The letters, of course, consisted exclusively of missives sent to Sutton. Minerva pushed around the drawer for a diary or unsent epistle but found no sample of the man’s writing, no clue or explanation beyond what her father had read aloud at lunch.
Presley stroked his beard. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Sutton had received a letter in the post just yesterday, from his friend in New York—I saw the return address clearly. We had quit our labors. He sat to read it over a cup of coffee before dinner when suddenly he leapt up in some agitation. Then he grabbed his coat and stormed out the door, the letter in hand. I assumed it was bad news, and he had gone for a walk to cool his head. That’s the last I saw of him.”
•••
Early on a breezy Wednesday in October, the members of Bonaventure pulled the wagon out of the barn, hitched Bessie the ox to the tongue, and piled as many as they could into the box. David Grosvenor climbed into the seat, his wife alongside him. He tapped Bessie’s shoulders with the lightest brush of the whip and slowly the wagon started down the road to Saltonstall, its cargo laughing and chattering too loud. Meanwhile a bunch of the men, Lyman included, released the mature hogs from their pen. Under Mr. Presley’s direction—the swines’ master, Mr. Sutton, having abdicated his position to his lieutenant—the men formed a phalanx around the hogs and, goading them along with switches, followed the wagon to town. It was the day of the Saltonstall Agricultural Show.
It was a merry parade, the women facing backwards with their legs dangling off the open tail board, pointing and advising as the men and pigs followed them like the children of Hamelin. The hogs required constant attention, as very often one or another would attempt to penetrate the cordon walling them in while others, exhausted from what was doubtless the most strenuous exercise of their lives, would occasionally decide to halt and lay down in the middle of the road. Fifteen minutes into it, Lyman thought it was the most arduous walk of his life, and thirty minutes into it he decided it was also the most absurd.
Once, when the pigs had picked their pace to arrive close to the wagon, Minerva leaned over the rail and wiggled her fingers at Lyman striding next to the spoked wheel. “Kiss my hand!” The women beside her tittered.
“I daren’t,” he said, “not with your father and mother riding up front.”
“If you’re too prudish to give me a kiss, I’ll steal it from you.” Minerva grasped the rail and pivoted over the side, pecking Lyman on the cheek. The girls cheered, the men howled, and for their part Mr. and Mrs. Grosvenor pretended deaf and dumbness. Lyman’s ears burned.
The show had erected a large canvas tent in a field just beyond the town center, with a number of smaller tents and gypsy carts orbiting it. The utopians disembarked from their wagon and the pigs, sensing the excitement and hurrying faster, were corralled into a waiting pen. Their labors for the most part complete, the Bonaventurists dispersed to their own amusements.
Lyman and Minerva immediately found each other and headed for the main tent, cramming onto the rough plank benches inside to watch the many acts. Not all were equal to the others. There were several contests wherein blue ribbons were dispensed to the fattest hog or finest ear of corn. Lyman was just about to excuse himself to go buy a bag of roasted chestnuts when boys appeared rolling giant orange pumpkins like boulders before them, and even Lyman’s cynicism was abated when they began weighing them. More exciting still was a plowing competition in which a number of men lined up at one end of the tent behind their plows and nags, and at the blow of a horn raced down the length, leaving deep furrows in their wakes. Minerva clapped and cheered while Lyman wondered who would repair the field once the show departed.
After the contests, the crowd spilled out into the little avenues formed by the carts and stalls where a gray and chilly afternoon had descended. Straw had been thrown onto the churned mud, lit by lamps and tall smoking tapers. Minerva snuggled close to Lyman, the air damp without the sun.
“Here is our perfect city,” said Minerva. “Boulevards of grass under rooftops of boughs. No vermin, no beggars. See how easy it is to achieve? The only question is why we don’t pull down our cities of stone and brick tomorrow.”
“Ah,” said Lyman, “but this neighborhood is ephemeral. It isn’t made to stand more than two days. Should all our cities be so?”
“I see no need of cities lasting for more than two sunrises. The buildings and taverns would come together, trade would be conducted, and then the whole would dissolve into mist. What business is so consuming that it requires more time than that?”
“The council to decide what to call each town would alone last a week.”
Minerva suddenly pointed. Just ahead, a tent, smaller than the main, had been staked into the grass. A sign over its flaps read Menagerie.
Immediately she pulled Lyman in its direction, breathless in her demands that he pay the penny admission. “Do you think they have an Ourang-Outang?”
Alas, while the proprietor—a girthful man with a mustache of eccentric length—did allow a small tailed monkey to climb onto Minerva’s shoulders, the zoological demonstration failed to contain anything larger than a house cat. Lyman strode among the tables, peering into the cages, not terribly impressed to learn such a wide and diverse array of rodents and weasels populated the planet.
“A proud look, a lying tongue.”
Lyman, by this time, was accustomed to hearing eerie voices uttering strange truths over his shoulder, yet nonetheless it never failed to unnerve him. He froze as if dipped in Rosendale cement; his skin turned icy; his
