Steeplechase (13 page)

From then on, it was a delicate matter of chopping and jumping back and gazing up and darting in again to strike another blow, then jumping back and looking up again. Then at last, the tree began to sigh and sway, and they knew the job was done.

Standing safely back out of the way, Brendan and Daniel Fitzmorris watched the triumphant conclusion of their long day's work as the vast cloudy head of leaves slowly moved against the sky, then toppled in a floundering mass. The two sawyers braced themselves, then staggered as the earth shook and the horizon quivered and the boughs thrashed from side to side. It was like watching the death throes of some majestic beast. Silently, the two brothers waited until the tree no longer throbbed and every leaf hung still.

Then, chuckling, Brendan and Daniel shook hands and climbed the hill to collect their promised fee and the preacher's thanks for a job well done. But at the door of the parsonage, they were surprised by the pallor of Preacher Biddle's face and by the trembling of his hands as he counted out their pay. No thanks were expressed for the success of their long day's work, but they were content with the cash in their pockets. Aching in every limb, they set out for home, ducking their heads as the rain came down.

The next day was Sunday, a fine bright morning after the violent storm of the night before. The sky was clear and sparkling as Josiah Gideon stumbled across the road to look at the wreckage. All that remained standing of the ancient trunk was a vast stump, like a vulgar joke. Sick at heart, he waded through the leafy tangle, bending to stroke the flat furrows of the bark or break off a spray of leaves. Before long, his grief was transformed into anger, and his anger into a powerful resolution, a new and wild idea.

Catching Prayers

 

I
t was the Sabbath. Julia dressed for church in a house that steamed with the delirium of Josiah's unspoken wrath. As she pulled on her gloves she could hear the rumbling wheeze of his grindstone. Looking back from the gate, she saw her husband crouched over the revolving stone, his right foot violently working the treadle, his ax blade glittering in the morning sun.

It was a balmy morning. Jack and Jacob Spratt, those celebrated portrait and aerial photographers, were making good on the aerial part of their promise. The balloon tugged at the guy ropes and nodded over their heads as they lifted the camera into the basket. It was mounted on a contraption invented by Jake, a cantilevered arm that suspended it over the side.

Today, they had a plan. Wherever the wind might carry them, they would take panoramic views of main streets and town squares, mercantile establishments and church steeples, houses and barns. Later on, Jake would print handsome images from the exposed plates to astonish prominent citizens, mayors, city councillors, and village selectmen.

The splendid prints would be offered at prices tenderly quoted by Jack, who had an inborn gift of gab. “Well, I don't know,” a selectman might say, but they knew how his eyes would bulge at the unfamiliar views of his native town, and sooner or later he would surely persuade the rest of the board to come up with the price. And as likely as not, he would pluck Jack's sleeve and ask for a private sitting. “Just me and the wife? And maybe my shop with the clerks outside in a row?”

So it promised to be a profitable venture.

This morning, Hector was ready to follow along. He had tossed a sack of oats into his wagon, greased the wheels, and whispered encouragement to his old nag. Now he licked his finger and held it up to the gentle breeze. “Wind's just right,” he said. “West-nor'west.”

It was the last Sunday in June. The balloon lifted softly and drifted over green fields and wooded hills. Jack handed the plate holders to his brother, and Jake tipped the camera to capture two Lincoln churches and a town hall. Then he eased it a little to the right to record the center of Concord, where their mobile studio had done such a land-office business a few weeks back.

“Hear the bell, Jake?” said Jack. “See all them people going into that there church?”

Jake laughed. “Bell's going up and down on the wheel, Jack. See that?”

Jack laughed, too, and once again they had the proud sense of being citizens of the air, angelic visitants looking down on the earthbound creatures below.

Churchgoing faces looked up. Loungers on the Milldam looked up. As they drifted over the road to Barrett's mill, a small boy looked up and clapped his hands. His grandmother looked up, too, and waved her handkerchief.

Then Jack gripped the rim of the basket and Jake clung to the camera as the balloon began to wallow. The wind had changed. Cupping his hands beside his mouth, Jack hollered down to Hector, “You all right, Hector?”

Standing up in the wagon as it hurtled after them along the road to Nashoba, Hector had no breath to shout back. His horse was laboring and foaming at the mouth. Hector flicked the whip, but only in show. The poor old plug, she couldn't go no faster.

In the basket floating high over Hector's head, Jake heaped more coal on the fire and the balloon lifted slightly, carrying them over a Concord orchard and a Nashoba field of sprouting corn. Jack handed Jake another plate and Jake readied the camera. The small domed steeple of the church was rising above the trees. Then the burial ground came in sight.

“Mercy,” said Jake, “will you look at that there stump.”

“Where at, Jake?” said Jack.

“Down there in the graveyard.” Jake aimed the camera and squeezed the bulb. “Remember that big tree?” Then he snatched out the plate holder, installed another plate, and swiveled the cantilever to photograph the church.

“Mighty quiet down there, Jake,” said Jack. “Can't hear no singing.”

“Praying, that's what they're doing, Jack. All them people, they're down on their knees saying their prayers.”

“Might catch a few on the way up, Jake.” Jokingly, Jack held out his hand as if to catch a flying prayer.

But in the sanctuary of the church, below the drifting balloon, most of the silent appeals of the Nashoba congregation were merely bursts of feeling, too ephemeral to be caught in an outstretched hand. Some were wordless explosions of sorrow. On the way into the church for the morning service, everyone had seen the devastation in the burying ground. There had been horrified stares at the fallen tree and shocked exclamations of dismay.

“Reverend Gideon, he ordered it,” whispered a parishioner who had witnessed the murder. “You hear that?” whispered another. “Parson did it.” In the pews, there were murmurs of anger and grief.

Ella Viles had no particular interest in the fate of the chestnut tree. In the pew where she sat with lowered head between her mother and father, she was envisioning her wedding. She could see it as clearly as if it were actually happening—her slow progress up the aisle, her silk train reaching far back over the carpet, her veil floating behind her as she moved toward the pulpit, where Eben Flint stood waiting. Eben's face was dim. She saw only her wedding dress. Dreamily, she added lace insertions to the bodice, a chemisette and a quilling of ribbon around the sleeves.

In the pew behind Ella Viles sat Julia Gideon. Julia's prayer was true and fervent, but, as always, it was pointless. What could she pray for, after all? Not for the restoration of James Shaw's handsome face, nor the sight of his left eye, nor the return of his two hands. For what, then? Julia's head bowed lower. Only for the courage to bear it, for James, for Isabelle, and for herself. Then, clasping her gloved hands tighter in her lap, Julia prayed for her husband. Josiah's anger alarmed her.

As for the prayer of the Reverend Horatio Biddle, it was a wild jumble. With his face buried in his hands, Horatio tried to persuade the Almighty that the destruction of the finest tree in the county of Middlesex had been a pious act, rather than an error of judgment.

The prayer of his wife was not confused at all. It was direct and articulate. If the brothers Spratt could have caught her prayer as it shot skyward through the roof of the church and streaked past the balloon, they might have pursed their lips and tut-tutted, because Ingeborg's prayer to the Supreme Being was more in the nature of a curse upon the head of her husband's enemy, the Reverend Josiah Gideon.

But then in a single instant, all the prayers in the sanctuary of the First Parish Church of Nashoba, whether addressed to the God of Abraham or to the editor of
Godey's Lady's Book
or to the Devil himself, were interrupted by a crash from the burial ground.

Julia winced and looked up. Could that terrible noise be the sound of Josiah's ax?

The Lift and Fall of the Ax

T
he service came to a close much earlier than usual. Horatio Biddle's sermon ended with a “thirdly” rather than a “tenthly.” At every crash from the burial ground, Horatio flinched and the face of his wife grew darker. When he quavered, “We will forego the final hymn,” there was a slamming shut of hymnbooks and a rush for the door.

The noonday sun shone brightly down on the green hillside, on the scattered tombstones and the pale stump of the chestnut tree. It shone on the strange spectacle of Josiah Gideon savagely at work in the welter of fallen branches, and on the men and women flooding out of the church to watch the lift and fall of his ax. It shone on the woman who came last, picking her way slowly among the gravestones, Julia Gideon.

Ingeborg Biddle followed, too, in an equal state of dismay. Her husband strode ahead of her, trying to persuade himself that it had been Josiah Gideon who had committed the original offense by desecrating the resting place of Deacon Sweetser. “Sir,” he shouted at Josiah, “may I ask what you think you are doing?”

Josiah gave him a burning glance, steadied a thick bough under his foot, lifted the ax, and brought it whistling down.

“Church property,” cried Horatio. “I command you, sir, to desist.”

Josiah did not desist.
Crash
went his ax, and
crash
again.

Courageously, Horatio Biddle took a step forward, as though to wrest the ax from the madman's hands, but when Josiah turned toward him with the ax held high, Horatio thought better of it and withdrew. Ingeborg withdrew also. As she stumbled away, she stared straight into the faces of her friends for sympathy, but Elfrida Poole looked down, and Ella Viles simpered, and Abigail Whittey blew her nose. Only Julia Gideon gave Ingeborg a direct and troubled glance.

Thirty-seven men and women of the congregation remained in a silent circle around the prostrate tree, watching the powerful lift and crashing fall of Josiah Gideon's ax. If any precise recorder had been on hand to note down the names, his list would have looked like this:

Arthur Wall,
pharmacist

Frank Wheeler,
attorney, and
Martha Wheeler

George Blood,
farmer, and his wife,
Pearl

Elfrida Poole,
widow, mistress of the pianoforte

Samuel Bigelow,
judge of the district court, and
Lydia Bigelow,
arranger of noonings, fairs, and bake sales for the benefit of the parish

Phineas Wilder,
postmaster, and
Wilhelmina Wilder

Jarvis Brown,
attorney, and
Eliza Brown

David Kibbee,
dairy farmer and selectman

Potter Viles,
merchant, his wife,
Joan
, and daughter,
Ella

The Misses
Dorothea
and
Margaret Rochester

Miss
Abigail Whittey,
widow

Jedediah Eaton,
professor of Latin at Harvard College

Samuel Brooks,
retired clergyman

Joseph Hunt,
farmer, and
Eugenia Hunt,
painter of artistic lamp shades

David Monroe,
farmer, and his widowed mother,
Alice

Jonas Todd,
banker, and
Dorothea Todd

Theodore Wilbur,
district schoolmaster

Charles Holland,
farmer, and
Annie Holland

Artemus Grout,
sheriff, and
Eleanora Grout

Reuben Mills,
farmer, and
Dora Mills

Miss
Cynthia Smith,
spinster

Douglas Pease,
merchant

Richard Doll,
resident,
Nashoba Home Farm

Gradually, the crowd thinned and dispersed, until no one was left but Josiah, savagely rending branches from the trunk of the tree. But within the hour, Ted Wilbur was back with an armful of tools, and by evening the whole town of Nashoba echoed with the crashing of axes and the wheezing of crosscut saws.

Women and children had come, too, and now, following the sturdy example of Lydia Bigelow, they were stumbling in the tumbled chaos of the shattered tree, hauling away the heavy boughs and dragging them into piles.

Julia Gideon was not among them. Julia was at home, watching from the window of the sitting room, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry. The gathering of carts and buggies and the cheerful confusion were exhilarating, but at the same time she was profoundly distressed by her husband's fury. No matter how righteous it was, no matter how justified, where would it lead him? Unable to watch any longer or listen to the buzzing of the saws and the chopping whack of the axes, Julia withdrew to the kitchen and made noises of her own, thumping bowls on the table and clashing her bread pans.