The Transcendental Murder (8 page)

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” said Mary. (Don't let him get away with it. Jump, Mary, jump.)

She began, halting and stuttering, defending Emily. She was the greatest, the best, she saw the supercharged significance in humble things, in natural objects …

“Oh, that old transcendental fallacy, that things seen are purposeful symbols of things unseen. I knew a man once who found enormous significance in people's license plates. He was crazy as a coot.” Homer looked at Mary's flushed cheeks. What were those pinkish flowers like gramophone horns? Petunias?

“Look,” said Mary, “you can't use a madman's ravings to dispose of a whole philosophical position.”

“Calm down, for Pete's sake.”

Mary took a new stand on higher ground. She began to reel off ribbons of Emily's sharp, bright verse. Homer listened. John and Annie at last got their pancakes, and they all sat down. Mary sang on, disdaining food.

“There now, listen to that,” said Homer, waving his fork. “'Twere better far, or something like that, to fail with land in sight (how's it go?)

… Than gain my blue peninsula

To perish of delight.…

“You see? Always turning aside, withdrawing from the experience, afraid to get their feet dirty. And another thing. Here they were always swooning and perishing with delight over things, but they couldn't stand the sight of each other. Old Emily up in her chamber, refusing to come downstairs to see visitors. She knew she'd scare them with her electric fluid. And you know what Waldo said. ‘We descend to meet.' And Henry Thoreau was the worst—exalting his solitariness into a kind of solipsism almost.”

O, Blasphemy. And this was the so-called expert. “Solipsism! Oh, really, you just don't understand them at all.”

“Thank you,” said the expert in a pained tone, wounded to the quick. Mary felt around for her coat. Oh, good for you. Insulting the country's most celebrated Emersonian scholar. That was well done.

On the way out they got in another argument over who should pay, and Mary unfortunately won. She scuttled the children off to her car, and Homer strode off the other way, wrenching at his tie.

Chapter 12

	These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it.
HENRY THOREAU

Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations …

The weather had turned out well. Everybody in the family was marching in the parade except Mary and Freddy and Grandmaw. They took up a position on the Milldam in front of Vanderhoof's Hardware Store. American flags, like something pretty invented by Grandma Moses, were stuck into special holes in the sidewalks along Main Street. Jimmy Flower's policemen directed surges of traffic out of the parade route. There were balloon men on the corner of Walden and Main, their arms floating high with buoyant clusters of gas balloons and fans of plastic pinwheels, blurry flags and feathery celluloid dolls on sticks. The balloons were transparent, with polka dots and stars. Mary bought a red one for Freddy, and tied it to his wrist. He tossed his arm around to make it bounce up and down. He was too young to have had one before. Somebody else lost his and it went sailing up in the blue sky. There was a braying sound of a distant band, and everyone peered down the street. Hello, there was Homer Kelly in his fur hat, hurrying Rowena Goss across the street. He nodded distantly to Mary, and she smiled back her friendly smile, wishing he would go fly a kite.

The Independent Battery came first. Philip rode one of the two lead horses, carrying the Battery flag, his thoughtful forehead seamed, his body tense and erect. The horses that pulled the limbers were heavy old plugs, but they made a fine showing, with the clop-clop of their great hairy-ankled hooves and the unfamiliar noise of metal wheel-rims on the streets. Three members of the Battery sat on each limber, with linked arms. Mary remembered that in the good old days after a traditional whiskey breakfast the linked arms had been a necessary precaution. Now the Battery carefully discharged all its duties before toasting the military spirit of the forefathers. After the Battery there was a blur of marching units and noisy bands, the trombonists and trumpeters staring cross-eyed at the music clamped to their instruments. Freddy clapped his hands at the red chariots of the Fire Department and waved at Tom, who was stepping along with his parade staff, handsome in his let-out uniform. Gwen, struggling with morning sickness, walked beside her Girl Scouts, wearing a green uniform that matched her complexion. Grandmaw chuckled and pointed at The Spirit of '76. The bleeding, bandaged drummer boy was extremely small and obviously an amateur, but he was beating the tar out of his instrument. Next in line was the High School Band, with the controversial drum majorettes prancing sweetly to the fore, showing astonishing lengths of bare white leg. After the band there was a big open car containing the Governor of Massachusetts and his wife. The Governor nodded and waved his hat, but his lips were moving, distracted. He was trying to remember what in hell rhymed with Revere. (Hear, queer, beer, near, leer, fear … oh, sure, fear. “A-cry-of-defiance-and-not-of-fear-a-voice-in-the-darkness-a-knock-at-the-door-and-a-word-that-shall-echo-forever-more.”)

“My dear,” said his wife, beaming radiantly to right and left, “why in heaven's name didn't you write it out? I know you're trying to work up a reputation for old-fashioned eloquence, but you'll just make a fool of yourself, that's all you'll do.”

The parade was over. The watching crowds closed in behind the last band and followed them down Monument Street. Gwen hurried back and picked up Freddy and started walking against the stream toward her car. Homer and Rowena caught up with Mary and old Mrs. Hand. “Those noisome grails of yours,” he said. “I've figured out what they're for. Black Masses.”

“What?” Well, at least he wasn't not speaking.

“Noisome grails. For witches to use at Black Masses.”

Oh, that was good. Mary chuckled.

“What happens now?” he said.

“Now everybody gathers in the field beside the bridge, there next to the Old Manse, and there are speeches and so on.”

“These military demonstrations, all this nationalistic flag-waving. Honestly,” said Rowena.

“You got something against parades?” said Homer.

He had changed his tie. This one was patriotic with red, white and blue ballerinas.

Chapter 13

	What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot to-day?
HENRY THOREAU

Preliminary report of the Committee on Public Ceremonies and Celebrations …

The amplified voices of the General Radio Glee Club sounded tinny, singing Emerson's hymn—

By the rude bridge that arched the flood
,

Their flag to April's breeze unfurled
,

Here once the embattled farmers stood

And fired the shot heard round the world.

It didn't matter much that the Governor forgot half of his poem. The instant he said, “Listen my children,” everybody stopped listening, and smiled around and visited. Grandmaw couldn't hear, but she guessed. “It's not Longfellow again?”

“I'm afraid so,” said Mary.

It was pleasant to stop one's ears and just watch. Around the speaker's platform the parade-marchers in their contrasting uniforms stood in orderly radiating clusters. Beyond them the disorderly citizens came in all shapes and sizes and moved here and there at will, pushing baby carriages over the bumpy ground, carrying infants on their shoulders. There were boys in the trees, there was the smell of spring, there were grandmothers sitting on the trampled grass, and somebody's dog that shouldn't have been let out nosing around and barking. There were jets going over, and now and then, thin occasional fragments of the Governor's proclamation. “Whereas … and … whereas … do hereby proclaim this Patriot's Day …” Below the Governor the color and confusion of the massed marchers reminded Mary of two paintings rolled into one, some grandiose Napolepnic battle scene and a picnic in the grass. There were the fringed flags lying at every angle, the dazzle of sunshine on a sousaphone, the glittering splendor of the glockenspiel rising out of the high school band like the standard of a Roman legion, and under the crossed flags the reclining figure of the dying general replaced by the tired pimply second trombonist eating a sandwich.

The Governor finished and sat down, to a splatter of applause. Then a long straggling line of Scouts from Acton arrived, with more flags, and there were mutual felicitations. At last it was time for Charley. Mary craned her neck. There he was, right on time, accompanied by a shout that gathered momentum along Monument Street and echoed around through the field, “Here he comes!” Charley's outfit had been scrounged from here and there, but he looked reasonably like an eighteenth century general practitioner arousing the countryside. His hair was hidden under an orange wig that was tied back with a ribbon, and he wore a skimpy purple tricorn, with cheap gold braid around the edges. He urged Dolly as fast as was safe through the parted crowd, giving an impression of speed, leaning forward, waving one arm, crying, “The Regulars are out!” Then he reined in and tipped his hat to the Governor. “In case you don't know it, Your Excellency,” he said, handing him a scroll, “the British are coming.”

Mary felt the old movie music grinding. It was queer the way a real event was apt to become lost in the pageantry that grew up around it. But there had been a real Dr. Sam, and for a moment Mary reveled in knowing it. “Put on,” he had said to Paul Revere, there on the Battle Road where the British had stopped them, and his horse had jumped over a stone wall and carried him and his burden of news to Concord, and on to Acton and Carlisle. It was Prescott's ride that had helped to bring not only a few hundred Minutemen to the bridge but three or four thousand to the stone walls and hill slopes by the end of the day, ambushing the British retreat, turning it into a rout. A hero he had been, for sure, and a martyr before the war was over, dying in a British prison, so that he never got to marry the girl he had gone to Lexington to see in the first place.

The Governor was reading the scroll out loud. It began with a “Whereas,” and went on with a rather tedious statement of general approval of the whole thing by the mayor of Boston. Mentally the Governor resolved to suggest to the Mayor that next year he include a few appropriate lines from some traditional verse. Then he shook hands with Charley, calling him Paul Revere, and congratulated him on the successful completion of his famous ride. Suddenly he remembered some of the lines he had forgotten, and hanging onto Charley's hand, he pumped it up and down and declaimed them into the microphone.

Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,