Woodsburner (40 page)

He is not prepared for the certainty of the flames.

On the way from Concord they watched the smoke unfurl overhead, a procession of phantoms grasping for light, opaque one moment, translucent the next. The men approached the fire from the opposite side of Fair Haven Hill, and they shuddered together as the wall of crackling heat slammed into them. Odd was stunned by the enormity of the sound. The men fell silent as they took in the extent of the fire, and then, weapons raised, courage renewed, they charged.

Odd fears that they are outnumbered, for the fire is not one enemy but many, thousands of individual flames, chewing through trees, taking possession of the woods as if this were their inheritance. During the years Odd lived alone in his little cabin, he had come to suspect that trees and plants and animals—and all else that relied upon sun and soil and water—were inhabited by a gentle spirit that seemed to tremble beneath the surface of living things. And now he imagines the ghosts of what has burned gathering in the dark ribbons of smoke and fleeing skyward. Odd feels helpless to save them; he inhales, tries to draw the dissipating life into his chest, and doubles over coughing.

This is what it means to be haunted, Odd thinks. He has heard others speak of ghosts as half-glimpsed shadows in forgotten corners, but Odd knows that they are more sensation than presence,
an ache, a stirring. He has sometimes felt their earnest touch—a flutter in his stomach, an acrid finger at the back of his throat. The first time he visited his family's gravestone at Copp's Hill, Odd discovered that the spirits of the dead did not haunt places at all; they haunted people.

The gravestone sat in the overgrown weeds at the back of the burying ground, near the spot once set aside for slaves. A grieving Boston family had paid for the stone, and they allowed the grass around it to grow tall like the seaweed shrouding the relatives who did not make it to the New World. Odd's family was not buried there, but they shared the memorial with the forty-three other passengers from the
Sovereign of the Sea
who also were not buried there. Together, their bones mingled on the ocean floor, dressed and undressed by shifting sands. Odd used to worry that the ghosts of his mother and father and sister would be unable to breathe underwater, but when he visited the gravesite he understood: from the moment he flew from the ship's deck on the expanding ball of heat, he carried their spirits with him. The fire in his lungs should have been a sign to him that he was to be the vessel of their haunting. The vacant grave at Copp's Hill was marked by a thin rectangle of slate topped by a jawless, winged skull. Odd studied the hollow sockets and the empty grin of the half-bird, half-death's-head image etched into the brittle stone. He pressed his fingers into his cheek to feel the hidden contours of his own skull grinning back from behind closed lips, and he knew that he, too, for a time, had had wings.

A shovelful of dirt hits Odd's shoulder. Otis Dickerson yanks the ax from Odd's hands and pokes the handle of a shovel against his ribs.

“Wake up, man! If you're going to stand here, you'll need this instead.”

Odd nods. He takes the offered shovel and starts digging.

Otis Dickerson shakes his head and carries the ax back to the men who are chopping down the trees behind them. Odd helps the men nearest him dig a shallow trench in front of the flames like a long, snaking grave. He tries not to stand too close to the others. Beneath grunts and coughs there are darker complaints, muttered between strokes and swings, as if their thoughts must be kept secret from the flames.

“This will carry on to Concord.”

“If Concord goes, the forests at Walden will go next.” “We'll hang the devil that brought this down upon us.”

Odd fears that their anger is directed at him, that each man has somehow already intuited that he is responsible for this. They fling the dirt into the burning woods, trying to bury the fire alive. Odd digs faster than most. He is strong, and the loose black earth yields easily. He feels his muscles settle into a comfortable rhythm of exertion, expanding and contracting across his rib cage, yanking the bones of his arms forward and back. His shovel bites into the soil, tears up grasses, rips out spindly, tangled roots and hurls them into the fire, feeding and killing the monster at the same time. He calls on the anger that he feels over the fire's certainty and lets it flow through his limbs, lets it energize him with a sense of purpose.

The smoke is thick, and more than once Odd throws a shovelful of dirt into the back of someone's head. At times it is impossible to see, but Odd is convinced that some of the other men are looking at him, watching him for some sign that he is the cause of this blaze. The very thought makes him feel guilty. He wants to shout that this fire is not his. He shovels faster, as if to prove his innocence. Around him, bodies materialize and vanish. Men grow large against the flickering light and shrink back into their own skinny shadows. Odd listens for accusations but hears only angry shouts and the steel thump of axes and shovels above the din in
the trees. Each man seems lost in his own repetitive task, but through a break in the smoke Odd sees a man staring at him, a dark shadow among shadows, and after a wave of smoke passes the man reappears in a different place. Odd thinks he has seen the man in these woods before, but he does not know his name.

He feels a hand on his shoulder and turns to find Otis Dickerson at his side once again. “Look here!” the shopkeeper yells, though they are standing only inches apart. “What are you doing? We're trenching this way!”

Odd looks once more at the man he thinks is staring at him, and Dickerson follows his gaze before a cloud of white and gray smoke engulfs them and moves on.

“You acquainted with that one?” the shopkeeper asks.

Odd shakes his head.

“If you've no cause to speak with him, I wouldn't recommend it. Strange fellow.” The shopkeeper rests for a moment, props himself on the handle of his shovel. His face is smeared with sweat and soot, and Odd can see a network of thin veins in his cheeks, bright red beneath the filth.

“He's taken to calling himself Henry David Thoreau,” Dickerson says, “though he was christened David Henry. Pointless, that. No less an idler now than he was before he rearranged himself.”

The shopkeeper hefts the shovel with both hands, steps forward, and attacks the gnarled underbrush. Then he turns back to Odd and adds, “He makes a fine pencil, I'll give him that, but I came upon him once in the woods, completely without clothes. Now, what kind of a man does that?” Dickerson resumes digging with a fury that seems to reflect his disdain for the man who dared to change his name. Odd does not find Henry David Thoreau's conversion unusual. People remake themselves in ways more troubling than merely switching their first and middle names. Whole families erase entire histories every day simply by stepping off
ships and announcing themselves to the New World as the Smiths or the Coopers. Even Cyrus Woburn is a man remade, though Odd doubts that Emma herself knows as much as he does about her husband.

Odd came upon this knowledge by accident. It began with a spotted rabbit that had made a nest for her squeaking babies in the feed bin. When Odd lifted the lid, the mother blinked at him with surprised black eyes, shamed by her failed instincts. Odd knew Mr. Woburn would order him to fling the babies into the dirt, so he dragged the wooden bin to the garden beside his own lodgings, certain that he would be able to find extra chicken feed somewhere in the barn. What he found instead was a bottle of rye whiskey hidden beneath a worn-out saddle.

When Odd turned around with the bottle in one hand and a half-empty sack of chicken feed in the other, he saw Mr. Woburn outlined in the bright morning light, tamping powder into the long barrel of his rifle. He was not wearing his hat, and his wild tangle of gray hair was swept back from his forehead and stuck out behind, making him look as though he were leaning into a strong wind. Mr. Woburn withdrew the rod, slid it back into place along the barrel, and peered at Odd through one eye, taking aim without his gun.

“Morning, Odd.”

The bottle felt suddenly slippery, and Odd dropped the feed sack so that he could better cradle the whiskey with both hands.

“I was looking for feed … for the chickens.”

“Did she send you back here?” Mr. Woburn asked, holding the rifle lengthwise. He wore only trousers and an unbuttoned vest over his nightshirt, and Odd could see dark circles of sweat beneath his arms. The cuffs of one trouser leg were half tucked into one of his boots.

“I did not see Mrs. Woburn this day,” Odd said carefully. “I will tell her nothing.”

Mr. Woburn shrugged to show that he had nothing to hide. “Why don't you help yourself?”

“I will put it where it was.”

“Come with me, Odd. And bring that bottle.”

Odd could not take his eyes off the loaded rifle.

“We're going to rid the back field of those damned turtles once and for all,” Mr. Woburn said. He threw the satchel with powder and balls to Odd. “They ruined the pumpkins last season. I've thought on it, and I'm certain it was the turtles. Damned nuisance.”

By the time they crossed the field, Mr. Woburn had taken several pulls from the bottle and had begun speaking in a loud voice that reminded Odd of the rainy night when he found him sitting next to Emma in front of the fire. The old man seemed to have forgotten entirely about the incident, or at least he never spoke of it. Odd kept a nervous eye on the rifle just the same. He had never liked working alongside Mr. Woburn, and since that night he had avoided being alone with the man altogether. When they reached the creek, Mr. Woburn sank down onto the grassy bank and teetered backward before righting himself with his legs straight in front. He motioned for Odd to take a seat beside him. Odd noticed the white beginnings of a beard in the deep crevices of Mr. Woburn's cheeks and neck, where he could not be bothered to guide his razor.

Mr. Woburn's aim was lousy, but the turtles were easy targets. They sat sunning themselves placidly, shells glistening black and brown and yellow, hooked beaks turned toward the sky. A line of stinkpot turtles perched head to tail on a fat log that jutted above the stream. Snapping turtles floated in twos and threes on the slow-moving water. Odd wanted to warn them. He cringed at the sharp report of the gun, the sickening crack of the turtles' shells, and the voluminous spray of red.

Between curses and pulls on the bottle, Mr. Woburn reloaded. He was in no hurry. When he fired, he usually sent the ball cracking
through the shell of the turtle next to the one he was aiming for. He might have achieved the same results with a heavy club and a net. He might have set traps or spread poison where he believed they nibbled at his crops, but he seemed delighted by the flying shards and plumes of red, each little explosion suggesting that the turtles were packed into their shells under great pressure. Odd could not understand why they did not all swim away at once. The shots scared off a few each time, but most only withdrew into their shells, and those that fled returned moments later, poking their creased, leathery heads above the water at the worst possible instant. Odd strained against the urge to help them. He sat holding the open bottle by the neck while Mr. Woburn fired lazy shots between swigs.

“I forswore the drink ages ago, Odd my boy. I'll tell you, it near delivered me to self-destruction. This bottle here, it's only for the pain in my back. Go on, a tipple will do you good.”

Odd put the bottle to his mouth and let only a trickle pass before he felt as though his tongue had been set on fire. Mr. Woburn pulled the trigger without raising the gun from his lap, and another turtle disintegrated into a shocking red cloud. He saw Odd gag and pulled the bottle away, placed it to his lips, and tossed his head back. Odd watched three coppery bubbles float up through the churning liquid as Mr. Woburn gulped.

“See how it's done? Don't let the baldface sit on your tongue. Whole point is to put the fire into your gullet.”

While Mr. Woburn drank, Odd saw movement from the corner of his eye. Three painted turtles surfaced near them, creating ripples of overlapping light. He could see the shadows of their feet, paddling quiet little circles underwater while fragments of shells floated past, black and pink. Odd saw Mr. Woburn's eyes tighten with the act of swallowing, and before he lowered the bottle Odd ran a hand through the grass, found a stone, a pretty one
with a vein of black jagging through smooth gray, and sent it skipping across the water. The turtles darted below the surface.

Mr. Woburn cleared his throat and kept one eye squeezed shut as he spoke. “Moderation, Odd. Try again. Take a good, long drink.”

Odd held the bottle upright, kept his lips closed, and pretended to swallow until he could feel his Adam's apple working dryly in his throat.

“It softens the unpleasantness of things, it does. No reason to tell Mrs. Woburn about this, you understand.”

Odd nodded.

“Good man. She won't understand, and I don't need her worrying. Terrible nervous woman she is. Good cook. Terrible at the rest of it. Wifely matters.”

Mr. Woburn winked at Odd and then took a shot at a small turtle floating nearby. The ball skipped over the water's surface, and the turtle slowly turned and paddled calmly in the other direction. Mr. Woburn reached for the powder horn and spilled gunpowder down the barrel, onto his lap, dropped in two balls instead of one.

“Never tell a woman what you don't want to hear again and again. A woman can't let things be. Doesn't know how to take unpleasant news and lock it away.”

By way of illustrating his point, Mr. Woburn rapped the barrel of the rifle against his temple. “Take all this.” He flung his arm over his head in a broad circle. “If she knew what happened to the farm before, ach, imagine the state she'd put herself into.”

Odd saw another doomed turtle rise to the surface, and he leaned into Mr. Woburn's line of sight. “What happened to it?”

Mr. Woburn held up the half-empty bottle and swirled the contents, staring at the spinning threads of sunlight with reverence.