning, he plunged away from the path, with the troll roaring close at his heels, its gigantic feet trampling the forest floor, its terrible claws snapping at branches and twigs. Glancing fearfully back, Horace could see only the dark purple cloud that was obliterating the setting sun. A cold wind had sprung up and all around him the dappled splashes of sunlight were flickering out. Scuttling through underbrush and brambles in a sudden pelting of raindrops, Horace did not know that he was cold, only that he was afraid.

  Where could he hide? Zigzagging left and right, he found a hollow place, dropped into it, and burrowed under an umbrella of overarching ferns. They trembled over his head and the rain pattered down, and Horace mistook the drumming of his heart for the pounding feet of the troll. Like a rabbit with a dog at its heels, he jumped out of the hollow and sprinted away.

  Had he fooled the troll? No, because you couldn’t fool a troll. It was still clumping along behind him in the pouring rain, smashing and crashing closer, its fiery breath sounding very near. With hot tears running down his cheeks and water streaming from his hair, Horace made a desperate lunge toward a gleam of light that appeared for an instant between the trees. It was only a flickering glimmer, disappearing and flaring up again, but to Horace it was like a candle in the window of a cottage, the cottage of a good witch who helped little boys lost in the forest, and he blundered toward it.

  But it was not a cottage. Drawing closer, Horace recognized the new church in the woods, the one Uncle Eben had built with his own hands, where this very morning his grandmother had played the organ and Horace had helped to ring the bell. Now an orange light flared in the steeple, and there were welcoming jingles from the bell.

  Horace floundered across the wet ground, stretching out his arms to touch the door, because he would be safe inside. Churches were holy! Too holy for trolls! The friendly door swung open, and Horace stumbled across the sill. Quickly, he slammed the door, but it flapped open again on its hinges, and at once he saw a dark shape silhouetted against the rain.

  Wailing, Horace backed away. Didn’t the troll hear the bell jangling in the steeple? Didn’t it know that churches were forbidden to trolls? Desperately, he stared around the shadowy room, looking for a place to hide. The church was only one big chamber without cupboards or closets, but then he remembered the ladder. Yes, there it was in the corner, its rungs matted with hay. The trapdoor in the ceiling was a square of orange light.

  A ladder was nothing to Horace. With the wild wind blowing into the church through the open door and the bell tingling overhead and the clawed feet of the troll booming across the new planks of the floor, Horace scampered up the ladder, rung after rung, in a shower of sparks and wisps of falling hay. Poking his head through the trapdoor, he saw a man crouched under the bell with a lighted candle in his hand.

  He recognized him at once. It was the preacher—the other preacher, not Mr. Gideon—and he was setting the hay on fire.

  Horatio Biddle turned around, colliding again with the infernal bell. Below him, at the top of the ladder, a small boy stood staring up at him. Horatio set the candle down on the smoldering hay and took the boy by the throat.

  A Far, Far Better Thing

  James did not mean to catch the boy. He was only trying to keep him in sight, because these woods went on forever. Josiah’s woodlot lay at the edge of a thousand acres of trackless forest, stretching north into Carlisle and west, all the way to Littleton.

  As a boy, he had been lost in these woods himself. For an entire November day, young James had wandered in helpless circles among the trees, unable to find his way home. With darkness had come the cold, and he had crawled into a thorny tangle, terrified of wolves and creeping things. In the morning, he had seen at once which way to go, and within the hour the domed steeple of the Nashoba church had appeared above the trees and he had run all the way home to the arms of his mother and a whipping from his father. But that lost boy had been ten years old, twice the age of the boy who was running into danger now.

  Like a dog herding sheep, James headed him away from Quarry Pond, then turned him in the direction of the Acton Turnpike. Reaching out with his hooks to thrust low branches out of his way, James managed to keep the boy in sight and urge him northward. Soon, young Horace would find himself in the neighborhood of the new church that was Josiah’s pride and joy, and then he would no longer be lost. Yes, there it was, beyond an ugly patch of tree stumps, a rain-darkened building with a miniature steeple.

  For a moment, James slowed his steps and tried to catch his breath, but when he heard the jangle of the bell and saw the blaze of light, he began to run again. Stumbling headlong into the clearing, James saw with a single glance of his one good eye that two things were horribly wrong: the boy running into the building and the man in the steeple.

  James knew the man on sight. On the mild May morning in 1864 when 2nd Lt. James Jackson Shaw had embraced his new wife, Isabelle, and joined the other volunteers at the depot, this man had been there to shake his hand and say a prayer. He was the Reverend Horatio Biddle, and he was setting the steeple on fire.

  James raced across the rough wet grass and threw open the church door. Looking wildly around the dark sanctuary, he saw Horace scrambling up a ladder toward a fiery opening in the ceiling. James bounded across the floor and reached up to the rungs with his iron hands. They were awkward on the ladder, but he managed to hook his way up from rung to rung. At the top, he sprang to his feet in the burning straw and flung himself at Horatio Biddle. With one hook he slashed at the staring face and with the other arm he tugged at the boy.

  The Reverend Horatio Biddle shrieked and let the child go. James plucked Horace free and dropped the screaming boy down the ladder.

  Horatio, too, was sobbing, but he threw himself at the ghastly apparition that was Josiah Gideon’s disfigured son-in-law. The two men grappled and the wild bell rang in the steeple—the insufferable, unbearable new steeple—and the fire in the hay took hold.

  The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready.…

  the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.… The

  murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces,

  the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of

  the crowd, so that it
swells forward in a mass …

  Twenty-three.

  —Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

  The Nashoba Steam Fire Society

  At the foot of the ladder, Horace picked himself up, bruised and sobbing. He gave one terrified upward glance at the trapdoor, but he saw only flames.

  The church door banged open and shut. Horace tottered outside and made his way to the road, the wind at his back. When the sky suddenly darkened, he looked up, half-blinded by tears and by the rain in his face, and saw an enormous balloon swoop low over the treetops.

  Horace had seen the balloon before. Now, gaping, he watched it droop and lift and stretch out nearly flat, with the good fairies in their bowler hats clinging to the tipping basket. And then, as the collapsing balloon blew out of sight, a wagon rattled by on the road and the rain came down in sheets.

  The balloon was hurtling east. “Shouldn’t have gone up today, Jack,” said Jake, clutching the railing of the basket. “Too late in the year.”

  Jack clapped one hand on the brim of his hat. “Seemed such a nice day, Jake.”

  “Raining now,” said Jake, as the balloon wallowed and plunged. “Coming down like pitchforks.”

  Then both of them cried “Whoopsie” and fell sideways in a heap.

  Scrambling to his knees, Jake pointed and shouted, “Church on fire, Jack. Looky there.”

  “Boy down there,” hollered Jack.

  “Fire department,” yelled Jake. “Got to tell ’em.”

  The balloon lifted, billowed wildly, and sagged. The burning steeple vanished. Below them in the racing, rattling wagon, Hector waved his arms and shouted, “Jesus Christ, boys.”

  Jack leaned out of the basket, pointed west, and shouted, “Church on fire, Hector.”

  Jake leaned out the other way, pointed east, and cried, “Fire engine, Hector.”

  Hector stared up at them with his mouth open, then lifted his whip and brought it down on the back of his old horse. In the blowing wind and drenching rain, horse and wagon plunged away in the direction of the town green.

  While the squall lasted, it was a violent downpour. Jake and Jack tumbled around in the basket of the balloon, but Jake managed to crawl on hands and knees to the firebox and relight the coals, hoping to lift the drooping bag above the trees. The coals began to smolder and the rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, but it was too late.

  “Whoopsie, Jake,” cried Jack as the basket scraped and caught and then wallowed free again. “We’re tickling the treetops.”

  “Hang on,” shouted Jake. “We’re going down.”

  A moment later, the withered balloon flopped into a tangle of branches, brushed through the outermost twigs, caught on a dozen snags, and hung suspended, sagging and deflated. A pair of identical bowler hats spiraled down through the branches and splashed in identical puddles.

  Lying flat on their backs in the swaying basket, Jack and Jake considered the matter philosophically.

  “Time to settle down maybe, Jack.”

  “Guess you’re right, Jake.”

  “Maybe get married, Jack.”

  “Good idea, Jake.”

  “Lotsa pretty girls out there, Jack. Whoopsie, the bag’s on fire.”

  The Nashoba Steam Fire Society was a volunteer outfit, but when Hector shouted “Whoa” at his wheezing horse and delivered the news, the fire bell rang and the volunteers came running. In no time at all, the boys had the boiler fired up and steaming and the team hitched up and prancing. Hector, hanging on precariously, pointed straight up the Acton Turnpike.

  But instead of a burning building, the fire turned out to be a flaming balloon. Undaunted, the sturdy volunteers uncoiled their hoses, aimed a stream of water straight up in the air, and put the fire out. Then, with ladders poking into the treetops, they rescued the dangling aeronauts.

  Jake and Jack were drenched, but they did their civic duty. “Hey, you fellers, there’s a church on fire,” said Jake earnestly, picking up his bowler hat from the middle of a puddle.

  “Up the road apiece,” said Jack, rescuing his from another puddle.

  “Probably burned to the ground by now,” said Hector with a grin.

  “We’ll take a look,” said the heroic chief of the volunteers. “Gentlemen, hop on board.”

  At once, the steaming machine was tearing up the road again with Hector, Jack, and Jake bouncing on the running board. The galloping team slowed down as the firemen caught sight of the new church. All heads swiveled to the left, looking for smoke and flame, but except for the blackened steeple, the little building seemed undamaged.

  “Fire’s out,” said Jack.

  “Rain did it,” said Jake.

  “Gee-up,” shouted the fire chief, and soon the bold volunteers were barreling along the road in the direction of a famous tavern in the town of Acton. Neither Jack nor Jake turned their heads the other way, nor did any of the gallant firefighters, to see a small boy huddled in the wet grass.

  But Eben, whipping Mab into a lather and racing after the mighty engine of the Nashoba Steam Fire Society, looked not only to the left at the blackened steeple but also to the right, to the place where his small nephew was crawling out of the ditch. Horace was wet and weeping but unhurt. Eben picked him up, wrapped him in his coat, and carried him home.

  Girded for Any Horror

  Horace, oh, Horace,” cried Ida, enfolding him while his grandmother ran upstairs for a dry shirt and a pair of drawers.

  Eben was soaking wet, too, but he ran out again into the night and jumped up on the seat of the wagon. When Mab gave him a reproachful look, he said, “Sorry, old girl,” and urged her into a canter. But at once he had to pull her to a clumsy halt, because his mother was screeching at him and handing up an umbrella. The rain had stopped, but Eben took it, popped it open, and clucked at Mab, who bounced into a trot and carried him briskly back along the road to Nashoba.

  On the way, he stopped to pick up his brother-in-law. Alexander had been looking for Horace all over town. Water trickled from his whiskers and his trousers were soaked with mud, but he laughed with delight at Eben’s good news. His gig was waiting beside Josiah’s gate, and Alexander took off at once for home.

  There was no laughter in Josiah’s house. When Eben reported that Horace had been found, Josiah said grimly, “Then it’s only James who is missing,” and Isabelle caught at Eben’s coat and cried, “Oh, where can he be?” and her mother said softly, “Surely he’s looking for the boy.”

  Then Eben remembered the blackened steeple of Josiah’s church. He began to tell them, then checked himself and said, “I found Horace on the road beside the church. Perhaps James was there, too. I’ll go back.”

  Isabelle snatched up her shawl, and her mother pleaded, “No, dear, no,” but Josiah said, “Let her go.”

  Then Eben gave Josiah a warning look. “I’m afraid, sir, there was a fire.”

  At this, Josiah pulled on his rain-drenched coat and girded himself for any horror.

  In the wagon, no one said a word as Mab trotted solemnly along the Acton Turnpike. Nor did they speak as they stood together on the trampled grass and gazed up at the blackened steeple in the light of Josiah’s lantern. Around them, the haunted clearing gave off a sense of sorrow. There was an ugly smell of burning.

  “Wait here,” said Eben to Isabelle.

  “Yes, my dear, wait,” said Josiah.

  “No, no,” cried Isabelle, and she clung to her father’s arm.

  But when Eben urged her again, saying, “You must wait, Isabelle,” she let go of Josiah’s arm and stood back, trembling.

  Waiting alone in the dark, she listened to the hollow echo of their boots on the floorboards inside the church. Then there were other small noises, and finally no sound at all. Eben and Josiah had been gone a long while when Isabelle at last called out, “Father?”

  There was no reply, but soon Josiah’s lantern flickered in the doorway and he came out, followed by Eben. Their faces were grave.

 
; Josiah went to his daughter and took her hand. “Oh, what is it?” whispered Isabelle. When he told her that they had found James and that he was dead, she broke down and fell to her knees.

  Isabelle did not often weep. She had cared for her stricken husband in hospitals in Washington and Philadelphia and in a rooming house in New York City, and here at home she had nursed him with unfailing devotion. For three suffering years, she had borne it without faltering, but now she threw herself down on the wet ground. Her sobs were not gentle and ladylike. Isabelle blubbered and tore with her fingers at the grass.

  Her father murmured in pity and stooped to help her, but Eben reached past him, lifted Isabelle in his arms, and carried her to the wagon. Then Josiah took the reins and Eben kept his arm around Isabelle, who leaned against him, racked with weeping.

  NOW

  The Lost and Found Steeple

  TODAY’S SPECIALS

  Green Pepper, Onion & Mushroom Pizza

  Provolone & Pepperoni Pizza

  Cheese, Pepperoni & Sausage Pizza

  Mozzarella & Pepperoni Pizza

  Tomato, Sausage & Zucchini Pizza

  The Works

  The Call of Nature

  For the customers of the Nashoba pizza parlor, the lack of public rest rooms was like the scarcity of indoor plumbing in the old town of Nashoba. Mary whirled the car into the weedy parking lot and zoomed to a stop, and Homer leaped out and plunged into the wilderness.

  It was not a pretty wilderness, but a wasteland. Homer shoved hastily through a thicket of burdock, collecting burrs on the sleeves of his sweater, and headed for a stand of dead trees. But even here the protective cover was too sparse for Homer’s modesty, which was more hoity-toity than one might have expected in a burly, bewhiskered male of the species, six feet, six inches tall. Homer pushed on and broke through the wasteland at last into a glade screened by willow trees. It was perfect. Homer relieved himself gratefully, then looked around as he zipped up his pants, aware of something odd about the place, a kind of frowsy dignity.