Woodsburner (47 page)

“Father!”

“Those stairs are a fright.” Mr. Mahoney stood in the doorway, balancing his bulk forward with both hands on the head of his cane.

Margaret rushed to her father's side, but he waved her away. “You shouldn't overwork yourself like that,” she said. “Where are Mr. and Mrs. Durham?”

“Terrible company,” Mr. Mahoney grumbled, “but what would half of the coffee merchants in Boston do without Mr. Durham, eh? What are you doing, Eliot? Working on a Sunday?”

“Eliot is working on one of his plays, Father.”

“Excellent recreation. Just the other day I wrote a poem about my cat, right after balancing the accounts for the week. You can tell us all about it over sherry. Unless it is unsuitable for the ladies.”

“Really, Father.” Margaret laughed, moving toward him. “Eliot would never write such rubbish. Come, we should give him a moment to prepare for our guests.”

“I believe I can suffer the Durhams' company for another quarter hour,” Mr. Mahoney said with mock resignation. “Then we'll talk of the coffee trade, Eliot. Impressive profits to be had.”

Margaret gently prodded her father from behind. “He'll join us soon,” she said, smiling, and looking at Eliot she mouthed, “Hurry up.”

Eliot heard their voices recede down the stairwell, and then heard Mr. Mahoney's booming laugh greeting the Durhams as if
they had only just arrived. He felt his face grow warm on the side facing the bright window. He sometimes pondered what would happen if he opened one of the windows and walked out into the light. Even when the room was dark, he wondered: if he were to pull back the curtains, crank open the windows, and step confidently into the bright air, would the solid shafts of sunlight support his steps so that he might walk about freely above the city of Boston? The thought always brought him a momentary thrill.

And now Eliot is wondering much the same thing as he faces the burning woods alone. Would it be practical
—reasonable—
to run into the flames as the others had done? He knows that the men who have thrown themselves into the conflagration need his help. They will need every available pair of arms that can swing an ax or shovel, but Eliot's arms hang limp as he imagines the terrible things that are happening where the other men have gone. If he were to follow them now, it is entirely possible that he might never sit at his desk again. He feels the ground shudder as a massive tree falls somewhere behind the impenetrable curtains of smoke. Eliot shuffles sideways, tracing a close circle in the black earth.

Those men are fools, Eliot thinks. He watches the flames scatter, sees them test the edges of the trench, searching for something to burn, something to take them to the other side. Little points of flame hop toward the trench, lurch for the clearing where Eliot stands, and expire in midair. The fire cannot cross the divide, but it does not give up. It is possible, Eliot thinks, that a shift in the wind might send the flames skipping east to the Walden Woods, and a strong enough gust might launch the flames over the trench into the trees that stand on the other side of the firebreak. If that were to happen, there would be no one here to help him. Eliot faces the flames across the divide, and he feels suddenly vulnerable.

A few feet away, Eliot sees the wooden handle of his shovel begin to smolder in the heat where he left it stuck upright in the ground. He has been treading steadily backward without realizing it. He knows he can hesitate no longer. He decides. He takes a deep breath, gathers his courage, then pivots on his heels and runs away through the dark clouds, toward the clear, cool air of Concord.

Young America is gone. Henry watches him disappear into the fire like a man fleeing the specters of his own conscience. Some of the men pursue him, hesitantly at first, and then moments later the rest follow, with Henry swept along in their midst. No one can remain behind when one of their number dares to move forward.

The fire closes behind the men in front of Henry, and he calls to those nearest him to fan out over the charred ground. They swing their axes at the crippled half-burned trunks, felling trees left and right. They cut a fresh swath the fire cannot cross. There are more shouts, more orders; in confusion each man seeks to direct the action of another, but in the end they only narrate their own deeds. For a half hour more, they labor without pause. And then they stop, and wait, and watch.

The fire makes several attempts at crossing the new void they have carved. It marshals its forces, hurls itself skyward, aims at the treetops across the divide, lurches hopefully toward the distant, tantalizing rooftops of Concord. But each effort diminishes its intensity.

The men stop chopping, stop shoveling, devote themselves to selfish gasping. There is no cheering, no triumphant slapping of backs. Their victory is gradual. It is, Henry thinks, an anticlimax, a slow dawning. It affords no moment that one might celebrate as
now
. Portions of the woods as yet lie under siege, but the men
have halted the main advance. They stand wearily in the firebreak, leaning on handles, watching the fire eat itself, and as the smoke thins, new scenes emerge: ghostly shadows, blackened trunks, tall sentinels stripped of bark and branch and leaf, a giant forest of silent spent matchsticks.

Never has Henry been so relieved to see a creation of his own hands approach its end. He has mangled his creations before. He has torn apart drawings of flawed perspective, blotted out the malformed poems that sometimes issued from his pen, but the relief then was for embarrassment avoided. And, now that the enemy has been halted, the murmuring begins anew. There is talk already of pecuniary losses, of recrimination and restitution, as if a man could assign a price to the soil and the sky and the living woods. But, in fact, men can and do. There will be estimates of lumber lost. There will be the untallied damages to shovels and axes and hoes and boots and clothes. There will be complaints of chickens unable to lay for months because of the disturbance, and together these losses will accrue considerable sums. When weighed against what might have been suffered—the possible destruction of Concord, the potential loss of life—the sums will seem small, but when considered alone the amounts will amaze. Already someone points out that even the felled trees at the firebreak will be of no use to the carpenter, smoke-damaged as they are.

Henry at last sees Edward Sherman Hoar among the others. Edward sees him, too, but they do not acknowledge each other. They keep their distance, not wanting to invite further suspicion or accusation. The weeping man has returned to his ruined farm, and no one has yet asked Henry about the man's accusation. They will not believe it until the story is repeated, until Henry confesses to the deed as Edward no doubt already has. It occurs to Henry that it may prove some benefit to count Edward Sherman Hoar as his companion in this misadventure. Fortunate accident, that. In
deference to Edward's esteemed father, Squire Hoar, there may follow a willful forgetting, just short of forgiveness. But Henry knows that he will not smother his sorrow, will not ask forgiveness from men. He will tend and cherish his regret, until he finds himself restored. He will remain behind after the men have left; he will find his way back to the beginning and finish the excursion begun that morning. Perhaps he will spend the night here, alone, among the ashes.

And these men, Henry thinks, have stood for a moment on the brink of something greater than themselves. These men have had a precious opportunity to act as men, and now they will return to their groveling lives. They will return to the ordained destruction of land and living things that pretends offense at accidental loss. As towns and cities expand across the continent, woods like these, vaster tracts by far, will disappear beneath ax and saw and the other engines that men will devise to quicken the clearing of what brought them here. The railway slicing through the woods at Walden will bring more men to help topple solitude's slow reign. More and still more will distribute themselves far and wide across the surface of things; each day they will extend their numbers over the untouched land, while their individual lives remain as shallow as ever. In all mythologies, a forest is a sacred place, but those who arrive on America's shores will continue to bring with them the old displacing fables, until one day they will voice disdain for the new world that can remember no legends of its own.

New England
SPRING
, 1844