Steeplechase (6 page)

Crossed from the top of Annursnack to the top of Strawberry Hill.… Measured the great chestnut.… It branches first at nine feet from the ground, with great furrows in the bark.

—Henry Thoreau,
Journal
,
August 15, 1854

Josiah

J
osiah walked home from the church, hardly able to contain his anger. Horatio Biddle had aimed a tirade like a blast from a cannon straight at the head of Josiah Gideon as he sat alone in the family pew. Passages from the Bible had been hurled at him like mortar shells, as though the Book of Genesis were the sole property of Horatio Biddle, as though Josiah had trampled it underfoot and desecrated the evening and the morning, the beasts of the earth, and the fowl of the air. Then Horatio Biddle had raised a sanctimonious hand and vowed never to profane the house of God with the name of the British naturalist who had replaced their great ancestors Adam and Eve with ludicrous hairy beasts. And then he had waxed poetic, telling again the fable about the wood of the tree in the Garden of Eden that had become the cross of Christ.

Straight downhill through the burial ground strode Josiah, his long legs carrying him at high speed past the ancient headstones of the first settlers of Nashoba.

The tree in the garden and the cross of Christ
! Oh, yes, it was a pretty story, but it belonged to Josiah Gideon as rightfully as it did to Horatio Biddle. And there was another legendary tree, one of which Horatio was entirely unaware.

Josiah paused in his downhill plunge and looked up at the chestnut tree beside the stone wall. It was a gigantic tree, spreading its green crown all the way across the Acton Road to drop its cool shade on his own doorstep. Surely the tree had towered over the graves of the first settlers of Nashoba, and over the memorial stones of the sad generation that followed, when whole families had been swept away by scarlet fever and the bloody flux.

But to Josiah, it had become much more than a splendid survivor from centuries past. He now thought of it as Mr. Darwin's great “Tree of Life.” He knew the passage by heart and he mumbled it now as he climbed over the wall:

As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and beautiful ramifications.

If ever a living tree could be said to have “ever-branching and beautiful ramifications,” it was the chestnut tree in the Nashoba burial ground. Josiah's anger seized on the tree as a rallying center for all his mental forces.

But as he vaulted the stone wall, he saw the doctor's horse browsing on the grass beside the gate. Once again, he tried to clear his mind of its feverish excitement, because within that house, where at this moment a curtain was blowing out of a bedroom window and the shadow of the chestnut tree was moving over the clapboards, there could be only one thought. Before it, all others fell away. Josiah's daughter, Isabelle, flinging open the door to welcome him, was an embodiment of the thought, the doctor spoke it aloud in quiet truths, and James was the thought itself.

Once again, Eben Flint had come with the doctor. Eben nodded at Josiah, then looked back at James. Isabelle and Julia stood watching, too, as James tried to undo the buckles of the prosthetic hook on his left arm with the hook on his right. He failed, and failed again, and at last the hook clattered to the floor.

“Good,” murmured Alexander. He took the stump in his hand and inspected the raw chafing. “I'll bring something next time. I've got an ointment that's first-rate.”

Eben said quickly, “I think I could make a better fit than that.”

James made a sound in his throat. He was not interested in a better fit and he cared little for an ointment to soothe the chafing. He could not say what he wanted in words. He could only gaze at the doctor with his one suffering eye.

Alexander did not need words. In a field hospital after Antietam, he had seen the same look on the face of a maimed lieutenant from Mississippi. In everything but words, James was pleading, Help me out of this sorrow. Of course, Dr. Clock pretended not to understand. He closed his bag and said a serene good-bye. Eben followed him out of the room, and so did Isabelle and Josiah.

In the hall, Eben took his hat from the table and said to Josiah, “You see, sir, I could make a sort of padded contraption that might be more comfortable for James. I'll see what I can do.”

Eben could not look at Isabelle, but when Josiah thanked him, so did she.

For the rest of the day, the house was quiet. Isabelle took down a book from the Dickens shelf, but when she showed it to James, he shook his head and pointed a hook at another. “You mean this one?” said Isabelle. He nodded, and she plucked it out. Sitting down beside him, settling herself comfortably among the chair cushions, Isabelle began to read
A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
”

James bowed his head and listened.

Upstairs, Josiah was reading, too. He had set up an office under the eaves of the spare room and arranged on the desk his lexicon, his quill pens, his penknife, his household ledger, and the account books for the charitable institutions that were in his care. Here also was the Bible that had belonged to his father and grandfather before him. Its covers were cracked and its pages limp from a thousand turnings—his father's hand seeking one of Paul's Epistles, his grandfather turning to the Book of Revelation.

Josiah picked up the heavy book and opened it to the beginning. He had not looked at Genesis since his days in seminary. Now he read the first three chapters from the beginning all the way to the verse about the angel whose flaming sword drove Adam away from the tree of life.

The story was a wonder. Josiah sank back in his chair and read the beautiful verses over and over, until, to his surprise, he saw that Adam's tree was beginning to merge with that other tree, the one that teemed with birds and monkeys, lions and tigers. A chimpanzee scrambled past him and a bird of paradise flew so close that its feathers brushed his face, and a kindly baboon reached out its hand.

“Josiah?” His wife was touching his shoulder, and he woke with a start. Julia stood beside him in her nightdress. Josiah lighted a candle, and their shadows followed them across the hall. In the bedroom, he blew out the candle, put his arm around his wife and led her to the window. In a moment, their eyes adjusted to the darkness. Julia drew the curtain aside, and at once they could see the stars, although half the sky was blotted out by the dark shape of the enormous tree across the road.

Charles Darwin had said nothing about the stars.

The Emperor's Birds

T
he photographs had come. Jake Spratt had developed the plates and printed the images, and Jack had mounted them on cards and dispatched them in brown paper packets.

All over Concord and Nashoba, the subjects of the pictures tore off the brown paper and extracted the contents. Some of the subjects were disappointed and threw their images in the stove; others were pleased and ordered more.

Ella Viles was delighted with her set of six cartes de visite. At once, she urged her mother to pay a call on Eudocia Flint.

Her mother objected. “Eudocia and I never call. She belongs to the Charitable Society, and that set of women is altogether too freethinking, in my opinion. I prefer the ladies of the Eastern Star.”

But Ella had her way. And therefore mother and daughter set out on a Wednesday morning in their pretty Jenny Lind, Mrs. Viles shading her complexion with a parasol, Ella flourishing a dainty whip.

Eudocia was astonished to see them at the door. “Well, my goodness, come in,” she said, sweeping off her apron. Turning quickly to the little boy beside her, she said, “Horace dear, we'll read your story later.” But the boy clung unhappily to his grandmother's skirt as the two elegant ladies stepped inside.

Their visit was a failure because Eben was not at home. Disappointed, Ella folded her hands in her lap and listened to her mother's probing gossip: “Eudocia, have you heard about that poor young man in Nashoba, the one with the horrible wounds who is married to Ella's friend Isabelle?”

“No,” lied Eudocia stoutly, “I have not.” Horace climbed into her lap and sucked his thumb. Conversation languished. Eudocia did not offer tea.

Ruffled, Ella and her mother rose to go. But at the door, Ella thrust a packet into Eudocia's hand. “Eben asked for my likeness,” she said, simpering. “Tell him I demand one of his in return.”

“I'll tell him,” said Eudocia crisply.

With relief, she watched the pretty buggy dip and rock as Ella and Mrs. Viles climbed in. When the little cob trotted away with one of Eudocia's prize tulips dangling from its mouth, she closed the door smartly and put her arm around her grandson. “Come on, Horace dear,” she said, plumping him down on the sofa in the sitting room, “it's time for your story.”

It was a brand-new book of fairy tales. Today's story was “The Emperor's Nightingale.” When Eben came home, he tossed his hat on a chair, sat down beside Horace, and listened, too.

“The artificial bird
,” read Eudocia,
“was covered with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. As soon as its key was wound, it could sing and move its tail up and down. But the plain little brown bird sang to the emperor about the quiet churchyard where the white roses grow, where the elder tree wafts its perfume on the breeze.
”

It was the end of the story. “Read it again!” said Horace.

But Eudocia closed the book, reached for the packet left by Ella Viles, and handed it to Eben. “This is for you. Two ladies brought it this morning. Delivered by hand.”

“For me?” Puzzled, Eben opened the packet and found the photograph of Ella Viles.

“She demands one of yours in return,” said Eudocia dryly.

“She does?” Eben stared at Ella's high-piled curls, then put the picture in the pocket of his coat, reflecting on the emperor's two birds and on the nature of two women of his acquaintance. Which was the twittering clockwork bird and which the nightingale?

The Home Farm

T
he steeple of Nashoba's parish church was imposing, but it was not a white needle pointing at the sky. It was a domed tower with a bell chamber and a clock.

Behind the church on the road to Acton stood the parsonage of the Reverend Horatio Biddle. From the front door, Horatio and his wife, Ingeborg, could look down the whole length of the burial ground to the place where the chestnut tree marked the edge of the graveyard. Across Quarry Pond Road, hidden by the gigantic canopy of leaves, was the home of Horatio's fractious parishioner Josiah Gideon. In front of the church stretched the rough grass of the town green, and beyond the green stood another building painful to the sight of Horatio Biddle. Josiah Gideon called it the Nashoba Home Farm, which was only his fancy name for the old Nashoba poorhouse, so long a depository for bastard and orphaned children, the aged and infirm, the feebleminded and insane.

The Nashoba Home Farm was not the only almshouse supervised by Josiah Gideon. He had been appointed by the Massachusetts State Board of Charities to inspect all the almshouses in Middlesex County. Therefore, he spent three days a week touring the countryside, interviewing caretakers, examining infirmaries, laundries, and kitchens, and taking note of provisions for heat and light, fresh air and exercise, washing and bathing.

As a Christian clergyman, Josiah had been drawn to this work by observing that the greatest need for human courage came at the time of greatest weakness—in old age or desperate poverty. Thank God, things were no longer as inhumane as they had once been, back in the bad old days when town charges were auctioned off “at public venue” to the lowest bidder and exploited for their labor. No longer might their dead bodies be handed over for dissection to medical schools in order to further “the advancement of medical science.” No, things were no longer as bad as that. Most of the almshouses inspected by Josiah were run by competent superintendents and matrons. The others aroused his furious pity and relentless nagging.