"Those who call themselves Abolitionists should not wait till they constitute a majority of one. It is enough if they have God on their side. Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already."
The voice stopped again. Homer recognized the statement: it was a fragment of Homer's essay Civil Disobedience. He remembered some of it himself, and he spoke up cheerfully. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." He lifted up his flashlight and switched it on, pointing it at the chrysalis of fog. The fog expelled its contents, and a man stepped forth. It was Howard Swan.
"Is that you, eh, Teddy?" said Howard.
"No," said Homer. He turned the flashlight up under his face and then turned it momentarily on Mary. "It's Kelly and Mary Morgan. Well, well, Howard. Happy anniversary."
Howard Swan scraped the gravel with his foot. "I had to come," he said. "I was sitting at home there, reading Henry's journal, and I got to thinking about him, you know, lying up here alone for a hundred years, and I just had to come over." He gestured sheepishly with his hand, which had a bunch flowers in it. "I brought him some wild flowers."
Homer spoke softly. "Did you expect to find Teddy Staples here?" He directed his flashlight at Howard's face. Howard looked distressed.
"No, of course not. He's still missing, isn't he? I just though when you spoke up, it might be Teddy. I mean, who else cared enough about Henry's memory to come up here like this, and could quote him, and so on? As a matter of fact, for a minute there, I almost thought you were..." His voice drifted off, and he turned and bent over and laid his flowers in front of the Thoreau family marker.
"Thanks for the compliment," said Homer. "We thought same about you." He turned off his flashlight, and the three of them stood in the swirling mist looking at the blocky shadow that marked the resting place of Henry Thoreau, his father and mother, his beloved brother John and his two sisters. (The sisters had probably worn their hair long, like the others. They had parted it in the middle, and combed it flat and smooth each morning, and twisted it and braided it and lifted it up and interwoven it and pinned it together at the back of the head with long, long hairpins. Strong sharp hairpins firm enough to hold their heavy masses of hair...)
"Well, so long," said Howard Swan. "I'll go on home, I guess." His footsteps went off, crunching along the path.
Mary and Homer followed slowly. Homer whistled quietly, the only tune he could think of to honor the man a hundred years dead. It was John Brown's Body. Henry had been a passionate defender of Brown.
Then Mary had another rush of insight, and she felt tears springing up in her eyes. How could she have been so blind! "Homer, I know now what Teddy meant, when he said he had only one month more—he was born on the same day as Thoreau, remember? July 12, 1817. Only in 1917, of course, exactly one hundred years later. I told you about that, didn't I? And Thoreau died exactly one hundred years ago today. Teddy must have thought that he, too, was going to die on the same day! Don't you see?"
"My God, I think you're right. And Teddy had the same symptoms, too—the pulmonary consumption, the coughing, the legs going out from under him. And all completely induced by hysterical identification. You're a genius," Homer clapped her on the back.
"Homer, Teddy's gone off somewhere to die, like a poor sick dog. Can you die of hysterical identification? I'll bet you can."
"The question is, did he do in Goss first? If Teddy thought he was going to die anyway, what was there to stop him? And then where the heck did he go?"
But if he was dead anyway, what did it matter? Mary found herself remembering the words in Teddy's journaclass="underline" Her light will be as raddiant as ever, when I am no more. She said nothing, and stared up at the mist. It had risen and it hung now in the treetops, like layers of spun glass shredded out into stringy banners, or long hair tangled in the treetops. Long, tangled, witch-white hair...
Homer could feel her shaking. "What's the matter with you? Here, dearie, let's talk about something else. We'll be out of these meeting places for spirits pretty soon. Just hang on." He put his arm around Mary's waist (it was easy) and began to talk amiably about Paul Revere, squeezing her tightly against his side. "I was reading those three accounts of his today, that he wrote about his famous ride. That Prescott fellow of yours must have been a bold fellow. The British said, 'G-blank-D D-blank-N you, stop, or you're a dead man!' Or so goes Paul's story. Imagine his politeness, writing in those blanks. And then they herded Revere and Dawes and Prescott into a field, and then Prescott jumped his horse over a stone wall and got away to Concord. So he was a jumper, too..."
"But, you see, that doesn't matter," said Mary. She shook her head and pulled away from Homer, rubbing her arm over her forehead. "I keep getting the past and the present all mixed up. As though Henry Thoreau really took Teddy away with him, or as if the murderer was really Dr. Sam Prescott, and as if he shot Mr. Goss with a ghostly old flintlock and then vanished into thin air. And of course it's ridiculous to think that way."
Homer chuckled. (Cheer the girl up.) "I bet you don't know what Paul Revere said at the end of his famous ride?"
"No, I don't."
"'Whoa.'"
And then suddenly there was a horseman, and the sound of a horse's hooves cantering along the gravel path behind them.
"G-blank-D," said Homer, "if it ain't old Dr. Sam himself come back as a ha'nt!"
Mary, too frightened to speak, stood rigid in the middle of the path, her head wrenched back over her shoulder, listening. The cantering sound changed to a gallop, and Homer at last had to snatch her roughly out of the way, as a great shape plunged heavily by, going like the wind down the hill. The horseman was leaning forward, his jacket flying behind him. They could see his hair in silhouette, caught by a ribbon in back, bobbing up and down. He called something to his horse, and leaned over farther. "Hey," shouted Homer, "whoa up there!"
They could see the rider pull at the reins with a sort of convulsion, and half turn his horse to glance back at them. Then he wheeled his mount around and, kicking with his heels, started downhill again at top speed.
Mary could feel hysterical laughter welling up inside her. She found a grave that was a lichen-covered marble bench and sat down on it, covering her mouth with her hands. It had been Prescott, the real Dr. Samuel Prescott.
"Now, don't get excited, you idiot," said Homer. "You know who that was? I heard the voice. There was no mistaking that flat monotone. That was Edith Goss."
*38*
Lidian says that when she gives any new direction in the kitchen she feels like a boy who throws a stone and runs. —Ralph Waldo Emerson
The melting.snow and the rains of March and April had swollen the river that flowed at the foot of the sprouting fields. But the weather of May and June, normally an occasion for irritation, abuse, misery, tears, pain, distress and withered hopes, had turned out so long and golden a succession of days that one almost forgot to take note any more or thank God or rejoice. It was like a king's grant, signed and sealed, or a special dispensation of Providence. The greenish-white blossoming of Tom's trees was over now. It had been a spring when one walked carefully, afraid to tear or crush something incredible. But the most fragile time was past, and now there was strong ugly plantain in the grass.