The Rebellion of Miss Lucy Ann Lobdell (10 page)

Henry Watson took his chair at the head of the table, while Mrs. Watson sat at the other end. I was seated next to Lydia. Beth and Julia across. Henry Watson said the blessing, and the food was passed—roast lamb, greens, and mashed turnips.

“Well, Professor Lobdell,” said Mrs. Watson, “I hear you’re quite the regular at Cornell Hall with its many visitors. What news do they bring?”

This was as it should be. I was the guest and the man. Mrs. Watson would ask questions of me, and I would respond in an engaging way if I could.

“I fear no one brings tidings of joy,” I said. “By all accounts, there’s trouble in every direction.”

Mrs. Watson sighed. “Wherever can it all be going?”

This, again, as ordained. My part was now to say the thing that would put everyone at ease. But before I could, Julia jumped in. “Is there going to be a war?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said. “This sort of thing has been going on for a long time. Most of it is posturing.” I was parroting a view I had heard at the Literary Society. If pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to say who was doing what to whom.

“I hope there’s going to be one,” said Julia with a child’s innocence. “And father bought a forest, so they can make the boots!”

There was a sudden silence as Mrs. Watson gave Julia a look that would have burned the pudding. Lydia stared down as though to make sure nothing spilled off her fork. I too inspected the silverware, a little confused and not daring to cast my eyes in Henry Watson’s direction. Finally, he spoke.

“There is a great difference, Julia,” he said slowly, his displeasure for all to hear, “between being prudently prepared for war and hoping for it. A Christian man does not hope for war.” He turned to me. “I am in the wood trade, Mr. Lobdell. I bought, not long ago, a superior stand of hemlock, the bark of which is filled with tannic acid. If war comes, there will be a need to tan leather. If war does not come, the profit will arrive a little later.”

Henry Watson descended into a stillness that coiled around me. Lydia gave her head a slight shake to say I shouldn’t be bothered, but I was. Henry Watson appeared put upon by my presence. And perhaps it was my imagination or the lack of a handshake, but he seemed to not even regard me as a man, to which, I must say, I took insult.

The conversation stumbled a bit from that time forward, but Mrs. Watson did her best and that was good enough. Later at the door, she graciously offered her hand. “You must promise, Professor Lobdell, to visit our house again.”

Mrs. Watson moved aside, and Lydia stepped forward. “Yes, Professor Lobdell,” she said, echoing her mother, “you must come again.” She then offered her hand, and when I took it, she gave my fingers the lightest squeeze.

* * *

For the next week, the town baked like an oven. Dogs found what shade they could, and well-mannered people lost their tempers over trifles. Farmers kicked at the dust and only talked about a second cutting.

On Thursday, I sent the class home early to no one’s complaint. Lydia stayed on, but all we did was sit by the window in hope of a breeze. The air was thick and still. But then, as though summoned, a breeze did come. Clouds of gray and purple swooped in from the west like giant birds of prey. A rushing noise moved through the fields and tree lines. A bright spark. Then a crash that sounded like God had knocked over His wardrobe.

Sheets of water poured from the sky. A man ran along the road, trying to reach shelter. Then, realizing that not a dry bit of him was left to be saved, he stopped and let out a silly laugh. Taken by the moment’s drama, I turned to Lydia. She was looking toward the creek, seeming lost in thought. But then, without turning, she spoke.

“When I was little,” she said, “Mother would let us run in the rain behind our house wearing hardly a thing.” That memory brought a smile to the part of her face I could see. “If we were in a meadow out of sight, Joseph, I would do it now. Would you join me?”

“You would not,” I said, trying to scold, but all the while imagining her running in the rain, shift clinging to her flanks. “And no, I wouldn’t join you. I’d like to keep my reputation and remain in town a little longer.”

Lydia laughed. “Well, aren’t you the modest one. You’d have to promise to cover your eyes and never tell a soul.”

Cover my eyes? Never tell a soul? I knew what she was doing, and this time I wasn’t going to play the prude. “I think, dear Lydia,” I said, now meeting her eye, “the most I could promise is that I would not tell.”

I saw her start to color, but she quickly danced away. “I loved those summers,” she sighed, as though nothing had been said about running in the rain. “I would turn so brown. Mother used to say that she was going to give me back to the Indians.”

“Did that frighten you?” I asked, happy to move on.

“No, I liked it. I liked when she played with us, my cousins and me. Sometimes she would chase us, and we would scream as though a beast were loose in the woods. But there were so few moments like that.”

Lydia then asked about my mother. Did she play games with me? For an instant I was back in our old house in Westerlo, looking out at an apple tree that had come down in a storm when I was ten. As far as games, I didn’t remember much of that. What I remembered was Mother being sick a lot. Headaches. Sudden noises like a door closing might be enough to send her to her room. I learned to be quiet and move carefully; we all did—a complicated story, so I put a simple lie in its place.

“She was playful,” I said. “Not all the time, of course.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Oh, several months ago.”

Lydia seemed to lose her balance. “But, Joseph, you said she was dead!” In the warmth of new deceptions, I had forgotten my old ones. My mind raced back to fill the breach.

“So she is,” I said, as though Lydia had not heard things right. “She’s buried beside my father in New York. I visited her grave before I came to Honesdale.”

Lydia wrinkled her brow. Behind her eyes I saw more questions, but I was rescued by a sudden rush of hail. For several minutes it fell, the size of small, dried peas. We captured these pellets with outstretched hands, refreshing our faces and laughing.

That night I thought back over the afternoon’s storm and what it had brought forth between Lydia and me. She had challenged me with a game that was beyond propriety—all that running-in-the-rain talk. I had protested, but that protest wasn’t very convincing. And it was gone for good the moment I said I wouldn’t tell but might look.

So Lydia had proposed a flirtatious game, and I had played. I wasn’t sorry. I liked it. And I didn’t really care if it was or wasn't proper. I had never cared a fig about proper. Beyond that, I didn’t think it was strange to feel so drawn to her. After all, I was living as a man. Life was presenting itself to me as it presented itself to a man, so it was natural for me to find Lydia beautiful and enchanting. The better I played my role, the more beautiful she would be.

* * *

The rainstorm had broken the heat, and the following night Cornell Hall was bearable. After the lecture, I walked to the Wayne to dine with Burton, who was to follow. I was almost to the hotel when up ahead I saw David Horton and two friends. They didn’t see me. They might have already been drinking, because they were pushing at each other and laughing loudly. I moved to the shadows and watched as they bellowed and hooted their way down the street.

When I got to the hotel, I took a seat at Burton’s table and watched as men who had been at the meeting entered and sat at the remaining tables. A few minutes later, Burton came into the room with the evening’s speaker, Mr. William Casey. With them was Mr. Francis Penniman of the
Democrat
. Mr. Penniman looked every bit the newspaper man, as he stopped and shook hands with several men seated nearby. His spectacles were framed by unruly eyebrows and his wool vest displayed a gold watch chain, all of this befitting a man of his age, which I thought to be a little north of sixty. Our out-of-town guest, Mr. Casey, was younger, with more hair on his head and more flesh about the face. He had lectured that evening on “The Danger to Our South,” a lesson that continued over a plate of beef and cabbage.

“You have to understand what’s at stake,” he said, chewing loudly. “Depending on how thin you slice the bread, there could be four to eight new states down there. And they’d all come in slave, with just as many senators as New York or Pennsylvania.”

“Could that really happen?” asked Penniman.

“My dear friend,” said Casey, “as we speak, there’s an expedition in New Orleans ready to sail for Nicaragua. To capture it and make it a state. Yes, it has rich soil. Minerals too. But there are ways to get at them without granting voting privileges in our sacred halls.
Presidentes
come at a rather reasonable price.”

“But, sir,” I said, a little surprised. “Did you not say this evening that our southern neighbors should be free from interference?”

Casey glared at me and pointed his fork. “Interference is what’s being planned in New Orleans. But in the world of nations, there’s a rightful place for the strong. We see it in nature as it is handed down from heaven.”

I nodded as though all had been made clear. Burton winked.

Mr. Casey finished his dinner and ordered two pieces of pie. Once these were dealt with, he retired upstairs. Fewer people were in the room now, and it was easier to talk in a normal voice. Mr. Penniman turned to me. “I’m happy to finally meet you, Mr. Lobdell. Burton speaks well of you.”

I glanced at Burton, but he gave a blank look as though to disavow anything to come.

“I wonder,” Mr. Penniman continued, “if you might be interested in a position at the
Democrat
this autumn? I was impressed by your conduct tonight.”

“But I hardly said a thing,” I protested.

“Ah, but you listened! You found the weak point in our guest’s fortress, and you did not press the attack when there was nothing to be gained. These are qualities not lost on an editor.”

The offer was most certainly Burton’s doing. Even so, I felt as though Mr. Penniman had pinned his gold watch to my chest, and I had a brief vision of myself at the head of Cornell Hall. I tried to hide these inflated feelings, saying that I knew nothing about newspapers. Penniman would have none of it.

“Everyone learns on the job,” he said. “You can do it, or you can’t.”

“But I have the music school.”

He shrugged. “We can work around that.”

Once again, I was swept away. Mr. Francis Penniman, owner and editor of the
Honesdale Democrat
, thought me worth my own hours. I stopped looking at the gift horse and said I would try my best for him. We agreed to sit down in September.

I left the Wayne with a light step. My fortunes were on the rise. I would need new clothes, a better place to sleep, and a bank account. I had not opened one before, fearing that questions would be asked or references required. What money I made, I handed to Blandin to keep in his safe—two, sometimes three dollars a week. Soon, with a second income from the newspaper, I was certain to save more, money for our future, mine and Helen’s. And this night, as I walked down Main, my daughter was very much on my mind. In the autumn, I would begin to send money home—I’d find a way. In a year or two, Helen might come to me, perhaps as my niece. I didn’t know how it would all work, but that night it seemed it could.

The next morning, I warmed a bucket of water and brought it to my room, washing myself up and down with a rough cloth as I often did. I had just put on my britches when the door to my room swung open—the latch hadn’t held. From the corner of my eye, I saw Damon in the doorway, peeking out from behind a pile of sheets and towels he was bringing around. I gave him my back and quickly put on my shirt. I didn’t think he had seen the evidence, but my hurried actions must have looked peculiar. I turned back and tried to smile. He gave me an odd, searching look and then put the sheets on my bed.

* * *

I wrapped the violin while Lydia sat and read the
Herald
. She seemed strangely quiet, and I didn’t have much to say. But then she began to read aloud—a story about a fire in a mine near Carbondale—a fire that could not be put out and now burned in unknown directions. Would the city fall into the newly created chasm? No one knew.

“A strange way for the world to end,” she said, putting the paper aside. “To be burned up from the inside.” And with that, she began to recite something that at first sounded like scripture.

In the ’ginning was the Wurts. And the Wurts was good.
And the Wurts begat Hone who did what he could.
And Hone begat Carbon, and Carbon ’gat Hawley,
and they all rode to town in a little painted trolley.
And Hawley ’gat Jervis by a mule team driver,
and the two lived together in a shack by the river.
And the Wurts stole a boro, and the Hone stole a dale,
and the Jervis stole a port, and they all went to jail.
How many years did they serve without bail?

I laughed. “What, in heaven’s name, was that?”

“Oh, just something Evelyn and I made up. We used to skip rope to it.”

“I was a fair skipper myself,” I said, not seeing the mistake.

Lydia looked surprised. “Really? There weren’t many boys I knew who could do it at all. They jumped like grasshoppers.” I braced for more questions, but Lydia got up and stared out the window. “Have you ever been over there, Joseph? To Carbondale?”

“Is it nice?”

“Oh yes,” she said, still looking out, “if you like grand homes with porches on the second level. But what do you see when you stand on them? Mountains of coal, piles of slag, and on every surface a black dust that surely darkens the soul.”

I looked at Lydia like I was seeing my younger self, though we were only six years apart. She saw the world as black and white, good and evil, one or the other to win. I had seen it that way. Now I believed that the world was just a pudding of good and bad and would always be so. But I liked that Lydia felt the way she did, and I argued with her sometimes just to see the color run to her face.