Thoreau at Devil's Perch (24 page)

 

I
decided to pay Granny Tuttle a visit today to thank her for all the delicious provisions she has been sending our way of late. The dry grass crunched underfoot as I walked through the meadows to the farm, and the sun beat down on my shoulders and neck. I had neglected, as is my wont, to take a parasol, thinking Grandfather's tattered straw hat would sufficiently shield me from the mid-morning rays. It did not, and I was quite flushed by the time I got to the farm. Granny was not in the kitchen, but I found little Harriet outside. She was sitting in the shade of the grape arbor and looked cool as a cucumber even though she had a big duck in her lap. Its feet were bound together with strips of cloth, its head was tucked under Harriet's arm, and she was plucking feathers off its upper back and depositing them into a sack. She left off cooing a soothing lullaby to the duck as I approached.

“Good Day, Miss Bell,” she said.

That vexed me somewhat. Although I have oft requested that she call me Julia, she insists upon treating me as a visiting stranger. I made some vague comment in regard to the poor duck.

“Look-a-here, Miss Bell. You got no reason to call this duck
poor
. Picking its feathers does not hurt it. Why, it would have shed them anyway.” Harriet's tone indicated to me that I had ruffled
her
feathers. “Indeed, it will be cooler without them.”

“As I would be without my petticoats. I am tempted to shed every last one of them in this heat!” My small jest got no smile from Harriet, nor did I get an offer for something cooling to drink.

“Their feathers grow back quickly, you know,” she told me, still determined to rectify my obvious ignorance concerning duck plucking. “Six weeks hence I shall be picking this one again.”

“And how long does it take you to collect enough feathers to stuff a pillow?”

“That depends on how many ducks I pick, doesn't it?”

“Right. I hadn't considered that.” I shook my head over my own slow-wittedness.

Harriet, who has a sweet nature despite her sour manner toward me, relented. “If you really care to know, Miss Bell, it has taken me about three months and four ducks to collect almost enough feathers to make a nice pair of plump pillows.”

“And I am sure Granny Tuttle will be very pleased to have them.”

“Oh, but I am not making the pillows for her. Granny thinks it is high time I start amassing my own store of household linens and such.”

“Ah. So the pillows are for your trousseau.”

She frowned at the foreign word. “They are for when I get married.”

“And who will you be marrying, Harriet?”

She turned red as a poppy. “I am sure I do not know yet!”

And I am sure she has spent many a night imagining Adam's head upon one of those nice plump pillows. “Well, whoever he turns out to be, he will be fortunate to have you for a wife, Harriet.” I said this most sincerely, for she is a good, hard-working, and able girl. And quite pretty to boot.

Still blushing, she lowered her face and untied the duck's legs. It fluttered off her lap and waddled off, looking a little raggedy and quacking very loudly. After Harriet informed me that Granny was in the dairy room beneath the kitchen, I waddled off toward the back of the house, also quacking loudly. My antics were rewarded by a laugh from Harriet.

I descended a steep staircase into the cool stone and brick dairy room. Granny was ladling off the cream floating in a shallow pan of milk. “You are my second visitor this morn,” she stated, making it sound like I was one too many. But she did at least kindly tell me to get myself a drink from the well.

“And who was your first visitor?” I asked, dipping the wooden cup into the bucket.

“Pilgrim.”

I drank a deep draught. Tuttle well water is just as sweet and cold as I remembered from childhood, and Granny just as taciturn. Without another word, she turned her attention back to her ladling. The thin milk ran through the holes in her tin spoon and back into the pan, but the thicker cream did not, and as she plopped spoonful after spoonful of captured cream into an earthenware jar I waited for her to say more about Pilgrim's visit.

When the jar was filled, she put it aside. “Cream needs to ripen fer a few days afore it be ready to churn,” she said and pointed to a wooden barrel. “Cream in there has already turned. And I best get to churnin' it afore it curdles.”

“Allow me to do it for you,” I offered.

Granny looked doubtful. “Could you?'

“Why ever not?” I took a seat on the stool beside the barrel, but I was not quite sure what to do next.

“Just start pumpin' the dasher,” Granny said.

I took hold of the long handle sticking out of the hole in the cover of the barrel and moved it up and down. “Like this?”

“Put a bit more elbow grease into it.”

I went at it most energetically. Granny silently watched for what seemed a good long while before she spoke. “You ain't well suited fer farm work, are you, Julia?” she said.

“I am quite fit,” I replied huffily, for I thought I had been doing a fine job of churning despite being hindered by my tight-fitting bodice.

Turns out 'twas my bodice, not my physical condition, that Granny was alluding to. “Don't see how you can breathe, much less work, dressed in them fine city clothes of yours.”

“I am afraid they are all I have to wear. And they are not so fine, either.”

Granny gave me one of her dismissive sniffs and went over to a wooden cheese press that was a good foot taller than she is. She loosened the screws, hauled out the heavy wooden mold, removed the cover, and salted the cheese. After she put the mold back in the press and tightened up the screws again, she looked back at me with a knowing little smile.

“Pilgrim tells me the Reverend Mr. Upson is courtin' you, Julia.”

“I swear! Men tattle more than women.”

“Pilgrim don't tattle. More often than not, he's as silent as a tomb. He only spoke of it to me so I would speak to you.”

“I see no reason for
anyone
to speak about it. Whatever interest Mr. Upson has in me will come to nothing.”

“Pilgrim will be relieved to hear it.”

“What has he against the reverend? “

“He would not say. But I myself do not care fer Mr. Upson. As much as I would like to see you married off, Julia, I would not wish you chained fer life to the likes of him. Fine lookin' though he may be, he is a mighty stiff stick of a man.”

I continued to churn without comment.

“Then again, you never know,” Granny said in that sly voice of hers. “Some sticks are just waitin' to be set afire. The colder they are on the outside, the hotter they heat up.” She squinted at me appraisingly. “Could be the reverend just needs his passion ignited. What say you to that, Julia?”

I stopped churning. “I do not wish to say anything. Nor hear any more of such talk, ma'am.”

“Gracious me, have I offended you, Julia? I did not suppose you were one to mind frank talk.”

“I appreciate frankness when it is called for, but in this case it is not. You presume an intimacy between Mr. Upson and me that does not exist.”

“Pilgrim claims to have witnessed Upson takin' liberties with you on Devil's Perch.”

“In truth he did attempt to kiss me. But I would not allow it. Pilgrim came upon us at that brief instant. His lack of discretion disappoints me exceedingly.”

“Now, now, missy. No need to get all haired up. Pilgrim would never go gabbin' about it to anyone exceptin' me.”

“Why you, of all people?”

“He supposes I am your grandmother as well as Adam's. I tried to set him straight on that score, but he still thinks you will listen to me better'n him regarding the reverend.”

“I cannot fathom why he has such an interest in my personal business.”

“He has taken a likin' to you fer some reason, Julia. And he does not think Mr. Upson would make you a good husband.”

“Well, neither do I. But how would a vagabond who traipses through Plumford but once a year know anything about Mr. Upson?”

“Oh, Pilgrim is very sharp-eyed. I am sure he knows more about most folks hereabouts than they would want him to.”

“He sounds even more a busybody than you, ma'am.”

Granny laughed. “You got that butter churned yet, Miss Saucy?”

We removed the barrel cover and took a look. It appeared that I had. But my job was not yet done. Granny scooped the solidified cream out of the barrel, plopped it into a chinaware basin, handed me a small wooden paddle, and told me to work out the buttermilk, else the butter would go rancid. As I slid the soft, silky mass back and forth against the sides of the basin, I told Granny how much my grandfather and I had enjoyed the cheeses and breads and pies her foreman had been dropping off at our door.

“Well, I know you can't cook to save your dear life, Julia,” she said, “and when I heard your hired girl was laid up, I feared you and the old doc might starve to death. Adam usually gets his nourishment here, but he ain't been around all week. Still in Boston, is he?”

“I expect he shall return today.”

“Little Harriet will be most pleased. She misses Adam's kind attentions.”

“As we all do,” I said.

“Well, I reckon you better git accustomed to missin' Adam's kind attentions, Julia.You still aim to go away soon as your grandfather can manage without you, don't you?” I responded with a weak nod, and she gave me a gimlet-eyed gaze. “You ain't waverin', are you? What about all your fine ambitions to be a limner?”

“I could paint portraits in Boston as well as New York.”

“Wouldn't you and Adam be too close fer comfort?”

She was right of course. “I suppose the wisest thing for me to do is put an ocean between us,” I said.

“Up and do it then!” Granny urged. “No sense lingerin' around here when there ain't no future in it.You told me yerself that Walker cousins should not marry, did you not?”

“Yes, but the tales I have heard concerning the dire consequences may have been exaggerated over the years.”

“You are grasping at straws, foolish girl,” Granny said, sorely vexed. “Ask anyone who knew poor Eugenia Walker, and they will set you straight.”

“Did you know her?”

“I was but a mere girl at the time,” Granny said, “but I recall Miss Eugenia well enough. She had much the same golden coloring you do, Julia, and I wager she could have married any young man in the county. Instead she went and married her own Walker cousin. And you know as well as I what resulted.”

“A child that was born . . . disfigured.”

“Born a
monster
. The congregation would not brook havin' it put in the church buryin' ground, and the shame of it forced the poor couple to leave town.”

“What happened to them? Did they have other children?”

Granny looked shocked. “Of course not. They durst not share a bed again! Even so, they were still bound to each other till death did them part. That happened soon enough, when the husband up and kilt himself.”

“What?”

“You heard me right,” Granny said. “Some in your family claim he drowned by accident, but most Walkers acknowledge there were rocks in that young man's coat pockets when he jumped out of his boat. He did it to free Eugenia, so's she could marry again and have a proper life and family. But she never married again, and 'twas all fer naught the poor boy doomed himself to hell.”

“Such a selfless soul as his does not belong in hell!”

“Self-murder is the greatest sin there is aside from murdering another, Julia. If there be a hell, he is surely in it.”

“Then I do not believe there is such a place.” I turned away so Granny would not see my tears.

Nothing eludes those beady eyes of hers, however. She pulled a rough linen hankie out of her apron pocket and handed it to me. “What I just told you happened more than fifty years ago, and there is no need to blubber over it now, my girl.”

I dried my eyes and went on with the task of paddling the butter, then rinsing it until the water ran clear. When Granny was satisfied all the buttermilk had been expunged, she salted the butter and packed it in a small stoneware jar for me to take back to Grandfather's house, along with a basket of food.

“I am sorry if my speakin' of yer family history caused you sich distress, dearie,” she told me in parting.

But I do not think she was sorry. Like Grandfather, she wants me to understand and accept that Adam and I cannot have a happy future together.

 

A
dam did not return to Plumford yesterday. His last communication was four days ago. I know something bad has happened to him. I can feel it in my bones, in my heart, in the pit of my stomach. I must
go
to him. I shall set off for Concord as soon as day breaks and take the earliest morning train to Boston. If I cannot find Adam at the house where he boards, I will go to Dr. Quincy. If that proves futile, I do not know where else in the city to search for him. How helpless I feel. I pray for guidance.

To pass the time and calm myself as I await sunrise, I shall record an astounding event that took place yesterday. Trump escaped from the Powder House! Whilst imprisoned there, he was so feared by his guards that they would not set foot inside, giving him ample opportunity to excavate a tunnel beneath the brick wall. He dug and burrowed his way out to freedom sometime last evening. No one knows exactly when, but it was before midnight, when a guard shined a lantern through the small door window and discovered him gone. Constable Beers, with a group of townsmen acting as his deputies, came to the house to inform us. Grandfather was asleep, but I had not yet retired, and when I opened the door they all looked much relieved. They had half a notion that Trump might have returned to our house to rob and scalp us. This shows how ill they think of him, and how little they know him. Although it may be wrong of me, I hope he makes good his escape and remains free.

The sun has at last risen. Time to go. My prayer for guidance has been answered. A voice within has directed me to go straight to Walden Pond and ask Henry Thoreau to aid me in finding Adam.