Thoreau on Wolf Hill

by Oak, B. B.

  Henry and I removed ourselves to two rockers in front of the fireplace for a better view of the brilliant show the roaring backlog was putting on.

  Henry began without preamble. “I remember Lamb now from my past life regression, Adam. If he were dressed in a breechcloth instead of formal dinner attire, he would be the spitting image of the brave whose neck I broke.”

  “You are saying they have similar features?”

  “I am saying they are one and the same!”

  “Well, for a man who is over two hundred and fifty years old, Dr. Lamb has aged well. He looks not a day over thirty,” I quipped, for my rational mind could not accept such a possibility. “Besides, did you not recall killing that warrior in your regression?”

  “Perhaps I only thought I did, Adam. How could Lamb have described in detail the ax I wielded if he had not been present to see it?”

  That was what had so struck me as astonishing too, for I had deliberately left out the description in my article. “There must be a logical explanation.”

  “Pray give it to me then.” Henry rocked in the chair and waited.

  I rose and worried the backlog a bit with the poker and shovel. Sap dropped from its ends and sizzled. “What about this?” I finally said, resuming my seat. “Lamb too has had a past life regression, and he was taken back to the exact same place, at the exact same moment in time as you were.”

  “Such a coincidence as that,” Henry said, “would be truly amazing.”

  “Not as amazing as a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old man,” I replied.

  “Here is a more feasible possibility,” Henry said. “Lamb heard the details of my past life regression from someone. And the only other person present when I was hypnotized was Julia. Might she have related the incident to Dr. Lamb or to someone who knows him?”

  “It is hard for me to believe Julia would be so indiscreet,” I said, “but it is far harder for me to believe Dr. Lamb is the selfsame warrior you fought with over two centuries ago, Henry.”

  “Ah, but what if he is? Think of the enlightenment he could bring to us!”

  “Dr. Lamb did not impress me as being particularly enlightened,” I said. “If he is indeed the Indian you fought, why couldn’t he recognize you as you did him?”

  “Because I do not look in my present life as I did in that past one,” Henry said. “Only my soul returned, reborn in a new human body. That is the very essence of Reincarnation.”

  Gran came out of the pantry, a pie plate in her hands. “What in God’s name are you two jawing about? We live once and only once and go up to heaven or down to hell as we so deserve! Now put your mouths to better use than spouting blasphemy and eat some of my pumpkin and chestnut pie.”

  Henry did not need to be asked twice. Nor did I. Whatever deep and intriguing mysteries our minds had been engrossed in were forgotten for the moment as our stomachs took precedence. Henry made up to Gran for his severe breach of etiquette in refusing her stew by devouring three pieces of her pie.

  “I used the chestnuts you brung me in it,” she told him and blessed him with one of her sweetest smiles. He had been forgiven completely, even for blasphemy.

  Henry left soon after, laughing off Harriet’s fears that he might come upon the Night Stalker as he tramped his way back to Concord. I returned to my rocker, intent upon contemplating all that we had discussed. However, my thoughts centered mostly on Julia. A short time later two of Gran’s farmhands, father and son, came through the back door. They each carried a blanket and pillow.

  “We would like to take you up on yer kind invite to sleep in yer kitchen tonight, ma’am,” the father said.

  “I figured the barn would be too cold,” she said, “with no snow as yet coverin’ the roof to hold in warmth from the cows. Make yerselves to home, boys, and I’ll dish you out some stew.”

  I stayed a while longer to talk with the men. I’d worked the fields with them as a boy, and we go back a long way. But when I saw they were far more interested in chewing than chin-wagging, I left them to their food.

  “I’m off,” I announced as I grabbed my coat and hat from the wall peg.

  Gran and Harriet came rushing forward to inquire where I could be off to in the middle of the night. It was not even nine o’clock yet, and I told them I had decided to spend the night in my office, sleeping on the cot. I had been feeling most uneasy thinking of Julia all alone in the house with a killer possibly still roaming about town. That she was not entirely alone, but had another woman and a young boy for company, did not give me much comfort. What protection would they be? And now that Gran and Harriet had two hearty men under the roof, they did not need me around to make them feel safe. Even so, Harriet put up quite a protest, covering her head with her apron and wailing most dramatically over my departure. But Gran just wished me Godspeed, for she knows when I make up my mind to do something there is no changing it. She knows too that there is no changing my stubborn heart’s abiding devotion to Julia.

  Napoleon trotted back to town most happily. He likely prefers to be barned there, his home all the years Doc Silas drove him. I went into the house through the office passageway and found the kitchen dark. Lit a lamp and went to the hall, listening for voices. Heard none and supposed the ladies and Noah had all retired for the night. But then I discerned a faint sobbing emanating from the studio and went to see what was wrong.

  Found Julia holding a candle in front of the portrait she’d painted of Doc Silas. Called her name softly so as not to frighten her. She turned, cheeks shiny with tears, but then her countenance brimmed with happiness at the sight of me.

  Hurried to her, blew out her candle, and swept her into my arms. “Why are you crying, Julia?”

  “Everyone I have ever loved in this world I have lost.” She pressed her cheek against my chest. “And I have loved you most of all.” Her words were muffled as she spoke them into the area of my waistcoat that covered my pounding heart.

  Guided her to an armchair and sat her down upon my knee. Did not forget that the last (and only other) time I’d pulled her onto my lap, we had kissed for the first time as adults and had experienced a carnal desire so strong we near consummated it right there and then. Did not intend to kiss her tonight. Just held her in my arms for as long as she cared to have me do so and took the liberty of breathing in the scent of her hair and her neck and her hands.

  After a while, I know not how long, she lifted her head from my shoulder and said, “Why have you come here this evening?”

  “To protect you.”

  She merely nodded in response, as if this were her due. Perhaps it is. I have felt inclined to protect Julia ever since she was eight years old and have always done everything in a boy’s and then a man’s power to do so. She lifted herself from my lap with the grace of a gazelle and asked if I wanted some tea.

  Followed her into the kitchen, and as we waited for the kettle to boil I asked her if she had ever told anyone about Henry’s hypnotic regression. She assured me she had not. Told her about Dr. Lamb’s mentioning the ax, and then went ahead and told her how Henry and I had actually found it. This astonished her, as well it should have, but we could not pursue the subject further for Noah came in, wearing an old-fashioned night shirt far too large for him. It must have once belonged to Doc Silas.

  “Reckoned I heard voices in here,” Noah said, rubbing his eyes.

  Julia offered to heat him up some milk. He said he’d do it for himself and did so with quick efficiency. He also prepared the pot of tea for us, far more at ease in a kitchen than Julia has ever shown herself to be. He even served us up some macaroons, arranging them on a plate most artistically.

  “Did Mrs. Swann make these?” Julia asked him. “Or did you, Noah?” The boy shrugged his scrawny shoulders and turned away. “He is too shy to take credit for anything,” Julia whispered to me. Addressing Noah again, she said, “Go fetch your drawings, dear. I want Dr. Adam to see them.”

  He did as he was bidden and returned with a ta
ttered and smudged sketchbook. I leafed through it and regarded the unskilled drawings of mundane household objects with the mildest of interest. But Julia murmured words of admiration and encouragement over each page. The last drawing was of some large-eyed, long-lashed creature’s countenance, its features all skewwhiff.

  “Is that me, Noah?” Julia guessed, and he nodded. “Perhaps Dr. Adam will pose for you one day, although he has always refused to do so for me.”

  “Not always,” I said. “Have you forgotten the time I allowed you to make a life mask of my countenance and what followed?”

  She did not reply, nor would she even look at me. No matter. I knew she remembered our first kiss as vividly as I did by the blush that suffused her cheeks.

  We all parted in the kitchen a short time later, she to her chamber and Noah to his upstairs, and I to my office, where I continue to write although it is nigh midnight. Enough! To bed.

  JULIA’S NOTEBOOK

  Thursday, 16 December

  When Adam enfolded me in his arms last night, I felt I belonged with him in every sense—physically, spiritually, exclusively, eternally. Alas, as much as we belong together, we cannot be together as husband and wife in this lifetime. Perhaps we shall have a future life together in which we will be free to enjoy conjugal relations. Perhaps we have been intimate partners in a past life. I can almost believe these things possible after what Adam told me last night.

  He said that in August of ’46, shortly after I’d sailed for Europe, Henry had taken him to a place called Bartlett’s Hill, not far from his cabin. Henry believed this location to be the one he’d recalled in his hypnotic regression. There two boulders stood cheek by jowl, and they matched the ones in Henry’s remembrance, right down to the crevasse between them into which the unfortunate Indian had fallen after Henry sank an ax into his head. (Not Henry in his present incarnation, of course, but some past Indian self.) And Henry had then wanted Adam to hold him by the ankles whilst he went headfirst into the crevasse to see if he could find evidence that this memory from a time two hundred years ago had actually occurred. Adam had tried to talk him out of such an imprudent endeavor, but had ended up assisting him. And lo! Henry had come up with a skull with an ax embedded in it!

  This ax exactly fit the description of the one Henry had recalled in his regression. It was made of pink quartz and had a jagged blaze of black stone running through it. They had decided to tell no one of their discovery, for neither of them wanted the notoriety such a claim would bring. So they had tossed the skull, ax and all, back into the crevasse and had gone about the business of living in the present.

  But last evening a man they had recently met called Dr. Lamb had described just such an ax to them. How would he know of it? Although I was there when Adam regressed Henry, I certainly have told no one about it. So how Dr. Lamb knew details never made known to anyone is a mystery far too deep for me to comprehend. Adam insists there must be some logical explanation. But I prefer to think our souls do come back again and again. And if Adam and I are truly soul mates, surely we will have another lifetime together. How I hope that to be so!

  Meanwhile, my present concern is Noah. He has not come home yet, and twilight is fast approaching. I shall have to go out and find him post haste.

  ADAM’S JOURNAL

  Thursday, December 16

  Another patient lost. Will I ever become inured to it? Even though I knew Arabel Phyfe’s demise to be inevitable, I am still astounded that she left this world so quickly. A painless exit, I am thankful to report. I could do nothing to save her, but I could at least ease her passing.

  As is often the case with Consumption, this young woman became more beautiful as she wasted away. Her sisters remarked that Arabel looked an ethereal angel, so delicate and pale, with eyes as bright as stars. She remained conscious almost to the last, and whenever I came to her bedside her eyes would brighten even more. ’Twas not me personally she was so joyful to see, but the black bag I carried, for she knew it contained the laudanum she so craved.

  Today, when I took her pulse, I found her feeble heart to be laboring away at a hundred forty beats a minute. Auscultation with the stethoscope revealed ever greater congestion in the upper lobes of the lungs, for I could hear the bubbling and gurgling of tubercular matter in the bronchi. She was no longer ingesting any food and had lost near all her life force since I had first examined her in my office but three days past. I administered a generous draught of laudanum, and she drank it down with the only energy left to her.

  The drug had an immediate effect, and she lay her head back on her silk pillow with a sigh of relief. Her peace lasted only a moment before it was interrupted by a violent bout of coughing. I lifted her up and held a bowl beneath her chin. In it she expectorated clots of blood and bits of lung tissue. That took her last strength. She lay back again as I wiped her mouth, pale cheeks now flushed from exertion, and I knew that Death had tiptoed into the room, along with her father.

  “Is she better today?” Justice Phyfe asked me.

  Such a pitifully futile question! Poor Phyfe had yet to accept that his eldest child was dying and that there was no way all the doctors and treatments his money could buy could prevent it. Arabel’s breath came more and more slowly, each intake labored, made with painful effort. Having witnessed this stage of the disease far too often, I knew what next to expect.

  “She has come to her last moments of life,” I replied as gently and kindly as I could. “It is time to bid her good-bye.”

  Phyfe and his daughters knelt by the bed and began caressing Arabel’s thin arms, stroking her hair, and kissing her face in a flurry of demonstrative affection. But of a sudden they stopped, for Arabel’s labored breathing had stopped.

  Although I knew she was dead, I still followed my established procedure. Felt for a pulse at wrist and neck. Held a small mirror close to her nostrils to see if any trace of respiration left a touch of fog on the glass. Placed my stethoscope to her chest and listened long and carefully. “She is gone,” I said.

  “Look!” the youngest girl said, pointing upward. “Her soul is floating away.”

  Although I saw nothing, it might well have been so, for Arabel had slipped away smoothly, without the final hacking struggle or desperate, wild-eyed fear that is more typical of Consumption’s final moments. Her spirit did indeed seem to float from its mooring, leaving behind only a shell of flesh and bone that was no longer her.

  When I returned to the office I was relieved to see there were no patients waiting, for I felt heavy of heart and exhausted. Dropped off my bag and went down the passageway to the house, seeking out Julia. Found her at the back door, dressed in cape and gloves, about to go out.

  “How sad you look!” she said to me. “Has Arabel passed?” When I nodded her eyes filled with tears, but she contained them. “I will go to the Phyfe house to offer my help and condolences as soon as I find Noah. I want him safe inside the house before nightfall.”

  “Where do you hope to find him?”

  “I’ll try the new cemetery first. He often goes there to pray at the graves of his parents, or so Mrs. Swann tells me. She too has gone off, I know not where.”

  “I’ll accompany you,” I said. “You should not go roaming alone in the dark any more than Noah should.”

  Off we went into the silvery twilight, walking briskly up the post road to the cemetery that had been established only a few years ago, when the one behind the Meetinghouse ran out of space. At this time of day no one was about but for a tall figure standing amongst the gravestones. He was a long-armed, bearded man and seemed to be shaking out a coat with a curious fury. And then, as we drew closer, I realized ’twas a boy, not a coat, that the man was so violently shaking. The boy was Noah! And the man was Solomon Wiley. When Solomon saw me charging toward him, he ceased shaking Noah, but still held him up by his collar so that his feet did not touch the ground.

  “Put him down,” I demanded.

  Solomon complied, but kept a grip
on the boy’s neck. “I found him here communicating with the undead,” he told me. “He is their minion. He was born to it. See how evil marks the little fiend’s face.” He must have tightened his grip, for the boy winced.

  “Free him,” I commanded Solomon as calmly as I could, fearing he would snap Noah’s neck.

  “Free the Night Stalker’s spy? I do not think so,” Solomon said in a most reasonable tone that belied the madness in his eyes. “I have heard how he sets fires to call up the devil. This town would be far better off with him dead.” He gave Noah’s neck another wince-inducing twist. “Would not this little monster’s head look better on a spike?”

  Out of nowhere, a slate footstone came flying past me and hit Solomon smack on the forehead. I could hear Julia breathing fast and furious behind me, but dared not turn to see her, for Solomon remained upright and dangerous. The blow she had delivered to him, however, had caught him so entirely off-guard that he’d loosened his grip on Noah’s neck enough for the boy to break free and run into Julia’s arms.

  Solomon flicked away the blood gushing from his forehead and moved toward Julia. “Give me back the devil boy, woman, or I’ll twist off your neck, too.”

  Before he could take another step, I hit him with a right fist driven from my shoulder and legs as I had learned at the Harvard boxing club, but with more anger and brute power strength than I had ever hit a man with in sport. Solomon did not buckle under from the blow as I’d expected him to do, however. He merely shook his head and hooked a swipe at me that would have knocked my head right out of the cemetery grounds if it had connected. Fortunately I dodged in time. As I half turned and yelled at Julia to run with Noah, Solomon saw his chance and shot his elbow into my face. I reeled back, and he ran forward after Julia and the boy. His long legs covered the short distance between them with no trouble. He snatched Noah up. And shoved Julia to the ground!