Thoreau at Devil's Perch

KENSINGTON BOOKS

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Talk of mysteries!—Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the
solid
earth! the
actual
world! the
common sense! Contact! Contact! Who
are we?
where
are we?

—Henry David Thoreau

Monday, August 3rd, 1846

 

T
his morning I glanced up from my search for medicinal plants along the Assabet River and was startled to see the sun-browned face of a stranger appear through a screen of beech leaves. He quickly but calmly communicated that he had found the broken body of a man on the rocks just upriver and sought to alert the local constable.

“Are you certain he is dead?” I said.

“He appeared quite dead to me,” the stranger said. “His head had a severe wound, and when I laid my hand upon his shoulder he did not move.”

I identified myself as a doctor and urged we get to the man immediately, explaining that I have known cases where all visible signs of life had ceased and the patient was yet revived.

Without further ado we started upriver Indian file, the stranger leading the way. His homespun suit of greenish-brown blended well with the foliage, and it was no wonder he had come upon me unawares. We exchanged few words as we marched, only stating our names and where we resided. Mr. Thoreau's stride was long for his short stature, and within scarce minutes we came to an area beneath the precipitous face of a cliff overlooking the river. We hastened to the body of a man sprawled on the rocks at water's edge, scattering a murder of crows pecking at the back of his head.

The man lay on his stomach, one arm beneath him and the other spread wide and at an angle that led me to conclude it had been dislocated from the shoulder. Both the tibia and fibula of the right leg had thrust clear through muscle and flesh, and the shattered ends showed white where they had pierced the trouser leg. A two-inch-round section of his skull was stove in, and blood had amassed and dried around the wound, with heavy clots clinging to his dark hair. Placed my hand on his carotid artery to check for a pulse. Found none. His skin was faintly warm to the touch, but skin temperature could not help me determine time of death, as he was lying in the hot morning sun. Mr. Thoreau and I turned him over and saw that he was a young Negro.

I bent over the corpse, lifted the arm that had not been dislocated and rotated it. “The body is stiff, but the rigor mortis is fading. This indicates he died sometime yesterday,” I told Thoreau.

He glanced up at the high cliff face. “The obvious conclusion is that his death was caused by a fall from up there.”

“Obvious but possibly erroneous,” said I. “Although a fall from such a height would certainly result in death, I doubt it caused this man's.”

Thoreau's deep-set eyes widened. “Do you? Why?”

“There is no blood around the leg wound, for one thing. If such a severe break had occurred when the man was still alive, the severed arteries would have pumped out a profuse quantity of blood.”

“Are you proposing, Dr. Walker, that he was already dead when he went over the cliff?”

“I am almost sure of it,” I said. “There is clotted blood in his hair from the head injury he received, yet none on the rocks beneath his head, leading me to conclude he was struck a mortal blow elsewhere. The instrument used was round and blunt.”

Thoreau nodded and studied the dead man, his gaze compassionate yet probing. “Note how the backs of his fine boots are caked with dirt, doctor. That indicates to me he was dragged with his heels digging into the ground. We will likely see evidence of this atop the cliff. Let us go investigate posthaste.”

We made our way up and to the side of the sheer cliff face by way of a steep and narrow path through the woods. When we reached the clearing on top, Thoreau cautioned me to walk no farther.

“Allow me to inspect the ground,” he said, “before we tread upon it.” He pulled a magnifying glass from the deep pocket of his jacket.“I use it to examine plant specimens,” he explained. He then proceeded to hold it over the marks in the damp, bare soil.

After a few minutes had passed I admittedly lost patience. “Well? Did you find any clews?”

He stood back and pointed. “Wagon tracks,” he said.

He had stated the obvious, and I was not impressed. But as he elucidated, I grew more so.

“Here the wagon tracks stop,” he said, “and two parallel grooves begin. They lead to the near edge of the cliff, and I surmise they were made by the dead man's boot heels gouging the earth as his body was dragged. Between the two grooves are several very distinct footprints, more deeply depressed in the hind than the forepart. These impressions must have been made by the man who was hauling the body. He would have been walking backwards, with his hands gripping the victim under the arms as he pulled him along.”

“I can well imagine the perpetrator's actions as you describe them,” I said. “Unfortunately, shoe prints such as those could be made by any man.”

“Look more closely, Dr. Walker. The soles of the footwear have the thickness of boots rather than shoes, and there are two deep indentations in the right sole. Should we find the owner of a boot that bears matching marks, we will have found the murderer, or at least the man who threw the Negro's body over the cliff. But how can we preserve such telling evidence?”

“Might not casts of the prints be made with plaster of Paris?”

“An excellent suggestion, if only we had some.”

“My cousin Julia Bell does. She had a bag of plaster delivered to her in Plumford just yesterday,” I said. “She is an artist and uses it to make face masks.”

It was decided that Thoreau would go to Plumford, alert the constable, and obtain the plaster from Julia whilst I further examined the body. I told him where I had left my gig and how to most quickly get to town.

“Look for a big white house with a picket fence overlooking the Green,” I further informed him. “It is the residence of Dr. Silas Walker, our grandfather. Both Julia and I are staying with him at present. Pray tell my cousin as little as possible, for I do not want her involved in this foul crime.”

“I will be as discreet as I can honestly be,” Thoreau said and hurried off.

I descended the cliff path and went back to the dead man to inspect him more closely. His clothing was of cheap quality but of the latest style, more suitable for city than country wear. It was not the sort of apparel I would expect a runaway slave to be wearing. He might have been a freeman from Boston. The pockets of his yellow frock coat, scarlet vest, and boldly checkered trousers were empty of coin, banknotes, or papers of any kind, which suggested to me that his possessions had been taken along with his life. But how had this black stranger ended up at the bottom of a cliff deep in the woods of our township?

Used my pocketknife to slit open his clothes to better examine him for further injuries. He was in the prime of his youth with clean trunk and limbs and no sign of disease or debility. In addition to the broken leg, dislocated shoulder, and head wound I had first seen, one ankle was shattered and three ribs on his right side fractured. As I worked I could not help but be aware of the warm sun on my shoulders, the cliff swallows swooping over my bent head, and the soothing sound of the river flowing beside me. It was altogether too lovely a summer day to be lying broken and dead on the rocks, and I felt deep regret that such a healthy young man had come to such a brutal end in the summer of his own life.

Finding no further injuries or signs of a struggle on his body, I gathered an armful of fresh ferns from the woods and covered his face to keep off the bluebottle flies. I heard a gun go off in the near distance but paid it little mind, for hunters frequent the area. Eventually the town constable found me. Mr. Beers's trudge along the river had caused him to sweat profusely, and his face was so flushed that I sat him down in the shade, soaked my handkerchief in the river, and applied it to the back of his neck.

“I am getting too fat for this post,” he panted.

Could not refute him. Eating too much and sitting on a cobbler's bench all day have not made Beers very fit for constable duties. Yet the townsmen reelect him to the office year after year for he is well liked, and his duties are not all that taxing most of the time. Mischief-making boys or an occasional rowdy drunk cause him the most trouble.

He would not go near the corpse nor even look at it. “I'll just set here till the inquest commences,” he said. He informed me that the Town Coroner, Fred Daggett, would be along as soon as he found someone to mind his store and he could go round up a jury.

As we waited I asked Beers if he recalled mending a boot with deep cuts on the sole. He did not. I told him about the imprints Mr. Thoreau and I had discovered upon Devil's Perch. He expressed only the mildest interest. I suggested to him that he should go take a look at the prints for himself. Apparently he did not want to hoist his bulk up the side of the cliff, for he suggested to me in return that I should desist from telling him how to perform his constableship duties.

Before our conversation became more heated, Mr. Daggett arrived with his jury of six Plumford citizens, one of them being the town undertaker. Elijah Phyfe also came. Although he had no legal role to play in this particular proceeding, I suppose he had the right to be present as he is the town's Justice of the Peace and chief magistrate. Coroner Daggett swore in his jury, and they convened around the body.

Mr. Thoreau returned by way of the footpath, and he and I testified. The jury listened to us most patiently and attentively as we presented our evidence. After hearing us conclude that we believed this was a case of murder, they all walked downriver, out of earshot, and conferred with Justice Phyfe. In less than a quarter-hour, they came back, and Coroner Daggett informed us the decision they had reached was Death by Accident. When I voiced my objection, Justice Phyfe raised his hand like a Roman senator.

“Now, Adam, do not be pigheaded about this,” he said. “This unfortunate buck, unfamiliar with these parts, couldn't see where he was going in the dark and walked off the cliff. Simple as that.”

“But the moon was near full last night!” Henry said. No one paid him any mind.

“A runaway slave in stolen clothes, no doubt,” Coroner Daggett said. “No need to make this more complicated than it ought to be. The inquest is closed.”

“It is your minds that are closed,” Mr. Thoreau declared and without another word marched off.

Justice Phyfe, watching him disappear into the woods with narrowed eyes, asked me who he was. I told him all I knew about Henry David Thoreau was that he came from the neighboring town of Concord. One of the jury members, originally from Concord, commented that the Thoreau family, though respectable enough, was of no major consequence there. Justice Phyfe lost interest.

A moment later the Rev. Mr. Upson came down the cliff path. The fowling piece over his arm, I surmised, was the gun I had heard go off earlier. His satchel looked heavy with game, and I have seen him hunting in the area before. Reckon the poor man has little better to do with his time since losing both his wife and his pulpit.

“Best you move on, Mr. Upson,” Phyfe said. “There has been an unfortunate accident here.”

Upson gave the corpse a cursory glance. “So I just heard.”

“Where did you hear this?” Phyfe demanded.

“Above.”

Phyfe raised his eyebrows. “You mean to say God informed you?”

“If I had meant to say that, I would have.” Upson pointed to the top of the cliff. “I came across Miss Bell and a man called Thoreau up there, and they informed me that a dead man lay below.”

Upon learning that Julia had accompanied Thoreau to Devil's Perch, I drew in my breath but said nothing.

The reverend offered to lead us in prayer, but Justice Phyfe said there was no time for that and turned to the undertaker. “Make arrangements to remove the body as soon as possible, Mr. Jackson, before anyone else from town comes upon it.”

“And who will pay for my services?” Jackson wanted to know.

“Oh, what the hell, I will,” Phyfe said. “But I'll be damned if I am going to pay for a funeral service as well.”

“You are already damned, sir,” the Rev. Mr. Upson said, “if you can speak so profanely in the company of a clergyman.”

Shrugging, Justice Phyfe looked away without begging his pardon, and Mr. Upson stalked off. It occurred to me that Phyfe would not have risked being so dismissive toward the reverend were he still minister of the Congregational Church. Upson used to hold great sway in town, but times change, even in Plumford. After ten years of hearing Upson preach sin and damnation, his parishioners grew weary of his rigid Calvinist doctrine, and he was voted out of the pulpit, replaced by a Unitarian minister with a more tolerant view of humanity.

The Coroner's Jury having no further use for me, I hurried back up the cliff to find Julia. She was waiting by the gig, eager to hear about the inquest. I told her as little as I could and made it clear that such sordid business was no business of hers. We talked but little on the drive home.

I wonder if I spoke to her too harshly. In truth, I do not know how to communicate with Julia anymore. We have done so little of it over the years. After her father hauled her off to Europe we were forbidden to write to each other, and when we were old enough to post letters on our own, we both wrote in such a stilted, formal style that we left off our endeavor to recapture our childhood intimacy entirely. It appeared that we had simply outgrown each other.

Even so, when I saw Julia alight from the train at the Concord station ten days ago, I was drawn to her as though she were a lodestone. And she seemed just as drawn to me. She had not seen me since I was a boy, yet she headed straight to me without the slightest hesitation and took hold of both my hands. We would have known each other anywhere, no matter how long apart.