*57*
With Midnight to the North of Her—
And Midnight to the South of Her—
And Maelstrom—in the Sky— —Emily Dickinson
It was a deep hole. She hadn't seen it because it was covered over with a broken branch. But her foot had gone right to the bottom, and down she went, falling awkwardly on top of something that lay in the hole. Her foot twisted viciously in the crevice, and she had a tussle getting it out again. There was something very wrong with it. Could it be broken? Perhaps it was only a bad sprain. Now she was in a fix, for sure.
She must pull herself up and try to hobble. Mary reached one arm forward to lean on the great round boulder that filled the hole. But it wasn't a boulder—it was something that felt like leather. Leather and metal. She brushed aside the hemlock branch that lay across it and looked at it.
It was a chest. There had been the black box on Elizabeth Goss's dresser, and the bait box with the letters in it, and now this—an old-fashioned round-topped trunk. It looked like the kind that Long John Silver would dig up on Treasure Island, all filled with pieces of eight and jewels and pearls. And this was an island, too. She was in a dream of Treasure Island. Mary leaned on one thigh on the edge of the hole, with the storm raging about her, the wind clawing and tearing at her hair, her wounded foot lying at an ugly angle beside her, swelling and throbbing broken, broken—and opened the chest.
There were no jewels inside it. Just notebooks, ordinary three-ring school notebooks. Mary lifted them out, one by one, and glanced at them, wrenching her body around so that the rattling pages would be protected from the wind. How funny—someone was a student of Emily Dickinson. Familiar lines jumped out at her. The thickest notebook had a title, Rowing in Eden. That was Dickinson, too. (Rowing in Eden, Ah, the sea! Could I but moor tonight in thee!) There was a subtitle, too, written in by hand. Mary squinted at it. The light was bad and she had lost her glasses...
The True Story of Emily Dickinson's
Romantic Attachment
Oh, for heaven's sake, another one of those things. It was probably another of Ernest Goss's crazy fake documents, hidden like his letters beside the river.
But then she read a little more and changed her mind. This document was very different. It was no clever mimicry or burlesque of the real thing—it was the real thing, a work of profound and careful scholarship. And the suggested lover was none other than Henry David Thoreau. Mary's adventurous mind reeled and rejoiced, and she read on, hardly noticing the pitch and terror of the storm, brushing aside in annoyance the leaves that smacked against the page, heedless of the flailing fall of a tall pine tree behind her, although the dirt that was shaken from the snapped roots leaped upon her back! She neither saw nor felt nor heard...
The paired symbols were so daring, yet so sound. Henry had had a dream of a mountain that was his life—and Emily was the daisy at the mountain's foot. They had gone boating on the river (Rowing in Eden)—so Emily was the little boat, the little brook, and Henry was the mighty sea ... it was enchanting.
And to her flower he was the drunken, fainting bee...
What other revelations were there? Mary reached for another notebook and opened the cover.
Facing her was Elizabeth Goss. It was an old photograph, but it was Elizabeth without a doubt, as she had looked twenty or thirty years ago. And under it, in the same handwriting (Mary bowed over it, peering at it)—"a direct descendant of the union of Emily Dickinson and Henry Thoreau"—good God.
But that was impossible. That Emily and Henry might have met one another was plausible—she would love to believe it—but this was going pretty far—Elizabeth Goss a direct descendant of the union of... (Mary shifted her weight, and the hurt in her foot became a spasm of pain.) But, wait—wait! There was the black box in Elizabeth's room, with the coil of red hair—Great-grandmother's! Was it Emily's? Could it be Emily Dickinson's, that wealth of auburn hair, that was "bold, like the chestnut burr"?
Revelation beyond revelation—then the box, the black box could itself be the Ebon Box in the poem, on the page that Elizabeth had torn out of the book because it came so close to her secret truth. Elizabeth's box was black because it was ebony, and it had contained the "curl" and the "flower" and the "trinket"!
But the poem had mentioned something else. Mary mumbled the words over, closing her eyes to the wind and the storm and the pain—
To hold a letter to the light—
Grown Tawny now, with time—
To con the faded syllables
That quickened us like Wine!
Where was it then? Where was the letter?
What, what? Someone was shouting at her. Mary looked up. There on the other side of the hole stood Howard Swan. Howard? What was Howard doing here? Then she remembered. She had come to take him away. But it was too late now. They must find shelter from the storm, from the falling trees. She struggled to her feet, shaking her head over her wounded foot, smiling at Howard, apologizing. She clutched the two notebooks under her arm. She couldn't leave them behind.
Howard had a shovel in his hands. He didn't make a move to help her. He just stood with his mouth open, staring at her, his light hair streaming upwards around his bald head like a ghostly crown. Then he lifted the shovel over his head, as if he were going to smash something. He took a step forward. His lips were moving. Mary couldn't hear. "What did you say?" she shouted at him. But she could read his lips. He was saying the same thing over and over, "I'm sorry, Mary. I'm sorry, Mary..."
He must mean, about her foot. But she could manage. She showed him, hopping a little way, holding on to a tree. It would be all right.
Then suddenly she understood, and she faltered backwards. Howard jumped across the hole, and made a rush at her. The shovel—it was for her. He meant to kill her. He was sorry! Mary turned and scrambled into the clearing, running on both feet, hardly favoring her lame leg, ignoring the hideous broken pain. A livid scream arose in her throat. I'm sorry, Howard, I'm sorry, too. But I don't want to die. I'm sorry, too. She rushed at the landing place.
Oh, fool, fool. She hadn't pulled her boat high enough from the water, and the boiling waves had caught it up again and claimed it. It lay rocking six yards from shore, upside-down. And Howard was at her heels. Mary turned clumsily and dodged along the shore. She heard a mighty snap, as a tree fell on the other side of the island. Run, run. But you have no chance, not now. In the end you'll be caught! You are trapped. Trapped like a mouse some child has put into a cage with an owl. Run, mouse, run. Skitter on your small paws from side to side, dash in and out, let your small heart beat, beat, and your sides heave fear. You have no chance, you know, no chance at all...
*58*
It needs a wild steersman when we voyage through chaos! The anchor is up—farewell! —Nathaniel Hawthorne
It was a crazy time to get back. Homer drove up Walden Street, listening to the latest hurricane bulletin on his radio. The police station parking lot was full of cars. The police force was all there, a nerve center in crisis. The members of the fire department were bustling around on the other side of the building, ready for anything. Homer pushed open the door and went in. Bernard Shrubsole greeted him gaily. There was excitement in the air. All at once the Goss Murder Case seemed old hat.