Mason & Dixon (64 page)

"Obliging us, as Maskelyne and me at St. Helena, to take symmet-rickal readings on the opposite sides of the Crests, and hope that the two errors will cancel out. I pray the Western Slopes of Allegheny may prove less distressing than the Windward side of that wretched Island....”

49

To Appearance, Trans-Susquehanna is peaceful enough,— Farm-houses, a School-house, a Road to York. At the third ten-minute segment of Arc, they calculate their probable error, change direction by an R.P.H. to the Northward, and continue to their next stopping-place, which once again shall place them conveniently,— this time beside the great inland Road between York and Baltimore, more real than any imaginary Line any would run athwart it. The earth hereabouts is red, the tone of a new Brick Wall in the Shadow, due to a high ratio of iron,— and if till'd in exactly the right way, it becomes magnetized, too, so that at Harvest-time, 'tis necessary only to pass along the Rows any large Container of Iron, and the Vegetables will fly up out of the ground, and stick to it.

Ahead of them in the next ten minutes of Arc lie a dozen Streams falling into Gunpowder Creek, which runs roughly parallel to the Visto, and about a mile south of it. The last of these Branches being close enough to another ten minutes West, upon crossing it, they need only calculate their error as before, and aim slightly north, so as to fall in again with their proper Latitude, ten minutes west of that.. .in such easy Hops thro' the summer fields and the German cooking, do they progress, Susquehanna to the Allegheny Mountain. Some mornings they awake and can believe that they traverse an Eden, unbearably fair in the Dawn, squandering all its Beauty, day after day unseen, bearing them fruits, presenting them Game, bringing them a fugitive moment of Peace,— how, for days at a time, can they not, dizzy with it, believe themselves pass'd permanently into Dream... ?

Summer takes hold, manifold sweet odors of the Fields, and presently the Forest, become routine, and one night the Surveyors sit in their Tent, in the Dark, and watch Fire-flies, millions of them blinking ev'rywhere,— Dixon engineering plans for lighting the Camp-site with them, recalling how his brother George back home, ran Coal-Gas through reed piping along the Orchard wall. Jeremiah will lead the Fire-flies to stream continuously through the Tent in a narrow band, here and there to gather in glass Globes, concentrating their light to the Yellow of a new-risen Moon.

"And when we move to where there are none of these tiny Linkmen?"

"We take 'em with huz...? Lifetime Employment!"

"But how long do they live?"

"Ensign Cheer."

As the Visto has grown longer behind them, the Philadelphiaward Fringe of the nightly Encampment has lengthen'd to a suburbs dedicated to high (as some would say, low) living. Gaming, corn whiskey, Women able to put up with a heap of uncompensated overtime, Stages knock'd together each nightfall and lanthorn'd into view, to a Murmur as of a great Crowd in Motion, only to be struck again each dawn,— as those for whom it is cheaper to follow than to abandon the Party for business elsewhere, groaning with the Night just past, hoping for a chance to sleep sometime during the Journey, prepare to follow the Axmen through another day. The fast-and-loose artist, the Quartz-scryer, the Vasquez Brothers' Marimba Quartet, who often play back-up for the Torpedo, to whom it is the musick of his Youth, his home Waters. The marimbas, in great towering Structure assem-bl'd each evening just outside of camp, pulse along, Chords and Arpeggia-tions swaying upward to their sharp'd versions, then back down again, sets of Hammers, Hands, and Sleeves all moving together along the rank'd wood Notes, nocturnal, energetic, remembrancing, warning, impelling.... The Anthem of the Expedition, as it moves into the Unknown, is "Pepina-zos,"— marching, and rolling, but wishing rather to dance.

Pepinazos, nunca Abrazos, Si me Quieras, Sí

De Veras,

¡Oigamé!—

Déjaté,

Los Pe-pi-naa-zos!

All summer they labor in the service of the Line, over Codorus, Conewago,— pausing to set up the Sector, dodging inch-and-a-half hailstones, calculating Off-sets, changing Direction,— 'cross Piney Run and Monocacy Road, and the Creeks beyond, till just past Middle Creek, figuring they are about in their Latitude, without bothering to set up the Sector, the Surveyors turn off the Angle calculated to put them another ten minutes on,— at the South Mountain, in among all the ghosts already thick in those parts.

"We are Fools," proposes Dixon one night. The wind has shifted at about sundown to the SSE, heightening even minor stresses among the Company. "We shouldn't be runnin' this Line...?"

Mason regards his Cup of Claret. "Bit late for that, isn't it?"

"Why aye. I'll carry it through, Friend, fear not. But something invisible's going on, tha must feel it, smell it...?"

Mason shrugs. "American Politics."

"Just so. We're being us'd again. It doesn't alarm thee...?"

An accident of the late Light has fill'd Mason's Orbits with color'd shadows. "Resign? They would bring up the Letter. Immediately. Then?"

Dixon nods glumly, and Mason keeps on, more than he has to. "Tho' we're in this together, yet is it easier for you, being the Quaker and not expected to prove combative, than for me, who must accordingly bear double the burden of Bravery. Splendid. Did they team us up together like this deliberately? Are you my Penalty, precise to the Groat, for enjoying a Command of my own? For not having seconded Maskelyne at the Transit? Now I have to be Eyre Coote?"

"Bit steep, isn't i'...?"

Mason begins fiddling with his Queue, bringing it first over one Shoulder, then the other. "If it were all true,— ev'ry unkind suspicion, ev'ry phantastickal rendering,— would we, knowing all, nonetheless go on? Do what's clearly our Duty?”

"We sign'd an Agreement."

"If it meant our Destruction?"

"The ancient matter of the Seahorse must ever prevent us from Resigning. We've no choice, but to go on with it, as far as we may."

"Then as we've no choice, I may speak freely and share with you some of my darker Sentiments. Suppose Maskelyne's a French Spy. Suppose a secret force of Jesuits, receives each Day a summary of Observations made at Greenwich, and transcalculates it according to a system known to the Kabbalists of the Second Century as Gematria, whereby Messages may be extracted from lines of Text sacred and otherwise, a Knowledge preserv'd by various Custodians over the centuries, and since the Last, possess'd by Jesuit and Freemason alike. The Dispute over Bradley's Obs, then, as over Flamsteed's before him, would keep ever as their unspoken intention that the Numbers nocturnally obtain'd be set side by side, and arrang'd into Lines, like those of a Text, manipulated till a Message be reveal'd."

"Bit sophisticated for me. Tho' I don't mind a likely Conspiracy, I prefer it be form'd in the interests of Trade,— the mystickal sort you fancy is fair beyond me, I'm but a simple son of the Pit."

' 'Trade.'— Aha. You heard me mention Jesuits,— so now you're making veil'd allusions to the East India Company, in response,— I do see, yes... Drivel, of course."

"Come, Sir, can you not sense here, there, just 'round the corner, the pattering feet and swift Hands of John Company, the Lanthorns of the East... ? the scent of fresh Coriander, the whisper of a Sarong... ?"

"Sari," corrects Mason.

"Not at all Sir,— 'twas I who was sarong."

"Something's afoot with those Two, all right," says Dixon one day.

"Which two?"

"Frenchy and Mrs. Redzinger, they're scarcely together of late, 'd tha notice?"

As they draw nearer the Redzinger Farm, the presence of Peter Redzinger becomes quite sensible to both. Indeed, he's been back since the Winter,— he and the Boys have been working the place, lumbering

 
about insomniack, eating whenever they happen to remember, tracking soil ev'rywhere, hardly speaking. To Luise he seems chasten'd, even at times dejected, yet innocent of all suspicion as respects his Wife, having long travel'd past the Conjugal Emotions,— belonging to the simple fact of another hard Pennsylvania Winter, the lowness and solidity of Sky, no day without its distress, roads that end in Thickets at nightfall. "Christ went away," he discovers at last how to tell her, one morning, the eaves a-drip, the bleary Sun irregularly brighter and dimmer, "one day, for no reason that I could see, Christ came to me and said, 'Peter, I am going away. You thought it was hard before this? Here is where it gets impossible.'

" 'Are you coming back?' I almost couldn't speak.

; 'You must live ever in that Expectation.—
 
Come, spare Me that Face,— of course it is a lot to ask.' He seem'd in a dangerously merry State. Was it relief at being shut of me, at last?

" 'How do I proceed without you?'

' 'What have I been teaching you all this time?'

"I was smit dumb, Luise. I didn't understand the Question. 'Be more like You?' I tried. He'd been teaching me? All this time? Wehe!

'' 'Alas.' His Smile, at least, was not a pitying one, nor was it quite as disappointed as I'd fear'd. He turn'd, for the first time I saw the back of His Robe. He had a Motto in German embroider'd fine as could be in Gold Threads, upon the back. I couldn't read what it said. He receded. He was gone."

"Peter."

"I feel cold, helpless, without him...ah. I believ'd I could count upon him forever, he was there, he was real, then he turn'd and went away. I have displeas'd Him,— but how? I lov'd him!" All day, half the Night, on he talks, stunn'd and sing-song. He does not weep as much as Luise expects. Armand has a swift look in from time to time, smiles under-standingly, heaves a Sigh, withdraws. Luise waits to grow impatient. She considers the Frenchman for the first time with unrestrain'd Desire, having glimps'd the possibility that they may never have a chance to address it,— she can also appreciate how tiresome this listening to Peter is. Yet from some unexplor'd Region to her Spirit's West, like upland folk with goods to sell, come Messengers with the late News, that her destiny 'spite all may lie with this craz'd Christless wreck of a

 
Husband,— or, as she will also find herself asking in tears, upon any number of future occasions, "What else was I suppos'd to do? What? That Frenchman, and his Duck? I actually tried for a while to tell Peter about our little Trio. But I couldn't even do that, for he never heard me, he was too full of old adventures, out past Monongahela, with Christ, going about in various Disguises, Christ and his Hop-field companion Peter, upon missions of education. Christ and Peter visit the Indians. Christ reminisces about His Teen Years. Christ teaches Peter how to make Golems."

"Excuse me, Luise! Your Husband, he...?"

"Makes Golems,— oh, not the big ones, Lotte! No, Kitchen-size,— some of them quite clever, the Tasks they do,— one that peels and cores Apples,— ja, even pits Cherries,—

"Luise, for Shame!" The women beam together mischievously. One day, however, Luise will show her. Peter will not mind.

Pennsylvania is a place of spiritual Wonders amazing as any Chasm or Cataract. Among the German farmers of Lancaster, for example, are scores, perhaps hundreds, of truly, literally Good People, escap'd from a Hell we in our small tended Quotidian may but try to imagine,— entire Villages put to Flame, and Tortures worse than Inquisitorial,— disembowelments, bloodlettings,— a world without Innocence,— yet, escap'd here, into Innocence reborn,— something deeper and more intricate,— they call it "a new Life in Christ,"— it is their way of explaining it. Not a moment of their waking day passes, without some form of Christian devotion. Work, which the rest of us, at one time or another, have cursed and wish'd at an end, is here consider'd Sacred,— and this is only one of many Wonders—

Never has Traveler encounter'd such personal Variety, where utter cleanness and sobriety may be seen immediately adjoining the most stupefied exhibitions of Hemp-field Folly. There are Ger-manickal Mystics who live in Trees,— not up in the Branches, but actually within the Trunks, those particularly of ancient creekside Sycamores, which have, over time, become hollow'd out, like Caverns. In the midst of these lightless Woods are gun-smithies where the most advanc'd and refin'd forms of Art are daily exercis'd upon the machinery of Murder by Craftsmen whose Piety is unques-tion'd....

- Wicks Cherrycoke, Spiritual Day-Book

 
DePugh recalls a Sermon he once heard at a church-ful of German Mysticks. "It might have been a lecture in Mathematics. Hell, beneath our feet, bounded,— Heaven, above our pates, unbounded. Hell a collapsing Sphere, Heaven an expanding one. The enclosure of Punishment, the release of Salvation. Sin leading us as naturally to Hell and Compression, as doth Grace to Heaven, and Rarefaction. Thus—

Murmurs of, " 'Thus'?"

- may each point of Heaven be mapp'd, or projected, upon each point of Hell, and vice versa. And what intercepts the Projection, about mid-way (reckon'd logarithmickally) between? why, this very Earth, and our lives here upon it. We only think we occupy a solid, Brick-and-Timber City,— in Reality, we live upon a Map. Perhaps even our Lives are but representations of Truer Lives, pursued above and below, as to Philadelphia correspond both a vast Heavenly City, and a crowded niche of Hell, each element of one faithfully mirror'd in the others."

"There are a Mason and Dixon in Hell, you mean?" inquires Ethelmer, "attempting eternally to draw a perfect Arc of Considerably Lesser Circle?"

"Impossible," ventures the Revd. "For is Hell, by this Scheme, not a Point, without Dimension?"

"Indeed. Yet, suppose Hell to be almost a Point," argues the doughty DePugh, already Wrangler material, "— they would then be inscribing their Line eternal, upon the inner surface of the smallest possible Spheroid that can be imagin'd, and then some."

"More of these...," Ethelmer pretending to struggle for a Modifier that will not offend the Company, "curious Infinitesimals, Cousin.—
 
The Masters at my Purgatory are bewitch'd by the confounded things. Epsilons, usually. Miserable little,"— Squiggling in the air, "sort of things. Eh?"