Thoreau in Love (19 page)

“Oh my,” said Giles, staring at his pocket watch, “we have to get back to work. And I was supposed to meet Sarah.”

“Who’s Sarah?” asked Henry.

“My fiancée,” said Giles. “We were due at her house an hour ago.

“You’re engaged, to be married?” Henry was flabbergasted.

“You’ve got to come meet her. You’ll love her, and she’ll love you.”

“No, no,” said Henry. “I’ve got to get back. Back to Staten Island. The island of Statens.”

Will paid the bill, saying it was his treat. Then they said their good-byes and parted company. As Henry flew down the wood-planked Broad Way to the ferry slip, he shook his head to think that in the hours they’d been together Giles had never mentioned that he was engaged to be married. Shame flooded him as he recalled how he’d had his hands all over Will. “He’ll never want to see me again.” And as the shame overwhelmed him, he said, “Can’t drink. Remember, Henry, this is why you don’t drink.”

Henry fell asleep the moment he sat on the ferry and didn’t wake till they docked. He stumbled up the Richmond road, his mouth dry as dust, his head aching. Several times he veered off the road and found himself on all fours in a ditch. Finally, there was the Snuggery. And there was Susan on the front porch. “Henry, we’re late! Henry. Henry?” And then Susan was standing right before him. He smiled. “Henry, you’re drunk.”

“I am drunk.”

“We’re supposed to be at Madame Grymes’s.” Susan was furious. “Get yourself into the house and up to your room.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” said Henry.

“You’re lucky William’s not home.”

As Susan went to find Mary to tell her to keep the children from Henry, Henry careered from door frame to wall to wall to door frame and finally into the kitchen and over to the sink and well pump. He pumped just once and cold water gushed out. Thrilled that it took so little effort, he pumped and drank and pumped and drank, and the cold water tasted and felt so good he wanted to climb into the deep copper sink and immerse himself in it. But there was no way he could figure to do that, so he pumped and pumped and soaked his face and then his whole head, which he then shook out as if he were a dog. Satisfied and feeling good, he climbed the stairs and lay on his bed, watching the room spin until he passed out. He woke after midnight, filled with shame at the way he’d had his hands all over Will. And feeling he’d betrayed Ben. Why did I do that? What is wrong with you, Henry?

Numbed and filled with shame and guilt, he tried to get back to sleep, but his mind was alive with visions of the afternoon, his hands all over Will, and with Ben saying, “I know you don’t care so much about me.” And Henry saying into his damp pillow, “No, it’s not true,” and “I wish you were here. Oh God I wish you were here.” He tried to think about Ben, the images of their time together, but his mind kept drifting to the afternoon, his hands all over Will. And then an awful thought hit him, and he bolted up.

What if Will tells Emerson? Then everyone will know. “I can’t do that ever again. I’ve got to be more normal. Like. . . .” He was going to say Will, but then thoughts of Will whirled through his brain, Will touching his arm, Will’s eyes, looking at him in that way. “Giles never looked at me like that. No, Will thinks the same things I do.” More quietly, “And what things are those, Mister Thoreau?” Henry sat up, wondering if he should cross the room to pee in the chamber pot, or if he could make it through the night. He lay back down.

“No. I can’t give in to this. Normal. I’ve got to be more normal. No one would ever think Will wasn’t normal.” He snickered. “Except for me.” He plumped his pillow, wishing he could take back the day. He wanted to apologize to Will. But then he remembered that his hands weren’t the only ones grabbing at Will. “Giles was all over Will and me. And he’s soon to be married. Doesn’t anything make sense?” After a few moments, it came to him, and he said, “Ben makes sense. . . . Ben doesn’t feel anything’s shameful. Ben’s not afraid of anything. . . . Ben made me feel nothing was shameful. . . . For those few moments we were together. Ben liked touching me, he liked being touched, and he didn’t care who saw.” Though it seemed a revelation, the moment the thought left his lips, shame filled him.

“It’s ale. I go too far when I drink. That’s it, isn’t it? No more drink for Henry Thoreau.” All his problems resolved, Henry fell off to sleep.

In the morning, mostly recovered from his bout with alcohol, Henry pulled on his clothes and went downstairs. The Emersons were all preparing for church, except for baby Charles, who was upstairs with Alice, the wet nurse. Susan blew into the kitchen, stopped short when she saw Henry wearing the same clothes he always wore, squinched up her face and said, “Henry, you are coming to church, aren’t you?”

Henry blankly replied, “Susan, I told you. I don’t go to church.”

“But you must,” she said in a hush. “He’ll be so angry.”

From the front hall came William’s voice, “Susan? We must leave.”

“Coming, dear.”

“Is Henry ready?”

Henry followed Susan into the hall. “Didn’t your brother tell you? I don’t go to church.”

“No, he didn’t,” said William.

Mary, proudly dressed for her Roman church in one of Susan’s hand-me-downs, circled around Henry, wagging her index finger and tsking her disapproval. She took Haven and Willie by the hand and flew out the door. Susan followed.

William shook his head at Henry. “We’ll speak about this later.”

“There’s nothing to speak about.”

Dumbfounded, William left, closing the door behind him.

Henry watched until they were out of sight. Thinking he had the house to himself, he danced through the empty rooms, exulting, “I did it, I did it, I stood up to the beast!” Then, as if he were a thrusting swordsman, “Take that, William. You’re everything I hate.” Thrust. “Narrow-minded.” Thrust. “Scornful.” Thrust. “Arrogant.” Henry sheathed his imaginary sword, began to climb the stairs, but stopped and turned. “You’d be proud of me, Stearns.” And then, in imitation of Stearns declaiming from his soapbox, “We must fight society’s ways. We can’t give in to small-minded fools.”

“Ain’t you the headstrong one?” said Alice, the wet nurse, smiling down at him from the upstairs hall.

“Oops,” said Henry. “I forgot you were home.”

“And the baby.” Putting two stubby white fingers to her lips, Alice shushed him.

Church quieted the beast in William, and after a Sunday dinner of chicken stewed with potatoes and greens, Henry showed Haven and an uninterested Willie how to graft buds. He said for his own amusement, “We’re budd-ists, boys. This is my religion. These meadows and these woods my church.” In the late afternoon, Giles and his lovely, dark-haired fiancée paid a surprise visit. William proudly gave them a tour of the old house and his magnificent library. When William proposed extending the tour to the grounds, Giles said, “Thank you, Mr. Emerson, but, since we do have to get back to Manhattan, we thought it’d be fun, since it’s such a beautiful day, for the three of us to take a walk in the woods on our way back to the ferry.”

“That sounds perfect,” said Henry, and off they went down the Richmond road. After telling Sarah what an excellent writer Henry was, Giles said, “Henry, you knocked Will for a loop with all your talk about religion.”

“Is that why he isn’t with you?” asked Henry, worried that the real reason was because of how he kept touching Will.

“I don’t know why he didn’t come. But I’ll tell you this: He didn’t attend church this morning.”

“He didn’t?”

“First time since I’ve known him.”

“Perhaps he’s sick,” said Sarah. “Not everyone has Giles’s constitution. And from what I saw when they arrived at Bedford Street, Will would need Giles’s constitution to recover.”

“I like church,” said Giles. “Our minister nearly always has interesting things to say—not that I believe any of it—and I enjoy sitting with my Sarah. You wait, Henry, when you get yourself a girl, you’ll go too.”

“I doubt it,” said Henry.

“Giles, don’t you think Lizzie would like Henry?”

Giles laughed. “She might like Henry, but Henry would not take to Lizzie at all.”

“Will’s father is quite an amazing man, isn’t he?” said Henry, to change the subject.

“When Will was young,” said Sarah, “a mob burned his house down.”

“My Lord,” exclaimed Henry. “Because they were Abolitionists?”

“They burned his church down too,” said Giles. “His crazy uncle divorced his wife to marry a negress.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. His father and his uncle were the ones brought the plight of the
Amistad
to attention. You remember the
Amistad
?”

“Of course,” said Henry.

“His father’s a tough old bird, and quite a businessman, too. They nearly went bust in ’37, but now he’s one of the richest men in the city. But as tough as he is on everyone else, he’s even tougher on Will.”

“It’s quite sad,” agreed Sarah. “Will is so . . . afraid of him.”

“Will and I always talk about going west or to some exotic place, the South Seas or something. We did go to Cincinnati for a time, but I know that was it for him.”

“The South Seas?” asked Sarah. “You never told me that.”

“Oh, it’s merely a dream of mine,” said Giles. “But look at those blossoms. Glorious.”

“Dogwood?” said Sarah.

“Dogwood, yes,” said Henry.

“And what’s that bird?”

“The one that sounds like a flute? Meadowlark.” Henry felt proud of his knowledge. John had taught him well.

But Giles interrupted his good feeling. “You should have seen Will in the alehouse, Sarah. He let loose for a bit, but then Henry, making a point, put his arm around Will, and the look he gave you. . . .” Henry, astonished that Giles would bring up what he was most ashamed of, blushed scarlet.

“I’m sure you had your hands all over him too,” said Sarah, astonishing Henry even more. “Don’t mind him, Henry. Giles does that to everyone, trying to embarrass you when he does the very same thing himself.”

“I’m not trying to embarrass Henry. I was talking about Will’s reaction.”

Henry liked Giles and Sarah, the way they were willing to talk openly about anything, but he was glad when he dropped them off and the ferry departed its dock. On his way back up the Richmond road, he thought about how different he and Giles were.

“Giles gets such great joy just being with Sarah.” Henry picked up a round stone and, tossing it up the road, said, “The way I did with Ben. The way I did with Edmund.” He continued up the rise. “The way I didn’t with Ellen.” He kicked the dirt. “Yes, life’s easier for Giles, but I wouldn’t change my life for his. Not for anything.” Again he kicked the dirt, then he whooped like an Indian and ran up the road.

And ran until he was wheezing like a bellows and coughing up phlegm, just down from the house by the Clove road, where he sat under one of Longfellow’s spreading chestnut trees to catch his breath. Except that he was coming down with something, his damn lungs once again filling with phlegm, Henry felt pretty good. “But no more drink for you, Henry Thoreau.”

Like this old tree, he thought, I can put up with anything. “The wind, the rain, the sleet and the hail. We can take it, can’t we old chestnut?” And saying that, he fell into a coughing fit. When he recovered, what seemed like a raindrop hit his hand. He looked up, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Nor a bird anywhere above. Sap? “Odd.”

That night, Henry sat down to write Stearns a letter, but the drivel he wrote wasn’t worth sending to Heidelberg. My dear friend, how are you? I’m fine, living in Staten Island. He crumpled the paper. He knew what he wanted to say, but he didn’t know if he’d be able to say it aloud, much less write it in a letter.

“Stearns, I want to say, my life is a failure, my writings coming to nothing. But. But. . . . I met. . . . Stearns, I met this wonderful young man, who. . . . He has a life burning in him. There was a magnetism between us. Dr. Mesmer’s magnetism. I’ve been Mesmerized, Stearns. Just being around him made me feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. My skin prickled with excitement whenever we were together, and though I now revel in the memories of him, I’m always left with an aching emptiness because I am here and he’s not.” Henry sat back in his chair. “That’s it, isn’t it?” He dipped his pen, wrote that, then continued:

It’s not about my writings. My writings are going well. Emerson is putting one of the longer pieces I’ve written in this July’s
Dial
. And tomorrow I’m sending with confidence an essay to the
Democratic Review
. No, it’s not my writing. It’s Ben. That’s his name. Ben Wickham. With Ben I feel more alive than I have since you and I roomed together. I miss him so. And I miss you. You saw this about me, didn’t you Stearns? You saw this path my life would take. It’s very difficult, Stearns, but what I really want to say is, I lost all control with Ben. And you alone will appreciate that. You used to say that I opened my shell for moments at a time, and that what I had to do was learn to reveal myself all the time. This old crab has molted, Stearns, my chest has expanded and I know now what life can be. You knew, you tried to show me, and now I see. I— Stearns, I’m hopelessly, madly in love with Ben Wickham. Unfortunately, he is on the schooner that brought me here. Riding the coast, Savannah to Maine. I can’t stop thinking about him, and wonder always what he is doing, and wish he were beside me
.