17

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities.

“Life Without Principle”

 

The battle was joined. The news was out.

DEVELOPER EYES
HIGH SCHOOL PROPERTY

announced the Concord Journal. And there was a subheading:

Grandison Seeks
Zoning Change

The land in question lay still. The backhoe was parked at the edge of the lacrosse field, awaiting the ultimate decision of the town. Crows cawed in the tops of the white pines and flapped their black wings, but they could not call a meeting of protest. A mockingbird sang all day long, warbling and twittering, composing impulsive arias and recitatives, but it could make no enduring claim to the dead tree on which it was perched. And the red-tailed hawk that glided above the high school and soared over Route 2, gazing down at the sweet-rocket blooming pink and white on the edge of the woods, had no inherited deed of ownership, no binding contract guaranteeing possession to its heirs and assigns forever.

The human citizens of Concord were taking sides. Feeling ran especially high in the breasts of all the Thoreauvians, who had fought the good fight so many times before. They were worn out. They couldn’t believe they were in for another battle.

“Look,” said Oliver Fry, chivying them unmercifully, urging them to action, “we’ve got to do something.”

“But it’s hopeless,” said his old friend Elizabeth Bates. “How many times can you fight City Hall?”

Other people in town were tired, too. They didn’t want to hear another word about Henry Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Like Oliver’s daughter, Hope, they were sick of the way those Thoreau people were always hauling out their dead heroes, displaying the mummified bodies in their moldering greatcoats, propping up the grinning skulls. This was the present, it was here and now, they were poised on the brink of a new millennium. The nineteenth century was buried in the dust of the past.

The town was clenched like a fist. And yet there were still a lot of people who hadn’t made up their minds one way or another. After all, the matter wouldn’t come up until the special town meeting in October. It was now only the first week of July. There would be plenty of time to decide how to vote later on.

Poor Oliver Fry was suffering keenly on another count. His daughter was nursing a viper in her breast. The healthy-looking kid with the golden hair and pink cheeks, the one who had been sitting with Hope in Oliver’s very own kitchen, was Jefferson Grandison’s representative. He was the enemy.

Against his own better judgment Oliver confronted his daughter with her apostasy. “How can you talk to somebody who’s threatening to build all that garbage in Walden Woods?”

Hope was chagrined. She had hoped her father wouldn’t find out who Jack Markey was. But now Jack’s name was all over town. She put her hand to her stomach, where there was a sudden pain, and blustered back at him. “Walden Woods! It’s just a scrawny piece of land next to Route Two. Who cares what happens beside a highway? I bet it will look a lot better with Jack’s development on it than it does now. And he’s including affordable housing. You’re just being snobbish, not letting lower-income people live in Concord.”

“Affordable housing!” Oliver looked at his daughter in disbelief. “Affordable for whom? We couldn’t afford the rents they’ll be charging, I’ll tell you that right now.”

The Concord Planning Board was not surprised by the news in the Concord Journal. Chairman Roger Bland had already been consulted by Judy Bowman of the school committee.

“We’re letting them dig test holes, that’s all we’re doing,” said Judy. “But between you and me, it would be a blessing to have some money coming in right now. As it is, we’re going to cut back on the language program and slash the biology budget, and if things don’t improve, we may have to eliminate football altogether.”

“Football!” Roger was shocked. He promised to listen carefully to the Walden Green proposal when it came before the board.

At breakfast the next morning he told his wife Marjorie all about it. Marjorie was not the sort of helpmeet to give Roger sound advice, but she could be depended on to express the opinion of the town’s average citizen.

“Goodness,” said Marjorie, “a shopping mall in Walden Woods! Those conservation people aren’t going to like it.”

“They’ll talk about our historical heritage, I suppose,” said Roger. “No matter what comes up in this town, somebody fastens the word heritage to it. It’s a pain in the neck.”

“Oh, poor Roger. But of course we’re lucky to live in a place with so much history. I tell myself that every time I drive around in less fortunate places.”

“But there has to be a limit somewhere,” protested Roger.

“Oh, of course!” Marjorie stirred her coffee and added a wee dollop of cream. “I must say, those people in the Thoreau Society are just a little bit …”

“Far out?” suggested Roger boldly, and Marjorie laughed and agreed.

Far out—it was something no one would ever say about Roger Bland. Roger could be relied on to stay close to the sensible center of public opinion. He would never crawl out on some nutty limb all by himself. He walked down the narrow path in the middle of every road. His clothes walked down the middle, too, his coat lapels, his necktie, his shirt, his pants. Oh, let there be no pleating at the waist when I go out to sea! Something in Roger Bland recoiled, withdrew, shrank back from extreme positions. Unconsciously he dreaded expansiveness. There was a lid within him, controlling, calming, pressing down. It was unimaginable that any large and generous impulse would ever induce him to push up the lid and burst free, shouting “Huzzah!”

“There’s one good thing anyway,” said Roger, picking up the morning paper. “We don’t have to lift a finger to get back another piece of Walden Woods. Those Pond View people are dying off. Remember? There are only fourteen of them left.”

“And they’re terribly old, I’ll bet,” his wife said optimistically. Marjorie always looked on the bright side.

When Roger left for the office that morning, Marjorie went to the stable to set out a bucket of feed for her horse, ducking in and out quickly before Carmencita could race across the paddock and plunge at her or bite her or misbehave in some other upsetting way. That job done, she came in again and sat down at her desk to pursue her own personal good cause, her new hobby.

Marjorie had joined the recycling movement. This morning she was writing a letter to the editor of the Concord Journal, urging her fellow citizens to bring their old newspapers to the recycling area at the landfill. “And what about saving your grocery bags and using them over again next time? Save, save, recycle! (signed) Marjorie Bland, Musketaquid Road.”

Marjorie loved her recycling campaign. It was such fun. But then everything Marjorie did was fun, even her severest duties, even caring for her senile old horse and rolling the tennis court. Marjorie’s fun was the pitiful remnant of the sturdy resignation to the will of God on the part of the forefathers, who had endured without complaint death-dealing plague, hunger and privation, and savage spells of bitter winter cold.