The Transcendental Murder hk-1

by Jane Langton

  Her father scribbled on an envelope while she talked, snickering. When she was done he told her he was going to tell her what she would say to her husband on her wedding night. He read her words back to her, guffawing so hard he couldn't finish. Edith tried to laugh, but she turned an ugly purplish-red. Rowena walked into the room, looking freshly smashing. "It'll be different with her, eh, Homer?" said Ernest. He winked at him. "And some lucky fellow!" Homer winked gallantly back.

  "Ernest, you're impossible," said Mrs. Goss. She looked uphappy. This was her formula for husband-misbehaving-in-front-of-guests.

  The ball was in full fling when they got to the Armory. Tom came rushing in just in time for the Grand March. Gwen pleaded her delicate condition, so he snatched up Mary and marched her off with the selectmen and their wives at the head of the line. Johnny McPhale's Orchestra brayed "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder," the electric lights shone through the transparent red-white-and-blue bunting, and hundreds of pairs of feet shuffled rhythmically around the big room. The Captain of the National Guard with huge pointing gestures aimed the column left and right and soon had people marching four, then eight, then sixteen abreast. Mary found her arm hooked into that of the Chief of the Concord Police, Jimmy Flower. He was a small gnomelike man with a bald head who looked like one of the Seven Dwarfs. She beamed down on his five feet one-quarter inch and said hello to his wife Isabelle.

  "Jimmy," she said, "when is Isabelle going to give you a divorce so you can marry me?"

  It was a joke they had. Jimmy craned his neck up at her. "What's the matter, Mary? Haven't you got a boyfriend yet? When in heck are you going to get married anyhow?"

  "When you get down on your knees, that's when. I'm just waiting around, withering on the vine. What's the matter, aren't I pretty enough for you?"

  "It isn't that. I'm just scared I couldn't carry you across the threshold, that's all."

  "Well, what if I carry you?"

  "Say, that's a good idea. How about it, Isabelle?"

  "Sure," said Isabelle. "But only if you promise to take Frankie and Roggie and Linda and Sharon and the baby. Especially the baby. Then I'll kick up my heels and be fancy free. Who knows? I might find me another beau."

  "Oh?" said Jimmy darkly. "Like whom?"

  "I don't now. Some nice tall fella. Say, Mary, you know who I think is cute? That Homer Kelly. Boy, he's my type! You know, the Abraham Lincoln type? Say, Mary, he must be six feet six, how about him for you? He's cute."

  Mary lost interest in the conversation. It had taken a bad turn. He was not either cute. "Well, he's not my type."

  The bandleader spoke hugely into the microphone. "Ladeez and gentlemeeeeen, if you willlll, the Graaaand Waaaaltzzzz!" Tom obediently gave Mary a big dancing-school shove and propelled her strongly around the floor.

  Isabelle Flower looked across her husband's head at Mary. "She's stuck on him," she said.

  "Mary? Stuck on Tom Hand?"

  "No, stupid. Stuck on Homer Kelly."

  "But she just said..."

  "Take my word for it," said Isabelle. "She's nuts about him."

  "Oh, go on. You women. You know who Homer Kelly is, don't you?"

  "Some kind of a writer, isn't he?"

  "No, I mean besides that." He told her.

  "No kidding?" said Isabelle. "Well, I'll be darned."

  *10*

  "I hear the Governor comes to Concord today."

  "Yes, I am going down to buy a lock for our frontdoor." —Henry Thoreau

  The Governor of Massachusetts turned off his alarm clock, groaned, rolled over and sat up. It was April 19th, Patriot's Day. There was that ceremony out in Concord. For Chris'sake, he hadn't written his speech yet. He punched his pillow, lay down again and shut his eyes, seeking inspiration from on high. Of course he could always gas away about the forefathers. He could do that at the drop of a hat. But perhaps something more was called for here. Some quotation, some noble scrap of poetry. The Governor lay flat on his back, absentmindedly stroking the stiff hairs of his grey mustache. Then inspiration came to him, and he opened his eyes gratefully. There was that old poem, why, he practically knew it by heart already. How did it go?

  Listen, my children, and you shall hear

  Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere...

  A natural. He vowed to do it all by heart, so help him, God. After all, it was an election year. Why not razzle-dazzle those folks out in Concord?

  *11*

  To me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout... I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon... —Henry Thoreau

  Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations...

  19 April, 5:30 a.m.: Sunrise salute by the Concord Independent Battery and flag raising by Company D at North Bridge.

  Mary, who had gone to sleep at one a.m., pulled herself out of bed at five, woke up John and Annie, poured out cornflakes for the three of them and drove them to the North Bridge. She parked in the parking lot across Monument Street, and the children got out and ran down to the bridge. They came right back, to report nothing doing yet. "Maybe this is them," said Annie, as another car rolled up beside them.

  It was just Homer Kelly. He got out of his car, looking ten feet tall in a big fur hat. "There's nobody here yet but us," said Annie, jumping up and down and slapping her arms. It was cold.

  "Oh, hello there," said Homer, looking in at Mary.

  "They say sunrise, but they don't really mean it," said Mary.

  "The crows are all ready to go," he said, looking up.

  "They'll be after Tom's corn," said Mary. "He always plants some on April 19th, because that's what the Barretts were doing that morning in 1775 when the British came."

  Homer went around the car and climbed in companionably on the other side, to keep warm. Before long some boys on bicycles came charging up and raced down the path to the Minuteman monument in the half-light. It was a full twenty minutes before a couple of jeeps came along, pulling the gun carriages and the two gleaming brass cannon. The jeeps were bristling with khaki-clad members of the Concord Independent Battery. Philip hopped out of the first jeep, waved at Mary and undid the chain across the broad path to the bridge. Ernest Goss was driving, his World War One campaign hat pulled down over his forehead, looking like an aging Boy Scout. The two cannon jiggled backward down the little slope. Mary and Homer started after them with Annie and John. Someone set off a firecracker, BANG. The Concord River was high, flooded around trees and bushy yellow willows. There was hardly any green yet on the trees. Some small oaks still wore untidy wastebasketfuls of rubbishy brown leaves. There were a few canoeists on the river, paddling in close. More onlookers came hurrying up, half-running. Among them was a clot of teenage girls insanely dressed in shorts and knee socks. The Honor Guard arrived, pulling on white gloves. The members of the Battery bustled around, setting up the two cannon side by side, facing away from Daniel Chester French's statue of the Minuteman, aiming out over the marshy edge of the river. The Battery flag with the crossed cannon was pushed into the ground between them, the ammunition box set up behind it. Captain Harvey Finn turned on the crowd in his white puttees. He started yelling politely, then more and more firmly to stand back. At last he was satisfied, and the gun crews went into action. The powder monkeys ran forward with their bright red bags of black powder, the rammers thrust the bags down the barrels with their long ramrods, then took up positions facing away from the muzzles, hanging on to the near wheels, bending over. The lanyard men stuck their long pricks in the touchholes to free loose powder from the powder bags inside, and then the thumbers twisted their firing mechanisms in place and stepped aside so that the lanyard men could insert the small yoke collars that prevented the firing pins from falling on the 32-caliber blank cartridges. Then the lanyard men picked up the strings that were attached to the yokes.

>   "Number one gun ready," said Philip Goss.

  "Number two gun ready," said Jerry Toplady.

  "By battery," roared Harvey Finn, "fire!" The lanyard men jerked their strings and there was a colossal double BABOOM. Smoke and flame poured out of the guns. The gun carriages rolled back and forth. The bridge trembled. Three crows rose cawing from the top of a snagged old elm. Homer smiled at Mary, and picked up John so that he could see. Annie's skinny body tensed against Mary, and she kept her fingers jammed in her ears. The smoke billowed up around the Minuteman's knees and around his plow. His own musket seemed to smoke. The rammers turned their ramrods around and dipped the fleecy pompons on the other end into the water buckets. Then they :shook off the excess water and swabbed out the barrels of their guns. The powder monkeys trotted back for more powder.

  Getting into the spirit of the thing, Homer repeated Major Buttrick's famous words, "Fire, fellow-soldiers, for God's sake, fire!" And Mary, between booms, told him about the gigantic 150th anniversary celebration that had been broadcast to the entire nation, when a nervous descendant of Buttrick's had garbled his lines. "Come on you guys!" he had hollered, "for Christ's sake, shoot!"

  BOOM. The two guns were firing in slow alternation. "Number one gun—fire!" BOOM. "Number two gun—fire!" BOOM ... BOOM ... BOOM. John was beside himself with joy. It was like a war, a real war.

  What was the matter? The cannon had stopped firing, and the men were standing in one attitude, looking at someone. It was Philip they were looking at. Mary saw him turning his head stiffly from side to side, while the others stared at him. Ernest Goss stood in front of the Number One gun, his ramrod still halfway down the barrel. He, too, stared at Philip. Harvey Finn strode over to Philip and gripped him by the shirt. "What are you trying to do, kill somebody?"

  Philip said nothing. Then Harvey let go and went back to his post. Ernest Goss, looking shaken, pulled his ramrod out of the cannon and stepped to the side. Philip looked at his father, and then hesitantly at Harvey. "Well, Philip," bawled Harvey, "you ready or not?"

  Philip stuttered something inaudible, and Harvey yelled, "Number one gun—fire!" BOOM. "Number two gun—fire!" BOOM. The regular rhythm began again, and the salute ended with another double firing of both guns together ... BABOOM.

  Then the Honor Guard stepped up stylishly and hoisted the flag. Annie, sagging down in Mary's arms, saluted patriotically with the Honor Guard. A clergyman came forward and called on God. His prayer was long, and the teenager's blue knees knocked together with the cold.

  It was all over. Mary looked for Philip, but he avoided her and walked away across the field by the Old Manse, alone. Homer consulted his newspaper. "What's this about a Lions Club Pancake Breakfast?" he said.

  The cornflakes were rattling around inside Annie and John. "Oh, yes," they shouted, "pancakes!"

  "Well, just one apiece," said Mary. "We've got to go home so you children can get ready to march in the parade."

  In Monument Hall the Lions were struggling heroically with a fantastic bottleneck in the shape of a tide of hungry people and one small grill. The line of would-be pancake eaters doubled across the hall, idly paddling the air with their paper plates, their insides clapping against their backbones. Apologetic Lions moved up and down the line, passing out cups of coffee. Annie chewed her fingernails. Homer told Mary about his Ugly Word Collection, which included pianola, bowlarama, oleomargarine and frenchified words like shaze lownge, bra-zeere and neglazhay.

  "Your neckties must be an inspiration to you," said Mary, admiring the phosphorescent diatoms he was wearing.

  Homer looked down at his necktie proudly. "It glows in the dark," he said.

  "I've got a word game, too," said Mary. "I look for words that sound alike and more or less rhyme. It's kind of a nuisance because you can't stop. I wandered around the house yesterday for five minutes with a saucer in my hand, going from bashful flyswatter to gasfitter's daughter, to tiptoe, please, the Antipodes, to noisy gales, glassy knees, gluey noise, noisome grails."

  "Are you bragging or complaining?" said Homer, stepping on the flowers.

  "Bragging, bragging. Banjo band, bangled hand, newfangled strand."

  Homer picked up newfangled strand. "What stout Balboa said when he gazed at the Pacific. 'This ain't the Indies, by God, it's some newfangled strand.' "

  "And Emerson, too. That's what he said. 'This is a newfangled strand, this country, and why doesn't some newfangled man come along to match it.' "

  John began to whine. He was tired of waiting, and tears came easily. He had discovered in first grade that life was essentially tragic, and it had come as a blow. He pulled at Mary's skirt. Then Mary and Homer began to bicker. She had gone so far as to say that Emily Dickinson was the newfangled voice that Emerson was looking for. Homer bridled at that and took out his skewer. "There's another one of your women with electric fluid."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake," said Mary. (Don't let him get away with it. Jump, Mary, jump.)

  She began, halting and stuttering, defending Emily. She was the greatest, the best, she saw the supercharged significance in humble things, in natural objects...

  "Oh, that old transcendental fallacy, that things seen are purposeful symbols of things unseen. I knew a man once who found enormous significance in people's license plates. He was crazy as a coot." Homer looked at Mary's flushed cheeks. What were those pinkish flowers like gramophone horns? Petunias?

  "Look," said Mary, "you can't use a madman's ravings to dispose of a whole philosophical position."

  "Calm down, for Pete's sake."

  Mary took a new stand on higher ground. She began to reel off ribbons of Emily's sharp, bright verse. Homer listened. John and Annie at last got their pancakes, and they all sat down. Mary sang on, disdaining food.

  "There now, listen to that," said Homer, waving his fork. " 'Twere better far, or something like that, to fail with land in sight (how's it go?)

  ...Than gain my blue peninsula

  To perish of delight...

  "You see? Always turning aside, withdrawing from the experience, afraid to get their feet dirty. And another thing. Here they were always swooning and perishing with delight over things, but they couldn't stand the sight of each other. Old Emily up in her chamber, refusing to come downstairs to see visitors. She knew she'd scare them with her electric fluid. And you know what Waldo said. 'We descend to meet.' And Henry Thoreau was the worst—exalting his solitariness into a kind of solipsism almost."

  O, Blasphemy. And this was the so-called expert. "Solipsism! Oh, really, you just don't understand them at all."

  "Thank you," said the expert in a pained tone, wounded to the quick. Mary felt around for her coat. Oh, good for you. Insulting the country's most celebrated Emersonian scholar. That was well done.

  On the way out they got in another argument over who should pay, and Mary unfortunately won. She scuttled the children off to her car, and Homer strode off the other way, wrenching at his tie.

  *12*

  These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it. —Henry Thoreau

  Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations...

  19 April, 9 a.m.: Ceremonial parade leaves State Armory, Everett Street, for North Bridge.

  The weather had turned out well. Everybody in the family was marching in the parade except Mary and Freddy and Grandmaw. They took up a position on the Milldam in front of Vanderhoof's Hardware Store. American flags, like something pretty invented by Grandma Moses, were stuck into special holes in the sidewalks along Main Street. Jimmy Flower's policemen directed surges of traffic out of the parade route. There were balloon men on the corner of Walden and Main, their arms floating high with buoyan
t clusters of gas balloons and fans of plastic pinwheels, blurry flags and feathery celluloid dolls on sticks. The balloons were transparent, with polka dots and stars. Mary bought a red one for Freddy, and tied it to his wrist. He tossed his arm around to make it bounce up and down. He was too young to have had one before. Somebody else lost his and it went sailing up in the blue sky. There was a braying sound of a distant band, and everyone peered down the street. Hello, there was Homer Kelly in his fur hat, hurrying Rowena Goss across the street. He nodded distantly to Mary, and she smiled back her friendly smile, wishing he would go fly a kite.

  The Independent Battery came first. Philip rode one of the two lead horses, carrying the Battery flag, his thoughtful forehead seamed, his body tense and erect. The horses that pulled the limbers were heavy old plugs, but they made a fine showing, with the clop-clop of their great hairy-ankled hooves and the unfamiliar noise of metal wheel-rims on the streets. Three members of the Battery sat on each limber, with linked arms. Mary remembered that in the good old days after a traditional whiskey breakfast the linked arms had been a necessary precaution. Now the Battery carefully discharged all its duties before toasting the military spirit of the forefathers. After the Battery there was a blur of marching units and noisy bands, the trombonists and trumpeters staring cross-eyed at the music clamped to their instruments. Freddy clapped his hands at the red chariots of the Fire Department and waved at Tom, who was stepping along with his parade staff, handsome in his let-out uniform. Gwen, struggling with morning sickness, walked beside her Girl Scouts, wearing a green uniform that matched her complexion. Grandmaw chuckled and pointed at The Spirit of '76. The bleeding, bandaged drummer boy was extremely small and obviously an amateur, but he was beating the tar out of his instrument. Next in line was the High School Band, with the controversial drum majorettes prancing sweetly to the fore, showing astonishing lengths of bare white leg. After the band there was a big open car containing the Governor of Massachusetts and his wife. The Governor nodded and waved his hat, but his lips were moving, distracted. He was trying to remember what in hell rhymed with Revere. (Hear, queer, beer, near, leer, fear ... oh, sure, fear. "A-cry-of-defiance-and-not-of-fear-a-voice-in-the-darkness-a-knock-at-the-door-and-a-word-that-shall-echo-forever-more.")