Thoreau in Love (10 page)

“But you were never in love with him.”

“How do you know these things? How can you tell? Don’t look at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you? Like I’m your lover? Like I can’t wait to hear what you say next?”

“Yes. Stop.”

“So tell me more about Edmund. You were in love with him.”

“Edmund was beautiful. His mind, his thoughts, his ideas were all open. Like you, he wanted to experience everything. He could talk about any subject: politics, abolition, religion, the temperance movement. How he became so wise I don’t know. But you never would have known he was only twelve years old.”

“Edmund was twelve? Well well. And the two of you spent your days talking?”

“We went for walks in the woods, swimming in Walden Pond.”

“Naked?”

“Of course naked. Once he said he could swim like a dolphin, and proceeded to plunge under for such a long time that I became worried. I was about to go after him when he surfaced, just as a dolphin would! His buttocks were so beautiful, little globes, glistening in the sun.”

“My butt’s flat.”

“No it’s not. It’s skinny, but it’s perfect for you. You have long, thin butt muscles. I love watching you climbing, stairs, the mast.”

His voice even higher, more uncontrolled, “You do? Really?”

“I do.”

“Did you ever touch Edmund’s buttocks?”

“No, no, not intentionally,” Henry insisted. “Why am I telling you this?”

“Because you want to. And because I’m going to be your lover.”

Sure that Ben was trying to maneuver him into a corner, and feeling slightly trapped, Henry said, “For the sake of argument, let’s pretend you’re going to be my lover.” Henry inhaled and swelled at the thought of walking with Ben through Concord. But as he walked with Ben through the woods, Ellery Channing appeared, and Henry knew if he brought Ben to Concord that Ellery would be very upset.

And so what if he is, he thought. But then the reality of bringing Ben to Concord hit him, and he realized he couldn’t do it. He started panting.

“Are you all right?” asked Ben.

“You live on this boat, right? You don’t ever really get off, except for a day here, a day there?”

“So that’s it? I can be your lover as long as I’m here and you’re somewhere else?”

Henry shrugged. “I can’t get away with anything with you, can I?”

“Nope, nothing.”

“I like that.”

“I know you do. Now, let’s get back to Edmund. Even though you wanted to, you didn’t touch his buttocks intentionally.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to.”

“But you did want to.”

“You’re like a dog at a bone. Sometimes we wrestled—”

“Naked?”

“Well, once or twice.”

“Maybe we’ll have to wrestle,” said Ben. “Or....” Ben lifted himself, turned slightly and dropped his trousers, exposing his buttocks. “Touch me, Henry.”

“Ben, what are you doing?”

“We can barely see each other, you think anyone else can? Go on, touch me. I like it.”

“Like it? But what’s to like?”

“Touch me, Henry.”

Horrified but excited to see Ben’s bare buttocks right in front of his face, Henry tentatively laid the back of his fingers on Ben’s left butt cheek.

Ben sighed, and Henry turned his hand so he ran the pads of his fingers and then his whole hand over Ben’s bare buttocks. “That feels so good,” said Ben. “I love when you touch me. But we’d better stop.” He rotated and knelt, facing Henry, his cock sticking straight out. Henry was mesmerized. And then Ben pulled up his trousers and buttoned them.

When he’d regained his breath, Henry said, “I didn’t think anyone really liked being touched.”

Sweetly, Ben said, “Horseshit. Everyone wants to be touched. Most people are just scared to be touched or touch anyone. And if I’m going to be your lover, even if you hardly ever see me, you’ll learn to like it.”

Ben sat on his haunches and placed his right hand on Henry’s knee. And Henry, even more excited, had to readjust himself in his trousers.

Seeing this, Ben said, “You make my point for me.”

“What point?”

“About your so-called pure love.”

Suddenly Margaret’s voice came into Henry’s head. And then what Ben had said. “You truly think ‘Sympathy’ is a love poem?”

“But more than that, it’s a poem about someone who wishes he was able to love the way he wants to. Maybe we’ll have to run away, just you and me.”

“You think I’m constricted?”

Ben answered with a sneering smile.

Henry put two fingers to Ben’s lips. “Don’t say a word.” Ben smiled even more. “I love your smile. It’s so . . . un-constricted.”

A large cloud covered the slim moon, and once again Henry found himself in a state he knew too well—blind, groping, terrified. Though Ben still had a hand on his shoulder, Henry felt alone. He wanted to grab Ben and hold him for dear life, but he was too terrified to move. But then Ben found one of Henry’s hands and held it in his, and Henry’s fears disappeared. And Henry thought about what it would be like walking with Ben through the woods, laying together, holding one another. Henry’s insides felt like they wanted to burst with joy. He’d never felt like this with anyone, ever. He wanted to give in to it, see what might happen, but then he heard someone whisper, “Pansies.”

Jolted, Henry looked but could see no one. He pulled away from Ben.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“You didn’t hear someone say something?”

“No. What did they say?”

Henry whispered “pansies” into Ben’s ear. Ben laughed. “You imagined it,” he said, and retook Henry’s hand. “And what would it matter if they did call us pansies?”

“Hath not a Jew eyes?” said Henry.

Ben put two fingers to Henry’s lips. “Don’t say another word. Let’s go below.”

In the lamplight in their cabin, Ben and Henry sat facing each other, their legs crossed Indian-style, at either end of the lower bunk. Henry said, “You’re so thin.”

“Thin but strong. Look.” Ben pulled up his sleeve. “Feel my muscle.” Henry reached over and squeezed the tensed biceps on Ben’s incredibly thin arm. “And my stomach.” Ben lifted his red shirt, hesitated, then pulled it over his head and dropped it to his side. “Well, I look thin, more like I’m starving to death, I guess, but feel this,” he said and tensed his stomach muscles. As Henry ran his open hand over Ben’s thin torso, Ben said, “I love when you touch me.”

“Not so loud,” said Henry. And thought, What am I doing? He put a finger to his lips and sat back against the bulkhead, clearly changing the direction they were traveling.

After a moment, Ben said, “Now I feel naked.” He grabbed his shirt and put it back on. “So are you writing a novel?”

“A novel?” said Henry with disdain. “I don’t write novels.”

“Sorry,” said Ben.

Feeling the chill he’d caused, Henry said, “I’m joking. I’ve thought about writing a novel, but what I keep coming back to is, why fictionalize when I can write what’s true?” With his right hand, he brushed his hair. “Isn’t one person’s life more interesting than a tableaux of fictionalized characters? Really. Think about it. Think of any one person you know. Think of their life.”

Ben grimaced in thought. “Okay, I’ve got one. My mother.”

“I didn’t mean literally, but, well, take your mother. Isn’t her life or your life or your father’s life more interesting than some fake person’s who doesn’t really exist?”

“My mother’s is, my father’s too. He was a soldier in England when he met my mother, a lieutenant. And not two weeks later they stowed away on a ship in the middle of the night and came to America.”

“They did?”

Ben nodded. “My mother was sixteen, my age. She was from a very good Hampshire family. My father was very handsome, a little too handsome, they said. Plus, he had his pride. Soldiers had bad reputations. There was a lot of prejudice against them. And being the second son, though he was also from a good family, none of the estate was going to him.”

Henry was so totally taken aback, though Ben had proved this theory, that all he could think to say was, “They really left in the middle of the night?”

“They had to. My father was deserting the army. He had to cut his queue. My mother still has it.”

“And they came here without anything? Wow. . . . But, no, what I’m talking about is that even a life without so much adventure could be interesting.”

“Like your own?”

Henry flushed with embarrassment, touched his hair on both sides and slid his hands down to his cheeks. Gaining ground, he said, “Yes, like my own.” And his mind went a-whirling. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. You see what I’m saying? As dull as my life might be, or anyone’s. That’s what I want to say, that the bare daily activities of any one life, however uninteresting, can be more interesting than all the fictions Fenimore Cooper or Charles Dickens can create. What I’m doing in my journal is trying to be truthful.”

“So, in your journal you write the things you hide from everyone?”

“I try to.”

“Do you write about us? The things we do? How well we get along? How a lot of times we don’t say the things we want to say? Do you tell what you were thinking when we first met? What you were thinking all the time we’ve been together? When we shared the bunk and you were afraid to take a breath?”

“You noticed that?”

“I notice everything about you. I don’t exactly know why you do things, like why you jumped away from me on deck. Or just now. Are you going to write about that in your journal?”

Overwhelmed, Henry tried to deflect Ben’s assault. “Tell me more about your family.”

“My brother ran away, too.”

“Fitz?”

“Yes, Fitz. He went to sea. For a couple of years I got letters from him, then two years ago they stopped coming, maybe because I never wrote back. I have nightmares that his ship broke up on the rocks off Block Island—Block Island’s a graveyard for ships.” Henry leaned forward, and Ben went on. “I wake up sweating and I can’t really tell what’s going on. But my mother’s there and my father, and I know it’s Fitz in the water, his ship on the rocks. His ship left New York on her way to Liverpool and was never heard from again. So Fitz must be dead. Or who knows, maybe he’s in Liverpool, or somewhere else over there. Maybe he went looking for our grandparents. Who knows.” Ben’s brow rippled; his face was a picture of consternation.

To break the ensuing silence, Henry said, “I’m so sorry for you, Ben.” Then, softly, “At least I know John’s dead. But why did Fitz run away? Your life seems so . . . ideal.”

Ben sat quietly for a moment, then he said, “Henry, I’m so ashamed.”

Henry sat back against the bulkhead. “What?”

“You say you’re trying to be truthful. I’m not really going to Harvard.”

Henry surprised himself by reaching across the chasm he’d created and taking Ben’s right hand. “Ben, it’s okay. I don’t care.”

“Just let me talk. . . . I left because I had to. After the trees were gone, everything changed. My father used to be full of fun. Saturday nights he’d drink with his chums, we always made a joke of it, but he always came home laughing and happy. But after the trees were gone he started drinking all the time, right from when he got up in the morning, and that’s when he turned mean. He’d go after anyone of us got in his way, especially my mother. He blamed her for everything. Before then he hated the army, but then it was, ‘I never should have left the army. I’d have a good career now.’” Ben shook his head sadly. “I wanted to tell you the truth, Henry.”

“It’s all right.”

“I begged my mother to take Fitz and me to the mainland, anything, but she was too scared. I always swore I’d never be scared like that. And I’m not. And never will be. But she’d been with him a long time. She didn’t have me till she was nearly thirty. She had four babies before Fitz, but none of them lived. That’s why she was so happy to have me and Fitz. And it wasn’t all bad. Fitz and I slept outside all summer, pretended we were pirates. Oh, and this old lady, Crazy Betty, she lived down on the beach in a cave. We used to follow her, but we never dared go near where she lived. She had eyes in the back of her head.” Ben lifted his arms and, in a craggy, witchlike voice, said, “ ‘Are those the children of George and Lydia?’ Put the fear in us. But Crazy Betty could be kind when she had a mind to. She taught us about plants and berries and roots and what you could eat and what was poison, and how to fish from the shore and use a slingshot to hunt birds, wild pigs, rabbits. Fitz and I used to go on expeditions. Course that’s probably why I don’t eat meat now. When I think of all the animals I killed, some just to kill ’em, it makes me sick. As far as I’m concerned, a potato’s as good as any meat.”

Ben’s face lit up. He leaned forward and in an earnest whisper said, “When we get to New York we can go to Graham’s—it’s this boarding house where everyone’s a vegetarian. The only food they make is vegetables. No one eats meat at all. Just vegetables. You’re going to love New York.” And just as quickly his mood shifted back and he sank into the bunk. “It got so all Fitz and I talked about was what it was like off island. Fitz talked to everyone who’d ever been off, and then one day he told me he was leaving and asked if I wanted to come with him. I wanted to, but I couldn’t leave my mother all by herself with my father. Fitz left. He wrote me those letters. And then like I told you he stopped writing. . . . But lockjaw’s awful, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“My father used to scare the wits from me telling how all it took was a break of the skin from a rusty nail, and he’d make this awful face and these awful noises, like he couldn’t breathe. I still have nightmares seeing his face like that. I guess he knew someone who died like that. I’m sorry I’m talking so much. How did he cut his finger so bad?”

“Sharpening his razor,” said Henry. “Or so he told me. He was still holding the razor when I came upon him. Though the strop wasn’t anywhere near. He made me promise not to tell a soul. And then he ran downstairs and out of the house. He was holding his hand in snow, trying to stop the bleeding when I found him. He told my mother he’d fallen climbing over a fence and caught his finger on a nail.”

“He told you one thing and your mother another? Why would he do that?”