Woodsburner (5 page)

Eliot wonders if Ticknor will ever understand that he is in no small way the reason for this visit to Concord today. As far as Eliot is concerned, the thriving Old Corner Bookstore should really be
his
, and not Ticknor's. Sooner or later, Eliot is certain, he would have been made a partner in the firm of Carter, Hendee & Co. if not for Ticknor—a man with little experience in the world of books—who came along and snatched up the business: shop, stock, and publishing house. The great injustice Eliot suffered has all the elements of a fine melodrama—a tragic tale of promise withheld, a moral for the common working man—and Eliot would happily write it himself were it not for fear of the unseemly
vitriol that would surely spew from his pen. Eliot has decided instead that if he cannot compete with Ticknor in Boston he will take the competition elsewhere. Here, in Concord, out from under Ticknor's shadow, he has good reason to hope that a second bookshop might finally purchase him the liberty he has so long sought.

Walking down Main Street, Eliot passes the Shakespeare Hotel, where he will spend the night; he passes Concord's carriage factory, a dry-goods store, a haberdashery, and pauses in front of a jeweler's window, where gold and silver watch fobs hang from delicate chains. It amazes him, the effort people expend in creating objects for the sole purpose of ornamenting other objects. Watch fobs, hat pins, tie tacks, snuffboxes, cigar cases, opera-glass chains, wallets, reticules, the whole lot of
things
that people use to coddle their other
things
. He has seen men with a half-dozen fobs—commemorating everything from political campaigns to wedding anniversaries—dangling from their watch chains like military medals, as if by decorating themselves these men might convince others of the fullness of their lives.

One of the fobs on display in the shop window is cast in the image of an open book roughly the size of a silver eagle dollar. It sits next to a campaign fob bearing the likeness of the unfortunate William Henry Harrison, “Old Tippecanoe,” whose presidential campaign three and a half years earlier proved more successful than the four-hour inaugural speech he delivered to the cold, wet crowd gathered on the Capitol grounds beneath a raging snowstorm. As a result of the infamous speech, longer than any in presidential history, Harrison fell victim to a severe ague, which sent him directly from the inaugural podium to an early grave and catapulted the uninspiring vice president, John Tyler, into the highest office of the land. After months of hearing campaign slogans for “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too,” the country now had only Tyler.

Eliot has read editorials claiming that President Tyler's vehement support of states' rights during the past three years has deepened the rift between the Northern and the Southern states, but Eliot does not concern himself with such matters. As a man dedicated to the art of the written word, he believes that he needs to rise above the quotidian, to aspire to something more universal than the time-bound debates of politicians and abolitionists.

Eliot stares at the fobs on display and fingers the watch chain drooping naked between his buttonhole and his waistcoat pocket. He does not think the book-shaped fob is large enough to hold the inscription that appears on the recently amended sign above his Boston storefront: “Eliot R. Calvert, Purveyor of Fine Books, Maps of Impeccable Quality, Stationery and Writing Supplies, Toy Books, Games, Apparatus for Schools.” There are more items listed on the sign, now, than there were when he first opened his shop a decade earlier. The last part of the list, in particular, depressed him. He hated the fact that he desperately needed the measly profits from primers and pocket maps and copybooks and writing papers and cheap nibs. No one had warned him that a bookseller is little more than a well-read hardware salesman. The sign above Eliot's shop expanded over the years, advertising an increasingly varied stock, but it still does not, of course, mention the other, highly profitable materials that patrons might also acquire by arrangement.
Discretion Assured
. He has considered simplifying the sign, now that he is about to open a new location. “Calvert Books—Boston, Concord, and Beyond.” That would easily fit on the fob. Perhaps just “Calvert Books” would suffice. He pictures the fob hanging from his chain, a counterweight to the gold watch he consults with dramatic flair whenever one of the Washington Street publishers refuses to settle on a reasonable price.

A small paper tag hangs from the fob in the window. Eliot stoops, but the tag is facedown. Out of the corner of his eye, he
sees the proprietor watching him. If he wants to learn the price, he will have to enter the shop. Eliot knows the tricks shopkeepers employ to lure a customer across the threshold, the necessary prelude to getting said customer to draw forth his purse; he has used such ploys many times himself. Eliot straightens and turns to leave, but he catches his reflection in the window, the bright flash of his spectacles, and stops to study it. His face has changed considerably over the years, but the ambition is still there, tucked away behind the well-fed softness of middle age. His once sharp jaw is now buried under an extra layer of flesh, but these changes do not worry him. The engravings of the great tragedians in his bookshop show the same changes. His chest is still sound as an oak barrel, even if his shoulders have begun to slump forward under the invisible burdens that no man can hope to escape. His hair is still thick and dark, and, though his vision is not what it once was, the blue of his eyes suffers none of the cloudiness that afflicts some of his best customers, who no doubt spend too many nights sighing over candlelit pages. Eliot gives his reflection a nod of approval.
Happy is the man
, he thinks,
whose countenance is reflected thus
.

Eliot turns from the window, scribbling this last thought in his expensive pocket memorandum. If he loiters any longer at the window, he knows he will not be able to resist the temptation to enter the shop and examine the fob more closely, discuss its craftsmanship with the jeweler, feel its heft, dangle it from his own watch chain experimentally. Eliot walks on past other storefronts, taking note of the goods available and the size and lettering of the signs hanging above. He nods politely at a young couple strolling past. He observes the cut of the man's clothes, hopelessly out of fashion, and he can tell that the woman's jacket is too thin for such a chilly day, but with no parade of children behind them the young man walks tall, shoulders back, and the young woman clings
weightlessly to his arm. The day is theirs to use as they wish, the world wide open to them to explore or ignore as they see fit.

Eliot shakes his head. He has no reason to feel ashamed of such thoughts, has he? There are men who would run from the duties that he accepts without complaint. He sees these fugitives every day on the streets of Boston, nameless men at easels mixing watery paints with bristly nubbins, skinny young men outside dark-windowed taverns, writing on scraps of paper, muttering in rhyme, veterans of forgotten jobs strung together to support their stubborn devotion to fiddle or flute, penniless old men who refuse to abandon the fruitless dreams of their youth. Yet sometimes, beneath his contempt, Eliot wonders how it would be to switch places with one of them for a day, to be a man whose sole purpose in rising from bed was to make manifest the airy shapes that populated his imagination.

And that is the real reason for his coming to Concord, is it not? If all goes as planned, the additional income from the new bookshop will afford him that which he covets most of all:
time
. He pulls a card from his coat pocket and checks the name of the man he has come to meet. It distresses him to think that his lot could be bound to such a person, but the world is indeed a vast stage with a great variety of players. In business, such liaisons are regrettable but necessary. If his new bookshop succeeds, he will hire another clerk. As the owner of two bookstores, he could not possibly be expected to involve himself in the daily details of receipts and ledgers, and he might even give over management of both shops to a trusted employee for one, or two, or even three days a week.
Three days
in which to sit and work on his plays! Given such a luxury, surely he might at last finish his most recent play,
The House of Many Windows
. The manager of the Boston Museum, Moses Kimball, has all but agreed to produce it and has encouraged Eliot to complete the manuscript, but Eliot thus far
has found himself at an impasse. He needs time to revise. And there are financial matters to consider: the play will conclude with a great conflagration, an unheard-of and expensive spectacle. In the third act, an entire house will be burned to the ground, right before the audience. Moses Kimball made the suggestion himself, but there remains the question of cost. There is always the question of cost.

If his new business venture proves profitable, Eliot will finance
The House of Many Windows
himself; he might even rent an apartment with an inspiring view of the new Public Gardens, where he can sit alone with his notebooks. Eliot has not mentioned this part of his plan to Margaret. She would likely voice opposition— but what of it? He should not need to have her approval. He knows of other men who secretly rent rooms at midday for far more ignoble endeavors.

Eliot reaches the empty storefront on Main Street, where, as the agent informed him, the previous owner worked doggedly until the day he met with an untimely accident. Eliot takes another deep breath of the crisp air. The smell he detected back on the turnpike has grown stronger, as if all Concord's residents conspired to pack their stoves with green wood today. Eliot steps back from the empty storefront and imagines his name hanging from the signpost; he thinks again of the watch fob bearing the same inscription. He studies the windows, the red door, the peeling paint and broken glass, and then he looks up to the roofline and raises an eyebrow. In the distance, a thick finger of smoke floats ominously into the perfect blue sky.

They will think the light is for them.

The Reverend Caleb Ephraim Dowdy sees the miraculous light in the woods before the others do. He sees the beginnings of it, as if time slowed for him alone so that he might mark the infinitesimal motions of things in the open field around them: a beating insect wing, a budding plant, the lengthening of an eyelash, the eruption of a match head. He watches the leading edge of the light slicing through the air like the prow of a ship, and he barely resists the urge to drop to his knees.

Filtering through the barren interstices of limb and branch, the unmistakable glow of benediction falls upon the believers gathered under the clear, cold sky, a fitting sign for those craving affirmation. They gasp when the light touches them, and they believe they are feeling nothing less than the hand of God.

Suspicious at first, Caleb reassures himself that this is not a dream. In his dreams, he is free from the headaches and the shaking hands and the leaden remorse that hangs like a pendulum in his belly during his waking hours. Caleb rubs his temples, tries to wipe away the cloying perfume that addles his brain. His short black hair is plastered to his forehead, held in place by the sheen of sweat covering his round pale face. It makes him shiver in the cool air. He is a thin, nervous man, but the robes he wears lend him some bulk and help to hide his trembling. He slides his
fingers from his temples to his eyes and presses them gently. He briefly thinks that he might press harder, drive his thumbs in all the way and thus bring an end to the torment. There is no discernible cause for the constant pain behind his eyes, nothing that can be leeched or blistered. He can find temporary relief in only one remedy, but it has the unfortunate effect of doubling the discomfort afterward.

Caleb tries to hold the attention of his followers, thirty or so in number, but it is hard to compete with the flickering light that grows stronger by the minute. He knows each of them personally. He knows their histories, some better than others. At the edge of the gathering, he sees the widow Esther Harrington and the reformed drunkard Amos Stiles standing next to each other, elbows touching, and for no particular reason Caleb wonders if they have begun sharing a bed. He imagines the savage cries issuing from the widow's dry lips under the rutting weight of the drunkard. Caleb presses his eyes again with thumb and forefinger and tries to focus on the reason they are all here.