Thoreau in Love (3 page)

“Henry, I want only you. I love you.” She took Henry’s arms.

“Lidian, you must stop this madness.”

“Henry?” Waldo again, from his study. Henry flushed, sure that Waldo had heard. “Come here for a minute, will you?”

“Excuse me,” Henry said to Lidian, happy for an excuse to get away.

“Of course,” said Lidian. “The master calls.”

Lidian knew how to get Henry’s goat. Though he liked to think he and Waldo were equals, Henry worried that Waldo had published his poems and his “Natural History of Massachusetts” merely to keep him caring for Lidian.

At the door to Waldo’s study, Henry knocked.

“Come in, come in.” Handsome Waldo, whose boyish good looks made him appear much younger than 40, sat in his reading chair, his stern attention on the letter he held. After letting Henry stew in fear for a few moments, Waldo said gravely, “I forgot all about this contract. My brother William needs a tutor for his children. Of course. . . .” Ominously, he lifted his dark eyebrows, looked Henry in the eyes, and broke into his beautiful smile. “You’d have to move to New York.”

It was Henry’s turn at last.

A couple of deep ruts brought Henry’s mind back to the stagecoach, and though he was tossed around, his spirits were high. After another hour and many stops to take on mail and pick up and discharge passengers, the clacking and squeals of the wheels became more rhythmically monotonous, and the incessant thundering of the horses’ hooves changed to an even more annoying clompety-clomping on the wooden toll road as they approached the city.

The Boston railroad terminal was located at the harbor, by the wharves. There Henry was to meet up with Susan Emerson, whose children he was to tutor. As he entered the station, he heard Susan calling his name. He lifted himself to his tiptoes, trying to find Susan among the crowd, and saw a vivid green, cloth-covered arm waving. “Over here, Henry.” He wasn’t the only one looking; this was prim and proper Boston, where people didn’t call greetings. Henry sidled through the men and women toward the ebullient voice, and there, in a circle of gawkers, aglow in an emerald silk dress, stood Susan. Henry could hardly believe his eyes. “Susan, what happened? You look. . . .” Beautiful was the word tripping on his tongue.

Susan had come to Boston three days earlier after staying a month with the Emersons in Concord. There, she’d seemed to Henry pretty enough in a plain sort of way, but here in the railroad terminal she was a vision. The bodice of her emerald dress was tight around her breasts and waist, and she was festooned with a ruby-colored, full-length, rose-embroidered sash. Her skirts ballooned like the gowns he’d seen in newspaper articles about New York society. The Boston ladies, dressed like so many Puritans in high, starched white collars and narrow, spinsterish black and gray skirts, paled beside Susan, and made no effort to conceal their disapproval. Susan’s green eyes, shaped like suns just beginning to rise out of the horizon of her high, full cheekbones, had a liveliness they’d lacked in Concord, and her yellow hair, parted in the middle, falling out of a custard-colored bonnet, glowed.

“I’m so glad to see you, Henry. Do you like my new dress?”

“It’s beautiful. As is your hair, and your eyes.”

“A little time by myself and you see what happens. I bought the fabric in New York, while I was pregnant, a present for after I had the baby. My dressmaker here said he’d never seen such material, but of course it’s Boston, so what would you expect? Lidian would be scandalized.”

“I’m sure she would.”

“How Waldo puts up with her I’ll never know.”

“He doesn’t.”

“No, he doesn’t, does he? He goes on lecture tours.”

Surprised by her outspokenness, Henry found himself saying what came to mind. “I never noticed how lovely your skin is.”

“Henry, stop.” With a silly smile, Susan looked around at the drab Boston women whose disdain couldn’t hide the envy in their hearts.

“Shall we dance?” asked Henry, only half kidding, for Susan was certainly the belle of this ball. He took her by the arm.

“Oh, one thing,” said Susan. “I hope you won’t be too upset, but . . . I’ve booked passage for us on a coaster.”

“What?” Henry dropped her arm.

“I sent William word by Harden Express.”

“A coaster? A sail ship?” Their plan was to take the railroad to the end of the line in Norwich, Connecticut, where they would board the overnight steamboat to New York. Henry had been terribly excited about finally getting to ride the giant mechanical monsters that were changing the way everyone lived. Yes, he’d traveled by steamer to Portland, but that was years ago, bare-bones compared with the night boats to New York.

“A schooner. I’m sorry, Henry, I know you’re disappointed, but I had a horrible dream. I don’t dream much, but when I do, they often foretell real events.”

“What was your dream?”

“You and I were standing on deck, looking out at a beautiful moon. You reached over and took my hand, and the boiler exploded.”

“I took your hand, and the boiler exploded?” Susan nodded. Henry didn’t believe in dreams, but his mother did, and hadn’t she had a dream about John disappearing from the family just the night before John’s accident? Henry was disappointed—and upset that Susan had a romantic dream about him—but he didn’t feel like fighting the fates, or his new employer.

“If you’ll indulge me this. . . . You’re always railing about the noise and the dust those steam engines make. I’m sure it will be fun.”

“And four more days away from home?” said Henry, a sly grin on his face. In the month Susan had been at Waldo’s, Henry had several times edged close to asking the question that had been on all of Concord’s lips: Why did Susan, who’d just given birth, leave her husband, two children and her newborn to visit her brother-in-law?

“I see you have me pegged, Henry,” said Susan.

“I don’t know why you came to Concord, but I know it took great courage.”

“Not so much courage as a quiet desperation.”

“Whatever your reasons, and I do hope someday to find out, it still took a lot to stand up to society and say, I don’t care what you think, this is what I’m doing.”

“Thank you, Henry, I appreciate your saying that.”

Henry spread his arms. “Bring us fair seas and soft zephyrs, Aeolus.”

“Oh, you will do it? Thank you, Henry.”

Thinking of the two men of commerce on the stagecoach, Henry said, “Leave the railroads and the steamboats to those every-day merchants who don’t have a minute to spare. I have minutes. And days.” Susan giggled. She loved when Henry proclaimed pedantically. “But you’re not going on a dirty coaster in that dress, are you?”

“I’ll change in my cabin.”

Susan had booked but not paid for their passage; at the wharf, Henry sat on his duffel bag, guarding the trolley piled with Susan’s trunk, portmanteau and hatboxes, while she purchased their tickets. Instead of cinders and smoke, the scent of the sea filled his nostrils. Seals barked, and white gulls cawed and swooped and stood on the pilings.
Dahlia
, the ancient schooner they were to sail on, was tied in its dock. “
Wilted
Dahlia
would be more appropriate,” said Henry. “And what is that smell? Tar?” Henry looked around; by the ship’s bow a tar pot smoked.

Two old gray horses, pulling a rum wagon, clomped up. All at once, the crew of the coaster appeared and began unloading the wooden kegs. Henry watched the men, delighted in the long line of buttocks in tight trousers before him, flexing and relaxing as they passed the kegs of rum from one to another onto the ship and into the hold. Henry envied their camaraderie, the way they laughed and made fun of one another as they did their hard work. Was there anyone among them he might become friends with? Most were older than Henry, some by many years.

The horses stammered, steamed in the damp air. One of the men caught Henry staring and gave him an angry look; Henry nonchalantly turned away, as if he’d just happened to pass his gaze over the men, and what his gaze fell upon were the dozens of sails in the harbor, going every which way. Henry cringed as a huge triangular sail veered directly into a smaller triangle, which disappeared but then after a moment appeared astern of the other.

“That’s it,” said the sailor on the rear of the wagon. He leaped to the ground. The teamster clicked his tongue, and the steaming beasts hesitantly clomped forward. Then, neighing with pleasure at their lightened load, the team picked up its pace and circled briskly around Henry.

As the crew passed the last of the wooden kegs onto the boat, a thin young sailor Henry hadn’t noticed before looked over and smiled, and Henry lost his breath. The limber, red-shirted youth had uncontrolled, wavy brown hair and light whiskers that ran down his cheeks like daggers. Henry couldn’t take his eyes off him. The sailor turned away, distracted by one of his mates, but then he turned back, stood straight, stretched out his thin arms and smiled again. And a voice inside Henry, distinct as a bell, said, “I could fall in love with him.”

Henry smiled back at the young sailor, but then from his right, a startling, sing-songy, “Oh Henry!” He jumped. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I scare you?” It was Susan.

“You did.” Following behind her was a fashionably dressed young man with a mop of dark hair, a baby-fat face and a cigar stub in his mouth. His fitted trousers were perfectly pressed, his shirt cuffs ruffled out his jacket sleeves, and his collar was high but comfortable. He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“This is Captain Hawke,” said Susan.

Without removing the cigar from his mouth, Captain Hawke said in a soft tenor, “Lovely to meet you.” An awkward, fake smile plumped his cheeks even more.

“I was expecting someone much older,” said Henry.

“That’d be my wife, Gale. Here she comes now.”

Henry, taken aback by the captain’s crass comment, gave Susan a look, then saw a short, heavyset woman striding toward them in homespun calico. She appeared to be a bit older than Susan, who was thirty-nine. “Oh,” said Susan, her face pale. “It’s Mrs. Hawke, the woman who sold me the tickets.”

Mrs. Hawke didn’t so much stop as set herself for sturdy balance, her legs spread, her arms akimbo. Her skin was dimpled, and before she spoke her jaw ruminated, as if she were chewing a cud. Then, from deep inside her, with a voice that sounded like one of the seals barking nearby, she said, “That’s two cabins, Peter.”

“Two cabins it is,” said the captain. “Somers! Get over here.” Pointing to the trolley, the captain sneered, “Help this lovely couple with their luggage.”

“Oh, no,” said Susan, blushing.

Fiercely, Gale said, “Why don’t you let one of them others get a tip? Your little bud don’t do nothin’ to begin with.”

Tip? thought Henry. And Susan fumbled in her purse.

“I beg your pardon, my dear, but do I have to tell you again who’s captain and who’s crew?”

“I’m not crew and I never will be. This is my ship.”

“She was yours, my dear, till you married me.”

Though her attention seemed to be directed full fury at her husband, Gale pointed to several crates stacked by the gangway. “Don’t forget these, boys! They’re going out in New London. Yup. That too.” As she directed the sailors, she said, “Take them below. And steady the lady.”

Intent on the goings-on between the captain and his wife, Henry didn’t notice that someone had come to help until he said, “I’ll take that,” and tugged at the duffel bag in Henry’s hand. It was the red-shirted young sailor, smiling joyously. His eyes sparkled. When Henry didn’t respond, couldn’t respond, the sailor comically distorted his mouth and eyes and forehead as if in a fierce struggle to get the bag from Henry. “I said, I’ll take it.”

Henry laughed. “Go ahead. Please.”

The sailor didn’t move an inch, but kept gazing directly at Henry, who, transfixed, didn’t hear Susan speak his name until the second time she said it, more firmly. Henry said, “I can take it,” and, grabbing for his bag, grasped the young man’s hand. They both laughed.

“Right this way,” said the young sailor. With a hat box under each arm and her portmanteau in his right hand, the young sailor, his head high, strolling on air, led the way. Susan, excited for their grand adventure, pulled in her skirts and lifted them into her arms so they wouldn’t get soiled. Henry, too, was agog, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off the youth leading their way. “There’s plenty enough room for two in the big cabin,” said the young sailor as they crossed
Dahlia
’s deck.