In the field along the road, Mal and Virgil and Lena mowed with their scythes, binding the cut grass into sheaves. “Hello, David,” they called as he walked.
“Hello, hello!”
Farther, Presley and a handful of men worked clearing a patch of never-used soil, digging at stumps or piling rocks into a second cart. Bessie chewed thoughtfully nearby, waiting to be hitched to a stump sufficiently exposed to daylight. Come spring, Bonaventure would have that much more land to till.
“Good morning!” Waves all around.
On the edge of the woods, Abe and Judah each had their hands on a crosscut saw, bucking a fallen timber into eighteen-inch lengths. Nearby lay a splitter and a mound of quartered logs.
“I just saw Kit,” said Grosvenor to them. “He should be along shortly to refill his cart.”
“Tell him not to hurry,” said Judah as he wiped a handkerchief across his face.
Grosvenor chuckled and nodded before plunging into the trees.
Within the half-hour, David Grosvenor clambered over a boulder field, the heat of the exercise canceling the coldness of the morning. Already his fingers, numb from the long walk through the woods, warmed with blood as he grabbed and gripped his way across. It was the most barren corner of his farm, that place, the rocks of every size pushed into one wide mound by ice and by time. As always, it was as lifeless and silent as a mausoleum.
His earlier mood of camaraderie deserted him. Unlike previous visits, dread shadowed this morning’s arrival to the field, echoing its utter bleakness. He recalled Emerson: Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. Grosvenor’s very first exploratory hike to the place had been driven by simple curiosity, by a desire to learn more about the property. There had been subtle hints in some of the property’s papers obtained during the acquisition—suggestions about a graveyard, or the fact that the death of Sed Garrick had never been confirmed by anyone outside the family. That emotion of mystery had been transmuted to wonder and awe by what he’d discovered among the rocks and boulders; and subsequently he always returned with excited anticipation, the same feeling experienced when reading a book he couldn’t set down. For two years he had read the book, learning, ruminating, applying what wisdom he gleaned to Bonaventure and its success—or at least toward keeping it from total failure. Today he reached the back cover.
For the moment he satisfied himself with not breaking a leg or twisting an ankle as he hopped and scrabbled over the rocks to the field’s epicenter, where the terrain flattened into a kind of tabletop dotted by puddles of rainwater. Its centerpiece was a low cairn of smaller stones some seven or eight feet long. Grosvenor, after catching his breath, began to remove these smaller stones from the pile one at a time, placing them neatly aside. After the work of some minutes, cold sunlight fell upon the face of a granite statue buried beneath the stones.
Michelangelo would have envied the craftsmanship of the effigy, each hair of the beard and brow distinguished in stone, the lifelike wrinkles carved beside the nose and the corners of the mouth. Yet he might also have questioned the artist’s choice of model, for the statue was not handsome; its face was overly oblong, and a sense of cruelty seemed etched into the wrinkles and hollow cheeks.
As Grosvenor placed the last stone beside the grave, he clapped the dust off his hands and inhaled the frosted air. “What a glorious morning to be alive,” he said loudly.
The statue’s eyes snapped open.
“Enjoy the dawn, Goodman Garrick,” said Grosvenor, “for I’m afraid it’s your last.”
Like arrowheads the statue’s blue eyes pierced the man standing over it. The lips trembled but refused to separate, as if sealed by glue. Then by slow solvency they parted and a voice like grinding gravel spoke.
“As I am betrayed, so too shall thou be betrayed.”
“Perhaps,” said Grosvenor. He sat down on the seat of stones he had manufactured from the cairn. Grosvenor had never hinted at duplicity, had never suggested the thing he was about to do to Garrick; and yet Garrick’s shrewd reading of Grosvenor’s intent didn’t surprise him. He and Garrick had never minced words—Sed Garrick, nearly calcified, could hardly spare the effort. Neither had they ever apologized for the things they’d done. Or, in Grosvenor’s case, would do.
“I ask you, though,” said Grosvenor, “is this existence so precious to you? I see myself as doing you a favor.”
“Altruism is foreign to thy soul,” said the statue with glacial patience. “Thou destroyest me to prevent anyone else from finding me as thou didst. To silence me.”
“There’s some truth in that. Yet ultimately, I act for Bonaventure’s success, which is itself an altruistic act. What I have built will be remembered as a lighthouse in the sea of a dark age.”
“Whatever thou hast constructed is for thy vanity alone. This trifle of thine will fail and in failing, be forgotten.”
“I disagree. The gold your pet has brought me from underground was real enough. It has sustained Bonaventure this long—and will continue to, long after the beast has died.”
“Only a fool would believe its serpent’s mouth, but what care have I? Through it I will be revenged.”
“I don’t have to believe it,” said a stern Grosvenor. “I didn’t believe it at first. I shall give thee what thou most craves, it said. Gold in New England! Whoever heard of such a thing? But then I remembered stories of gold found in Litchfield County and sometimes panned in the rivers. It makes a kind of sense. The whole of Connecticut
