The Transcendental Murder

boor.

The railing of the bridge was lined with tourists. The tourists were all staring back at them. For some reason people beside a body of water always assume that anybody in a boat must be deaf and dumb. A woman from Belmont dug her elbow into her husband's side. 'Look,' she said loudly, 'lovers.' Her husband lifted his camera and leaned way out over the railing to take a snapshot. Another fellow laden down with equipment was making an artistic home movie. He hung over the side, too, found the canoe in his finder and adjusted his new zoom lens. Idyllic picture—lovely girl in white, tall fellow with sleeves rolled up, lock of brown hair on forehead. Charming. Now. Come in close on the girl. Zooooooom. Boy, she's a dilly. Looks a bit stiff though. Now for her beau. (Homer adjusted his features into a grimace, rolled up his eyes, crossed them, and lolled his tongue on his chin.) The movie expert shifted his focus, zoomed in on Homer, and nearly fell off the bridge. He just managed to save himself, but his Bell and Howell Director Optronic Eye Reflex Camera ($249.95) fell into the middle of the Concord River, along with his Pistol Grip ($16.95) and his Luxury Contour Camera Carrying Case with smart Chrome Trim ($24.95). As Mary and Homer passed under the bridge, the movie expert was jumping up and down and waving his arms around.

Homer could feel his good humor coming back. Come on, rile her up some more. 'Of course what I really don't understand is why Concord has any claim to fame at all. It was Lexington where the first blood was shed. And there wasn't any indecision and running around behind hills there. What did they do? They stood there on the Common and met the enemy face to face. Besides, Lexington was where the brains were, with Hancock and Adams holed up in Jonas Clarke's house.'

'I sometimes wonder,' said Mary acidly, 'what would have happened to the history of this country if it hadn't been for Jonas Clarke's wife. Do you know how many children she had? Twelve. And on top of them she had all those important people and their aunts and cousins sleeping and eating in her house for weeks at a time. What if Mrs. Jonas Clarke had thrown in the towel? The whole thing might never have come off at all.'

Homer snickered. 'You're probably right, at that. What is there behind every great man? A great woman.' Homer pulled back on the tiller, and the canoe made a wide turn and started back toward the bridge. The man who had lost his camera was kneeling on the bridge, poking around in the water with a golf club. Homer agreeably turned off the motor and fished around in the water with the handle end of a paddle. He got the handle neatly under the strap of the camera case and brought up the whole thing, streaming water and trailing weeds, but still grinding away, five dollars' worth of color film wasted on a lot of curious out-of-focus bass who had nosed up in a school to see what the funny noise was. The owner of the camera took it back with bad grace, and then Homer pulled the switch of the inboard and they headed upstream again. At the joining of the rivers they took the left-hand branch and nosed their canoe up the Sudbury River. Suddenly they discovered that they were ravenous, and Mary opened up Annie's lunchbox.

'I like to fight with you,' said Homer, with lordly condescension.

'Thank you,' said Mary, nodding graciously. 'How nice of you to say so.'

The river was becoming domesticated, flowing past the green lawns behind the houses on Main Street with their small docks and their canoes leaning up against trees. A noisy powerboat piloted by a man in a duck-billed hat beat them to the railroad bridge. They joggled pleasantly in his wake, and presently the river became wild again. Tom's little motor pushed them silently past Thoreau's Conantum, with its tall pines and its discreet development of new houses, half hidden in the trees.

'What happens here?' said Homer. The river was opening out into a lake. 'Oh, I know.' There was a shade of reverence in his voice. 'It's Fairhaven Bay.'

'Yes. And there's Teddy Staples' house. And that white one next to it is Alice Herpitude's.'

'Look over there,' said Homer. 'There's an island. Funny, I don't remember any island on the map. Holy smoke, look at the size of that pine.'

'Well, most of the year the island is connected to the mainland by a marsh, but it's all high water around it at this time of year. Would you like to land over there and look around?'

The island was about as big as a baseball diamond. There was a clearing near the place where they drew up their canoe, and at one edge of it the tall pine tree grew. It was a magnificent specimen with irregular outflung branches at the top, a long bare trunk and a bristling set of broken snags below its evergreen arms. They walked to the other end of the island, knee-deep in blueberry bushes and the pale stars of Quaker Ladies. Then they walked back again, pushed the canoe off and climbed in. Misfortune struck. Tom's little motor wouldn't catch. Homer fiddled with it clumsily. 'I think the blasted thing's out of juice.'

'That's what's so exciting about Tom's gadgets. You never know what will happen next. I'm afraid we're in for a lot of paddling. Horrors, there's only the one paddle.'

'Oh, well, give it to me. Me heap awful big chief. Bendum mighty arm.' Homer's paddling was inexpert and splashy. He caught a crab and doused Mary with water.

'You heap big lousy paddler,' chortled Mary. 'Here. Me paddlum with lunchbox. Don't dip down so deep.'

The lunchbox provided just enough extra movement of water to allow them to creep forward. The sluggish current was with them, but the wind wasn't, and they made slow progress. They inched past Conantum. An hour later they we struggling past the Main Street lawns. Homer had taken over the lunchbox and he was plying it in rhythmic sweeps and bellowing in basso profundissimo a hymn he had made up called 'Arise, O Man, and Curse!' He called it a typical Protestant hymn. Mary sang a dreary alto part—fa, fa, fa, fa, mi, fa. The whole effect was altogether too plausible. She asked a question that had puzzled her. How could anybody who called himself a Catholic have anything in common with the Transcendentalists?

'That's easy,' said Homer. 'Awe and majesty and glorification of the spirit, that's all. The mystic sense of God the Creator, what Emerson called the geometry of the City of God. You Protestants had a good thing in Martin Luther, and then you let it all go down the drain and replaced it with ethical culture and rationalism and humanism and Japanese flower arrangements. Corpsecold Unitarianism, that's what Emerson called it. A society of the diffusion of useful knowledge.'

An hour later they were still bickering. 'Oh, for God's sake, let's go ashore,' said Homer. They had reached the joining of the rivers.

'But we've still got to go upstream on the Assabet,' said Mary. 'That'll take ages.'

'Go ahead. You go upstream. Be a hero. I'm getting out right here.' Grumpily Homer took off his shoes and socks and jumped out of the canoe. It rocked wildly from side to side. Homer's feet found a mushy footing and he pulled the canoe after him toward the left-hand shore. Mary found this action highhanded and she began to protest.

'Squaw talkum too much,' growled Homer. 'Squaw shut-tum-up and come ashore.' Then suddenly he began to howl and hop around on one foot. He lifted the other foot out of the water. There was a small snapping turtle attached to his toe. 'Ow, ow!' roared Homer, trying to kick it off. The turtle hung on like grim death.

Mary was overjoyed. She clapped her hands. 'Freddy's turtle! Oh, good for you. Here, don't lose it. Just hold still.' She reached over the side with the lunchbox, held it open like a clamshell, and then clamped it hard around the turtle and Homer's toe, slam. Homer hollered and jumped around, and Mary, hanging on, fell clean out of the canoe. She went under, and stayed there, and Homer found himself groaning and fishing around for her desperately. But in a minute she was up, smiling radiantly, her hair streaming, her wet dress clinging, clasping a lunchbox that was shut and locked on the bloody mingled waters of the Assabet, the Sudbury and the Concord rivers and on a snapping turtle that was digesting a piece of Homer Kelly's toe. 'It's all right,' said Mary brightly, 'I've got him!'

'Who's worried?' snarled Homer. He turned to wade toward the shore, hobbling, hanging onto his toe. Then he stopped, and hopped up and down in one place, and pointed. 'What's that?' he said.

Facing them was a great grey rock. There was an inscription carved into its face. 'That's Egg Rock,' said Mary. 'We went right by it twice before.'

Homer waded clumsily to the edge of the water, and read the inscription.

ON THE HILL NASHAWTUCK

AT THE MEETING OF THE RIVERS

AND ALONG THE BANKS