"YOU MEAN THE APRIL 19TH PARADE? WAS THE HAT THERE AT THE BRIDGE?"
"NO, NO, IT WAS IN THE FIELD THERE, OVER THERE ON THE OTHER SIDE."
"DID YOU SEE ANYONE THERE AT THE TIME? A BOY SCOUT? A MAN ON A HORSE?"
"OH, IT DIDN'T BELONG TO A SOUL, IT WAS JUST LYING THERE ALL ALONE."
"THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MRS. BEWLEY."
"OH, DON'T MENTION IT."
*42*
'Miracles have ceased.' Have they indeed? When? —Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It's the Prescott hat, all right," said Chief Flower. "This strand of fiber that was stuck inside the band matches that cheap orange wig. But that doesn't tell us whether it was worn by anybody else after Charley wore it the first time."
"You know," said Mary, "this is probably a waste of time, but do you think there might be any point in our looking around Mrs. Bewley's house? Maybe she picked up something else. You don't suppose she carried home that great long gun, too?"
Homer threw back his head, convulsed by the picture of Mrs Bewley as a Minuteman. But then they went and paid her a call. She lived in a small house on Lowell Road, with an infinitesimal parlor, a miniature bedroom and a dollsize kitchen. Mrs. Bewley herself was quite large and angular, and she had to bend herself around her furniture. She was overjoyed to see Mary and Homer, and she shouted them in for tea. It was pouring rain outside and Homer and Mary were glad to duck indoors and take off their wet coats. There was no difficulty in getting Mrs. Bewley's permission to look around. She adored exhibiting her Collection of Things.
Homer was particularly impressed by her collection of beer bottles (the high-class green ones only). She had a whole lot of matchbooks with pictures of pussycats on them, and a drawerful of miscellaneous mittens. Mary recognized one that had belonged to Annie. She had NEVER SEEN SUCH A DARLING MITTEN.
"OH, TAKE IT, TAKE IT," hollered Mrs. Bewley.
The little room was overwhelming. It seemed bursting at the seams with overstuffed plush decked with antimacassars. Antimacassars were Mrs. Bewley's favorite swiping material. It was so easy. Just swish, pop, and there you were. Stalking around the room were her little pets, four or five bantam hens and a tiny rooster. They kept getting their claws tangled in the antimacassars. Homer made the mistake of sitting down without looking in one of the chairs. There was a small punksh, and he got up with an infinitesimal egg dripping from his backside.
"OH, TOO BAD," cried Mrs. Bewley, dabbing at him with an antimacassar. "BRIDGIE'S SUCH A GOOD LAYER, SHE DOES LIKE THAT CHAIR, SEE?" Mrs. Bewley felt around in the voluptuous bulges and crevices of the chair and triumphantly brought up two more small eggs, like a child finding jelly beans at Easter.
Mary decided to remain standing. "WHAT'S IN THOSE PAPER BAGS, MRS. BEWLEY?" she shouted.
Mrs. Bewley looked ecstatic. "MESSAGES, ALL MESSAGES."
"MESSAGES?"
"FROM JESUS. HE SENDS ME MESSAGES ALL THE TIME."
For a wild moment Mary wondered if Mrs. Bewley was a sort of super-Transcendentalist, seeing sermons in stones and lessons in the running brooks. Or was she a sort of innocent natural saint, and were the paper bags filled with long curling ribbons inscribed with Gothic messages in Latin, like the ones you saw in old Flemish pictures with the Virgin and the angel Gabriel?
But the first thing that came out of a paper bag was a startled hen named Priscilla. ("WHY, PRISCILLA, YOU NAUGHTY GIRL, SO THAT'S WHERE YOU'VE BEEN.") Next Mrs. Bewley had to scrabble around until she brought out Priscilla's six teeny-weeny eggs and established them under Priscilla again on top of the sofa. Then she plunged back into the bag again, peering into the top like a skinny Mrs. Santa Claus and then rolling her eyes up at the ceiling while she felt around. "THERE!" She came up with her hand closed around something and held it behind her back coyly. "WHICH HAND?"
Homer groaned under his breath, but Mary heroically chose the left. That was wrong. She chose the right. Mrs. Bewley brought forth her treasure. It was a message, all right, from the Jubble Bubble Chewing Gum Company. It had once encased a large pink piece of bubble gum, long since chewed and gone to glory. Mrs. Bewley reached for another grab. This time it was a torn campaign poster advertising Harry J. Croney for County Clerk. Mrs. Bewley leaned Harry up against the wall like an icon and beamed at Mary and Homer, expecting homage.
They were stunned. Mrs. Bewley, taking their gaping for awe, decided to do the thing up brown. She turned the paper bag upside down and dropped a fluttering shower of trash on the floor. And there among the candy wrappers and cigarette containers and throwaway mail advertising specials on pork chops, Mary saw a message from Jesus that was worth the salvaging. She reached for it and picked it up. It was another one of Ernie's letters, the one that had fallen under her chair at Orchard House. It was the tenderly beautiful letter that Henry Thoreau was supposed to have written to Emily Dickinson. What on earth was it doing here? Mary showed it to Homer.
"What a stroke of luck," said Homer. "It never occurred to me that one letter might be missing from that bunch in the bait box." He read it over. "What a genius that Charley is. This is a masterpiece. Mrs. Bewley must have lifted it off Ernie's desk before he decided to hide them away. Say, maybe that's why he had to hide them in the first place. Someone was swiping them."
"Ssshh." Mary looked apprehensively at Mrs. Bewley. But Mrs. Bewley was delighted by their interest in the central feature and mystic heart of her collection. Struggling behind her sofa, which was kitty-cornered artistically across the angle of the room, she moved aside a wickerwork plant table sprouting a hardbitten rubber plant and yanked at a closet door. It opened just wide enough to show what was inside. It was jampacked and bulging with brown grocery bags chock-full of messages straight from Jesus.
Homer clapped his hand to his brow. The worth of Mrs. Bewley as a collector on a par with Bernard Berenson and Andrew Mellon was just beginning to dawn on him. He fell down on one knee and shouted humbly, WOULD MRS. BEWLEY, COULD MRS. BEWLEY SEE HER WAY CLEAR TO LETTING THEM BORROW HER COLLECTION OF MESSAGES? THEY WOULD BE SO CAREFUL, SO VERY CAREFUL...
Mrs. Bewley climbed eagerly over the back of the sofa, stepping gingerly on either side of Priscilla, and gave them her blessing.
*43*
Let such pure hate still underprop
Our love... —Henry Thoreau
Mary was still hoarse from shouting at Mrs. Bewley. She cleared her throat. "Why don't we sort them for her?" she said. She was watching Patrolman Vine and Sergeant Ordway turn over mountains of trash, spreading them out neatly on the floor of the firing range on six of Isabelle Flower's clean white sheets. "Maybe she'd like all the Choko-wrappers in one bag and all the popsicle sticks in another."
"No," said Homer. "She may have some profound system of classification all her own. Let them alone. Mrs. Bewley knows best."
It took them two hours to go through the entire collection. Some of the pieces were sticky and had to be soaked apart. Luther Ordway picked up the last of these from a towel in the darkroom and brought it out into the light to look at it. He was whistling, but then he stopped whistling, and read it through again. Then he brought it to Chief Flower. Jimmy read it a couple of times, looking sober and brought it over to Homer's desk.
"Oh, good," said Mary. "Did you find something else?" Jimmy glanced at her, looking troubled, then shifted his glance away. Homer read the scrap of paper through twice, then slowly lifted his small sharp eyes to look at her.