"Well, what's the matter with Oliver? Oh, I know he's a crusty sort of a nut case, but his heart's in the right place. We can trust him to protect the town against commercial development, if we can trust anybody."

"Oh, well, I suppose that's right. But what about"a"Marjorie lowered her voicea""Oliver's drinking problem?"

"His what?"

"Didn't you know?" Marjorie's tone expressed her sorrow. "The poor man, he's been an alcoholic for years."

"An alcoholic? Oliver Fry? No kidding? Good heavens, I had no idea."

And then Irma met Granger Pond in her yoga cla.s.s, and she pa.s.sed on the news on the way to the parking lot. And of course Granger told his wife.

Thus the news flitted around town at high speed. It did not need to be typed up and copied and folded and stuffed into envelopes and sent out in a town mailing to six thousand households.

It didn't matter that no one had ever seen Oliver Fry intoxicated. The merest hint that he had a drinking problem was enough to condemn him. It was so easy to imagine him in a sodden condition, his speech slurred, his head lolling, his eyes half-closed, his hand clutching a bottle.

Hope Fry was surprised to find herself the recipient of little sympathetic pats and embraces. "My dear," said Marjorie Bland, running into her in the Star Market, "have you thought of AA?"

"AA?" said Hope, confused. "You mean in case I have a flat tire?"

"A flat tire?" They parted, mutually bewildered.

The wildfire spread of the rumor did much to promote the candidacy of Roger Bland for the empty place on the Concord Board of Selectmen. Roger's bid to become one of Harvard's overseers was not so easily handled.

Those candidates were far more formidable than Oliver Fry. They were leaders of the nation. Roger labored over his personal history, the short paragraph of biographical information that was to accompany his picture on the ballot. Should he mention that he had been active in the election campaign of a recent Republican governor of Ma.s.sachusetts? Or would that turn off all the Democratic alums? Better say nothing about it. How about his term as director of the Concord Country Club? No, strike that. Well, what the h.e.l.l could he say?

Roger quailed at the thought of all the thousands and thousands of alumni and alumnae who would read his words of self-praise, detecting the hollowness of his claim on the one hand and the strength of his desire on the other.

*45*

Our relation was one long tragedy... a"Journal, March 4, 1856 Given enough time, the essential quality of a man or woman reveals itself. Presidents fail because one ma.s.sive flaw works its way to the surface and stands revealed. Marriages reduce themselves to the clash of defects unguessed at in the beginning.

The married life of Pete and Charlotte Harris suffered from Pete's total lack of imagination and Charlotte's stubborn refusal to bend. She would not, she could not, accommodate herself. This evening, while Pete watched his favorite game show, Charlotte turned her back on him and read the Concord Journal. Tight-lipped, she examined the front page. She learned about the selectman's race, she read the letters to the editor, she looked with horror at the prices of real estate, she examined the police log: VAGRANTS: Milldam shopkeepers report vagrants occupying the sidewalk. Warnings have been issued, but so far there have been no arrests.

When Pete switched off the television set, Charlotte put down the paper with relief. It was time for the night shift in the kitchen of Emerson Hospital. Behind her she could hear the starched rustle of his white cook's jacket as he heaved himself into it.

Rebellion started up in Charlotte's breast. "I won't," she said.

"You won't what, baby doll?"

"I won't take any wooden nickels."

Pete was nonplussed. He hesitated in the doorway, unable to utter his ritual farewell. Robbed of speech, he descended the steps and let the screen door bang behind him.

Charlotte took a deep breath. Her lungs expanded. Her spirit spread out to fill the trailer. She poured herself another cup of coffee and picked up her book. In the deepening twilight she sank down into the final chapters of The Mill on the Floss.

After a while she could no longer see to read. She stood up and turned on the light, then paused for a moment to look out at the other mobile homes. Their glowing windows were comforting, as always. Behind the blinds of the trailer next door, Eugene Beaver would be washing his supper dishes. Honey Mooney's curtains were new, replacements for the ones that had burned. Beyond Honey's mobile home Charlotte could see Norman Peck's lighted windows.

Sitting down again, she picked up her book. Then she lifted her head from the book and stood up.

Norman Peck was dead. His trailer was empty. Why was a ray of light streaming down on the long gra.s.s around it, the gra.s.s n.o.body had cut since his death? What was going on in there? Perhaps Norman's daughter Fran was showing the old Landola to a prospective buyer. Stu LaDue said she was trying to sell it for a lot more than it was worth.

Charlotte opened her door, walked softly down the steps, and crossed the driveway to take a look.

There were no cars parked at Norman's place. His daughter wasn't there. But someone was inside. Charlotte saw a woman sail past the window and out of sight, then whirl past it again. She was dancing! She was wearing earphones and dancing with her eyes closed, bobbing around, turning in circles, dipping and swaying.

Charlotte watched for a moment, wondering what to do. Then she walked to the end of the driveway, climbed the steps to Julian's door, and knocked. At once she hurried down the steps again and stood on the pavement. She didn't want him to think even for a moment that she was invading his privacy.

When Julian opened the door, Charlotte turned away at once and pointed. "Norman's place, there's someone in there."

"There is?" Julian came down the steps and they walked together back to Norman's trailer.

"There she is," whispered Charlotte. They stood still, watching the woman with the earphones. She had stopped dancing. She was reaching up into Norman's kitchen cupboard, taking out a jar, running her finger around the inside, sucking the finger.

"Jam," murmured Charlotte. "I guess Fran didn't clean out the shelves."

Moving away, they stopped beside Charlotte's mobile home to talk it over.

"I don't know what to do," said Julian. "Who do you suppose she is?"

"Probably one of those homeless people. I've seen them on Main Street near the hardware store."

"Jesus." Julian looked back at Norman's windows.

"I suppose she shouldn't be there," said Charlotte, "but it seems silly to leave it empty when people are sleeping on the street."

"Right," said Julian. He stood irresolute for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders. "So let's just forget about it, shall we?"

"Good." Charlotte watched his thin shape move away, merging with the deepening darkness. Aching a little, she went back inside.

Next morning Julian looked out at the little street of mobile homes, wondering if Norman's was still occupied. The pale trailers nosing this way and that along the driveway looked a little seedy this morning. The turquoise plastic shutters were supposed to make the long narrow houses look like colonial dwellings, but Julian thought the shutters were ridiculous.

There were no lights in Norman's trailer, but of course there wouldn't be, not in the daytime. Only later, as Julia; set off for the landfill, did he encounter the woman with the earphones. They were dangling around her neck.

"Hey, mister," said Bobbsie Low, "what's the matter with my sink? I got no water."

"You're disconnected," said Julian. "Wait a minute." He went back indoors to find his toolbox, then accompanied Bobbsie back to Norman's. "How'd you get in?" he asked her. but then he saw how she had done it. She had smashed the gla.s.s louvers of the locked door, probably with one of the white-painted rocks around Porter McAdoo's yard next door.

Later on when Julian came back from the landfill, eager for a shower, he encountered an outraged Stu LaDue.

"f.u.c.king homeless," hollered Stu. "Three or four of 'em, they've moved in. They're in Norman's place and Shirley'; and Porter's. Somebody even moved into old Jane Peac.o.c.k's place, back there behind the laundry shack, the one's been empty for three years. We gotta get 'em outta here. I'm gonna call the police."

"Oh, Stu, what the h.e.l.l difference does it make? Those old rigs are empty anyhow."

"You think we ain't got enough crime around here already?" whined Stu. "You wait. They'll steal everything's not nailed down."

But when the police came, the four trailers were empty once again. Stu yelled and waved his arms and complained, but there was nothing to be done. The patrol car left, with Stu standing in the driveway, shouting after it.

Julian waited until Stu went back indoors, and then he whistled into the woods behind his house'to inform Dolores Marshall and her little girl, Christine, and Bobbsie Low and Carl Browning and Almina Ziblow that the coast was clear. They came straggling up the hillside with their baggage.

"You can move back in now," said Julian, "but don't turn any lights on this evening. And I'm afraid you'll have to leave in the morning. The police will be back. Stu LaDue will see to that. Hey, wait a minute. Come on in. I made a bunch of sandwiches."

Next day, regretfully, they left Pond Viewa"Dolores and Christine, Bobbsie and Carl and Alminaa"and trudged back to the center of town to take up their places on the sidewalk. The younger shoppers on the street ignored them. Healthy young legs in sneakers stepped over them, pa.s.sing in and out of Mimi Pink's Den of Teddies or Hugo's Hair Harmonies or the Unique Boutique. But to the older customers they were a threat, a menace, a warninga"and of course Mimi Pink herself was in a continuous hissing state of rage.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Chief Flower told her again and again, "there's nothing we can do about it. They're not breaking any law. It's a case for the churches. Why don't you talk to one of the reverends?"

Sarah Peel was not among those who occupied Concord street corners and shopfronts. Sarah had found her way home. She had settled down in Marjorie Bland's recycling studio next to Pearl's cozy stable. Oh, she was careful. Whenever Marjorie and Roger Bland were at home, Sarah lay low. But when both cars were missing, she moved around and enjoyed herself. She and Pearl were in constant communion. Sarah tended the horse with devotion. She curried her dappled gray coat with the rubber bristles of a hard brush she found in a basket. She petted her and fed her wormy fruit from the apple tree behind the house. She pulled up carrots from the vegetable garden and gave them to Pearl. She fed her candy. She looked with longing at the saddle hanging on a rack on the wall of the stable, but when she tried to put it on Pearl's back, it slipped under the horse's belly. There was some trick to putting it on.

Well, it didn't matter. Sarah was sure she could ride bareback. Pearl was her very own horse, and sooner or later Sarah would ride her far, far away.

Every now and then Marjorie surprised Sarah by walking into the recycling studio. Then Marjorie would squeal, "Oh. no, not again," and shriek at her to go away at once. So Sarah would stuff everything back into the stroller and depart. It puzzled her that she was never troubled by an officer of the law. Without an official warning she felt perfectly comfortable returning to Pearl and settling in night after night among the stacks of newspapers and the bags of bottles and the plastic bags of trash and the empty boxes from J. Crew and Lord & Taylor and Saks.

One day, peering through the hinge crack of the door into the stable, Sarah saw something interesting. Marjorie was teaching a young teenager how to care for the horse. "Fresh water every day," Marjorie told the little girl. "Sweet feed twice a day, but only this much. A can of pellets. This much grain, no more. We're leaving next Sat.u.r.day, so you'll take over from then on. Now promise me, Emily dear, you won't try to ride her. Promise!"

And Emily promised.

As for Sarah's friends, they too were resourceful. For a while they holed up in the First Parish Church. In the bas.e.m.e.nt there were splendid bathrooms and a large, well-equipped kitchen. Bridgie Sorrel found a big jar of sauerkraut in the refrigerator. Doris Harper opened a box and discovered a giant cake.

After supper they went out the back door of the church into the drowsy summer dusk and stood on the little wooden bridge over the Mill Brook. Young Christine took off her shoes and waded in the water. She picked black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne's lace in the weedy gra.s.s. When it grew dark they went back inside and climbed the stairs to the sanctuary and lay down on the long rosy cushions in the pews. Every pew boasted a rack full of hymnbooks and questionnaires for newcomers to the church services. "Would you like the pastor to call?" inquired the questionnaire.

"Yes," wrote Bobbsie Low.

"f.u.c.k you," scribbled Doris Harper.

Next they bedded down in the Concord Public Library. It was simple. They hid in the stacks until the library closed for the day, and then the whole place was theirs. The big entrance hall was furnished with comfortable sofas and a lot of white marble statuary. Almina and Dolores did their laundry in the staff restroom, then hung their wet clothes over the balcony railing to dry. That madcap Palmer Nifto tossed some of Almina's underwear onto the busts of Ebenezer Rockwood h.o.a.r and Amos Bronson Alcott, and then he draped one of Dolores's skirts over the shoulders of the big seated statue of Emerson. The others all screamed with laughter.

Bridgie Sorrel was not with them during their days in the church and the library. Somehow she became detached from the rest. She hitched a ride to Burlington, but she didn't like it there, and it took her a week to get back. Sarah came upon her one day limping up Main Street in tears. Bridgie had just been evicted from the Den of Teddies by Mimi Pink, who had given her a tongue-lashing.

"It's okay, Bridgie," said Sarah. "Listen, I've got an idea." Putting her arm around Bridgie, she walked her down Lexington Road to the Concord Museum.

The museum was a large brick building with a triangle of pretty garden. "We'll wait here a while," said Sarah, settling Bridgie down on a garden bench. Adroitly she stowed their possessions behind the stone wall. Then she sat beside Bridgie and waited for the right moment.

"Look," said Sarah, "a tour bus. It's stopping here. Now, listen, Bridgie, do just as I say."

People were flooding out of the bus and starting across the lawn. "Now," said Sarah, rushing Bridgie to the front door.

There were two women at the door, Dolly Smith and Carolyn Lahey. "Can I help you?" said Dolly, looking doubtfully at Sarah's too many layers of dingy clothing.

"Oh, look, the bus is here," said Carolyn as people streamed toward them across the gra.s.s. "It's the golden-agers from Salem."

"We just want to use the ladies'," said Sarah urgently. Her arm was around Bridgie Sorrel, who was holding her hand over her mouth. Bridgie's wild stare made it clear she was about to throw up.

"Oh, dear me," said Dolly Smith. "Quickly, come this way." She ran ahead of them to point out the right door, then rushed back to deal with the flood of newcomers from the chartered bus.

Not until closing time did Dolly remember the odd-looking pair of bag ladies who had come in to use the rest room. "Did you see those two women go out?" she asked Carolyn.

"No," said Carolyn. So they went to the ladies' room and looked in. It was empty. "They must have gone out through the gift shop," said Carolyn, and then they locked all the doors and turned on the burglar alarm and went home.

Upstairs in the eighteenth-century bedchamber Sarah went to the window and looked out. "It's okay now," she said.

The two of them had been lying flat in the canopy bed under the puffy spread.

Bridgie smiled and sat up.

"I've got some doughnuts here," said Sarah, pulling out a bag from an inside pocket and sitting down comfortably on the edge of the bed.

After that Sarah and her friends tried the other historic houses in Concord. They didn't get anywhere at Hawthorne's Old Manse, or at Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott had written Little Women. But behind Orchard House stood Bronson Alcott's School of Philosophy. It was a real find.

There were windows at ground level in the back, and Carl Browning had one of them open in a jiffy.

The School of Philosophy lacked comfortable sofas and upholstered chairs, but it was delightfully airy and open. Emerson was there again in plaster effigy. The floor was uncomfortable to sleep on, but the place had an exalted aura, and they all enjoyed it.

Palmer Nifto was the cleverest at finding a home away from home. A place had occurred to him immediately, the instant he saw the destination on the ticket handed him by Sarah Peel.

It was a one-person dwelling. Palmer kept it in the back of his mind until they were thrown out of the library and the School of Philosophy. Then he resolved to try it.

But first he gave himself a present, a splendid meal at the Colonial Inn, paid for with the piece of broken gla.s.s he kept in his pocket. The piece of gla.s.s had worn out its welcome in Boston, but out here in the boondocks it awaited its debut.

The hostess found him a table in a prominent part of the big dining room, he looked so interesting and respectable in his seersucker jacket. His twenty-five-cent Morgan Memorial tie was limp, but it had begun life at Brooks Brothers. He looked like a young professor of the shabby genteel variety.

The Colonial Inn specialized in hearty old-fashioned food rather than trendy gourmet stuff. Palmer ordered a charcoal-broiled steak.

"Baked potato or mashed?" said the waitress.

"Mashed, please," said Palmer craftily.

When his steak and mashed potatoes were put in front of him, he smiled at the waitress and struck up a conversation. "Not many places like this left," he said, plying knife and fork, taking his first bite of steak, then shaking his head in appreciation. "Mmmm-mmm. Dee-licious."

Therefore when Palmer found a piece of gla.s.s in his mashed potato, his disappointment was profound. He beckoned the waitress to him, his face long with woe, and displayed the mashed-potato-smeared piece of gla.s.s, which he had pushed delicately to one side of his plate. "I must say, I'm surprised," said Palmer sorrowfully.

The waitress was stunned. She summoned the hostess. The hostess was horrified. She hurried out and returned with the manager. The manager was appalled. He spoke soothingly to Palmer and asked if he was hurt in any way at all. When Palmer said no, he was only very much surprised, the manager a.s.sured him that he, too, was completely astounded, because nothing like this had ever happened before in the entire history of the Colonial Inn. There would of course be no charge for the meal, and would he like anything else from the menu, courtesy of the inn, of course?

"Well, that's very kind of you," said Palmer courteously. At once he examined the menu and ordered a second meal, even more luxurious than the first.

Later on, as he consumed his lobster thermidor, the manager hurried over with a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice. "With our compliments," he said, getting to work on the cork. There was a resounding pop. Heads turned. People smiled.

Ah, there was nothing like virgin territory. What innocence, what charming naivete in this idyllic rural town!

After dinner Palmer walked off his heavy double meal. It was two long miles to Walden Pond. Was the little house still there?

It was. The house was a replica of the one Henry Th.o.r.eau had built on the northern sh.o.r.e of the pond. The replica occupied a similar spot on the sh.o.r.e of the parking lot.