Thoreau on Wolf Hill

by Oak, B. B.

  ADAM’S JOURNAL

  Sunday, December 19

  Hyram Jackson’s attempt to end his own young life for no discernible reason was not the only bizarre occurrence to bewilder me yesterday. Far from it! The events that took place last evening were more flummoxing still. My mind throbs with disturbing images as much as my head aches from the blows it endured.

  And to think how ordinarily the evening began. Went to the Sun for a small beer and some small talk. Received both from the amiable Ruggles. But as we discussed the likelihood of getting snow before Christmas, I began sniffing the air, wondering if I still retained the scent of arsenic in my nostrils. Then I noticed the garlands of garlic hanging above the bar.

  Ruggles noted my glances and smiled. “Yes, doctor, they are to ward off the Night Stalker. The precaution eases the minds of my customers.” He turned to the seemingly ever-present Beers. “Don’t it, constable?”

  “My mind has not been at ease for over a fortnight, since the body of that young man whose name escapes me was found in our township.”

  “Chauncey Bidwell,” I said. “And if you cannot even recall his name, it indicates to me that investigating his death is not topmost in your mind.”

  “Well, I have a more recent murder to deal with, do I not?” Beers said indignantly. “But what is the point of investigating who murdered either of ’em if we already know who done it?”

  “You have arrested no one,” I said.

  “And pray how do I go about arresting a vampyre?”

  I groaned. “Stop using that fabrication as an excuse to keep from doing your job.”

  “Fabrication!” Beers sputtered. “I have evidence. I have a witness. I have the council of a vampyre authority who has slain such—” He looked toward the door and stopped talking. “Who be that?”

  I followed his gaze and at first did not recognize the new arrival, but when the tall fellow looked my way, I saw that it was Dr. Lamb. He was now clad in a shabby overcoat, rumpled worker trousers, and a black slouch hat, the broad brim shielding half his face. Not only had he changed his dress, but also the very set of his face. The hauteur had been replaced by a dull, rather stupid expression, and thick, metal-framed glasses covered his piercing eyes. But despite Lamb’s obvious attempt to look inconspicuous, he still drew suspicious looks his way. The appearance of any stranger now causes alarm in our town.

  “That man is a doctor I know,” I told Beers and hastened to go greet Lamb. “What brings you to the Sun Tavern?”

  “You, of course,” he replied. “May we talk in more privacy?”

  We went to a table in the back of the room. “So how did you find me this time?” I asked him when we were seated. “Sheer luck again?”

  He gave me a shadow of a smile. “I shall always be able to find you, Dr. Walker.”

  “So it seems. And did you find Solomon Wiley after you left my grandmother’s house so abruptly?”

  “Oh, yes. I watched him from a distance and determined he was a mortal man of the lowest order. He is not the one I seek.”

  “Is that not what I told you?”

  “You told me nothing!” His intense anger flared for only an instant. “And to be fair, I have told you nothing of myself.”

  “You are not a doctor who practices in Maine?”

  “No. I would make a poor doctor indeed, especially if required to bleed patients. And once you hear more about me, you will understand why.” But he said no more.

  Contained my impatience and waited. Had to wait for some time before he spoke again. And when he did, he related the following to me, as near as I can remember.

  I was born a Nipmuc and lived in this region before the white man came. You cannot imagine the sweetness of life and the plenty before your coming! So many silvery alewives and shad ran in the Assabet they could be scooped up with just our hands to fill our reed baskets to bursting. And when the salmon ran, there were more fish in the river than water itself, and some of them were longer and heavier than men. We burned the brush under the trees to keep the land open for grass and plants to grow so that herds of deer would come to graze. They gave us hides for clothes, antlers for tools, and meat all the winter through. The bears were so many every wigwam had robes for sleeping, and we smeared their fat on us to keep out the winter cold. And beaver, how we loved to eat their fatty tails! Babies and maidens wore their soft, warm fur next to the skin when it was cold.

  And what beautiful men and women we were! Far taller and stronger than you English, with sounder limbs and far better teeth. The air was clear, without the stink of cows, oxen, pigs, and horses, and yes, the stink of you who were far less clean than we.

  How I long to hear my language spoken and chanted again! How I long to awaken on a cold night such as this in a wigwam and smell the bark roof, see in the flickering embers of the fire my bow and lance and arrows, and feel the body of my good wife against me. Even in the winter we were content. While blizzards raged I sat and knapped arrowheads while my son laid turkey feathers on the arrow shafts, my wife sewed garments of deerskin, and my girl wove and painted baskets of reed or folded birch bark. What more in the world could any man want? We made with our own hands everything we needed. I scorn your clapboard houses filled with chattels, your fenced-in farms with penned-in animals, your binding garments and shoes. You surrender your freedom in order to possess such unnecessary things.

  You have heard of us only as people with dead eyes and mouths bent down in sorrow and hate. But you brought us that sorrow with your diseases, and you caused us to hate you for your greed. I tell you, how we all laughed before you came! No people so laughed, so saw the sweetness of life, so amused themselves with pranks, so enjoyed pratfalls, so frolicked at a feast, so jested, so threw themselves into games of every kind. Life was a game.

  Even war was a game for the battle was about bravery, showing daring and courage and skill. Women and children were spared, even taken into the victor’s clan and tribe. Men fought eye to eye instead of firing weapons at each other from a distance. We fought to test each other. You fight to annihilate each other. But there is no point in my going on about all that. Your world is here, and my world is gone.

  And you are no doubt weary of hearing about a life you cannot understand, Dr. Walker. What you want to know is how I could live so long. Or perhaps you have already decided that I am completely mad, and nothing I tell you will change your mind. Nevertheless, I shall tell you anyway, for it is such a relief to speak the truth of my past.

  I was the leader of the Wolf clan, and we were at war with the Bear clan across the river. On that hill above the pond you call Walden, my brother Tisquantum and I pursued a Bear warrior up a high rock formation. Tisquantum raised his club to smite him, but the Bear had an ax of powerful medicine and struck my brother first. Tisquantum tumbled down into a crevasse between the rocks with the ax sunk in his head. I did not mourn my brother for there is no better way for an Indian brave to die than in battle. I did revenge him, however, by stabbing the Bear in his chest with my knife. But as I made to stab him again, he played some devil trick on me, got his arm around my neck, and snapped it. He threw me down and left me for dead.

  But I was not quite dead when clansmen bore me back to the village. All through the night my father chanted over me, his only remaining son, hoping to call up Witiku to save me. My father was a most powerful medicine man, and Witiku answered his call. He told my father that he might be willing to restore me in exchange for another life, and my father immediately slit his own throat. After drinking the blood that poured from my father’s throat, Witiku brought his mouth to mine and poured the blood into me, transforming me into an immortal creature like him. So ’twas the blood of my father that gave me my second life just as his seed had given me my first.

  And then Witiku took on the role of my father. He taught me the ways of a vampyre Witiku like him, as my first father had taught me the ways of a Nipmuc warrior. We roamed the wild forests together for many companionable yea
rs. We took what we wanted, but we never took too much. We were not rapacious like the white men who take everything from this land. When my Witiku father saw enough of your ways to know what was to come, he said good-bye to me and burrowed down into the earth, leaving me to find my way alone as a Witiku.

  My eternal life became one of eternal suffering as I watched the destruction of my people. Your diseases came first and ravaged us before we had a chance to even fight against you. My people perished so quickly from the white man’s poxes that there was no one left to bury the dead. I would walk through village after village, their bones crunching under my feet as our fields became yours. When Metacomet, the one you call King Philip, declared a war against you, in your year of 1675, I fought with all my Witiku powers beside him and the few of my people left to defend the life we had loved.

  I was a tireless slayer and helped exterminate twelve of your towns. But there were always more of you coming. And so few of us left. When Metacomet’s head ended up on a pike at the entrance of one of your forts, I wandered about, aimlessly killing white settlers for a time, and legends grew about me, the terrible man-eater Witiku. Eventually I grew tired of that, and like my vampyre father I burrowed underground. I buried myself in my clan’s burial ground near here, to sleep away my sorrow. I could not face what was on the earth anymore.

  Then curiosity got the better of me. I awoke to see if any of my own race still lived. By then it was a new century, and I had to learn the white man’s language and ways to avoid too much notice. I found not a trace of my people left in these parts and was ready to go back into my grave when by the merest chance I read your article on hypnosis, Dr. Walker. I was astonished! And so should you be, for the man who recalled killing my brother and fighting with me is a vampyre like myself.

  Now do not give me such a disbelieving look, doctor. That can be the only answer to explain how he recalled what happened two hundred and fifty years ago. You must tell me how to find him. I hope you understand why it means everything to me. We are the last two Nipmucs left! That we were of different clans and at war means nothing now. I long to be with one who thinks as I do, for an Indian sees the world as differently from you as does a bear from a fish. We are of different worlds. And you have imposed your world onto mine.

  I cannot bear to live in your world alone. I will bury myself away again deep into the peaceful earth, perhaps this time forever, if I cannot find one of my own blood and mind.

  So that is why you must tell me who he is.

  He fell silent, and I then spoke most reluctantly. “Doctor Lamb, pray believe me when I tell you that the man I regressed is not an Indian vampyre. He was born only thirty years ago, is neither tall nor dark, has living parents and sisters, is of French and English descent, walks about in the daylight, and forebears from eating meat of any kind, much less drinking blood. All the same, he was the Indian you fought in another life. He is not that same man anymore, however, although his very essence might be the same.”

  Lamb looked at me in an inhuman fashion, his pupils red as hot coals. “You speak in riddles to confuse me. Dare not trifle with me, doctor.”

  “I do not wish to confuse you, but all this confuses me as well. The only explanation I can give you is that my subject recalled a past life.”

  “He came back from the dead?”

  “No. But his soul was reborn.”

  “What is a soul, doctor? I hear white men speak of it all the time and can never understand what they mean.”

  “Most of us most likely don’t know what we mean, either,” I said. His eyes flamed behind the shield of his glasses again, and I held up my palm to stay his anger. “Forgive me for speaking in riddles again. But is not life itself a riddle? There is no answer to what awaits us after death. I reckon even you do not know, after all these years on earth as a vampyre.”

  “Ah, so you believe I speak the truth.”

  “No more or less than you believe I speak the truth to you,” I hedged.

  “About your subject’s being reborn?” Lamb gave out a hollow laugh and leaned so close to me I could smell the clove on his breath. “I could easily prove to you that I am a vampyre, but you would unfortunately have to die from the demonstration. But how can you possibly prove this theory you call Reincarnation?”

  “We have! To our satisfaction at least.” I went on to tell him, without referring to Henry by name, how we had found the ax-embedded skull in the crevasse of the rocks. “We thought it best to return it to its resting place,” I concluded.

  “It rests there no more,” Lamb said. “I too went back on that hill and crawled down into the crevasse where Tisquantum fell so long ago. I took his head with the ax still wedged in it and buried it in my clan’s graveyard. Indeed, in my own grave, so if I return to sleep my brother will be with me. That is how lonely I am!”

  We regarded each other silently in the noise of the boisterous tavern.

  “If you truly found that skull, you may well be who and what you claim you are,” I finally said, my voice shaky.

  “And I am ready to concede there is such a thing as Reincarnation,” he told me.

  The door flew open, and Solomon Wiley barged into the tavern like a wild beast, grunting out greetings to one and all as he brandished a human skull on a pole. Some regarded him with wonder, others with repulsion. Lamb showed no emotion at all upon his pale countenance. Such unnatural self-control made me almost believe he was what he said he was, for the skull Solomon was showing off so proudly had an ax implanted in it, and that ax was of pink quartz with a black blaze running through it.

  “I have been hunting for Witiku!” Solomon cried out.

  “You have been plundering a graveyard!” I shouted back at him and left the table to talk to Beers. “Arrest this man, constable. It is now against the law in Plumford to desecrate human corpses.” Of course Beers made no move to vacate his stool.

  Solomon laughed. “This skull did not come from a Christian burial place but from that old Nipmuc boneyard up by Herd’s pasture. How can you desecrate what is already ungodly?”

  “I have no jurisdiction, I am sure, over such a place as that,” Beers murmured.

  “And hark this, my fellow townsmen!” Solomon bellowed. “I believe I have found the vampyre Witiku’s lair!” He paused as men left their bar stools and tables to gather round him. “I found this skull in a grave by a boulder. I swear as I stand here that grave was fresh dug,” he continued. “When that fiend discovers how I defiled his sleeping place with my own urine, he will have nowhere else to go tonight.”

  “You pissed in it?” I said in a jeering tone. “Why, you are no better than a dog marking his territory, Wiley.”

  That got a few laughs, and the more respectable tavern-goers started backing away from Solomon. Oh, how he did glower at me. I smiled back.

  “Walker is too stupid to understand my intent,” Solomon told those still around him. “Vampyres lose all their powers in the light of day, and if Witiku has nowhere to hide, he will be at my mercy. I intend to spend the rest of the night at that unholy place awaiting him.”

  “But won’t the stink of your piss keep him away?” I said, since my vulgarity had gone over so well the first time. And sure enough, it got laughs once again. Indeed, it does not take much to get men at a tavern laughing. Humor pertaining to body parts and their functions rarely fails.

  Solomon turned red with rage, but held his ground. “I am trying to save this town for you and your loved ones,” he told those still listening to him. “And to do so, all the vampyres that inhabit it must be destroyed or driven off. I have spent this long day searching for Witiku and his minions in the Indian boneyard, and although I labored hard and long digging up ancient graves and strewing about their contents, I expect no payment for it.”

  I glanced toward Lamb to see how he was taking all this, but much to my surprise, he was no longer seated at the table, nor could I spot him anywhere in the tavern. I looked back at Solomon.

  “Of co
urse you expect payment!” I shouted at him. “As you expected payment for desecrating the bodies of Consumption victims until that was deemed against the laws of sanity and decency. So now you resort to destroying Indian graves to incite fear and drum up business for yourself.”

  “Slaying vampyres is not my business, ’tis my mission in life!” he replied in his preacher voice, addressing the others. “I was but a boy when I saved my own dear mother, who was dying of the wasting disease. My stepfather was preying upon her from his grave, sucking the life out of her as she lay in her sickbed, until I unearthed his coffin and beheaded him. She got up from her bed restored to health that very day. Has that man”—he pointed to me—“ever cured anyone from Consumption? His patients die off like flies!”

  “At least I am not a shameless fraud like you are, Solomon Wiley,” I said. “You defaced Chauncey Bidwell’s body with rat’s blood at the ice house to make it look like the work of a vampyre. And you then tried to bully his poor mother into paying for your services. Enough of your tricks and scaremongering. Get the hell out of our town.” Men began to stand alongside me, leaving Solomon to stand by himself.

  “Very well, heed this useless doctor who cannot save his patients from dying, instead of heeding me, who can destroy the very cause of their deaths,” he said, his voice now sad and weary. “We will see whom Witiku chooses to kill next.” With a parting glare at me, he stalked out of the taproom and into the night.

  I too soon left the Sun, for the likelihood of Lamb’s returning seemed remote, and I had no desire to swallow down more alcohol. The one small beer I’d imbibed had left me lightheaded enough to make me realize how exhausted I was. As I walked past the smithy shop I heard from behind it a weak cry for help. Thinking someone was injured, I hurried toward the sound and in the moonlight saw what I took to be a supine figure on the ground. But as I crouched over it I discovered it to be only an empty coat and hat. I heard the cry again and turned to see Solomon Wiley behind me, grinning over his clever trick. He whacked me in the head with his pole.