Thoreau in Love (17 page)

That was all he could write. His head fell into his hands. Oh Lord, what have I done? He lay on the bed, and almost immediately thoughts of Ben came into his mind. How different this room and this house would be if Ben were with him. He pictured Ben standing beside the bed, looking down, making one of his funny faces, his toothy crescent smile blazing. Images of Ben flashed through his mind: Ben in their cabin. Ben beside him in the ship’s bow. Ben in the crow’s nest. Ben kissing him, touching Ben’s skin, Ben bursting “I love you.”

Smiling, Henry opened his eyes and said, “If I hadn’t left Concord, I never would have met Ben.”

But Ben was gone;
Dahlia
would soon set sail if she hadn’t already. Henry rolled onto his back and stared at the peak in the ceiling. Rousing himself, he sat on the side of the bed, then got up and went downstairs to the parlor and asked if they would mind if he went for a walk.

“Not at all,” said William. “You can go and see my courthouse. Did my brother tell you I was the County Judge? I’d wager he didn’t.”

“It’s a wager you’d lose. He refers to you all the time as ‘my brother the judge.’ ”

“Does he?” said William, obviously flattered. “That so surprises me.” Then, taking Henry to the other door and pointing, he said, “Go right at the end of the arbor, follow the Richmond road and you can’t miss my courthouse. That’s the Richmond road right there.” On and on he went about his courthouse, when it was built, who designed it, the materials used to build it. When he paused enough to get a word in, Henry said, “Thank you, William, I’ll do that.”

And William said, “Oh, and Henry. If you would, either address me as Mr. Emerson, or, if you must, as Mr. William.”

Taken aback, Henry snuffed and said, “Of course. Mr. Emerson.” He popped his eyes and smiled tightly as he nodded to Susan, then he went out the door and down the arbor path. Knowing William would be watching, when he reached Richmond road, he took a left, and before he’d taken three steps, William called, “No, Henry. Right. Go right, up the road.”

Pretending he’d made an innocent mistake, Henry said, “Oh, silly me,” reversed course and walked up the Richmond road. Across the road past a stone fence was a spring green grain field. Henry continued up the rutted road until he came to a handsome classical revival house at least twice the size of the Snuggery. Feeling a new appreciation for the efficiency and compactness of the Snuggery, he looked back at the long, vine-covered brown house. It felt good to get his legs doing what they did best, and as so often happened when he walked outside, his mind cleared.

The grain fields were alive in the whooshing wind, as was the forest of mature cedar beyond the fields. As he walked, the shifting winds brought the scent of onion grass. Following the scent, he looked right, to where a stream ran out of more woods and meandered through a field to a small pond, where a single Guernsey lapped the water. Everywhere birds were singing, and Henry thought, John would have known what every one of them was.

Cresting a hillock, Henry saw another classical revival house that seemed the twin of the one he’d just passed. Indeed, they were twins, but the second appeared to be abandoned. Well, not entirely abandoned. As he passed the overgrown walk, a slim boy of about twelve bolted out the front door, chased by another boy. They raced across the long porch, laughing as they ran. The pursuer nearly had the slim boy’s flying shirttail when the slim boy leaped off into the air.

Screaming, “Oh, no,” the chasing boy stumbled into the bramble of overgrown bushes as the slim boy landed on his feet, tumbled and stopped, laughing at his friend’s end. Henry waited a minute, ostensibly to make sure the boy in the brambles was all right, but really just to make contact with the two lively boys. The slim boy waved to Henry and at the same time called to his friend, “You okay?”

The boy climbing out of the bushes said, “I’ll get you!” And the chase was on again. Envious of the boys’ joy, Henry continued up the road, avoiding the water filled ruts. Billowing clouds covered the sun, but the air was pleasantly warm.

He climbed the road to see yet another classical imitation—the Moravian church. But just when he thought the island held nothing for him, the sun suddenly blazed down, brightly illuminating the trees down the hill to his left, and when he turned he saw through a break in the cedar blue ocean and a two-masted schooner under full sail. Could it be
Dahlia
? Images of Ben came into his mind. Then he thought, No, I can’t do this. Enough Ben. No more perversion. I’m no sodomite. Whistle a song. “Think of Mary. She’s a pretty girl.” He tore the images of Ben from his mind and replaced them with Mary’s blushing face, and he began to whistle, but the song he found himself whistling was
Tom Bowline
.

Feeling totally empty, he collapsed on the steps of the Moravian church, stared down at the painted gray wood. Make this pain go away. With his forearms he pushed into his gut. After a bit he mustered the strength to lift his head and look up and down the roads. “Someone to talk to, anyone?” He didn’t see a soul. What am I doing here? Why am I here? What’s the point of it all? The beautiful cedars, the scudding clouds, the birds, the spring green growth in the fields did nothing for him. Before him was an open space of wet dirt and puddles of mud. “Is this what they call a square?” He twisted to look up at the structure that dominated the square, but it was just a big building with columns, painted white and pretending to be Hellenic. “ ‘How think you / Are they afflicted / Love, whom you smite?’ I am smitten. Smitten, bitten, lost unwritten. Ben, Ben, Ben.” He sank deeper into his stupor of sadness. “No, stop, enough of this.” Heaving a sigh, he stood and brushed the dirt from the rear of his trousers.

“Let’s see what’s up at the top of this hill.” The rutted road by the side of the church ran flat for a bit then straight up the hillside. Fields on either side, stone walls. His thoughts and mutterings rambled up the hill with him “New York is where they want new writing. Not Concord. Not Boston. . . . Maybe Susan is a prisoner here, but I don’t have to be. . . . I can make my career here. . . . I hope Ben likes my ‘Landlord.’ I’m sure he’ll like it. . . . No, who cares what Ben thinks? Ben doesn’t know writing. . . . No, the rude truth, Henry. I wish he were here with me. Will I ever see him again?” A sharp pain rose from the sole of his foot. “Damn, must be a rock.”

Henry hopped to the stone wall beside the road, untied his shoe and shook it out. Three rocks. He looked up and saw a cluster of buildings down the hill to the right of the church. The courthouse: one more white-columned classical revival. A curly-haired youth with his hands in his pockets strutted briskly up the hill. Was this one of the Irish toughs Susan railed against? Now he was waving at Henry. He stopped a short distance away and broke a great, crooked smile. Henry’s stomach turned to butterflies. As if he had somewhere to go, he tested his shoe and began down the hill.

“Hello,” the young man said with a thick Irish lilt. “Beautiful day, eh?”

“Yes,” said Henry, nodding a nervous hello.

“You a farmer?”

“Farmer? No.” Henry looked down at his clothes. “Do I look like a farmer?”

“I guess I thought you did. I apologize if you take offense.”

“No offense taken. Are you a farmer?”

“No, I’ve just been released from the quarantine. Nothing wrong with me though. I’m new to America. From Ireland. Someone on board was sick so they held us a fortnight.” Henry nodded nervously. The young man went on. “Perhaps another time then, friend.”

“Nice talking with you,” saidHenry. The young man held out a fleshy hand and when Henry shook it, a jolt of energy shot up his arm. “Nice
talking
with you, too,” said the young man.

Henry hurried down the hill, kicking up puffs of dirt; when he reached the rutted corner and turned left, he looked back up the hill, and there was the curly haired youth, waving at him. Henry waved back—and wished he’d stayed to talk. He forgot all about William’s courthouse.

His spirits were still high when he arrived at the Snuggery. Unsure what William would deem proper, he knocked on the door and called in, “It’s me, Henry.”

An ebullient Susan opened the door wide. “You don’t have to knock, Henry.”

“Am I all right to come in this door?”

“You may come in any door you wish. How was your walk?”

“Very pleasant, thank you. Getting my land legs back.”

“Did you meet anyone?”

“No, no,” he replied hastily.

That night, after a stiffly formal dinner, Henry, exhausted from the trip, lit his oil lamp, climbed the stairs to the attic, set his lamp on his desk, took off his shoes and lay back. Knowing his mind was too active for sleep, he focused on the shadows slowly dancing up and down the peaked ceiling, which usually worked to make him sleepy. Was it only this morning that he’d parted from Ben? It seemed a lifetime ago. And why had he been reluctant to tell Susan about the Irish youth he’d met. And how strange that their little exchange had lifted him out of his doldrums. Morpheus being nowhere near, he decided to unpack, and there, tucked in his duffel, was a note from Ben.

My dear Henry
,

Make sure you know how I love you. You are my sun and my moon. You have given me life. Being without you will be like a knife in my heart. Ben Wickham

That was all he needed: images of Ben filled his thoughts, Ben’s constant smile and rubbery face, the way Ben had waved when he first saw him, the pure joy of snuggling up to Ben in their bunk. Henry doused the lamp and fell into the arms of Morpheus. He didn’t wake till he was called for breakfast.

9

The next morning, William decided to take Henry with him to work, to show off his Manhattan. But because Susan warned him so sternly not to drink the water from the street-corner public pumps, Henry filled his canteen with the delicious water he pumped out of the Emerson’s kitchen well. On the steam ferry they saw the magnificent steam ship
Great Western
anchored off Bedloe’s Island, waiting to be cleared by the health inspectors before docking.

In Manhattan, Henry was so distracted by the hubbub of people and horse carts, elegant carriages and overloaded wagons that several times on the short walk uptown William left him in the dust and had to retrace his steps to retrieve him. Finally they arrived at 64 Wall Street, which William said was one of the best addresses anywhere. Henry was not impressed.

Happily, William had important work he needed to attend to, so, map in hand, Henry edged his way west on Wall Street, through crowds of well-dressed men spitting streams of tobacco juice, toward the ever-increasing din of the wood-planked Broad Way. When he got to the corner he had to hold his ears. Everywhere up and down the wide avenue clomping horses pulled carriages, hackney cabs, delivery wagons and 15-passenger omnibuses. Between the ruckus of the iron horseshoes striking wood, the wooden wheels drumming the wood planks, the circling horseflies, the streams of tobacco juice and the stench from the piles and piles of fresh manure, it made for a thoroughly offensive thoroughfare. Henry crossed carefully to the Trinity Church, where he found not only respite but also the grave of Alexander Hamilton, already dead nearly forty years. The fresh air from the west took the stink of manure east, so, hugging the west side of the Broad Way, he walked north several blocks, past commodious book stores and jewelers and silversmiths and hatters and linen-drapers and milliners, pastry shops and coffee houses—to another church, St. Paul’s. There, across the Broad Way, was Henry’s destination, Phineas T. Barnum’s gaudy, five-story American Museum, painted with huge advertisements of all that was within. On an open balcony, brightly uniformed men sounding more like a corral of donkeys than a band, played brass instruments.

Because the admission was so steep, twenty-five cents, Henry expected to have the place to himself. On the contrary, the first floor was so crowded all Henry could easily see were the busts of Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin and other notables atop columns throughout the long, narrow hall. He climbed a broad flight of stairs that brought him into the Picture Gallery—and closer to the discordant band—but the portraits of supposed heroes and presidents and governors didn’t do much for Henry, so he hurried on until he was stopped by a huge carnival mirror, which distorted his reflection as well as the image of everyone else who passed by or stopped to gaze at the wobbly mirage. He’d never seen anything like it, but after a few minutes of fun he moved on and was amazed to come upon the Wax-work Room, filled with creatures from around the world, life-size but not so alive as stuffed with cotton and sawdust or made of wax: a giraffe, snakes, an elephant, even the Queen Dowager of England, sitting in her state carriage, attended by wax footmen and pulled by six stuffed horses. What amazed Henry most were the incredibly bright limelight globes illuminating the displays, though he was also taken by the aviary, where bizarre birds, like the adjudant from India, five feet tall, were preserved in death. But Henry couldn’t get past that as real as they’d once been, they were fake. And then he thought of his secretive life and how he hadn’t even been able to tell Susan about the curly-haired youth he’d met on the road, and he wondered if he wasn’t so different from the stuffed adjudant, which he looked eye to eye with in its display.

Disturbed, feeling like the oddest creature in the entire museum, he hurried to the roof, where there was a garden and a fountain that shot water a hundred feet into the air. Again, he’d never seen anything like it, and it took him away from thoughts about himself. As he watched the water shoot into the air, he got to wishing Ben was with him and thinking how different it would be if Ben was with him, and how with Ben he hadn’t felt odd at all. And why was that? The fountain stopped and then after a few minutes of peace it once again shot high into the air. Ben would love this, thought Henry. He watched one more cycle, and then he descended the stairs, and as he walked past the various displays on his way down, he again thought, Ben would love this. And this. And this. And then there was the life-size,
tableaux vivant
of the Cruikshank family. In the first display the Cruikshanks were a happy family. But then Mr. Cruikshank took to the bottle, and in the final display the drunken Mr. Cruikshank stood leering at his terrified children. The Cruikshank family could have been half the families in Concord. Or Ben’s. Yes, Ben would have understood the destruction of the Cruikshank family.