"But, dear Mrs. Sprague" -- in her sugariest voice -- "so did the Pilgrims from time to time, I should imagine. Have a bad leg, I mean. Can't we just pretend this Pilgrim boy has received an injury trying to warn the town against marauding Indians?"
"But, dear Madam," said Mrs. de Sales-Sprague in her sugariest voice, favoring Lady with a condescending smile, "if he hobbles so, I shouldn't think he could get anywhere in time to warn anyone about anything."
'Very well. Then he must have a horse to ride." Lady's smile was so bright as to be astonishing. She did not fling the gauntlet, but dropped it, carelessly, as she might a glove.
"A horse?" snorted Mrs. Sprague. "There are no horses in my script."
"Then may I suggest you write one in?"
"Lady Harleigh, are you presuming to tell me what I may or may not have in my pageant?" Mrs. Sprague gathered herself up, trying to tower over Lady, which was difficult because Lady was quite tall.
"I presume nothing, Edith Sprague. . . ."
"Very well, then. No horses and no boys with game legs. I cannot have the lad gimping around and holding up cues, now, can I?"
"Certainly not. I quite agree. No horses and no gimps. Come," she said to me, taking my hand and starting to pull me along after her. Having won the day, Spouse turned back to have a word with the witch whose agonized screams were not quite as loud as the directress might have wished.
"One other thing, however," Lady recollected over her shoulder as we went, "no more can I oblige you by opening my house for the Pilgrim Club." She tossed her head and I wondered how she could make her way across the turf, so grandly oblivious was she.
When Mrs. Sprague sailed toward us again, it was on another tack. "One moment, one moment -- please, let us not be hasty about this matter," she called breathlessly.
Lady halted in her tracks but did not turn. "Then you agree," she said as the other hove to, "we must give it second thoughts."
The directress peered at me through her pince-nez. "Do you ride, boy?" she demanded.
"Of course he rides, don't you, darling?" Lady quickly put in (I had a photograph of me taken on a Shetland pony in the schoolyard), "and if he does not ride perhaps Mrs. Sparrow will open her house for tea."
Mrs. Sprague was, of course, forced to capitulate. "You can catch a lot more flies with honey than you ever can with vinegar," Lady whispered gleefully as she led me away.
"But you told her I could ride a horse!" I urgently returned.
"Can't you?"
"No."
"Always say you can, even if you can't, darling. It's how to get on in the world."
Whether I would get on or not remained to be seen, at least in the matter of my heroics in Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's pageant.
To begin the celebration, there was a flurry of dedications. Plaques and inscribed boulders were unveiled at various historical sites around town, an address was made by the Governor, and then a parade. The following day, a fine, fair June day, was the pageant, and the bleachers around the Green filled rapidly. Since the Great Elm was to all of us a sturdy and venerable symbol of the town, it was fitting that the pageant should take place more or less under its spreading branches, and that the tide be "Beneath the Boughs." Each scene was introduced by a narrator, The Spirit of the Elm, and it may be imagined who this narrator was. Mrs. de Sales-Sprague's purple prose was amplified through loudspeakers the length of the Green, she being cleverly concealed at the base of the tree trunk behind some fast-wilting shrubbery. Exits and entrances were made from beside the Piersons' garage, next door to Lady, where, obscured behind the heavy screen of firs hiding the house from the street, the actors gathered before their entrances. And it was from this place that on cue I was to ride full tilt across the Green, shouting the line I'd been given, "The Indians are coming!" to warn the Pilgrim settlers of the approaching Pequot war party. Painted and feathered, Blue Ferguson held the reins as I clambered into the saddle astride the sorry nag who usually pulled No-Relation Welles's horseradish cart.
'"And lo, the seeds that had been planted sprang up, and this was good,'" came Mrs. Sprague's voice, "'and the Founding Fathers knew that the Wongunk braves had been right -- Quonehtacut was a good place. But then one day, as they tilled their plenteous crops, they heard the sound of madly flying hooves and a valiant voice cried out -- '"
Fiercely gripping the reins, I dug my one good heel into the spavined horse's flanks the way Blue had showed me, and old Dobbin took a step or two in the drive, then stopped. I looked wildly at Blue, almost unrecognizable under his feathered bonnet.
"'. . . the sound of madly flying hooves . . .'" came Mrs. Sprague's cue, "'and a valiant voice cried out -- '"
Again I kicked the nag, again she moved a step or two. I could hear the "Indians" snickering behind me. I kicked and yanked and urged, to no avail. The horse wouldn't go. I looked at Blue again, who seemed to be paying no attention to my dilemma. He was over at the bushes beside the garage.
The cue came again. "'. . . the sound of madly flying hooves! And -- '"
And a valiant voice cried out. Mine. Suddenly the horse whinnied, dodged from one side of the drive to the other, then took off, with me holding on for dear life, across the lawn, into the roadway between the bleachers, and onto the Green. Turf flew in all directions as I blindly headed for the group of farmers and their families. All eyes were on me as I shouted, "They're coming! They're coming!" though it could have been the British for all I managed of my line about the Indians. But Indians quickly made themselves apparent when Blue and his wildly shouting tribe dashed onto the Green. There was a moment of confusion as my mount continued wildly gyrating and threatening my fellow-actors with injury. While the horse wheeled and the Pilgrims headed for the stockade, I saw a rush of feathers and a painted grimace. I was yanked from my saddle, and a tomahawk swished past my head. Before the horse could spring away, the savage reached and pulled something from under its tail and the animal immediately receded into docility again.
Flat on the ground, I watched Blue dash toward the stockade, run nimbly up a ladder, and give out with a loud Tarzan cry. The crowd was spellbound as he disappeared for an instant, then reappeared with ferociously protesting Mabel Talcott slung over his shoulder.
When the smoke of musketry had dissolved, the appointed people went about to carry off the fallen, but no one had been assigned to me. As Mrs. Sprague paused in her narrative, I groaned awfully, rolled over, got to my feet, alternately clutching my head and my chest, and staggered to the palisade where Mr. Pretty, the vegetable man, helped me from view behind the palings.
"You were extraordinary!" Lady exclaimed later. "Jesse -- some ice cream for the young man. He was born to the sock and buskin." After hugs and kisses and ice cream, I got my Kodak Brownie from Ag, who had photographed all the parts of the pageant I was in, and then I went around snapping people in their costumes, making sure I got one of Blue Ferguson in his feathers and war paint. He obliged me by re-enacting the abduction of the "Rose" girl with the hefty Mabel Talcott. A small crowd had gathered around, and watched admiringly, saying that Blue Ferguson was the greatest guy. And he was. If ever he could have been called "True Blue," he was that day.
"Some ride, eh, kiddo?" he whispered, taking me aside and giving me a friendly jab. "I'll bet you never thought that glue-bait could shag like that." Then he made his confession: he'd gotten some burrs from the bushes and stuck them on the horse's bum, hence my thunderbolt entrance.
"You're pretty good, kiddo. You really saved the day." He said it loudly, so everyone overheard it; praise from Blue Ferguson was praise indeed.
And though the events of that weekend ended happily enough, there was an aftermath which, though inadvertently brought about by me, could scarcely be considered my fault. But it upset Lady to the degree that she withdrew from all our activities -- "retired," as Ruthie Sparrow so often put it -- and it came about in this way. When the rolls of film Ag and I had taken were developed, we decided to show them on the magic
lantern in the garage. We invited the neighborhood to come and see the pictures of the pageant, which would be projected onto a sheet hung on the back wall. The audience was seated on benches and chairs, the doors were closed, and I showed my collection of postcard views; then everyone gave their undivided attention when I offered the main attraction.
As photographers, Ag and I seemed without peer, for the shots projected clear and large on the sheet, give or take a wrinkle or two in the fabric. There was old Mr. Lyman, our local Civil War relic, waving in the parade. There, on horseback, was Eamon Harmon, in tricorne and wig, playing the treacherous Stamp Agent for the Crown, Jared Ingersoll, who'd been stopped by the angry revolutionaries and forced to resign. There was the Pequot Massacre, with me riding full tilt onto the Green. There were all the guests at the tea in Lady's gardens; there we were on the terrace wall watching the boat flotilla down in the Cove; there was Blue Ferguson, repeating his role in his war bonnet, hoisting Mabel Talcott over his shoulder as I'd snapped the picture, and the crowd laughed. . . .
I had my head down, trying to adjust the focus slightly, when I heard the sound of a chair overturning. Lady had sprung to her feet, her hand to her mouth, staring at the picture on the sheet. Then, shaking her head, she hurried out the side door. The garage darkened again, and while everyone made astonished talk I stared down the beam of light to the picture on the sheet, seeing what I had failed to notice before, and which, enlarged, became immediately apparent. There, at the front of the group around Blue and Mabel Talcott, a little to one side, observing with thin amusement, the tight mouth twisted askew, was the blurred but clearly recognizable image of the red-haired man.
PART TWO
New Songs
1
So it was that Lady "retired" and we lost her for some time to come. For endless weeks no one saw her, and all you needed was to hear Ruthie Sparrow over the fence to know that the bedroom blinds were down. Everyone was at a loss to understand what had frightened her, and I for once withheld what little I knew, revealing nothing of the existence of the red-haired man. Secretly, I studied the snapshot under my magnifying glass, perusing the fuzzy features and wondering what his sinister power was over our friend, and how he came by it.
But, as we were to learn, even without Lady life continued however it might, and while she retreated into some unfathomable fear and hid behind drawn shades, and as July came on, we were now left to our own devices.
Those acquainted with the tedium of summertime in a small town are those who have lived through it, year after year. School vacation may have its charms, that infinite and airless vacuum of unvarying temperature looming up before the boy who in May anticipates the end of classes and who in September laggardly returns with some small sense of regret for time lost, but who by mid-July wonders if the days will ever pass, pondering on how to fill those monotonous hours of what-to-do-now.
Such times become a test of both ingenuity and will; the attempts to discover something new and diverting prove more taxing in that steamy season when those who can afford it have gone to camp, others to their lake or seashore cottages. These are the days of listless inaction and infernal boredom when the green leaves are already shriveled, the lawns burnt off in sorry patches, the flower beds too soon tired and gone to stalks. The businessmen come off the 5:10 in shirt sleeves, carrying their coats, with ties yanked, while at high noon people look for their reflection, children for mirages, in the baking tar of the streets.
One Saturday in canning season, Ma sent me over to Elthea to borrow some rubber jar rings. Elthea was ironing in the kitchen, shirts and a stack of Jesse's collars, dazzling white, one for each day in the week, and with enough starch in them to stiff a corpse. But no, she said, they were out of jar rings.
I asked for a cruller from the breadbox, but she said crullers were singing the Doxology. I knew Lady hadn't been baking. Elthea cut me a piece of her own banana spice cake, and gave me a glass of ginger ale, which I drank in morose silence.
"What's the matter, hon?" Elthea looked at me as her iron zipped around the buttons on a shirt.
"Nothing."
"Come on now, you look dark as thunder. Is it Missus? Don't you fret. Missus is all right, I just gave her a fine lunch and she ate it all. That's always a good sign." While I finished my cake, she told me about the show she and Jesse had seen Thursday night. Elthea loved going to the movies, or to the State Theatre where they had vaudeville and she could hear Cab Galloway sing "Minnie the Moocher."
Just then a truck pulled in the drive and backfired as it came past the window.
"Hol-ee, that'll wake the dead, or Missus, if she's napping. Blue Ferguson, whyn't you get yourself a new truck, sound like guns going off out there."
Blue came through the doorway with a market basket which he put on the table. Elthea pulled her cord plug and began taking the things out. "Here now, you call this veal?" she asked, slipping me a wink as she inspected a parcel.
"Elthea, that veal came off the fatted calf, believe it." Blue knew she was joshing him; Elthea loved to joke with all the delivery people and, like everyone else, she appreciated Blue. She sat him down and gave him a piece of cake, too.
"Say, that's good cake, Elthea," Blue said around a mouthful. "If you didn't have a husband, I'd marry you myself."
Elthea stifled her laughter and gave him a playful swat. "You better not let Jesse hear you talk that way, Blue Ferguson." Still, I could tell she was flattered. o
"How do you get around on those high heels, Elthea?" She gave him a sassy look and did a little sashay as she replugged her iron.
"Same way you get around on those flat ones. And if Missus doesn't eat her dinner tonight because the veal's tough, I'm coming after you all the way to Main Street. With this." She shook a rolling pin at him.
"Lord, that one," she said, giggling, when he'd gone, "he's True Blue, all right." When I asked where Jesse was, she said he'd taken his pole to the Cove and was probably fishing. I ran to the back of Lady's yard and looked down to the river: there was Jesse in his little skiff, edging along among the willows near the bank as he trolled.
I went down and stood waving until I attracted his attention. "How's about a ride?"
He nodded, I kicked off my sneakers, waded out, and clambered over the stern of the skiff. "How's fishing?"
"Fishing's fishing. Few perch, is all."
"You like fishing, huh?"
"I like it."
That was Jesse; you could hardly get more than a sentence out of him at one time. Being the sort who seldom talked, he gave you the feeling he didn't enjoy talking, but was full of all sorts of thoughts, and that if you could only discover them you'd be better off. He was a wise old bird; that is to say, he was wiser than some, which made him wiser than most.
I have called him a wise "old" bird. Maybe he was old, maybe he wasn't. He never seemed to age much, and Mrs. Sparrow said that in earlier days he was as hale a fellow as one could hope to see. He must have made quite an impression; there were not many Negroes living in Pequot Landing, just Andy Cleves, who ran the Noble Patriot tavern, some families at the end of Knobb Street, and a scattering of housemaids around town.
Jesse rowed a little, fished a little, was silent I said, "How's Lady -- Mrs. Harleigh?"
"Fine."
Silence.
"Jesse?"
"Um?"
"Don'tcha think Colonel Blatchley'd make a good husband for her?"
"Um."
"He likes her a lot."
"Missus tell you she wants to get married again?"
"Nope."
"Colonel Blatchley?"
"Nope."
"Then what?"
"Just seemed like a good idea."
"Maybe, maybe not."
For all his uncommunicativeness, Jesse Griffin was hardly a man to be taken for granted. During the time we had become friends with Lady and been given the key to the house, so to speak, he was to us as much a fixture of the place as the walls or the roof, a
nd if it was Elthea who fed us and looked after us, Jesse's quiet presence was nonetheless affirmed in a hundred small things. And as we grew older and he came more to trust us, in some strange, unspoken way he took the place of the father we had lost.
To me he had the look of a corsair, a strong, hawklike face, with prominent nose and cheekbones, the lips chiseled, almost etched, with an outline around them. When he smiled, which was rarely, his evenly set teeth flashed white, though there was little of this color in his eyes whose dark centers were surrounded with whites that were more often than not reddish, or even yellow. His short-cropped hair (Elthea used hand clippers on it on the back porch; Mr. Pellegrino at the barbershop would never cut a black person's hair) was like a woolly cap, and we wondered what it was like to touch it.
His hands were long and beautifully articulated, all the tendons and veins showing beneath the dark skin, with lighter palms, as if he'd scrubbed them too hard, and fingernails of a perfect shape, blunt at the ends, plum-colored, with paler, perfect moons, and always well looked after, like a doctor's.
He never did care much for our New England winters. He was always bundled up in sweaters and scarves and caps, but in the warm seasons his blood seemed to thin out and rise like sap in a tree. He was the hardest worker.
The pride he took in that house, the zeal with which he looked after it! We used to say he was Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, he did so many things -- gardening, plumbing, building, repairing. You'd see him sitting on a windowsill in one of his striped shirts (he wore violet suspenders to keep his pants up), a red bandanna wafting from his back pocket, as he Bon-Amied the panes, and always finding time when everything else had been seen to to lay out on the kitchen table and polish all Lady's good Georgian silver that was part of the Harleigh inheritance. How often I would find him down on his knees at the sideboard with his flannel rag and can of polish, and when he had waxed and buffed he ran his fingers over the worked surface of the wood as if the pale whorls of his fingertips by some tactile sense informed him of the "doneness," the same way Lady's careful poking with a broom straw into a cake layer told her when it was baked.