God in Concord Part 31

games than may here be played. a"Walden, "Baker Farm"

Sarah Peel and her friends were homeless no longer. Seven trailers were quickly set up on the Hugh Cargill land, the sewer pipe was rushed across the street, and on the first day of May everybody moved in. Next morning little Christine walked right across the field to the Alcott School, where all the fourth-graders in Concord were gathered under one roof. Sarah's horse, Pearl, began nibbling the gra.s.s on acres of pasture.

The only one who was dissatisfied with the new living arrangements was Doris Harper. "What the f.u.c.k?" she said angrily, after inspecting her brand-new mobile home. "Sarah, she's got wall-to-wall carpeting. What've I got? s.h.i.tty hardwood floor."

"But, Doris," said Sarah mildly, "you've got a cathedral ceiling and a bow window. Do you want to trade with me?"

"Oh, now I get it," responded Doris, "you're trying to get my cathedral ceiling. Well, f.u.c.k you."

So everybody stayed put.

At Pond View, the other Concord location for mobile homes, only four were left. They belonged to Charlotte Harris, Julian Snow, Stu LaDue, and Eugene Beaver. When Stu died of apoplexy in August, there were only three. Then Eugene went to live with his son in Atlanta. That left only Charlotte and Julian.

Pond View looked moribund. Bird-watchers and environmental enthusiasts congratulated themselves on the approach of the day when this trailer park, at least, would be no more.

Roger Bland was one of those who was counting down. Keeping track of the shrinking of Pond View was one of the few satisfactions left in his diminished life. Coming home every day to his small rented cottage in West Concord was depressing. Marjorie was grumpy. The house was dark and inconvenient.

But Pond View was petering out. "There's only a couple of them left," Roger told his wife. "Surely those people can't last long."

"Well, who gives a d.a.m.n anyway?" said Marjorie.

Certainly Julian and Charlotte had no intention of giving up and fading away. "Let's spite them all," said Charlotte. "Let's live to be a hundred."

And they did. Sometimes they lived in Charlotte's place, sometimes in Julian's. The commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts offered to buy them out, but they refused to sell, and since their two mobile homes were at opposite ends of the park, the whole thing had to be preserved just the way it was.

Far into the next millennium they had the run of the place. One day during the first decade Charlotte, a woman of taste, did something surprising. She bought a pair of orange plastic flamingoes and stuck their wire legs into the gra.s.s facing Route 126. All the Th.o.r.eauvians and bird lovers had to look at them as they trudged by. Later on, Charlotte added a couple of gnomes and a whirly windmill.

Charlotte and Julian went right on living at Pond View until they were very, very, very, very old.

In the commercial center, the part of town where Walden Street intersected with the Milldam, all the boutiques were gone. No one regretted their departure. When Taylor Baylor heard that Mimi Pink had sold out, he abandoned his retirement in Florida and came roaring back to Concord. Before long his old shoe store was back on the Milldam, occupying the former premises of Hugo's Hair Harmonies.

But perfection is elusive. The Concord landfill was still a vast hole in the ground. Five thousand people went right on trailing across Route 126 on torrid summer days to swim in Walden Pond. And every piece of private unoccupied land in the town was up for grabs. Fifteen houses went up on the Burroughs farm, to be offered for sale at a million dollars apiece.

And therefore Oliver Fry still found it necessary to do battle for Th.o.r.eau country. Sometimes his fellow citizens wished Henry Th.o.r.eau had been born in some other town, some village far away. Then Henry would have written Winnipesaukee, or Moosehead, not Walden, and Oliver Fry would have left them all alone.

Unfortunately Th.o.r.eau had been born right here in Concord. It was a simple fact, and they were stuck with it.

Sometimes when Oliver was oppressed with the hopelessness of it all, sometimes when he saw bulldozers a.s.saulting a new piece of virgin Concord soil, Homer Kelly took him by the arm and led him back, back, back, through tangles of catbrier and honeysuckle and buckthorn, to an abandoned orchard not far from his own house. Red cedars towered among the bristling apple trees. Homer and Oliver had to force their way in, torn by p.r.i.c.kling blackberry canes, inhaling the fragrance of the aira"ah, such smells!a"the heady aroma of fox grapes, the hot perfume of sunlit leaves, the thrilling scent of wild apples dangling from neglected boughs, and now and then, faintly from far away, the whiff of a pa.s.sing skunk.

And sometimes, once in a while, they heard again the song of the wood thrush. But whether its singing amended any human inst.i.tution in the world, even in the town of Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, was still very much in doubt.

Author's Note.

What about Th.o.r.eau's wood thrush? Was he mistaken! Was he really listening to the song of the hermit thrush?

In the 1906 edition of Th.o.r.eau's journal, edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis Allen, there are doubting footnotes to some of Th.o.r.eau's entries about the wood thrush. Here, for example, is Th.o.r.eau on April 27, 1854: The wood thrush afara"so superior a strain to that of other birds ... This is the gospel according to the wood thrush. He makes a sabbath out of a weekday. I could go to hear him, could buy a pew in his church.

And here is the footnote:.

Probably it was the hermit thrush, not the wood thrush, for which the date is too early, whose song he had been praising.

One might add a cautionary footnote to the footnote: Th.o.r.eau was such a keen observer and wrote so often about both the hermit thrush and the wood thrush, perhaps he was not mistaken after all.

But in this book I have gone along with the notion that he was indeed wrong, that the heavenly note of his wood thrush was really that of the hermit. Therefore, when Homer Kelly hears it at last, "a watery warbling, a bell-like melody ... repeated in a higher register, the last notes rising out of hearing," it is a description of the hermit thrush's song as I have been introduced to it in Concord by my friend Walter Brain.

The setting of this book more or less resembles the actual town of Concord, Ma.s.sachusetts, but all the shops are imaginary. The Walden Street house of Oliver and Hope Fry is real howevera"in some of my children's books it was home to the family of Frederick Hall.

There is a trailer park in Concord, but in this story its residents and their mobile homes are invented. So are the members of town government, as well as the various building projects and real estate enterprises that come before them. In fact, all the characters in this book have no connection with actual people, although some are descended from certain residents of Anthony Trollope's cathedral city of Barchester.

There is no seventy-story Grandison Building on Huntington Avenue in Boston.

I can't close without thanking Tom Blanding and Anne McGrath for spreading so generously their knowledge and enthusiasm for the work and the landscape of Henry Th.o.r.eau.

WARNING: Quaking bog enthusiasts are advised not to go unaccompanied into Gowing's Swamp. t.i.tcomb's Bog, on the other hand, is perfectly safe, since it does not exist.

Table of Contents.

G.o.d in Concord.

by Jane Langton.

Dear Julian, 1. I've been unhappy as Pete's wife my whole married life.

2. Getting a divorce is awful. You know, such a mess.

3. I wouldn't ever do it unless I thought you'd marry me someday.

She soon regretted the letter with all her heart.

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Dear Julian, I want to say three things.

1. I've been unhappy as Pete's wife my whole married life.

2. Getting a divorce is awful. You know, such a mess.

3. I wouldn't ever do it unless I thought you'd marry me someday.

The words crashed painfully among them. Ananda turned away, ashamed to be hearing what had not been meant for his ears. Honey Mooney's eyes were enormous. Julian stared at the table, his face scarlet.

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Mrs. Alice Snow, a resident of Pond View Trailer Park, died unexpectedly on June 12. She was 59. Mrs. Snow was born in Springfield. She leaves her husband, Julian, and her sister, Delphine, of Los Angeles.

Roger Bland was the chairperson of the Concord Planning Board. He was delighted, on the whole, to learn of the pa.s.sing of one more of the occupants of the trailers at Pond View. Looking up from the paper at the view of the Concord River beyond his living room window, he caught himself wishing the rest of those old folks would die a little faster. Then he put the paper down, ashamed of himself.

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DEVELOPER EYES HIGH SCHOOL PROPERTY.

Grandison Seeks Zoning Change *18*

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As I climbed the hill again toward my old bean-field, I listened to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket sound under all others, hearing at first some distinct chirps; but when these ceased I was aware of the general earth-song, and I wondered if behind or beneath this there was not some other chant yet more universal.

Ah, that was speech. That was English speech.

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When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the sh.o.r.e of Walden Pond...

As for Ananda, he was equally disturbed by the presence of Hope Fry. Seeing her in her flannel bathrobe and fuzzy slippers crossing the hall in the early morning, her hair flooding down over her shoulders and the sunlight slanting in upon her from the window on the landing, he was captivated. It was so odd that the first girl he had spoken to in the United States should be keeping him awake at night, thinking of her lying softly in her own bed across the hall. As usual Ananda was ashamed of his thoughts, which had become more intense as he grew older. It seemed hypocritical to dress so circ.u.mspectly in the morning and exchange so few words with this girl at breakfast, after the wild visions of the night. He remembered that Th.o.r.eau had written of his own "rank offenses." Had he been troubled in the same way?

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Breathe Free Serene Harbors Seash.o.r.es Unlimited Mountain Lake Environmental Services Blue Skies Ah Wilderness Dreams of the Maine Coast What exactly did they represent, all those poetical adjectives and nouns? Drowsily Homer went to sleep, gathered into one curve with his sleeping wife.