I dip my pitcher in these living springs
And draw, from depths below, sincerity. —Bronson Alcott
Freddy was looking for something that would be nice to play with, like a tractor engine or a big greasy battery. There was nothing in the barn where his father and John were tooling up the corn planter. Freddy had just learned to walk, so he toddled out the door and wandered down behind it toward the red-painted shed where the cider press was, sitting down occasionally with a plop and getting up again. The door of the shed was around on the other side, facing the river. Freddy, his balloon wobbling on the end of the string on his wrist, started around the shed. Then he stopped.
"Horsie," he said. There was a man sitting high up in the sky on a horse. A funny man. A funny lady? The top of the man was like a lady, a funny lady. The lady looked back at Freddy. Then the lady turned up the sides of her mouth, and beckoned with one finger. Freddy trotted forward. The lady reached out and snapped the string of Freddy's balloon. The balloon started to sail up into the sky. The rest of the string fell down over Freddy's arm to the ground. Freddy looked at the string, unbelieving. Then he looked up into the sky at his disappearing balloon. He reached up for it and started to cry.
Gwen, going out of the house with a basket of wet wash, saw a big red bird in the wrangle of elm branches below the barn. No, it was too big for a bird, and it was floating up out of the tree now into the sky. It was Freddy's balloon. Poor Freddy. She put the basket down, hearing the telephone ring, and ran across the road. Freddy wasn't hard to find. He had gotten away from Tom and was standing beside the door of the cider shed, hollering his heart out, pointing up into the sky at the little red dot that had been his balloon. The long string dangled from his wrist to the ground. Gwen picked him up. There was a good three feet of string left. How had Freddy managed to break the balloon off at the top? Perhaps he had caught it on the edge of the shed roof, or on a nail or something. He was bellowing about a horsie and a funny lady. Gwen tried to comfort him, but he was inconsolable. When Gwen got back to the house, Grandmaw met her at the door, her face strange.
"Ernest Gross is dead," she said. "He was shot."
"Who?" said Gwen idiotically. "I mean, who shot him?"
"Someone on a horse, they think, dressed like Sam Prescott."
"Funny lady," roared Freddy. "Horsie!"
Gwen looked at Freddy, her lips tight. Not Charley? Then she looked grimly at Grandmaw. "I'm not going to have him bothered. I don't care who..."
Freddy was sucking his thumb, his cranky head on his mother's shoulder. He would be asleep in a minute. "No, of course not," said Grandmaw.
*19*
Here lies an honest man,
Rear-Admiral Van.
*
Faith, then ye have
Two in one grave,
For in his favor,
Here too lies the Engraver. —Henry Thoreau
In 1846 when Henry Thoreau spent the night in jail as the guest of Sam Staples, the Concord Town Jail was a modest boxlike affair standing on ground now occupied by a parking lot behind Vanderhoof's Hardware Store on Main Street. By the nineteen-sixties the police department had grown to a force of twenty men, with a new headquarters on Walden Street shared by the Fire Department. The police occupied the right half of the brick building, with their own laboratory, dark room, firing range, parking meter repair facility, three radio-equipped automobiles and one walking mobile unit. Both Fire and Police Departments shared the use of the short-wave radio antenna. It was a good group of men, displaying the discreet and iron virtue of the best class of blue-coated law enforcers in the land. All of them were great broad-chested men except their Chief, James Flower. Jimmy was nine inches under the required minimum height, and he had worked his way into the Force and up to his present position through personality, competence and a special dispensation of the Legislature.
Thirty seconds after Sergeant Luther Ordway had hung up on Mrs. Jellicoe, a small parade of cars was turning out onto Walden Street, with Jimmy Flower already ticking off on his fingers a list of things to do. At the bridge he took calm and swift control. Patrolman Harold Vine passed on to him Arthur Furry's information and described the examination of the body by Mr. Ralph Chope of Houston, Texas. Chief Flower asked a few questions of Arthur Furry and Ralph Chope. He looked at Arthur's bright eye and flabby, pale face and directed that he be sent home in a patrol car. Then, after examining the body of Ernest Goss, he walked along the shore, looking at the ground. He peered across the bridge to inspect the place where the horseman had jumped the fence. He climbed over the fence in another place and walked gingerly around the area where the footprints of several hundred Boy Scouts were overprinted with the marks of a horse's hooves. Then he came back again the same way and did a number of things very quickly. He gave directions to the photographers, he organized a search of the immediate area for the weapon or for anything else of interest, and he dispatched Sergeant Silverson with two men to drive around by way of Liberty Street and attempt to pick up the trail at the point where Arthur had indicated the rider had left the field. He directed Sergeant Ordway to take charge of the on-the-spot investigation. Then he took the arm of Sergeant Bernard Shrubsole. "Let's go up to Charley's," he said. "We'd better round up Philip, too. There was some sort of hanky-panky with the Battery cannon this morning." On the way to the car they passed District Medical Examiner Walter Allen, hurrying up with his bag. Dr. Allen nodded without speaking.
It was quarter of two as they drove up Barrett's Mill Road past the Hand place and turned into the long drive that curved around in front of the Goss house. "Look, there he is," said Sergeant Shrubsole. Charley Goss was walking up from the barn with a hurried, distorted, limping gait. He came hobbling to the car, looking distraught, and leaned down to the window.
"I know what you've come for," he said. "I'll come with you. My mother isn't well. I don't want her to see you."
"All right, Charley," said Chief Rower, his voice gruff "Climb in. But some of my boys will be along shortly to look around. "Where's your brother?"
Charley climbed in the back seat and sat down by Bernard Shrubsole. He was wearing khaki trousers and a white shirt and a pair of dirty tennis shoes. He was shivering. "Philip? Oh, I suppose he's s-still at the Rod and Gun Club with the Battery, having lunch."
"Well, I'll get out there, Bernie, and you can go on and take Charley to the station. One of the boys will bring me back." He looked back at Charley. "Look, go in and get your coat."
"No," said Charley, "I'm all right."
"Now, Charley," said Jimmy Flower, "you know what your rights are, don't you? To an attorney, I mean. I just want to be sure you..."
"An attorney?" said Charley. He was shivering uncontrollably. "Why should I need an attorney? I'm perfectly willing to admit that I shot my f-f-father myself."
*20*
The station of the parties
Forbids publicity,
But Justice is sublimer
Than arms, or pedigree. —Emily Dickinson
At the Rod and Gun Club on Strawberry Hill Road the pie a la mode had just been placed on the table, and the members of the Concord Independent Battery were attempting to launch it into a sea of whiskey in which fragments of spaghetti and meatballs and green salad were already bobbing uneasily around. Police Chief Jimmy Flower's sobriety was taken as a profound tragedy and a personal insult. Jimmy was well known as a good fellow and a worthy citizen—why the heck did he look so grim? Surely he was badly in need of a little refreshment. Refreshment was thrust upon him. Chief Flower refused refreshment. Then Harvey Finn, looking him over critically, took querulous exception to Chief Flower's rubbers. He had never, he said, seen a more teetotalling, puritanical pair of rubbers in his life. "Take 'em off," he commanded, weaving imperiously across the floor.