The Transcendental Murder

'Then that's why my head hurts. Listen, Homer. You know how Henry Thoreau would jump rope? He wouldn't refuse. No sir, not Henry. He would just take the rope right away from the two little girls and swing it for himself, at his own pace, with those two strong legs of his leaping up and down. Isn't that right?'

'Oh, sure,' said Homer, nodding fatuously (humor her).

'And Emily, too. Emily would have a little rope, like a whip, and she'd swing it quickly, jumping in her small white dress, with her little black shoes tripping up and down in a tight rhythm like a verse, skipping all the way to the stars and back.'

'There now, my darling, you just go back to sleep, there's my good girl. And of course we don't have to go away. Libraries are my favorite for honeymoons. We'll live in Alice's house on Fairhaven Bay, and we don't ever have to go away at all.'

Next morning Mary woke up feeling a little more like herself. Homer came in again after breakfast, and took a good deal of time kissing her tenderly and telling her exactly why he loved her. Then he helped her out of bed and into a wheelchair and pushed her down the hospital corridor. 'There's someone upstairs who would like to see you.'

'Oh, oh, it's not Gwen?'

It was Gwen. She was sitting up, eating breakfast, looking wonderfully flat. Tom stood up as they came in, and started to complain. 'I wanted to call her Augusta, for Augusta Wind. I mean, how many children do you ordinarily have born in the teeth of a howling gale?'

'No,' said Gwen, 'that won't do. Oh my, isn't the food good? Just think I didn't cook it. Do go see the baby. She's the nicest one yet.'

Homer made a literary suggestion. 'What about calling her after Prospero's daughter, in The Tempest? What was his daughter's name? Miranda.'

'Oh, good for you. That's it. Miranda. Miranda Hand. I hope you like it, Tom, because that's what it's going to be. You do like it, don't you?'

'Oh, I do, I do.'

Homer wanted to know what it had been like, getting Gwen to Emerson Hospital in the middle of the storm. Had they had any trouble?

'Oh, no trouble at all,' said Tom. 'You don't call driving seventy miles an hour in a hundred-mile-an-hour gale trouble? The only little mishap we had with the pickup, which was all that was running at the moment, was picking up some broken window glass and puncturing a tube. But we didn't even stop. We bumped all the way to the hospital and got here on three wheels and a bent rim.'

'Say,' said Homer, 'that gives me a good idea. Why don't you call the baby Tube-blows Begonia? All these Morgan girls look like flowers.'.

Mary felt dizzy and silly. 'Flat-tirey will get you nowhere,' she said.

'Oh, please don't make me laugh,' said Gwen. 'It hurts.'

Homer pushed Mary down the hall and they looked in the window at the baby, which didn't look like anything much yet, and then they went back to Mary's room. Out of the window they could see the Sudbury River, glittering in the morning sun. Down below in the garden someone was tidying up, sawing a fallen aspen into small lengths of firewood.

'It was the worst hurricane around here since '38,' said Homer. 'Trees are down all over, especially the old diseased elms. There's a little foreign car wedged between the columns in front of the Middlesex Savings Bank, and a tree fell on the roof of the Rod and Gun Club. One good thing, though: you know that awful fake Colonial Woolworth false-front? It tore off and blew away, like a sail before the wind. It's probably over Connecticut by now.' Homer looked up. There was someone standing shyly in the doorway. 'Oh, Teddy, come on in. I guess we don't need to tell you how glad we are you came along.'

There was a big bunch of ugly-looking flowers in Teddy's arms. Mary smiled at him and reached out her hand. 'Teddy, you look wonderful. Where have you been? Are you going to try to tell us you didn't know everyone was looking for you?'

'I sure am. Homer told me the police were after me. But I guess the only way I'd have heard about it was if they'd written it in the sky over Moosehead Lake. I've been down in Maine.'

'In Maine? But why? I mean, what made you go off so suddenly, without saying goodbye or anything? If you knew how worried we've been about you...'

'Well, I told Homer how it was. I had this crazy notion I only had a few more days to live. Did he tell you? And there was something I had to get done first.'

'I know. There was someone you had to meet...'

'Someone?' Teddy looked puzzled. 'No, not someone. There was something I had to see—my whiteheaded eagle.'

'Your whiteheaded...?'

'My whiteheaded eagle. You know, our national bird. It was the only bird Henry Thoreau saw that I didn't have on my lifetime list. I just had to see it. So I went up Annursnac Hill one day, feeling pretty poorly...'

'Yes, I remember. Tom saw you that day.'

'That's right. And I saw it.'

'You saw it?' said Homer. 'What, you mean you saw your eagle?'

'That's right. He came dropping out of the sky far, far away, just as the sky cleared. I knew it was him as soon as I saw the speck. I hardly even needed my glasses. He just hung there in the sky, banking in a circle over my head. Then you know what he did? He veered off and headed in a straight line to the northeast, like an arrow flying to its target. Heading straight for Maine. And it seemed to me like it was Henry himself, beckoning to me, telling me where to go. It was like he said that Maine was where he'd like to have died, not in a stuffy room somewhere, but out in the open woods, in the forest, with nothing but Indians and the wild creatures of the woods around him. S-so I ran down the hill, climbed in my flivver and took off up north. Didn't even stop to pack my clothes.'

'And then you didn't die, after all.'

'No, I began to feel revived as soon as I got up past Bangor. I bought some provisions and a little equipment and headed for the wildest part of the woods. And you know what happened? It occurred to me that, now I'd seen all the birds Henry saw, I might as well tackle the plant life. And I got so busy doing that, I forgot what day it was, and before long May 6th was gone by without my even thinking about it. And I got a darned good list. I saw spotted touch-me-not, and spikenard and several kinds of orchis and the hog-peanut. And I made me some lily soup, the way Henry did when he was there.'

Teddy's clothes were green with rough usage, but he had just mended them and here and there a bright new staple flashed. Homer remembered the staples he had found on the monument at the bridge, and he asked Teddy about it point-blank.

'Was I at the bridge that day? Yes, as a matter of fact, I was. I was paddling around waiting to see if the bluebird would come back to make one more try for her hole, when I saw Ernie there at the bridge, and went over to speak to him, to put in another word for throwing out those golblasted letters. I pulled my canoe up and went up to him. But I never got a chance to say anything. He was huffy, wanted to know if I was the one who had sent him a note making an appointment to meet him there. Seems he'd gotten an anon-anonymous note, offering him a lot of money for the letters, and he was mighty suspicious, thinking it might be one of the members of the Alcott Association trying to put one over on him. You know, get him there with the letters and then get them away by force. But he was too cagey for us, he said. He'd hidden the letters where nobody'd find 'em, and there they'd stay until someone came along with a real offer or a genuine promise of publication. I said, heck, it wasn't me sent him the note. And then I left, and got back to my birds and forgot all about Ernie.'

'Didn't you hear the shot?' said Homer.

'Yes, and I paddled up close enough to use my glasses and see a lot of folks and a p-policeman standing around Ernie Goss, who was lying on the ground. And I knew I'd be better off out of sight, since I must have been the last one except the murderer to have seen him alive.'

Teddy looked down at his bouquet of swamp nettle, and turned to Mary bashfully. 'Here,' he said. 'This is for you.'

Homer decided reluctantly that he had better tell Teddy what the situation was, so he broke the news gently,