Thoreau in Phantom Bog

by Oak, B. B.

  “I am all aback in my chores!” she cried. “I have not even put the peas in the garden!”

  “Harriet and I sowed the seeds two weeks ago,” I told her. “So don’t you worry about your peas.”

  She found a new worry. “The Indian corn must be planted!”

  “It’s been done, the first field work of the year,” I assured her.

  “The cows should be put out to pasture, poor cooped creatures!”

  “They have been taken out to pasture every day this week,” I said. “Nothing is behindhand, and you need not be concerned, Gran.”

  Since Grandpa’s death near a decade ago, Gran has directed the farm work, and of late I have taken on the job of foreman. It is no burden to me, for the farmhands are reliable and hardworking, and Tuttle Farm is thriving. But Gran cannot be made to rest easy.

  “Something must be done about them foxes!” she said. “The sly critters must sense they are out of danger now that I got no strength to lift a musket, for they have made themselves to home in the henhouse, helpin’ themselves to as many eggs as they please. For two morns in a row, Harriet’s come back with an empty basket.”

  “Are you sure that foxes are the problem?” Henry said. “The hens may just be broody.”

  “Then off with their heads!” Gran cried. “What good are hens if they ain’t layin’?”

  “Calm yourself, Gran,” I said and patted her hand.

  Little good that did. “By the bye, where in the Sam Hill is Harriet?” Gran demanded. “I sent her on an errand an age ago. I wager she has stopped in town to chinwag with that gossipy friend of hers, the constable’s daughter.”

  “Don’t concern yourself about Harriet,” I told Gran. “Or wear yourself out with too much talking.”

  “I am already all worn out, my dearest boy. And useless to boot,” Gran replied.

  My heart went out to her, for she looked so very miserable, and I was tempted to give her a measure of laudanum to soothe her nerves. I held off doing so, however. Eventually I will have to dose Gran with the drug to assuage her pain and do not want to prematurely dull her sharp mind.

  “If I had half a hope I’d go to heaven,” Gran continued, “I would implore God to take me up there to be with Him right now.”

  Henry leaned forward in his chair and regarded Gran most earnestly. “But you are with God right now, Mrs. Tuttle.”

  “How can I be if I ain’t dead yet?”

  “All you need do to receive God’s inflowing spirit is accept that it is freely yours to have.”

  Gran shook her head. “If ’twere that easy, what purpose is there to goin’ to church?”

  Henry smiled at her. “As far as I know, there is none. But I have little patience with preaching. My own convictions come from what I experience, not from what others tell me.”

  “We all have to listen to someone, young man.”

  Henry tapped his chest. “I listen to the voice within. And I don’t need to go to church to be with God.”

  “Where do you go then?”

  “The woods. The pond. The fields and mountains. God is everywhere in the natural world around us and culminates in the present moment.” Henry took both Gran’s hands in his. “Stop all this worrying about what should have been done yesterday or what needs to be done tomorrow and simply be right here, right now. Just be still and look around you. Tell me what you see.”

  Gran turned her gaze toward the apple orchard on the hill. “I see the blowth on the fruit trees, and it is a mighty pretty sight,” she said.

  Henry nodded. “That is the bloom of the present moment.”

  Whether Gran grasped his meaning or not, his deep, gentle voice seemed to settle her down. None of us spoke for a while. Then my stomach rumbled. And Gran heard it.

  “Faith! You and Henry must be famished after all that tramping in the bog,” she said, all in a biver again. “I would fetch you some victuals if only I could. Or ask Harriet to do so, if only she were here.”

  Julia immediately rose from the sofa. “I reckon it’s up to me then.”

  “I thank you kindly,” Gran told her. “Pray go to the smokehouse and hack off a nice hunk of ham. Then go to the root cellar and bring up a small wheel of cheese and a big bottle of cider.”

  “No ham or cider for me,” Henry said.

  Gran sighed. “I clean forgot your aversion to meat and fermented beverages, Henry. Now what am I goin’ to feed you? I know. Fetch up some apples from the pit for Henry, Julia.”

  Julia looked bewildered. “What pit?”

  Gran gave one of her impatient sniffs. “You sure weren’t raised up to be a farmer’s wife, were you? Adam, go along with Julia Bell and show her where the apples are stowed.”

  I was happy to oblige, for I welcome any opportunity to be alone with my love. When we went into the root cellar I pulled Julia to me and gave her a deep kiss. She kissed me back, and we lingered in our subterranean embrace for a few blissful moments, then drew apart and caught our breaths, inhaling the earthy scent of the root vegetables stored in the racks along the stone walls. The walls sloped upward to an arched ceiling, and the dirt floor dipped toward a pit where apples from last fall were stockpiled between layers of straw. I’d left the rough plank door open, and a thin light seeped into the cool darkness of the cellar. Looking about, I saw that the cellar was not as orderly as Gran had trained Harriet to keep it. Carrots and parsnips were strewn about, and a red neckerchief Harriet had carelessly dropped was on the dirt floor. Julia picked it up and put it on a shelf. After tapping the plug in a cider keg with the heel of my hand to stop it from dripping, I looked into the pit. The straw had been cast aside willy-nilly, and the apples were in disarray.

  “Ah, well. Harriet is still but a girl,” I muttered.

  Julia got a basket from a shelf and placed the apples I handed her into it. “They look fresh-picked,” she said.

  “And taste fresh too. Try one.”

  She bit into an apple and exclaimed over its sweet juiciness. That inclined me to take a taste myself by licking her sweet, juicy lips, and we started kissing all over again.

  When we returned to the chestnut tree with the apples and cheese, neither Gran nor Henry remarked upon our long absence. They were intent upon watching a man on a sorry-looking gray horse coming up the long drive. He was a tall, lean fellow wearing a slouch hat with a brim wide enough to near qualify as some sort of umbrella.

  “Do you know who that is, Adam?” Gran said.

  “Never saw him before.”

  When the stranger reached the end of the drive I walked over to him. “How do,” he said and touched his ridiculous hat. His clean-shaven face was burnt brown as old leather, yet there was a youthful set to his countenance.

  “Good day,” I replied and waited for him to announce his business. I spied the barrel of a large-caliber rifle extending out beyond the bedroll behind his saddle, and when Henry left his chair and came to stand beside me, I was glad to have him there.

  “My name is Shiloh Prouty,” the stranger said in a low and melodious voice that indicated his Southern origins.

  I was not inclined to introduce myself back to him until he told me what he wanted. Henry too remained silent. Shiloh Prouty stared back at us with eyes as washed-out blue as his worn, patched overalls. It seemed further communication was at a standstill until we figured out each other’s protocols.

  Julia came over to us, and Prouty doffed his hat. His hair was the color of wheat and looked to be as stiff and dry. “What brings you to Tuttle Farm, sir?” she asked him right off.

  “Well, ma’am, that is a complicated question.” His demeanor became more relaxed as he addressed her. “What brung me has nothing to do with this farm in particular. I have been stopping by a number of farms hereabouts. And so far nobody at a one of them has offered me so much as a cool drink of water.”

  “If it’s water you want, help yourself,” I said more gruffly than graciously and gestured toward the old stone well a rod from the
kitchen door.

  Prouty dismounted and went to the well, where he filled a bucket with water and drank from his cupped palm. I expected him to leave after he’d refreshed himself, but instead he approached the sofa and doffed his hat again. “Fine farm you got here, mistress,” he told Gran.

  “Where you from, mister?” she asked him.

  “Virginia.”

  “Well, I reckon it must seem a mighty small farm compared to them plantations you got down there,” she replied. “But we don’t use slave labor in these parts of the country. We do the work with our own hands.”

  “Appears to me you folks up North got a lot of opinions regarding how we do things in the South, but no firsthand knowledge,” Prouty replied in a friendly enough drawl. “I got me a farm, not a plantation, and I work it mostly myself, as my pappy did afore me. Raise some cotton and some tobacco and some corn and got a good hundred pigs out below the oaks. It’s a fine farm like yours, and I take a good deal of pride in it.”

  “What you doing away from it during planting season?” Gran said.

  He shifted from one foot to the other and twisted the brim of the hat in his hands. “I fear my words may not please you, but I must speak them. I am looking for my slave who run away from me.”

  Gran didn’t so much as blink. “Well, we don’t countenance slave owners ’round here, young feller, so you’d best be on yer way.”

  Prouty’s amiable expression turned grim. “Seems I can’t get nowhere with you prejudiced Yankees.” He turned toward his sorry horse.

  “No, wait,” Henry said. “It is never too late to give up our prejudices. Let us hear you out.”

  I gave Henry a startled look, but in the next instant realized that his intention was to interrogate this Southern stranger, who might very well be Tripp’s murderer. So I too urged Prouty to tell us more about his slave.

  “I cannot fathom why she run out on me,” Prouty said most woefully. “I have always treated Tansy as good as I know how to. Here, I got a picture of her, taken but a few days ago. Maybe you seen her.” He pulled from his pocket a small velvet case and opened it to show us a daguerreotype of a hefty young Negro woman with a stern expression. “She looks better in the flesh, ’specially when she’s smiling. Tansy’s got a real nice smile.”

  “How long have you been looking for her?” Henry asked him.

  “Since she lit out on me two weeks ago.”

  “And how long have you been looking for her in these parts?”

  “I come from Boston just today.”

  “Why were you in Boston?” Henry said.

  “Tansy’s got a sister livin’ there. She’s married to some shipyard worker who bought her freedom. Figured Tansy would run to her, and I was right. I come this close to catching her.” He lifted a grubby hand and made a hairsbreadth space between index finger and thumb. “But she got wind of my being in Boston, and someone carted her off to a hiding place here in Plumford. I had to pay dearly for that information, and now I’m asking you direct and plain. Have you seen her?” We all shook our heads. “Have you heard tell of her?” We stared back at him in silence. “I am wasting my breath, ain’t I? You would never tell me if you had. You Yankees got no respect for another man’s rightful possession.” Shaking his head over our perversity, he went to his horse.

  “Might I ask you a few more questions before you go, Mr. Prouty?” Henry said.

  “No! I am fed up to my back teeth with you asking me questions but telling me nothing in return.” He mounted and looked down at us, his long, narrow face more sad than angry. “I ain’t leaving Plumford till I find Tansy or hear where next to look for her. Don’t care what it cost me in time or money. Not that I got much of either, but I aim to put up at that tavern down in the village for a spell.” He turned his horse and headed back down the hill.

  “That’s the first slave owner I ever seen in the flesh,” Gran said. “He don’t look as evil as I expected.” She sounded disappointed.

  “You cannot always perceive the evil lurking within a person,” Julia said. “Nevertheless, Mr. Prouty does seem more a lovesick swain than a hidebound slave owner.”

  “That’s not the way I view him,” I said. “Prouty has come here to reclaim his property. And he probably shot Tripp trying to do so the other night. He then pursued his slave across the bog, but she managed to escape him. That’s why he is looking in this area for her.”

  “We don’t know for a fact that the slave he calls Tansy is the fugitive Tripp was transporting,” Julia said.

  “Fact or not, it seems more than likely,” I said.

  “Let us not underrate the value of a fact, Adam,” Henry said. “It will one day flower in a truth. I too suspect Prouty, but we cannot prove anything against him without evidence.”

  “Tripp was shot with a powerful rifle like the one Prouty is traveling with,” I pointed out.

  “But the only way we can establish as fact that his was the gun that shot Tripp,” Henry said, “is if the bullets it fires come out looking like this one.” He fished in his deep pocket and then displayed in his palm the nicked bullet we had found in Tripp’s coat.

  “I hope you are not going to propose we find out by getting Prouty to shoot at us,” I joked. I glanced at Gran, hoping I hadn’t alarmed her, but she was once again dozing.

  “I propose something far more sensible,” Henry said. “After poor Tripp’s burial service tomorrow, let us go to Boston and establish if Prouty was there when he claimed to be. If he was, he could not have been in Plumford when Tripp was shot.”

  That didn’t sound too sensible to me. “How can we possibly know who might have seen Prouty in Boston?”

  “The Vigilant Committee makes it their business to keep watch for men like Prouty. And I know committee members we can talk to.”

  “I would like to come to Boston with you,” Julia said.

  Henry shook his head. “In order for your house to remain a safe Station, you can’t be seen associating with people on the Vigilant Committee.”

  “Yes, of course you’re right,” Julia told Henry. I would be most appreciative if she ever told me that.

  When Harriet returned from town Gran awoke and made much of offering Henry a cup of tea. He refused, as he always does. Shortly thereafter, Julia took her leave. The late afternoon light had begun to wane, and I carried Gran upstairs to her bed. She urged me, in another fit of fretfulness, not to leave the sofa outside. Harriet came up to read to Gran out of the Bible, which always calmed her down.

  When Henry and I brought the sofa back to the parlor, we were impressed that Julia and Harriet had managed to carry out such a big, heavy piece. We returned to our chairs under the chestnut tree to watch high, thin streaks of cloud ease in from the west and reflect the ruddy color of the setting sun. Long-winged nighthawks coursed back and forth above the meadow, catching insects in their choppy flight, and off along the stone wall whippoorwills called each other back and forth.

  Henry asked me how far the Tuttle property extended, and I told him it encompassed all the hill, from the meadow down below in the valley to the rocky top.

  “I reckon that would be about three hundred acres,” he said. His surveyor’s eye had estimated correctly. “What are your biggest crops?”

  “Corn, rye, and oats,” I said. “In my grandfather’s day it made economical sense to use most of the land for pasture and field crops, but now I’d like to devote more of it to orchard and experiment with new varieties of apples. Scientific farming, that’s the modern way to go, and I’ve been keeping careful records of seeds, sprouts, transplants, and grafts. My goal is to develop an apple more resistant to blight and less prone to bruising during shipping and storage. Thanks to the railroad, it’s possible to ship heavy produce fairly cheaply now, and that means city folk can have fresh, affordable apples. That would be a real boon to them, for I am convinced of the health-inducing qualities of apples. Why, I have seen certain of my patients with digestive and liver disorders improve from a
diet of . . .” I glanced at Henry and saw that his eyes were closed. “Well, I guess I have gone on too long about apples.”

  “Oh, I was listening to you with great interest,” he assured me, opening his eyes. “The subject of apples has always fascinated me. I find it remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”

  Henry then cited where the apple was mentioned by Homer, Herodotus, and Pliny. Although I too had studied the classics at Harvard, I had forgotten most of what I’d read. But Henry has a mind that retains impressions of all he sees and reads.

  “Well, now I’m the one who has gone on too long about apples,” he concluded. “Let me only say further that I applaud your ambition to cure man’s ills with the fruit, Adam.”

  “Not all man’s ills, of course,” I said. “I did not mean to sound overly optimistic. Indeed, it is most doubtful that my ambitions concerning Tuttle Farm’s future will ever be realized.”

  “They certainly won’t be if you have that attitude,” Henry said. “You must advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, Adam. If you endeavor to live the life you have imagined, you will meet with unexpected success, I assure you.”

  “The life I imagine has always included Julia in it,” I said. “Unfortunately, it is impossible for her to get a divorce. Therefore, we intend to head west, where no one will know we aren’t legally married, and we can live openly together. We often talk of California as a possibility, a dream of ours since childhood.”

  Henry and I are not in the habit of discussing such personal matters, and my frankness concerning my intimate relationship with Julia seemed to leave him at a loss for words.

  “Have I shocked you into silence, Henry?”

  “It is indeed a shock to learn I will be losing two good friends. When do you plan to depart?”

  “In truth, we would have gone already if not for my grandmother’s grave illness. I cannot leave Gran when she most needs me, and it is only a matter of months, I fear, before she passes.”

  “And when she does? What will happen to Tuttle Farm?”

  “I have not worked that out as of yet,” I admitted. “I would be loath to sell it. I reckon I can always get someone to manage it for me. How about you, Henry?”