The Transcendental Murder (5 page)

“He rams the powder bag down the barrel,” said Philip. “And the lanyard man pulls the string.”

“Kaboom,” explained Charley.”

Tom looked curiously at Charley. “How come you're not a member of the Battery, Charley? I thought these honorary things ran in families? Your dad's been in for years, and now Philip's in it … I thought it went from father to son?”

“Oh, I guess they thought I was too busy impersonating Sam Prescott. I do it so damn well, you know.”

“Oh, sure,” said Tom. It was plain he had brought up a distressing point. Mary suspected Ernest Goss's own personal spite against Charley, and hated him for it. She wondered if Philip and Charley knew about the Ernest Goss collection of letters, and asked them about it.

They looked at her, their faces two blanks. “Letters?” they said together. “What letters?”

“Didn't he tell you? He was very disappointed in the Alcott Association, because they didn't believe in them at all. But Howard asked us not to talk about them. Maybe I'd better not say any more about it. I thought you knew.”

There was an awkward silence. Then Freddy started for the tractor engine again, and Mary chased him back. She gave him a piece of chain to play with.

“Well, we're on our way home anyhow,” said Charley. “Don't forget, girly, it's my turn to squire you to the square dance.” He folded his arms and did a do-si-do. Philip turned away without speaking and started up the road. Charley made a horrible face at Philip's back and ran after him, with a long running slide along the ice. Mary went back to the house to help Gwen with lunch.

In the kitchen Gwen was buttering hot dog buns. She moaned in comic despair. “How am I going to tell Tom?” She had finally gone to Dr. Cosgro and discovered that she was, indeed, pregnant again.

“Just tell him,” said Grandmaw. “You know he'll be pleased.”

Tom came in and washed off his grease, while the women exchanged glances behind his back. “Go ahead,” said Grandmaw. “Tell him now.”

Tom pulled his face out of the roller towel and looked at them. ‘Tell me what?”

Mary started to laugh, and he guessed right away.

“No,” he said.

“Yes,” said Gwen.

“Ye gods,” said Tom. But he took hold of himself manfully and kissed his wife. “This calls for a drink.”

They were halfway through the drink when they remembered Freddy. “Oh, Lord,” said Tom, and he ran across the road without his coat. He found Freddy on his hands and knees beside the tractor engine. His snowsuit was black grease from head to foot. Tom picked him up, gave him a whack and took him home to be cleaned up. Freddy bawled very loud.

Chapter 7

	This Saturday evening dance is a regular thing, and it is thought something strange if you don't attend. They take it for granted that you want society!
HENRY THOREAU

The square dance was the week before the April 19th festivities. The freezing rain had given way to warm, and it poured steadily, as from a pitcher tipped smoothly in a firm hand. Mary ran from Charley's car into Girl Scout Hall on Walden Street, head down, with Charley whooping behind her. Inside the hall the fiddles were reeling, the feet stamping. Mary swung her wet hair out. Charley got spray in his eye. “Hey,” he said, “you've got an awfully superfluous amount of that stuff. Why don't you let me go to work on it?” He whirled her around on the sidelines, with her coat still on. Charley was a bouncing square-dancer, not a very good one. Mary didn't mind. She adored it, and would have danced with a chimpanzee, as long as the fiddles played “The Crooked Stovepipe” and “Golden Slippers.”

Oh, damn, that gorilla was here (speaking of chimpanzees). There he was, that Homer Kelly again, leaning against the wall, giving her that pit-viper look. Homer was with Rowena Goss, one of Charley's younger sisters. The pretty one. Pretty wasn't the word. Rowena had a brilliant smile and a splendid figure and the vibrant carrying voice of an actress, which she was, off and on. Rowena brought her prize over and introduced him. “We've met,” said Mary. She began to get that drab, washed-out feeing that Rowena seemed to hand out all the time like so many upended bushel baskets, muffling the opposition. Usually Mary put her light under Rowena's bushel cheerfully. But this time she found herself thinking about Annie, and the way she had looked the other day, playing jump rope—the way she had leaned in, getting ready. Jump, Mary, jump. Off with the basket!

Then the fiddles struck up. Charley took Mary's hand and she abandoned care. The caller set up a whine. “Active couples down the hall, four in line, ladies chain with the one below! Swing! Swing! Allemand left and around we go!” Mary progressed down the dance, curtseying to new partners, swinging with the shorter ones as gently as she could, trying not to lift them off the floor. Here came Kelly. He took her in his arms and swung her. Swung her and swung her. Her next partner collided with him, and Homer broke away, his craggy face flushed, making a stab at the figures he had missed. Mary went on, bowing and whirling and bobbing like a monkey on a stick, telling herself how little physical things mattered, like being gloriously in rhythm with a big oaf of a man. It was meetings of minds that mattered, meetings of minds. Yes, sir.

Next day the sun came out again, and the yellow grass flushed green. It was Sunday. Late in the afternoon there was a honk in front of the house, and Mary went out to the roadside stand. Rowena Goss was behind the wheel of her car, with Homer Kelly sitting silently beside her in the front seat, his long arm slung up on the back. “Hello,” mumbled Mary.

Rowena asked for a gallon of cider and handed out her bushel basket, free of charge. Mary took the basket and rammed it over her head, and went behind the counter to the freezer that preserved the cider out of season. She took out a jug, carried it back to the car, hunched down to the car window and handed it in.

“How much is it, Mary dear?” said Rowena.

“A buck,” said Mary gruffly. Oh, for heaven's sake, why didn't she say yup or nope while she was about it?

They drove away. Mary caught Homer's little pig eyes looking back at her, and she heard Rowena say something about a character. Damn. That's just what she was, a big bumbling character that you stared at to see what queer erratic thing it would do next. Damn, damn.

Chapter 8

	They congregate in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and paddle in the social slush.
HENRY THOREAU

Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations Relative to the 19th of April Ceremony. Chairman, Thomas S. Hand.

Before the Military Ball Ernest and Elizabeth Goss were giving a dinner party. Mary and Gwen and Tom were invited, but at the last minute the phone began to ring again, and Tom found himself bogged down. He sat by the telephone with the receiver pressed against his ear, bobbing Annie's yo-yo up and down, listening to a purist.

“Mr. Hand! I just want to know if you're planning to have those dreadful drum majorettes again in the parade? It's bad enough with those Highland Pipers—what they have to do with 1775 is beyond
me.
Why doesn't everybody just dress up like
Mickey Mouse
?”

“Hello, Tom? Harold Quested here. Say, you know that kid in my bunch of Cubs, Julius Spooner? Well, he came to the last pack meeting with spots all over him and guess what? Yup, I'm afraid so. Every last one of 'em. Chicken pox. Except Julius, of course. He's radiant with good health.”

“Well, let Julius carry the flag,” said Tom.

“Mr. Hand? This is Mrs. Shuttle, you know, the little boy that's going to play the piccolo's mother, in the Spirit of '76? With the bandages? Well, Howie's sick. No, not chicken pox. He fell on the ice and skinned his face, and his embouchure is all swoll up. But Jimmy, that's his little brother, he'd just love to help out. What? No, not the piccolo, the bongos. You know, like a drum? Would that do?”

“No,” said Tom. “But the drummer boy is sick, too. Maybe we can work something out.” Gwen, her mouth bristling with pins, came up behind him with his old Navy jacket, and struggled him into it. She hummed with horror when she saw how far the buttons would have to be moved over, and stuck a pin viciously in the right place.

“
Ow
!” yelled Tom. He put his hand over the phone and told Gwen to go ahead, he'd come along later. Besides, he had the pickup to fix because somebody had decided they needed it for a float. “I'll see you at the ball,” he said.

It was a fine night, so Mary and Gwen walked up the road and down the driveway that led to the big house by the Assabet River. Mrs. Bewley met them at the kitchen door and set up a cheerful shout. Mrs. Bewley was the maid of all work, a large, gaunt woman so nearly stone-deaf that one had to really holler to make her hear. She always hollered right back. She pulled Mary across the doorstep. “NOW, DON'T YOU LOOK PRETTY? I ALWAYS DID GO FOR PINK CHEEKS.”

Mrs. Goss came hurrying into the kitchen to greet them. When she said, “How charming to see you,” it didn't necessarily mean it was charming at all. It was just what she always said. Her command of any social situation was so stylized and flawless she might have been carrying it on in her sleep. Mary found it paralyzing. It wasn't too different from the effect of her daughter Rowena's bushel baskets. Mary sometimes wondered if that unshakable gentility could be jarred loose. What if she were to burst into tears and fall on Mrs. Goss's shoulder, and cry “Help me, Mrs. Goss, help me”? Nothing would happen, probably, except veils and swathes of formulae, wrapping themselves swiftly over the harsh real nature of the event. No tears, anywhere, no true laughter. Emily had said something about it—

I like a look of Agony,

Because I know it's true—

Men do not sham Convulsion,

Nor simulate, a Throe—

“Won't you take your things to my bedroom at the head of the stairs?” said Mrs. Goss. Mary agreeably started up the backstairs that led off the kitchen. “No, no,” said Mrs. Goss sharply, “please don't go that way. I meant the front stairs.”

But Mary was halfway up. “That's all right,” she said. “I don't mind not being grand.” Gwen hesitated, then went along with Mrs. Goss, who looked disgruntled.

At the top of the backstairs Mary discovered why she had not been wanted in that part of the house, and she felt a little ashamed of herself. There was an argument going on behind a closed door. She tiptoed past, trying not to listen. But she couldn't help hearing Ernest Goss's angry voice, talking rapidly. “I can take just so many of your threats, and no more. I'm not ashamed of my decision, I'm damned glad.” There were sounds of a scuffle, and the heavy crash of overturning furniture. “Now, now, you get away from me. You lay one finger on me and I'll call the police. Get away from me, you hear?” Ernie's loud voice rose in a high frenzy. Mary paused and looked back at the door. Should she knock? Call for help? But then Ernest Goss started talking again in a normal tone, so low that she couldn't hear what he was saying. She didn't want to. Mary walked down the corridor and found Mrs. Goss's bedroom. Gwen was still downstairs, talking to new arrivals.

Pulling a comb through her hair, Mary waited for her and glanced around the room. Over Elizabeth Goss's bedroom fireplace hung a copy of the old Doolittle print of the Concord fight. There was another just like it in the Concord Library, with the same rows of little British soldiers, their backs straight as red-coated grasshoppers, and the same pretty patterns of smoke puffing out of the muskets. Then she turned to the bookcase and ran her eyes over the shelves. Except for a dutiful shelf devoted to Concord authors it contained a dull miscellany. Why, hello, wasn't that Volume I of Johnson's edition of Emily Dickinson's poetry? It couldn't be the Volume I that was missing from the library? Mary pulled out the grey book and looked inside the front cover. It must be the missing volume. The card pocket was mostly scraped off, but she could still see where the edge had been pasted. Mary riffled the pages. Why would anyone steal one volume from a set of three? Then she found the answer. The book had been defaced. One page appeared to have been roughly torn out. It was page 123. Why, Mrs. Goss, you old so-and-so.