Steeplechase (17 page)

Dickie winked at Eben. “Sorry, boys, but I ain't doing this for nothing. You got to pay me. A few leftover bits and pieces of these fine chestnut boards, that's all I want. Say, Reverend Gideon, there was a little birdie whispered something in my ear.”

“Never mind little birdies,” said Josiah, grinning at him.

“Oh, but there was two little birdies. One birdie told me what you intend to manufacture with this here wood.”

Josiah picked up a board and shifted his hands until it balanced. “What did the other birdie say?”

Dickie laughed so hard, he had to wipe his face with his neckerchief. “It was pastor's wife. Miz Biddle says there won't never be another steeple in the town of Nashoba.”

Dickie went away chuckling. Josiah smiled at Eben and lifted his board to the top of a stack. Eben picked up a wood chip, tossed it high, caught it in his hat, and said, “Sir, I could draw you a pretty fair steeple.”

Their Masterpiece

N
o good, Jack,” said Jake, lifting the curtain and coming out of the darkness with a dripping glass plate. “Balloon, she was whipping along too fast.”

The aerial view of Concord's Milldam was a blur. “Too bad, Jake,” said Jack.

Jake ducked back into the darkness, dropping the curtain behind him. Five minutes later, he came out with another plate in his hand and a broad smile on his face. “Looky here, Jack,” he said, holding it up in the sunlight.

Jack gazed at it with his artist's eye. “Truly beauteous, Jake. What town is that? I forget.”

“That there's Nashoba, Jack. See the big tree stump? Remember that there stump?”

“I sure do, Jake. Biggest old stump I ever beheld.”

Jake took back the plate and looked at it proudly. “This here's our masterpiece, Jack. We got to spread it around.”

“Mayors and selectmen, they got to see it, Jake. City councillors and so on. They take one look, they'll all want aerial views of their own premises, courtesy of Jack and Jacob Spratt.”

“What about newspapers, Jack?
Evening Transcript? Boston Advertiser?
Whoopsie, I forgot. This here's a photograph.”

“I'll copy it, Jake. An engraving. Newspapers, they'll print an engraving.”

Jake laughed and slapped his brother on the back. It was clear that the inborn talents of the Spratt brothers—Jake's mechanical genius and Jack's nimble artistic fingers—were complementing each other once again.

It took Jack a week to turn the darks and lights of Jake's masterful photograph into spidery cross-hatchings. Then it was another week before the masterpiece of the Spratt brothers appeared on the front page of the
Boston Evening Transcript
, under the heading,
ASTONISHING AERIAL VIEW.

The roof and steeple of the Nashoba church showed clearly in the engraving and so did the burying ground, with the great white disk of the fallen tree among the tombstones.

The
Transcript
was an evening paper. Not till midafternoon did a newsboy hustle down Charles Street and toss a copy on the doorstep of number 164. The thump was a signal for the master of the house to hurry downstairs from his study, throw open the door, pick up the paper, and learn, to his horror, of the death by willful murder of his favorite chestnut tree. With an exclamation of disgust, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, medical man, poet, raconteur, and worshiper of gigantic trees, stared at the engraved view of the lopped stump in the Nashoba burying ground.

The atrocity called for action. Dr. Holmes ran upstairs, sat down at his desk, moved aside his microscope, sharpened his pen, and dipped it in the inkwell. At once, the furious lines came freely, as if flung down by themselves. Stanza after savage stanza streamed out of his pen in perfect alternating beats of four and three.

Within the hour, the deed was done. Smiling at the facility of his genius, Holmes waited only a moment for the ink to dry. Then he folded his rhymed revenge upon the slayer of the great Nashoba chestnut and thrust it into an envelope addressed to “Josephus Gill, Editor,
Boston Evening Transcript.
” Josephus was an old friend. He would not cavil at this unasked-for submission from a celebrated contributor. The clever verses would appear within the week, doubtless on the very first page.

Far away among the outlying villages to the west, delivery of the
Transcript
was delayed, since it had to be carried by railroad. At the depot in Concord, it was tossed out of the mail car into a waiting wagon. Newsboys snatched up bundles for delivery to Cutler's store on the Milldam and to individual subscribers on Main Street and all the way out the North Road. Bundles destined for Carlisle, Acton, and Nashoba went by coach.

Therefore, the Nashoba parsonage did not receive a copy of the paper that had so scandalized Dr. Holmes until the next morning. Horatio Biddle unfolded the paper at the breakfast table and gasped at the masterpiece of the brothers Spratt. There it was in black and white, their aerial view of the Nashoba churchyard. The glaring round spot in the center was the stump of the murdered tree.

NOW

Bedford Steeples

I do not propose to discuss here the movements that led to the separation.… Much there was that was painful.

—Bedford memoir, 1879

A Great Tidal Wave

T
here were two old Protestant churches in the town of Bedford. Mary and Homer visited both. Neither of the churches disgorged any morsels of controversial (or perhaps even scandalous) history, but it was an interesting day on the whole.

In the Congregational church, nobody was on hand but a middle-aged man pushing a trolley of folding chairs. “How do you do?” he said graciously, pulling the trolley to a stop with a thudding of chair against chair. “Name's Baker, church sexton.”

“How do you do, Mr. Baker,” said Homer. “We're Mary and Homer Kelly. We're looking into the histories of churches around here.”

“Well, I'm sorry nobody's around but me,” said the sexton.

“Perhaps, Mr. Baker,” said Homer, “you're a history buff yourself?”

The sexton shook his head. “Sorry, folks. My spiritual home is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Mary said thank you, and so did Homer, but he was disappointed. How could he write the damned book without more information of a fairly sizzling nature? “Mr. Baker,” he said, refusing to give up, “I don't suppose you know whether this church had a connection with the poet Oliver Wendell Holmes?” The sexton looked blank. “Or a big tree of some sort?” Mr. Baker shook his head. “Or a lost church? Did you ever hear a story about a lost church in the town of Bedford?”

“Come to think of it,” said Mr. Baker, “I saw one just last week.”

“You did!” said Mary.

“Where?” said Homer.

“You shoulda been there. Earth opened up and swallowed it right before my eyes.”

Homer's face fell. Mary grinned politely and said, “Oh sure.”

“Say, Mr. Kelly,” said the sexton, “you're not the writer, are you? Did you write that book about chickens?”

“Well, yes, I did.” Homer was pleased as usual, but in his wife's presence, he had to avoid vainglory. “You've read it? My
Hen and Chicks?
”

“Well, no, but I just happen to raise a little poultry myself, Plymouth Rocks mostly. I guess I don't need another how-to book.”

“Oh, Mr. Baker,” said Mary quickly, “may we help ourselves to some of these nice pamphlets?”

The other Protestant church in Bedford was only a few blocks away. They stood on the lawn, staring up at the tall, bluff facade of Bedford's First Parish, a Unitarian house of worship.

“Handsome,” said Homer.

“They're all handsome,” said Mary.

This time, they were met by an old gentleman in whiskers who introduced himself as Robert Tucket. “But please, dear people, call me Bob.”

“Well, good, Bob. My name's Homer. This is my wife, Mary.” Then Homer added ignobly, hoping his name might ring a bell, “Kelly, that is. We're Mary and Homer Kelly.”

Ah! It did! Bob looked dazzled. His whiskers trembled with awe as he stuttered, “You're not—”

Mary stuck an elbow in Homer's side, but he couldn't help grinning and saying smugly, “Well, yes, I guess I am.”

“My God, I never thought I'd have the honor of meeting you in person.”

Homer would have said, Aw, shucks, but it was soon apparent that Bob had an entirely different great man in mind.

“That hundred-yard dash back in '65? End of fourth quarter, Scranton a goal behind, then, glory be!” Bob raised his hands in ecstasy.

There was a bewildered pause, and then Mary said dryly, “I think, Bob, you're talking about Harry Kelly. It was Harry who was the football star, not Homer.”

“Oh my God, excuse me.”

But after delivering this crushing blow, Bob turned out to be a knowledgeable tour guide. He led them into every corner of the elegantly appointed church and explained its early history in elaborate detail, precisely quoting bits and pieces of significant sermons.

Once again, it was the same old story. The original eighteenth-century parish had split in two when the Unitarian heresy came along to shock the orthodox with its strange notions, while the adherents of Calvinism insisted on the old root-and-branch doctrines of divine predestination, human depravity, limited atonement, visible saints, and irresistible grace—and therefore there were now two church steeples in the town of Bedford.

“Which side kept the original building?” asked Homer, flipping over a page of his notebook.

“We did,” said Bob. “Congregationalists, they moved down the street.”

“I see,” said Homer. “How—um—do the two congregations get along now?” Hopefully, he added, “Any lingering bitterness? Any—um—discord?”

“Of course not. Oh, in the beginning, sure.” Bob stroked his whiskers and recited a passage by heart: “‘Much there was that was painful, but it was the result of a great tidal wave of changing opinions sweeping over this whole region.' I mean, that's the way they saw it.”

“‘A great tidal wave,' of course,” said Mary. “Homer knows all about that kind of thing, don't you, Homer?”

“You see, I wrote a book all about it,” said Homer, eager to brag at last.

“No kidding,” said Bob. In the vestry, he swept up a heap of pamphlets and thrust them at Homer. “I just happen to have written some of these myself. Take them with my compliments.”

The Knitting Ministry

H
omer took the wheel on the way back to Concord while Mary riffled through the papers in her lap. To her surprise, they turned out to be as revealing of the nature of the two Bedford churches as their ancient histories. She was fascinated. “You know what, Homer, this is what we've been looking for all the time. Here they are, these two congregations, naked and exposed.”

“Naked!” Homer glanced quickly at the glossy pamphlets and the stapled sheaves of green and pink paper. “You don't mean—”

“Oh, Homer, don't be disgusting. I mean they display the attitudes of the two congregations, their points of view, their whole entire—”

“Overarching philosophical turns of mind?”

“Well, I suppose so. Anyway, they're just so typical and revealing. Here they are, these two congregations of good people, equally the spiritual descendants of the Puritan fathers, both of them publicly displaying their inmost churchly hearts and souls, warts and all. Listen to this, Homer. Guess which one this is.”

Mary sifted through the photocopies and read from a pink list. “‘Learning God's good news. Prayer concerns and joys. Please remember these people in your daily prayers. Make music with the Lord. Bible Sunday. Moms' Book Group. The Knitting Ministry.'” Mary paused and held up a picture. “Look at all these happy people with their casseroles and paper napkins and balloons. It's a family church supper. Isn't it nice? Okay, which church is it?”

Homer glanced at the photograph. “They look to me like good, devoted, hardworking Congregationalists. Prayer and God and the Bible and family values front and center, right?”

“Are you sure? All right, here's the other one.” Mary plucked out another list. “‘Globalization study. Urban ministry. Interfaith couples. A hearty welcome to lesbians and gays. A just economic community. Multicultural leadership training. Singing as an act of compassion. Wellness Institute. Forum on the arts. Spirituality and justice. Intergenerational potluck and circle dancing.'”

“Well, that's easy.” Homer laughed. “Speaking as a compassionate old multicultural circle dancer myself, I'd say they're a bunch of heretical Unitarians.”

“Of course they are. But isn't it strange—they're both such a long way from their original beliefs, whether it was the single nature of God or the doctrine of original sin. So tell me, which great spiritual leader is whirling faster in his grave, Jonathan Edwards or Ezra Ripley?”