Woodsburner (23 page)

The stagecoaches bound for Cambridge slowed as they passed through Adams Square, horses sniffing the sugary air, passengers craning their necks to view the curious spectacle. The molasses ran in great, heavy gobs, soaking Caleb's shirt until it clung to his forearms like ill-fitting skin. It ran down his legs, into his shoes, pooled on the dirt at the base of the church steps. It dripped in wispy filaments. Long, spidery threads stuck to his face and landed in his hair, and it was not long before the sweetness attracted a host of eager insects. Bees and wasps flew straight into the amber globs and stuck fast, immobilized by their greed. Caleb saw the lesson in this.

He surreptitiously ran his finger over the face of the angel Gabriel, traced the length of his trumpet, and then slipped the gobbet of molasses into his mouth. It was a small transgression, one in a series he had committed this afternoon in the service of a noble purpose. Caleb looked at the angel seated on the golden cloud, and he held the sweet glob on his tongue until it melted and
ran along the insides of his teeth, stinging his molars. He knew then that, were anyone to ask him when he had decided to follow his father into the ministry, he would be able to identify the exact moment. How could such artistry, such craftsmanship, such skill in transport and installation, such perfection—how could any of this exist were it not for the existence of God? If heaven held but a portion of the intense color, if its sweetness were only half as cloying, if the ingenuity of angels came close to the genius before him, then it was indeed a destination to be pursued above all others. It made him happy to think that his mother waited in so marvelous a place, and he wondered if she would truly want to return to them.

Caleb looked at the bottom panes waiting to be installed first. They depicted the fallen, damned to the flames, preyed upon by serpents and insects, skeletal arms raised in vain supplication, mouths agape in fleshless astonishment. Caleb judged these panes to be the most realistic, and he had good reason. He could not know if the window's portrait of heaven was accurate, but he had once found a decayed body when he was just a boy, and he knew death's true visage. A year after his mother's passing, he had stumbled upon the body while walking in the woods on a bright spring afternoon. Beneath the trunk of a fallen tree he saw the toe of a boot and a flattened pants leg. Nearby lay a hatchet, its blade rusted, its long handle speckled with blue paint. Until that moment he had seen bodies only at wakes, lying in silk-lined coffins or on pillows of hay in simple pine boxes, but they had been prepared for viewing, the first patina of death wiped away, washed and dressed as if they had never been part of this world but were just passing through. The body he had found in the woods was a different thing altogether. He had tried to roll away the log hiding the dead man's face, but the wood no longer owned the hardness of its shape; it came apart in spongy handfuls. He pulled on the dead man's boot, felt something give way with a slippery pop,
felt the hard outline of bone and little else. Caleb stepped to the other end of the log and rolled away a sizable chunk. Underneath, he found a wide-brimmed hat, a faded blue shirt, and a flattened, outstretched arm, the white bones poking through the frayed fingers of a glove. He took a closer look. It was not a glove at all but the hand's empty skin, greasy leather no longer able to cover its frame. Caleb hesitated, then lifted the black brim of the hat.

From behind the mask of leather, the white skull stared back at him. A fat beetle pushed its way up through the dirt in one of the eye sockets, paused as if confused to find itself exposed, then waddled down over the shirt and entered the log resting on the body. A few seconds later, the beetle reemerged and crawled beneath the shirt. Caleb saw that scores of insects were shuttling back and forth, inhabiting wood, flesh, and soil indiscriminately. He did not think that there were insects in heaven, but he suddenly feared for his mother. He remembered what his father had told him—that one day the dead would triumphantly arise—and he was terrified at the thought that he might encounter this rotted body alive again and walking among them. Caleb knew that he needed to save it from further desecration. He clawed at the soft wood with his bare hands until he could not tell where the tree ended and the desiccated flesh began. He seized the old hatchet and swung wildly at the decaying log, exposing more of the human remains beneath. Caleb saw that flesh and wood had melded together, but he refused to believe it possible that God would allow a man to become as common to the earth as a fallen tree. He fled the woods in a panic and was nearly home before he realized that he was still clutching the rusted hatchet and that it had shed flakes of blue paint over his palms.

Caleb later told his father what he had found, and Marcus Dowdy explained that his discovery was neither evidence of God's callousness nor a sign that man was a soulless portion of nature.

“My son, I am certain the body was that of a heathen,” Marcus explained. “The native tribes of this land believe themselves one with the soil, so it is only to be expected that when death comes to them it comes as commonly as it does to the animals of the field. God would never allow a true Christian to arrive at so inglorious an end.”

There was, however, one detail about the dead body in the woods that Caleb had not shared with his father, because he feared it would have marred his father's explanation and, worse, jeopardized his mother's peaceful abidance. Around the neck of the dead man had hung a small leather wallet, and stamped into the decaying leather was a simple cross. Caleb had seen Catholic scapulars before, dangling from the scrawny necks of the superstitious Irish, and he knew it contained a small scrap of paper, a fragment of the Bible. There was no doubt in his mind that the rotting body had once housed a Christian soul.

Caleb thought of his father's explanation as he continued to scrape molasses from a pane of bright blue sky. The Judgment Day panes would be the brightest, most colorful of all: brilliant reds and yellows, great fugues of intertwined flames, arms belatedly outstretched for forgiveness lost. The sunlight pouring through these sections would make those who stood before them feel as though they were immersed in a burning sea. Caleb grew excited as he thought about the effect, the very air palpably stained with the brilliant crimson and gold of damnation. In his enthusiasm, he ran two fingers over the clouds pushing the ships of the faithful to America's shore. He raked a furrow through the dark molasses, contemplating the window's perfection, but as he placed dripping fingertips reverently onto his tongue something caught his eye. He looked closer at the stained-glass clouds, doubted, and looked again.

Alongside one of the lead seams that joined the colorful fragments, a web of fissures spread through the glass. A flaw! Caleb
grabbed the rag and rubbed at the square of glass to see if the crack had spread. It seemed impossible that any damage could have occurred during shipment. The molasses was so thick that it would have forgiven even the harshest seas. Caleb leaned in close to examine the pane, and slowly the realization settled in. The cracks must have occurred in the assembly of the window. Caleb found where the glazier, too lazy to replace the broken piece, had tried to cover the mistake with an extra layer of lead along the seam. It was hardly noticeable, but Caleb would forever know that there was a flaw hidden by another flaw, the second sin greater than the first. When the sun shone through the window, he would know that the bright sparkle in the clouds was the effect of cracks acting as a prism. It was unforgivable. Unlike his father, who doled out absolution like a man drunk with his own munificence, Caleb thought that some things, laziness among them, were inexcusable.

Caleb saw a bee struggling in the molasses on the glass, and he pressed his thumb into the syrup and squashed the imprisoned insect. He could see that in the years to come the great window of the Court Street Church would be a sign to him. Where others saw the sparkling brilliance of Providence, Caleb would see man's failure. It was the duty of every son to improve upon his father's deeds, Caleb thought, and though he knew his father was a good man, he thought him too lenient, too forgiving. Caleb knew that it would fall to him to root out and squash the flaws of the New World, lest the new be tainted by the degradations of the old. He had a great task before him. He was suddenly proud and happy and thankful, gravely thankful, for having been born in America, unburdened by the complacency of the past; there was simply too much work to be done.

Truth be told, it is a glorious spectacle, if one can part the burning from the burned. This is what comes to Henry as he appraises the destruction from the top of Fair Haven Hill. In the midst of terrific loss, he thinks, there is yet beauty to celebrate, for nature is never chapfallen. He feels life return to his spent legs, feels the cramped tingling subside, and he pushes himself to his feet. He is invigorated by the thought that he may find means to recuperate this day; the fire is a wonder to behold, and he is almost sorry that he alone is present to appreciate the awful force he has unleashed.

He skids sideways down the hill to be closer to the heat and smoke. The way is awkward and steep, and he stumbles, boot heels braking his descent, plowing up small stones like arrowheads and shallow, spidery roots. Halfway to the bottom he stops, crouches on the slope, and listens to the fire, trying to decipher its brute, rapacious language. He reckons the flames are distant by two hundred yards or so, close enough to reach Fair Haven Hill before help arrives. But Henry is no longer panicked by this possibility. He has stopped hoping that the woods might be saved. He has given up denying the truth of what has followed from his hand. He decides instead that he must endeavor to make the most of his regret; it is the only lesson to be taken from the tragedy. He tells himself that, henceforth, he will no longer turn from guilt; he will pull regret to his core, feel it deeply, and be happy for it.

Though he so often courts solitude, right now he would gladly welcome the company of Edward, or Waldo, or Isaac, or some beautiful specimen of Young America, that he might demonstrate to another how the bright orange flames mimic autumn's vibrant decay, how swirling cinders pay homage to celestial majesties, how the fire's roar echoes the flying tumult of the cataract. To be here in the final moments of the woods is consolation and privilege. The fire is close enough for Henry to hear its labored grumblings, feel its muted thunder against his breastbone, and it comes in waves, a slow throbbing, like the dying pulse of a giant. Henry squats lower, wraps his arms around his knees, and wonders at the beauty of the flames.

And then he hears something else, an exhalation issuing from the trees like an angry whisper, and the sound forms itself into a word, clear and distinct and impossible:
woodsburner
. The accusation wakes Henry from his reverie. He reels from the slap, bracing himself on backward-flung arms, then scrambles to his feet and peers into the shrubs nearby to see if someone is there, hiding from the flames. Henry holds a finger to his lips—on occasion he has caught himself muttering out loud when he is alone—but still he hears it, a voice begotten by the wind, a haunting in his ears:
woodsburner, woodsburner, woodsburner
. He turns and scrambles back up Fair Haven Hill with long, low strides, elbows fluttering, and the words pursue him. He glances over his shoulder, expecting to see his mysterious accuser a few steps behind.

When he reaches the crest, Henry puts his hands over his ears and shuts his eyes and tries to ignore what he has heard. He revisits the many insignificant causes that have brought him to this moment, but his thoughts cannot drown out the hissing indictment from the woods. He presses his palms hard against his head until his ears make their own roar. He sits, hunched forward, hands at his ears, and searches for a way that he might parcel out
responsibility for what has happened—Edward wanted a chowder, the shoemaker at the river gave them matches, the woods were unusually dry, the wind unusually strong—and next his thoughts alight upon someone else who might shoulder a portion of the guilt, a writer he met a year and a half earlier, then newly arrived in Concord: Nathaniel Hawthorne.