God in Concord Part 24

"You darling! You're sure now? We can really use your name?"

"Why not?" said Hope, recklessly burning all her bridges, taking up a sledgehammer to destroy those made of stone, tearing apart with savage fingernails the cobweb threads she had flung out into empty air.

*50*

There is indeed something royal about the month

of August. a"Journal, August 18, 1852

Roger Bland's campaign letter was ready, but Jo-Jo Field knew better than to send it out. Too many Concord people were away. The town was deserted.

But only by two-legged citizens. The racc.o.o.ns of Concord had not abandoned their favorite garbage pails for faraway realms of milk and honey. Wood thrushes remained in residence, singing to proclaim this or that patch of forest as their own. Coyotes loped along woodland paths. White-tailed deer plunged out of roadside thickets and paused in the middle of Lowell Road to stare at oncoming cars. In the open fields Monarch caterpillars inched along milkweed stalks to feed among the fragrant flowers. Cutworms ravaged neglected tomato vines, beetles wandered unchecked among the beans, borers tunneled into fattening ears of corn.

At the high school the lacrosse field lay quietly waiting for whatever action might be taken by the voters in October. In antic.i.p.ation of the vote at Town Meeting, tens of thousands of bricks were stacked on pallets in Marlboro. At a cement factory in Chelmsford limestone rattled down chutes to be crushed into powder by steel drums and heated in kilns and cooled and poured into sacks. Screaming saws in Oregon milled logs into clapboards.

The land itself lay dormant, warm beneath the August sun. The backhoe had a flat tire, and it leaned to one side with feathery heads of gra.s.s springing up between the bucket and the hydraulic cylinders. A sweater Jack Markey had torn off his back one broiling July day lay forgotten in the woods.

Below the playing field the train roared between Boston and Fitchburg thirty-six times a day. Traffic on Route 2 was perpetual, clogging the highway during morning and evening rush hours. One hot morning a black snake laid a clutch of eggs in the sandy kettle hole where Th.o.r.eau had once seen the carca.s.s of a dead horse. Before the day was out a racc.o.o.n ate the eggs, only to be killed a moment later on the highway. At once a crow flapped down to examine the crushed furry object on the road.

Another predator was hard at work in the commercial center of Concord. Mirni Pink was not taking a vacation. Every day she laid cunning traps for the tourists flooding the streets. The homeless people who had disturbed the smooth flow of pedestrian traffic were still missing, and the turnover of merchandise in Mimi's stores was brisk. People from New Jersey and Michigan and South Carolina and California visited the old North Bridge and Orchard House, then drove back to the Milldam to buy ice cream at Brigham's and saunter among the gift shops.

Roger and Marjorie Bland stayed only a week on the island of Nantucket, but they came away refreshed. Driving back to Concord from the airport, they avoided the cluttered center of town and approached Nashawtuc hill by way of Simon Willard Road. Marjorie was nicely tanned. A patch of pink showed under Roger's thinning yellow hair. His knees were fiery red.

During the week, tumult had prevailed in the house on Musketaquid Road. Sarah Peel's friends had made good use of every room. The master bedroom was Doris Harper's as her own f.u.c.king right. Dolores and Christine Marshall slept in the bedchamber belonging to Wally Bland. The three other bedrooms were occupied by Carl Browning, Bobbsie Low, and Almina Ziblow. Bridgie Sorrel slept on the daybed in the family room, and Sarah settled down on the living room sofa. Audrey Beamish and Palmer Nifto shacked up together in Roger's den.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on in there?" said Doris Harper, staring at their locked door. "What kind of s.h.i.+t is that?"

But n.o.body else seemed to mind that Audrey and Palmer were happy.

The house was a mess. For a while Sarah Peel tried to keep things under control, but it was soon beyond her power to tidy things up. Before long she abandoned the attempt and lived for the moment like the rest of them, giving no thought for the morrow.

Fortunately Bridgie didn't disconnect the freezer in order to plug in Marjorie's blow dryer until they had all gorged themselves on the four gallons of ice creama"chocolate chip and black raspberry and b.u.t.ter pecan and strawberry swirl. When little Christine dropped a dish of chocolate chip into Roger's compact-disc player, Dolores did her best to swab it clean, but the player didn't work very well after that.

The freezer warmed up so fast that everything thawed before they knew what was happening, but Almina got to work and cooked up a storm with the sirloin roast, the turkey, the leg of lamb, and the six cans of lobster meat. n.o.body bothered to clean up the kitchen afterward because Marjorie had an awful lot of dishes, and they just moved on from Lenox to Royal Copenhagen.

Something crucial happened to the was.h.i.+ng machine when the soap powder ran out and Doris Harper did her laundry with bubble bath. The teeming bubbles rose up in airy towers and filled the cellar with frothy foam. After that everybody had to wash their stuff by hand.

And it didn't do the dining room table any good when Audrey Beamish dropped a big bottle of perfume on it, the Parfum Shalimar that Palmer had stolen from Mimi Pink.

In fact, everything was going to h.e.l.l. But Sarah was content. Her dream of living in the country was fulfilled. She spent hours every day sitting on an overturned bucket, just looking at Pearl. She fed her and watered her and brushed her coat. When Pearl was tormented by flies and stamped her feet and flicked her gray-white hide, Sarah borrowed one of Marjorie's filmy negligees and draped it over her back.

Sarah was happy. Pearl was happy. Never again would they be parted.

The next happiest squatter in the Blands' house was Palmer Nifto. Not only had Palmer found himself a girlfriend, he was also the best-equipped person among them to exploit the contents of the house. In Roger's workshop, for instance, he knew how to use the equipment. There were great whanging and screaming noises from the bas.e.m.e.nt. Palmer and Carl Browning tracked sawdust upstairs and down. They soon had the teak and bird's-eye maple cut up into interesting shapes. Palmer made holes with the drill press and screwed the pieces together into a sort of sculpture.

And Palmer was the only one who understood Roger's personal computer. He was delighted with it. Palmer had been a computer hacker in high school, a whiz kid who had sent a virus raging through the files of the Worcester Trust Company. Now he penetrated Roger's memory bank, and before long he had the key to Roger's connection with his broker. Inquisitively he ran down the record of all Roger's recent transactions.

"Look at that," he said to Audrey. "He's been selling Boeing, but wait a sec, look at this." Palmer punched a couple of keys and brought up on the monitor the latest figures from Standard & Poor's. "Transports are going up, way up, you see that?"

He shook his head in pity for poor Roger Bland, who was not at home to guide his fortunes from day to day. The man needed help. "I'll take care of his portfolio for him," Palmer said. "It's the least I can do while he's away." In a jiffy he figured out how to send a buy order to the broker. And then his first transaction gave him such a feeling of power that he began frolicking among the rest of Roger's accounts, consulting the daily listings in The Wall Street Journal, selling this and buying that. It was exhilarating.

For Doris Harper the use of the telephone was equally stimulating. Doris made a lot of long-distance calls. Her limited vocabulary of four-letter words flashed across the nation at the speed of light to acquaintances in San Francisco, Juneau, Honolulu. Once when the phone rang only a few seconds after she put it down, she s.n.a.t.c.hed it up and shouted at her old boyfriend in Sausalito, "Bulls.h.i.+t! Shut your f.u.c.king trap," only it wasn't her old boyfriend, it was Wally Bland, calling his parents' house from Camp Watcheehatchee in Maine, where he was a counselor.

"Hey, who's that?" said Wally.

Doris rolled her eyes at Sarah.

Sarah took the phone. "Who did you want to speak to?" she said cautiously.

"My parents," said Wally. "Is Mrs. Bland there?"

"No Blands here," said Sarah. "Sorry, wrong number."

Wally hung up. When the phone rang again a moment later, they all stared at it and let it ring.

"No more phone calls," said Sarah firmly, glowering at Doris.

But Doris made an awful fuss. Palmer Nifto shouted at her to shut up, for Christ's sake, and Doris screamed back at him, and Dolores told her not to say things like that in front of Christine, and then Doris fell silent and looked at them evilly, and later they found the yellow brocade upholstery of the Sheraton sofa slashed front and back. Goose down floated in the air and settled on everything.

At the moment when Roger and Marjorie returned from their vacation and drove up to the house on Musketaquid Road, all the squatters happened to be quiet. Only the television set was making a lot of noise. It was "The Young and the Reckless" once again. Vanessa had awakened from her coma, but then the doctor became her lover, and pretty soon Vanessa was pregnant, and then she had an abortion, and now she was undergoing severe postpartem suicidal depression, which involved a lot of screaming. The actress who played Vanessa was giving it all she had. Scream after scream rent the air of the Blands' family room and shrilled out the doors and windows onto the lawn.

"Good heavens," said Roger, "what's that noise?"

Marjorie stared dumbfounded at Baronesa Carmencita de Granada. The horse was trampling the flower bed, eating the petunias, draped in Marjorie's best boudoir gown, a delicate garment of mousseline de soie and Belgian lace. While Marjorie looked on in horror, Carmencita stepped on a trailing end and ripped the gown from neck to hem.

Trembling, Marjorie got out of the car and faltered up the front steps and stood behind Roger as he grimly threw open the door.

*51*

Our whole life is startlingly moral. a"Walden, "Higher Laws"

"For you," muttered Mary, reaching the telephone across the bed. It was six o'clock in the morning.

Homer groaned and rolled over. "Homer Kelly here."

"Homer?" It was Police Chief Jimmy Flower. "Hey listen, I wonder if you'd do me a favor."

"Well, I don't know," murmured Homer, getting up sleepily on one elbow. "What kind of favor?"

"We've got some people here, locked up for breaking and entering, malicious destruction of property. What they need is counsel. You know, somebody to act for them, arrange bail."

"Listen, Jimmy, it's true I've got a law degree, but I haven't practiced in years. Why pick on me?"

"Because you're such a G.o.dd.a.m.ned famous old-fas.h.i.+oned liberal, everybody knows that."

"What's being a liberal got to do with it?"

"Well, it's these homeless. It's a typical bleeding-heart case. Everybody else in town is mad at them, mad as h.e.l.l. You know what they did? They moved into Roger Bland's house while he was on vacation and wrecked the whole place. Bunch of freeloaders. Welfare Cadillac types, if you ask me. Just your meat."

"Now wait a minute." Homer sat up in bed. "You mean we've got homeless people here on the streets of Concord?"

"Homer Kelly, where have you been? Haven't you been downtown lately? Haven't you seen them on the Milldam? I tell you, the merchant community is giving me a hard time. That Ms. Pink, she calls me every day, wants 'em run out of town."

Homer was dumbfounded. He couldn't speak.

"Homer? Are you still there?"

"Of course. It's just that I didn't know we had people like that here in Concord. I guess I've had my head in the clouds. I've been listening for wood thrushes. You know, stuff like that." Homer sat up and rubbed his frowsy head. "Well, okay, I'll come over and talk to them."

At the police station on Walden Street he found the ten of them sorted into three lockups. Little Christine was officially too young to be locked up, but she had been permitted to stay with her mother.

At first Homer talked to Palmer Nifto, who was by far the most presentable and articulate. But in the end it was Sarah Peel who commanded his attention. Homer liked her laconic truthfulness. Her speech was not enc.u.mbered with excuses, fanciful stories, and elaborate sociopolitical jargon like Palmer's.

"We've got no place to sleep," said Sarah.

It was enough. The words rang in Homer's head like a gong. The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of man hath no where to lay his head.

"That's terrible," he told Sarah, and she said nothing, she just looked at him, while the others jabbered and told their stories. The worst was Doris Harper, with whom it was difficult to feel any sympathy. In a few minutes Doris had exhausted all the obscenities in her repertoirea"religious, excretory, s.e.xuala"and now she was repeating herself. Somebody should invent a new religion, decided Homer, just to give Doris new words to swear with.

Before Homer left the police station he promised to arrange bail for all ten of them, volunteered to be their public defender, and obtained the immediate release of Dolores and Christine Marshall. "I'll be back," he said earnestly to Sarah Peel, but she just looked at him silently.

Homer felt an urgent need to talk to Oliver Fry, but first he delivered Dolores and Christine to his astonished wife. Then he drove back into town and pulled up beside Oliver's back porch. It was eight o'clock in the morning.

Homer was in distress. Until today he had been juggling only two things in his head, the splendor of the natural world on the one hand and its b.l.o.o.d.y teeth and claws on the other. Now there was this huge third thing to worry about, the fall of man, and Homer couldn't handle it. How could there be any excuse for preserving these lovely fields and forests in the face of all this human need? Let them build low-income housing all around Walden Pond, and erect cheap apartments on Th.o.r.eau's sacred cliffs, and comfortable dwellings along the river all the way from Sudbury to Bedford. He could no longer find it in his heart to fight against such things.

But, oh, G.o.d, those places were so precious, so sacred. Homer burst into Oliver's kitchen, full of doubt. "We can't do it, Oliver," he proclaimed, while the alarmed owl screeched at him. "We've got to drop the whole thing."

Oliver was eating breakfast with his daughter Hope and Ananda Singh. They looked up in surprise as he poured out the news about the helpless people in the police lockup.

Oliver fought back. "Drop it? Never," he thundered, lowering his mighty brows. He stood up and prodded Homer with his forefinger. "Those homeless people don't have anything to do with whether or not we should save the countryside. They're beside the point. We can take care of them and save the land, too. Those developers, you think they're going to do anything about homeless people? h.e.l.l, no."

Ananda listened in dismay. The existence of people without homes of their own was not new to him. With his own eyes he had seen the teeming streets of Calcutta. He had seen lepers lying among open sewers. It was terrible that such things should be.

Hope listened, too. Silently she set a fourth plate of pancakes on the table. Ananda leaped up and pulled out a chair for Homer.

"Oh, thank you," Homer said, breaking off in midshout. He sat down, attacking the pancakes hungrily, and let Oliver pummel him with furious protestations. Then he stopped listening. An idea had occurred to him. He calmed down. The ugly housing he had built in imagination around the sh.o.r.e of Walden Pond faded, and the trees returned. The moment of ethical crisis was over. He knew what to do.

"Look here," he said, changing the subject, putting down his fork, and turning to Ananda, who was, he remembered, one of the ten most eligible bachelors in the world, "where shall we go next?"

"Go next?" said Ananda blankly.

"Following in Th.o.r.eau's footsteps, where shall we go now?"

Ananda's stricken face cleared. He smiled. "Have you ever been to Gowing's Swamp?"

"Never. It's a quaking bog, right?"

"Oh, no," said Hope, "you're not thinking of going there?"

Homer adopted the idea at once. "Of course we are. What about some day next week? Oliver can tell us how to get there."

"You'll need rubber boots," exulted Oliver, "because you'll sink in up to your knees. Ananda, I'll loan you mine." Then he gave them a lecture on the nature of quaking bogs. "Sphagnum moss grows over the surface of a pond and gets thicker and thicker, and things grow in it, so that it looks like solid ground, but there's water underneath, so you have to be careful."

"I'll come, too," said Hope, flinging off restraint, the seesaw of her alternating affections flinging her high in the air.

Ananda beamed at her, and she turned away, smiling, to wash the dishes at the sink. Dumping them on the drainboard, she was p.r.i.c.klingly aware that Ananda was looking at her back, which was engulfed in a huge sweats.h.i.+rt. In the compet.i.tion with Bonnie Glover, Hope had fiercely made up her mind to be herself. The more lusciously Bonnie exposed the curviform parts of her anatomy, the more stubbornly Hope draped herself in her old clothes, the more violently she pulled back her hair into a tight pigtail.

Ananda looked at her bony little skull and longed to caress it. He jumped up, s.n.a.t.c.hed a damp dish towel, and dried the dishes, setting them down in the cupboard with extreme care, each chipped dish touching the one below with the most delicate of clinks.

Tags from Walden ran through Hope's head, and she wanted to say them aloud, to impress Ananda. But she couldn't fit them into the conversation. "I love the wild, not less than the good"a"it didn't go with was.h.i.+ng dishes.

"Thank you for helping," she whispered as Ananda picked up the last cup and wiped it around and around with the towel.

"You are most welcome," he said softly, hanging it tenderly on its hook.

*52*