The Transcendental Murder

Homer teetered on the top of the wall and looked again at Alice's hat. Mary wouldn't have gone down to Alice's place, would she? Yes, she might very well have gone to Alice's, to ready it for the storm, because it was her own house now. There would be things a property owner would want to lash down, to take care of. Homer made a run for his car. His was the only one on the road now, the wind was so high. It was behind him as he flew along Sudbury Road, turned on Fairhaven and crossed the turnpike. It was a mad business, charging down a narrow wood road with trees tossing right and left. Twice he had to stop his car and drag branches out of the way. At last he came down the steep descent at the edge of the river and pulled up at Alice's house. There was Mary's car. Thank God. He would find her in the house, and in a moment she would be safe again, safe in his arms. Leaning forward against the wind, Homer struggled up the steps and banged on the door. No one answered. He peered inside. All dark, the door locked. Where in God's name was she? Homer turned wildly and looked out at the river. There was no little boat at the landing, but there was something else. Homer's heart jumped into his throat. He ran to the landing. There were her shoes, in the lee of a big rock. One of her stockings was fluttering in a tree, the other had blown away.

The river had gone wild. The wind stormed over the black bay, hurling up quick frightened waves, with white spume threshing from their tops, rushing away from him. There was no sign of Mary, not anywhere. But there was something there in the water, way out in the middle of the bay near the island. It was—oh, God—it was a boat, overturned, upside-down. It must be hers, it could only be hers. Homer stumbled along the shore, looking for something to go out in, a rowboat or canoe, or something, anything. He shouted 'Mary,' but he couldn't even hear his own voice. Then he cursed himself for a fool, and turned and struggled in the other direction. Teddy's house was on the other side, and there would be some sort of canoe in his boathouse, if the police had only left it there.

They had. There were two of them, a canoe and a rowboat, resting upside-down on sawhorses. Homer hauled on the canoe clumsily and dragged it to the water's edge, righted it, stepped into the boggy ground, shoved off and climbed in. He was instantaneously swamped. The waves twisted the canoe sideways and washed over it. It tipped over, dumping him into the river. He grabbed at the paddle and doggedly sloshed out of the river again. Turn the canoe over, dump out the water and try again, only you've got to do some fast work with the paddle.

This time it was better. Homer dug choppily with his paddle, and managed to keep headed across the wind- torn waves. The spume streaked past him. The sun had gone out, and it was raining. Before he knew it the gale and the gale-driven water had carried him as far as the middle of the bay. Chop, chop, quick now, the other side, chop, chop. Nearly had him that time. Homer blinked the deluge out of his eyelashes and tried to see ahead. It was impossible to do anything but try to keep abreast of the waves. Any other kind of steering was out of the question. He was being carried to the east side of the island. The little boat was nowhere in sight. Homer glanced to right and left, fearfully, half expecting to see Mary's poor drowned face floating above the water. Why had she come out in this, the crazy fool girl? Then something caught Homer a terrible blow across the left shoulder, and he cried out and nearly lost control. A giant object hurtled past him, turning end over end, and foundered in the river a few yards away. It was the wooden slat-backed swing from Miss Herpitude's place, torn from the ground by the savage strength of the tempest. Branches went scudding past him. On the island the cracking trees sounded like tiny snaps of a scissors above the locomotive roar of the storm.

Suddenly the water quieted a little. He was in the lee of the island, and he could stop plowing at the water for a minute and look around. Water streamed from his hair down across his face. His shirt clung to him. His lap was full of water. If he didn't bail the water out of the bottom of the canoe it would sink. There was nothing to bail with. He had better try to land. Homer looked over his shoulder at the island.

There she was! She was running along the shore of the island, bowed over, stooping, racing, looking like a child, her hair loose and blowing in front of her, her feet bare. Oh, thank God, thank God. What was the matter with her foot? Homer shouted at her, but his words were blown back in his mouth. He lifted his paddle and tried to turn the canoe, but it wouldn't budge. It was those buttonbushes, damn them. The water between the island and the mainland was thick with them, and what had looked like a clear channel was a sunken morass of bushes. Homer looked for Mary again. Where was she? And who was that? Someone with a great heavy spade in his hand was struggling from one tree to another, moving in pouncing rushes, ducking across the point to cut her off. It was Howard! Oh, God, it was Howard! Homer clawed with his hands at the bushes, tearing at them, inching forward. Too slow, too slow! Why in the name of God didn't he have a gun?

The storm had passed its height, and the force of the wind was abating slightly. For a moment the squalling winds died. But deep down in the muddy roots of the giant pine that stood in the clearing the thickened clods supporting the last clinging root-strands began to be waterlogged by the rising watertable, and slowly—slowly—the old tree began to tremble loose. It leaned a little way toward the clearing, where there was nothing to stay its fall, and began to topple.

Mary stopped in the clearing. She dropped the notebooks and put her face in her hands, breathing in great sobs. In snatches between her indrawn breaths she began to mumble and pray ... Homer saw her. He stood up in his canoe and roared at her, with a shriek that tore his throat—'Jump, Mary, jump!'

She heard it, and looked at him, her white face blank. Then she looked up and stood frozen for a second. Then she jumped. The pine tree caught her a glancing, scraping blow, and she fell. But it caught something else, too, and destroyed it...

And the thing that it killed had once been worthy and good (one of those dependable people that everyone turns to and relies on)—the best fellow in all the world.

*59*

... And we went on to heaven the long way round. —Henry Thoreau

'Hoy there.' It was a tiny sound. Homer, dazed, turned toward it. Someone was pulling strongly across the water, looking back over his shoulder at him, pulling with his oars and heading his prow firmly across the churning waters of the bay. It was Teddy Staples. He was nearly at the island. Homer stared at him vaguely and started scrabbling at the bushes again. But then Teddy maneuvered carefully among them and pulled Homer's canoe free by stretching an oar to him. Then they landed together on the shore. Homer, his knees weak and nearly folding under him, struggled to the place where Mary lay. Teddy strained at the limbs of the tree, and Homer lifted her tenderly. She was unconscious. 'I think she'll be all right,' said Teddy. 'The trunk just missed her.'

The triumphal arch was founded on the sea, and through it, looking far away, Mary could see her distant blue peninsula. There was someone standing on it, and her eyes were so miraculous that she could see right past the columns and the arches and the moldings and the coffered barrel vaults, way across the water, with its dolphin- drawn shells and seagods, to the very texture of the cloth on the person's sleeve. There were long telescopic feelings in her fingers, too, and she could reach out through the arch, far away, and feel the cloth. And her ears were like conch shells that amplified the sound, so that she could hear what the person was saying. He was saying her name, and cursing.

She woke up and smiled at Homer. He stopped cursing. But he went on saying, 'Mary, Mary.' He was kneeling beside her bed with his arms around her. How lovely, how lovely.

The nurse was touching Homer's arm. He shrank back in dismay. 'Oh my God, I'm hurting you.'

'No, no. Do it some more.'

He did it some more very carefully, while the nurse grinned. 'I thought I'd lost you. And you were the only one that would ever do. I knew that right away, the first day I saw you. You spoiled all the others that ever were or ever could be.'

'I did? Oh, I'm so glad. How lovely. Oh, that's nice.'

Homer leaned back and glared at her. 'And, by God, you're going to marry me right away, before you slip through my fingers again. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Please, Mary.'

Mary closed her eyes. Her head hurt. What was it she had been trying to decide? Had it been something to do with jumping? She had decided not to jump, that was it. Like the Transcendentalists ... Then Mary put her head back on the pillow and her mind began slowly to unclench like an opening fist. She opened her eyes. 'I'll tell you what,' she said. 'I'll marry you if we don't have to go away for a honeymoon. Could we spend it in the library? I've got a whole new idea—oh, ouch. What's the matter with my foot?'

'It's broken. Compound fracture. You had a concussion, too. You're all beat up.'