Lyman was smitten.
“We should send down a rooster to the stone house so you don’t miss any more meals,” Minerva said. “City people think they only crow at dawn but the truth is they crow morning, noon, and night as it suits them. You will never oversleep again.”
This talk of sound reminded Lyman of something, and he addressed Minerva’s father, sitting to her far side. Lyman had, while walking that morning to breakfast on the road not far from the stone house, been stopped in his tracks by several sharp retorts not unlike artillery or fireworks, followed by a low rumble rolling over the trees and fields that vibrated the ground itself. It was very different from thunder, which surrounds and envelops the listener from above, he said; this was more like a slow shallow wave on the outgoing tide, seething toward him from a specific direction roughly to the north and west. Lyman asked if there was a powder house nearby—for surely the whole thing had just gone up at a spark, though he never saw smoke or flame.
“You truly are a newcomer to the area,” said Grosvenor. “Those, Mr. Lyman, are known as the Moodus Noises. They have nothing to do with gunpowder; rather they are a naturally occurring phenomenon unrelated to thunder. Reports date back to the earliest settlers.”
“What in nature could produce so loud a noise but not be thunder?”
“Ah, now we have struck upon a favorite pastime of mine: geology.” Grosvenor wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned toward Lyman. “The noises usually occur with regularity—often in the early morning, as you have discovered, or at dusk. There are several competing theories. The first supposes there are various mineral deposits that mix to form a kind of naturally occurring black powder underground which occasionally detonates, but I find this too improbable. Another hypothesizes gases are to blame. This is more likely but alone is incomplete. Where then do the gases originate? I suspect volcanic activity may be the source. Undoubtedly underground hot springs and geysers, which are known to erupt with great predictability.”
“Then where is the sulfur and brimstone?” asked his daughter. “Where is the hot water? It would save me the trouble of having to boil some on the stove for my bath.”
“It is kept entirely subterranean, dearest. By the time it feeds into our streams it is already cold.”
Lyman frowned. “But what of the fumes? I visited the springs at Saratoga once. Even the more temperate examples are evident by the plumes of steam and calcification of minerals on the earth around them.”
Minerva said, “Not to mention such a theory fails to explain the sinkholes that exist on the property, as we’ve learned.” A strange shadow crossed her face.
Grosvenor chewed his lip and tapped his finger against his cup, for in truth he had already recognized these nuisances to his theory. “You know, Mr. Lyman, one of the goals of Bonaventure is to demonstrate that labor and self-sufficiency do not preclude furtherance of the arts and sciences, and that working to feed oneself and his community doesn’t necessitate ignorance. After all, doesn’t Mr. Emerson himself state that all science has but one aim, which is to discover a theory of nature? Perhaps you would like to assist me in my inquiries. It is a lot to ask, I realize—the spare minutes of your day are already few enough as is.”
Lyman looked to Minerva. She smiled.
“I’d be delighted.”
Grosvenor slapped the table. “Excellent! Now tell me, what do you know of fossils?”
•••
Supplies arrived at the stone house. A stack of planks from the mill, a bucket of nails and tools from the smith. Lyman set about doing what he could, glad no one else was around to witness his trials. He had, in his letters to Grosvenor, mildly exaggerated his talents as a carpenter insofar as he had never before held a hammer in hand, let alone an ax. Having read about Bonaventure Farm in a newspaper at the Norwalk coffeehouse where he had taken to lurking, Lyman conceived that a winter in the wilds of eastern Connecticut would obscure his tracks completely. He immediately rattled off a letter to the farm’s master praising the experiment. Grosvenor responded kindly, and after another round of correspondence, Lyman obliquely sounded the depths for what skills were most in demand. When Grosvenor mentioned a certain enigmatic endeavor called for a carpenter’s deft touch, Lyman painted an appropriate self-portrait. He had assured himself at the time, as he dipped pen into pot, that woodworking could be easily learned in the field—whatever promises necessary to achieve his end could be fulfilled, would be fulfilled, once there. A week later came the offer of employment, an invitation to exhibit to the world what tomorrow would resemble.
The road begun in midsummer now found Lyman scuttling about the back roof, orbiting the hole blasted clean through the shingles by a fallen branch, clearing debris and gingerly removing rotten boards to assess what must be done. To say he did so calmly or without a rising sense of anxiety over the warranties made by his letter-writing self would be incorrect. The roof, to his eye, seemed like a Chinese puzzle dropped by a clumsy child, then thrust at him to fix. He slipped, he stumbled, he rolled off once, badly bruising his ribs and shoulder, and on a separate occasion was left hanging when the makeshift stairway he had made of rocks and sticks, as stable as the skin on a bowl of soup, collapsed beneath him. When his plea up at the Consulate for a ladder was met with shrugs, in frustration he took the ax and with skinned knuckles, cut rails and rungs from saplings, bored the holes with the drill that had arrived with the rest of the tools, and pounded it all together. Only after it supported his weight, granting a wobbly
