The Other Nineteenth Century Read online

scarcely flows

  the frozen Tanais

  through a waste of snows

  Talk, before that, of giving Waldo Sutter the lease? Talk.

  Lucinda does not now remind them that she herself witnesses the near-death on North Main Street of the Universalist minister. She screams and screams, warnings to the Rev. Mr. Showalter, appeals to her brothers. Mr. Showalter, after stoically refusing to acknowledge danger in the red touring-car’s furious approach, finally with a squeak of fear barely flings himself to safety; a contemporary—Dr. Nickolson the homeopath—extends shaking hands to hold the trembling cleric up; cries, “Don’t tell me those boys don’t have the witch-bump!” The Nickolsons have lived here almost as long as the Sutters: no love lost.

  The red touring-car continues to tear along the street like a whirlwind, madcap yells, howls, and cries coming from the front seat: Lewis at the Wheel. Mr. Showalter has suffered such a shock that he must retire; will place charges: duty!—doesn’t care about himself but cares about the public safety. Uncle Sawyer speaks soothingly and speaks and speaks and gives directions for a new roof to be put on the Meetinghouse. Mr. Showalter shakes his head. And on the Manse. Mr. Showalter slackens, but feels that someone must be taught a lesson. Uncle Sawyer mentions faith and hope. Uncle Sawyer settles a ten-year endowment on the Universalist pulpit’s everfaltering income. Mr. Showalter takes a vacation in the White Mountains, returns to preach with renewed vigor the doctrines of James Relly and Hosea Ballou (“‘No Hell! No Hell! No Hell! No Hell!’ rings out the Universalist bell!”)—But even Uncle Sawyer cannot keep this up forever. And, it turns out, neither can Lewis.

  If Aunt Harriet pretends to believe that her nephews’ troubles stem from drink alone, let her. Does no one point out that Samuel, for example, does not drink. He is certainly never seen in any of the local saloons, but he is certainly talked about in them. “Sam Sutter? Know what they say about what his motto is? ‘Women and children first,’ that’s what they say his motto is.” People laugh at this. But their laughs are not nice ones.

  Does Samuel suffer from amnesia? Sometimes people make references to the recent past, and his expression is a blank … that is if there can be a troubled blank. Can there be?

  One afternoon in the early spring the ladies of the family are in the music room listening to the victrola. All, that is, save for Aunt Sarah, who is, as usual, in her place in the library wearing her neat house-costume; as usual, silent. Chester Boswell is, as usual, talking … perhaps in a lower tone of voice, even, than usual. “Gone upstairs to wash my hands,” he says. “Samuel’s door. Open.” Everyone knows how such things are. One has no intention of looking. At all. But there is a slight movement and it catches one’s attention, Chester’s head turns automatically. Samuel is sitting at his desk, holding his head in his hands, motionless save for a slight fidget of the fingers in the hair, slight but incessant. Aunt Sarah looks up and at her cousin Chester when he says this, and he imitates for her this slight (but steady) motion, somehow restless, somehow steady, of Samuel’s fingers as he holds his head in his hands.

  “I don’t like to see this,” Chester Boswell murmurs. “That’s how it all started with Lew …” That’s how it started with Lew? And how does it end with Lew? For it does end. At the age of only twenty-three, Lewis takes up a heavy old Colt Navy revolver, once the property of Selah Sutter, Waldo’s elder brother, and shoots himself. Fatally.

  No note. As Samuel murmurs to Ellis at the service, “Not even a forwarding address.”

  Mother Sutter (Helen) “takes it better than we would have thought.” How, better? Does she not have practice? Never mind about Zachary, she is only a child when Zachary so hastily lights out for the Territories … and for oblivion. He is her uncle … greatuncle. Hardly counts … Uncle Zachary … though he lives on in local memory, in the minds and mouths of Sidney Coolidge and the like. Is Sid’s an august name in these days? in this place? Less. Llewellyn in Wales. Cohen in Tel Aviv. But.

  Kingston, Woodruff, Gerald. She doesn’t see Kingston and Woodruff dead? She doesn’t know for sure that Gerald—? She knows for sure. In her mind she sees them each dead a hundred thousand times. Perhaps there is even some comfort about Lewis. At least she touches the coffin. At least she stands by the grave. She tries to live a little while without him, likes it not, and dies. Waldo Sutter, he whom Chickamauga cannot kill, he whom none of them have seen in years, puts on his old Union uniform and attends the funeral. Stands apart, speaks to no one, is covertly observed by those curious to see if they can observe traces of the alleged blood of the Narragansetts … or even of a darker and more vigorous tribe. He speaks to no one; on his way home, whom Chickamauga does not kill or the wolves tear apart, collapses by the side of the road. Old John Kelly, hopefully skulking (he who should have known better than hope) to see if Waldo perhaps goes to the postfuneral feast, returning with victuals in his pocket, finds him dead.

  His will: Them as gotten everthing else as ought to ben mine, let them git all I have to leave … .

  And, one year later, one year and some months, Samuel at twenty-three, after something not less horrible for being less describable, Samuel rushes, roaring, naked, through the woods and dives into the water and swims outward with powerful strokes until vanishing from sight. This is shortly after Chester Boswell sees Samuel in the room with his head in his hands, motionless save for that fidget of the fingers. The rains have been heavy, the river is high, surely Samuel knows this? Surely Samuel knows that he is swimming toward the dam? They find him dead at the foot of it, drowned, and with many bones broken.

  Ellis’s once-high spirits, slackened when Lewis dies, seem now suddenly and entirely checked. There are no more stories told about him. One sees him no more at meals even; Agnes brings him up a tray: reports that he sits with head in hands, fingers trembling. Chester Boswell, Cousin Chester? His bad leg? It is re-broken and it is re-set. A room on the first floor in the large house is cleared up for him: the office of Henry, lost and forgotten Henry, husband to Helen, father of Kingston, Woodruff, Gerald, Lucinda, Amy, Lewis, Samuel, Ellis. And there Chester sleeps—what formal sleep he gets—although he spends most of his time in the library with his leg in its cast up on an ottoman; Chester still suffers from the sinking of the Maine, on which he never sets eyes, sometimes murmuring to silent Aunt Sarah, sometimes dozing, to awaken abruptly with a little groan. There is perhaps a slightly warmer relation between Ellis and Chester than with the other boys, has he been more like an uncle than a cousin? Ellis never comes down to see him, sends him no general or especial messages. His door is open only to Agnes, and, twice a day, the tray.

  Down below, they wait. And wait. As each day lengthens, so the tension. Yes, even so, a dreadful shock when, one morning, a great crash. And a quite frightful human sound, part scream, and—“What the devil—” cries Chester Boswell. And now another and rather lesser crash, and the scene is as one long prepared for some set piece, for a second all gape, then a wild rush up the stairs, somehow today the carpenters have been gotten in at last, large strong men—the thud of shoulders against a shuddering door. Voices cry out in horror, there are screams and shouts and—

  Silent Aunt Sarah sits silently; unmoving, her neatly trousered legs in the grey with the small black check. Trembling Chester Boswell sits, too, a prisoner of his patriot leg in its heavy cast. Turmoil, terror, tragedy. Ellis has been shaving, pauses in mid-stroke and cries out and pushes over the heavy piece of cherrywood furniture with the mirror and the basin, slashes his throat. Deeply. Doctor Brainert is summoned, can do nothing.

  Perhaps an hour or so later when there is something more like quiet once again, Chester Boswell, “Why,” he asks, in a trembling voice, “Why do all these devilish tragedies always seem to happen when they are twenty-three? Don’t they always seem to happen when—”

  Aunt Sarah breaks her silence. Her long, long silence. “Of course,” she says. “That is when the horns begin to grow.”

  She leans forward and
she begins to talk. And talk.

  The “new” family burying-grounds make up part of the original property of twenty-two and a half acres. Some say, it is a bit more than that. A good bit more than that, some say.

  AFTERWORD TO “TWENTY-THREE”

  It is well known that Avram Davidson read and appreciated the work of H. P. Lovecraft; he made more than passing references to the gentleman from Providence in both his reviews and his fiction. I would like to assert that “Twenty-Three” can be viewed as a Davidson pastiche of Lovecraft—fully as bizarre and original as the pastiche of Sherlock Holmes, “The Singular Incident of the Dog on the Beach” (in which Davidson also did not imitate the style of the author).

  Consider: the rich, eccentric New England family; the agrarian roots of an industrial fortune now in decline; allusions to the daemonic connections of Crossley Sutter, possibly producing bastard children; Cotton Mather’s supernatural writings; a reclusive elderly cousin “whom Chickamauga does not kill nor wolves tear apart;” the knowing helplessness of the Sutter women; the atmosphere of enforced New England rectitude and the abundance of antiquarian detail; and the explanation (almost too terrible to be spoken) in the final paragraphs of the story. Compare, for example, Lovecraft’s stories “The Dunwich Horror” or “The Shadow over Innsmouth.”

  —Henry Wessells

  BUSINESS MUST BE PICKING UP

  The scene was archetypal. The sweet gray-haired woman was trying to persuade the rugged gray-haired man to let her discard some of his old clothes. “No, I am not ‘throwing them away,’” she said. “I am giving them to the town church for the annual sale.”

  “No, you are not ‘giving them to the town church for the annual sale,’” he said. “I’ll make a cash contribution instead, but I don’t want a thing gotten rid of—not a thing!”

  He was firm, but not angry. Neither was she. They knew each other well. “What, not even—not even,” she groped, came up with several articles of old-fashioned look, “not even these, for goodness’ sake? When was the last time you wore silk socks?—And besides, what cash?” She looked at him with affectionate impatience.

  “Never you mind about that, it will be forthcoming when needed; no, not a thing. These old clothes, I can wear around the mill or the garden.”

  The room and the rest of its contents were neither new nor rich, but everything held and released the glow of things well made and well taken care of: paneled walls, furniture, bedspread and quilts. Stained-glass windows. Hand-crafted chandelier. Even the shade on the bedside lamp, and the bindings of the books.

  “Ohhh, I suppose—” Her voice trailed off, then was renewed as she lifted her hands. “And the old stockings, will you wear them around the mill and the garden? One is red and—why, they don’t even match! But, I suppose—”

  They had had this scene before. She always lost. And she always tried again. “Look at them! I could almost swear that they’ve shrunk.—Anklets,” she murmured, prepared to drop them, and the subject, too.

  “Never mind,” he said, also prepared to end it, but not for a few words more. “Never mind. I like things the way they are. No, don’t throw away a thing. Do I tell you to throw away stuff in the kitchen?”

  She shook her head. “No, you don’t. And that’s one reason we don’t have to apply for food stamps. Yes, I know. I know all about it. Well. Be on about your business, you—you old master craftsman, you! Going to the kiln?” she asked, as he, with a final grunt, moved toward the door.

  He tugged out his old watch, cupped and scanned it. “No, kiln won’t be ready for over an hour.” His rugged face split into a smile. “Man there waiting impatiently, even though I told him they’d have to cool, for gosh sake! ‘I’ve come five hundred miles,’ he says, ‘and I’m not leaving without them soup bowls!’”

  The gray-haired woman closed the closet door. “Well, I’m glad there are still some people who want them, big as they are. How long did it take the last batch to sell?” He did not answer, and she did not expect he would. So, “Find out how Sister Ferguson’s arthritis is this morning” were her last words as he left.

  A man of his own decade walked slowly along the graveled path, looked up now, and greeted him as “Brother Johnson.”

  “The gravel isn’t here ‘just for fancy,’ as the Pennsylvania Dutch put it, no, Brother Washburne. Done with forethought. No mud in the springtime, no dust in the summertime. That is the way we work, here at the Dawnside Place. Forethought is an important Dawnside principle. Sister Johnson thinks the soup bowls may be too big for you,” he said, with a slight quirk of his mouth.

  Mr. Washburne’s heavy face sagged. “Too big for me? Why, a soup bowl can’t be too big, way I look at it!”

  “Way I look at it, too—”

  “When I want a bowl of soup, I want a bowl of it! Not a cup … Keep this place real neat, Brother, I see. Not a fallen leaf, so much as.”

  As they walked through the grounds, so carefully taken care of that a stranger might have thought that all the trees and shrubs had been hand-planted instead of—for a large part—being the carefully preserved original plant-cover of the landscape, Brother Johnson explained that not even a leaf was suffered to wither uselessly at the Dawnside Place, nor were they burned—so wasteful! Some went directly into the compost heap and some went there indirectly, after having been of service in the barn. That way Dawnside had to plant less grass for hay and could devote the land saved to other crops. No, of course the cows and goats did not eat leaves; the leaves were spread on the floors of their stalls. There was no “spoiled hay” at Dawnside.

  “Nor much of anything else,” he added.

  Mr. Washburne was impressed. “Department of Agriculture comes up with some good ideas, sometimes,” he said.

  But that was the wrong thing to have said.

  The Department of Agriculture had absolutely nothing to do with it, the Master Craftsman of Dawnside Place told him, using a good degree of emphasis. Employing fallen leaves for other purposes was just plain old-fashioned common sense and American knowhow. “Department of Agriculture! Federal Government! People expect the government to do everything for them these days—the Federal Government, I mean. What’s going to become of the good old American get-up-and-go, is what I’d like to know?”

  Mr. Washburne said that he agreed with him a hundred percent.

  “We don’t expect some government bureau to do anything for us that we can do for ourselves,” Brother Johnson swept on. “Oh, this is not one of your so-called art colonies, subsidized and federalized, no, not one of your factory-in-the-field kind of farms, either! Never let anyone do for you what you can do for yourself—oh, that’s a very important Dawnside principle, Brother Washburne. Create your own beauty by your own honest toil is our motto. ‘Whatsoever thy hands find to do, do it with thy might’—can’t improve on that, can you now?”

  Mr. Washburne said that he agreed with him a hundred percent.

  “No!” cried the Master Craftsman of the Dawnside Place. “Elbert Hubbard showed us the way. The Shakers had already showed him the way. We raise our own food here—well, almost all our own food. We mostly make all our own clothes here. We make all our own furniture, we dip our own candles, we print our books on presses we have made ourselves, and we make our own pottery and glassware and paper. Some is wallpaper. I lost track of how many prizes our hand-printed wallpaper has won. And some is high-quality paper for our hand-printed books. We cast our own type and do our own engraving and coloring and binding and make our own cardboard and cartons for shipping and—”

  Mr. Washburne, whose head had drooped slightly, now said that they were certainly beautiful books, for sure. “Wished I could afford to buy some. And some of your other beautiful stuff, too. Your stuff is kind of expensive, though—oh, mind you, not that I don’t mean to imply, uh, why they are certainly worth every penny of it, and I don’t begrudge the price of them soup plates which I’ve been saving up for, oh, two years now.—Say, how are you folks set
up as a business here?” he asked, showing a slight embarrassment and a desire to change the subject.

  They were set up as a corporation like any other corporation, the Dawnside leader explained. Receiving certainly no favors as such from the Federal Government. “We craftsmen and craftswomen hold all our stock ourselves, and I am merely the first among equals, as Chairman of the Board of Directors.”

  Mr. Washburne asked, “How’s business?”

  There was a brief silence. “Slow,” said the Chairman of the Board. “Yes. Business is slow right now. Taxes are too high. People don’t have the money to pay for quality right now.” Nothing was said for a while. Presently they came to a low building of handpressed brick and unpainted timbers; it too had stained-glass windows of birds and flowers and plants.

  “I’ll just step into the office for a minute,” said the Master Craftsman.

  Mr. Washburne said he’d wait outside and enjoy the air. A large automobile drove up to a halt and two grown-up people and two small children peered out of the windows. “Say, what is this place?” the man asked.

  Mr. Washburne straightened up in his seat on the handfashioned bench. “Why, this is the famous Dawnside Place,” he said.

  The woman gave a sort of gasp of surprise. “Oh, is this the famous Dawnside Place?” she exclaimed. “Why, I heard about this place when I was just a little girl!”

  “I want a hamburger,” said a child.

  “I want French fries,” said the other child.

  “Say, I thought they’d gone out of business,” the man said. Mr. Washburne laughed at the very idea. “Yeah, sure, I heard they’d gone out of business. Or were going out of business. All that old-fashioned junk they make. Sure. I heard—”

  “—hamburger—”

  “—French fries—”

  The woman asked if they served food here. Mr. Washburne nodded. At the Guest Table, he said. Three times a day. Not now, though. And he was in the midst of advising them that they wait around when the large automobile took off at high speed and was gone in a flurry of gravel and exhaust smoke.