Thoreau in Love (37 page)

“My, my,” said Henry, now chagrined but unable to say so. He glanced over Ralph’s shoulder, then up and down the beach, to make sure no one was around.

“That’s not the end,” said Ralph, oblivious of Henry’s unease. “When I returned, there was Gregory, standing exactly where I’d left him, as if he hadn’t moved.”

“Gregory? From Ireland? The woodcutter?”

“Truth be told, I have no idea. I thought I had imagined the whole thing. But then as I was getting out of my carriage, he put his hands on my buttocks—yes, I believe he did say he’d recently been stripping trees—and when he’d helped me down he was all over touching me, making as if he was dusting me off, and after adjusting himself for the twentieth time, he said, ‘I’ve touched you, now you get to touch me.’ I couldn’t believe my ears. Dumbstruck is more like it. So he says, ‘I like when someone else starts it.’ ” Ralph gulped hard, shook his head and said, “What could I do? We went at it, right there in the stable.”

Henry stood in stunned disbelief, which Ralph again took for complicity. “It’s astonishing, isn’t it? I can’t keep away from him. I’ve been back every day.”

“What about your wife?” Henry choked out.

“Henry, don’t.”

“Are you sure you can trust him?”

“Trust myself is the key. It was one thing to go to Manhattan twice a month to release the satyr. Now that I’ve done it here, I can’t stop myself. I’m going again this afternoon. What time is it do you think?”

Henry looked down at their shadows. “Just after two, I’d say.”

“Then I must go. I’m so glad to have seen you.” Ralph and Henry shook hands, and then Ralph turned and hurried off down the beach, leaving Henry aghast.

That evening, the clouds that had been gathering offshore rose up over the horizon as the ocean pushed back with its own kind of unrelenting heat; the air became thick and sticky, and the temperature barely dropped out of the nineties at night. There was no escape. Tempers flared. Apologies were accepted.

A couple of miserably hot, sticky days later, at breakfast, Susan started in again about how the Irish had ruined Manhattan and there wasn’t a decent one among them, how good, upstanding people’s lives were endangered because these rabble-rousers and riffraff were taking over the world. In the kitchen, Mary, obviously upset by what she overheard, banged pots and pans. Susan screamed for Mary to stop, and she did, so Henry took up her fight, saying, “I wonder what you would have thought of our rabble rousing forefathers.”

Haughtily, Susan said, “What was that?”

“Our Founding Fathers? Before the Revolution, even during the Revolution, most good, upstanding Americans said our Founding Fathers were just a bunch of rabble-rousers. Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson—they said they were riffraff out to ruin our good society. New Yorkers hated them all through the revolution.”

Susan turned to Willie. “Eat your porridge.”

“I don’t want it. It’s too hot.”

Angrily scooping porridge with Willie’s spoon, Susan shoved it into his mouth, saying through clenched teeth, “Eat it anyway.”

Henry pushed out from the table. “I’ll be in the lessons room.”

At lessons, Haven painted a picture of what he said was Ben, all blues and splotchy reds.

“You made him go,” accused Willie, his lower lip stuck out.

Plaintively, Henry said, “I didn’t want him to go.” Henry was tired of feeling so bad. Something has to be done, he thought. But what? After lessons he went up to his steaming hot attic room, thinking he could work on the essay about the trip he and his brother took on the river. He sat at his desk, whittled a pencil and tried to write, but it was useless. He lay on his bed, dozing on and off, for much of the afternoon. He finally rose with the thought, Let me write Ben. He sat at his desk, opened his journal and tried to figure what to say before inking it on good stationery. Dear Ben, he wrote. What do I say? The rude truth, Henry. In pencil, he wrote:

I want to be with you, spend my days with you, but I am absolutely terrified. Yes, terrified at what people will think. Terrified that I/we will be the object of horrible derision. Terrified that what little career I have will be destroyed—nipped in the bud, if you will. I know you want me to go west with you. I could, but if I did that I don’t feel I would give my own life a chance. A chance at what I’m not sure, but I know something keeps me here, in the east. I’m a traveler in my mind. I could easily fill my days exploring in and around Concord. There is too much to see in that old town. You see more than I do. You’re able to take in and explore the west. I am not able to take in that kind of huge expanse. At least not more than in a cursory manner. When we were in Manhattan together, Manhattan passed me by: I saw only you. I’m sure it seems to you that I don’t want to be with you, but, Ben, I do. If you could have patience. I’m madly in love with you, Ben. I want to spend my days and my nights with you. Your loving Henry

Henry read over what he’d written in pencil and decided he ought to wait, certainly till morning, before putting his letter to ink.

Several times that evening, he put down the book he’d dozed off reading to see what he’d written. He didn’t think it really expressed all he wanted, but he didn’t know what else to say. “I need time, Ben.” A little after eight he fell into the sound sleep of the deeply depressed. The only thing that got him out of bed in the morning, after Haven came to wake him, was his determination to be the best teacher possible. He decided to give his letter to Ben another day.

As they were just finishing the morning’s lessons, Susan burst into the schoolroom and told the boys and Mary to leave the room. “Take them outside. Take them anywhere.”

“What?” said Henry. “What is it?”

“Your friend was caught in a disgraceful way.”

Henry blushed, afraid he knew what Susan was referring to. “My friend?”

“Your reverend friend. With the stable boy.”

“What? What do you mean, disgraceful way?”

“The most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.” Susan gagged, dry-heaved.

“What? You’ve got to tell me.”

“I can’t. Oh. It makes me want to throw up!” And then, her anger rising, she said, “I told you that church was no good. Didn’t I?” Again she shuddered. “Oh. Nothing could be worse.”

“What? What happened?”

“I can’t.”

“I’m going.” Henry started for the kitchen, to get his straw hat. Susan followed, saying, “You can’t. No. Henry. Believe me, you don’t want to be seen anywhere near there. It’s a disgrace. Nothing could be worse. His wife has fled.” But there was no stopping Henry. He was out the door, going down the path until Susan hissed, “They’re sodomites! They were caught with their pants down.”

Henry turned. “What?”

“You heard me.”

Henry did hear. And hearing what he didn’t want to hear stupefied him. “No. It can’t be.”

“It’s true,” said Susan.

“No,” said Henry, and took off. With Susan calling for him to stop, he ran down the Richmond road. He ran as fast as he could, in a daze, not wanting to believe, his head screaming, No, it can’t be! But then as he ran the word
sodomites
took over his thoughts, repeating itself again and again as he ran.
Sodomites
.
Sodomites
. And he ran and he ran, but he couldn’t outrun the thought:
sodomites
. And when his lungs and his coughing wouldn’t allow him to run, he slowed to a walk until he came to Bay Street.
Sodomites
. As he rounded the curve he saw the tumbledown church before him, and coughed and coughed and spit up phlegm and stumbled and walked as he could toward the decrepit clapboard rectory, leaning over, catching his breath, emptying his lungs, until he got to the front door of the rectory and, weakly, knocked. No one answered. “Ralph?” he rasped, barely able to hear his own call. He tried the door, which opened. He leaned in and, with more breath in his lungs, called, “Ralph? Ralph? It’s Henry.”

He looked into the parlor room, which was a mess of tumbled tables and chairs, chunks of marble, smashed vases and lamps, the heavy scent of oil, drapes a mess on the floor, the quiet after a storm. He’d never seen anything like it. Pulling himself up, he said quietly, “My Lord.”

He backed into the hallway. “Ralph? Ralph?” Getting no answer, he went up the stairs, still dazed. Here and there feathers blew up from the treads. A thickening path of blown feathers led through the sun-bright upstairs hallway to the front bedroom, which too had been turned upside down. Sunlight reflected off the white feathers covering the floor, and off the clothes strewn about, and off the polished mahogany of the dresser with its gaping drawer holes. The torn bedding was askew on the abandoned sleigh bed that had been made to last a married couple’s life.

Sodomites, thought Henry, and a stream of vomit flew up from his gut and out of his mouth. He gagged, wiped his mouth with the edge of the linen sheet and went back into the hall. “I got to get out of here.” And he did, down the stairs, out the front door, into the bright warm sunlight. He didn’t know which way to turn. I can’t go home, he thought. He took the low road. And ran until he was exhausted. And then walked. And walked. He walked the dusty roads until he found himself back in the petrified forest of stumps. No more were they chopping the trees or dragging them away. Many glorious trees lay where they’d fallen.

Looking over the lifeless expanse, Henry felt as lifeless as those stumps. He sat against the dried stump of what had been a chestnut. Or maybe an oak. But who cares? It’s not anymore.

For the rest of that afternoon, even as clouds gathered, Henry sat, trying to figure what was going on with his life. His worst fear had been realized. He’d been disgraced. Revealed as a sodomite. He thought about Ralph and about Ben.
Sodomites
. Lord knows he didn’t want to end up like Reverend Ralph Reed. He replayed his last days with Ben. The joy, the fear. He saw the moments when he could have said yes, but instead said no. When he could have accepted his fear and spoken up. He tried to imagine what would have happened, what could happen, where he would be now. But the stories didn’t play out.

Light drizzle dotted his sleeves, then fell in droplets. Henry sat, enjoying the diversion, watching the first raindrops in nearly a month splash off his hands and sleeves, off the stumps, off the bare ground. And then it began to rain generally so the air above the barren expanse became a soothing gray, and the water gathered on his hat and ran off the brim and onto his lap. The warm rain was a welcome relief, but, as the force of the storm grew, the trickles of clear water on the cracked ground became rivulets of brown mud, and after nearly an hour of sitting there, soaking-wet Henry decided he ought to get back to the Snuggery, to face the awful music.

He took his time and was surprised to see splotches of fresh green here and there among the stumps. The rain fell hard, but, protected by his soggy hat, Henry enjoyed the downpour and the immediate greening of the fields as he slogged over the muddy road. It was only upon arriving at the Snuggery that Ben and Ralph and all that had happened came full force back on him.

The rain had done nothing to douse the fire of Susan’s fury. She wouldn’t let Henry pass. “Every time I think of it”—dry heave—“Nothing could be worse.” Henry tried to ignore her, but Susan was in his face. “He didn’t go to Yale at all. Doctor Schramm found out. A charlatan. Her whole family taken in. A sodomite! It makes me want to vomit. And to think he was a guest in our house.” Again she gagged.

“Stop, would you!”

“Stop? Stop? Tell me to stop? Tell him to stop.”

“He did stop. He’s gone.”

“How many times did I tell you? And his poor little wife. Nothing could be worse.”

“Nothing could be worse? Nothing? Not even if he’d murdered her?”

Face to face, Susan said fiercely, “It would have been better for her.”

“That’s absurd,” said Henry. He pushed by Susan, saying a terse, “Excuse me,” and tore up the stairs.

Henry flopped on his bed and thought about Ralph. But he really didn’t care about Ralph. He cared about Ben. He tossed and turned. Trying to come to grips with his life, his future. The image of Ben on
Dahlia
came to him, the evening after they’d kissed in the crow’s nest. He told Ben he was as happy as he’d ever been. And Ben said, “Remember you said that, and believe that it was true, that it is true. Promise me you will.” Henry knew it was true, but not knowing what to do, how to make anything better, he sank into the miasma of his failure and fell asleep.