49

What is the price-current of an honest man and
patriot to-day?

“Civil Disobedience”

“I’ve got the whole town to myself,” said Oliver to Ananda. “My opponent is vacationing in Nantucket. Why don’t I start my campaign?”

“Excellent,” said Ananda. “What can I do to help?”

“Write a letter for me. We’ll get out a town mailing.”

So Ananda spent a couple of days composing earnest paragraphs at the dining room table, surrounded by a gloomy sideboard, a wicker plant stand, a tarnished tea service, an iridescent art nouveau vase, and two large brown pictures of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

There were helpful interruptions by Oliver. “Hold it,” he would cry, running in with another passage from Henry Thoreau. “You’ve got to get this in.”

“Of course,” Ananda would say. “How splendid, how appropriate.”

In the end they handed the letter to Mary Kelly, who cut it in half. Then Homer got busy on the phone, rounding up signatories, a nicely balanced selection of West Concord and Concord Center citizens, old residents and young professionals, people from the temple and all the churches, a good mix of town employees, and one very special farmer.

The farmer was Paul Rivelli, whose father had come to Concord from Italy in the 1920s. Paul’s signature was so valuable, Homer buttonholed him in person at his produce stand on Bedford Street. Paul turned out to be an admirer of Oliver Fry’s, and he agreed at once. Homer brought the signature back to Oliver’s house with a sack of Paul’s early corn.

“Here,” said Homer, “this is your half. Has Ananda ever tasted corn on the cob?”

Ananda hadn’t. At suppertime he sat at the dining room table with Oliver while Hope rushed in with a platter of corn plucked from a pot of boiling water.

“You roll them in butter like this,” explained Oliver, “then sprinkle them with salt and pepper.”

“How interesting,” said Ananda politely, picking up a steaming ear.

Oliver had consumed two preprandial whiskeys. He was euphoric. “I’m going to win this election,” he said, brandishing the salt shaker. “You see if I don’t.”

“Oh, Father, how can you be so sure?” Hope sat down at her place with a thump. It was another hot day. Her face was flushed from bending over the kettle. Her feet were bare. She was wearing shorts. Her plump thighs and long calves were hidden under the table, but Ananda was aware of them. He listened to Oliver’s cocky exuberance and tried not to think about Hope’s legs. When she leaped up to run back to the kitchen for more corn, he got a good look, but when she came back he riveted his attention on Oliver’s rubicund face.

“What about the young people, Hopey dear?” said Oliver. “What about all your friends? And Ananda my boy, what’s the name of that girlfriend of yours? The one who keeps calling? Bonnie somebody? Do you think she …?”

“She is not my girlfriend,” muttered Ananda, casting an agonized glance at Hope.

“But doesn’t she work in one of those fancy stores on the Milldam? She could get after all those shopkeepers. That woman Pink, for instance.”

Ananda’s embarrassment turned to melancholy. “Alas, I fear the woman Pink is hopeless.”

Oliver beamed. In his cups he was indomitable. “Oh, my young friend, I love the way you say ‘alas.’ I haven’t heard anybody say alas for thirty or forty years.”

The phone rang. Hope leaped up to answer it, and Ananda got another look at the twinkling legs.

It was Bonnie Glover. “It’s for you,” said Hope, handing him the phone with cool fingers.

After supper Hope went grimly upstairs and opened the door to the sleeping porch. She felt terrible. She batted the hammock. A cloud of dust flew up. Climbing in, she lay on her back, her hands folded over her copy of Walden, her eyes gazing at the big hooks from which the hammock hung. Then she wrenched herself sideways and stared at the porch screens. They were black and bulging.

Languidly she opened the book and turned to the chapter called “Higher Laws.”

… the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion.

Purity and devotion! Hope was filled with bitter cynicism. How much transmuting of sensuality into purity and devotion was Ananda practicing, that eager disciple of Henry Thoreau?

Faintly from the deep well of the stairs the phone rang once again. It rang and rang. Why didn’t somebody answer it? Slowly Hope got up and pattered downstairs, expecting to hear Bonnie’s voice on the line.

It wasn’t Bonnie, it was Jo-Jo Field.

“Hope, this is Jo-Jo. How are you, dear? I’m calling on behalf of Roger Bland. I’m helping with his campaign for the opening on the board of selectmen. You know, in the special election in October.”

“Oh, right.”

“Now I know, Hopey, that your dear father is running against him. But a little bird told me you might actually be supporting Roger.”

“Well, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.”

“Of course not. But we loyal campaign workers have to busy ourselves so early. We have to collect signatures for a town mailing. Now, dear, might I read his letter over the phone? It’s not very long.”

“Well, okay, I don’t see why not.”

Roger Bland’s letter was very different from the one concocted for Oliver by Ananda Singh and Mary Kelly. Roger’s was the standard candidate’s letter, reciting his solid qualifications, his devotion to the town and its history, his concern for the preservation of its rural character, his awareness at the same time of the fiscal crisis in the commonwealth, affecting all the cities and towns in Massachusetts. It was a time, said Roger’s letter, when state support for local needs was at rock bottom. Thus it was a time for imaginative responses to modern pressures. Roger’s supporters too quoted Henry Thoreau—oh, that was clever of them, thought Hope—“Alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices.”

“So you see, Hope, dear,” said Jo-Jo, “it’s really the same things your father stands for, but with—forgive me, dear—just a bit more practicality. We feel Roger will accomplish more in the long run, if you see what I mean.”

“Oh, yes, I see.”

“Now, to get to the point,” said Jo-Jo, suspecting that Hope’s resistance was softening, “we just wondered if by any chance you would lend your name to the others.” Swiftly Jo-Jo ran through the list of highly respected Concord citizens who had already agreed to sign Roger’s letter.

There was a pause. Hope thought it over. Actually she wasn’t thinking of the different points of view of the two candidates. She wasn’t even thinking of her father. She was thinking angrily about Ananda Singh. “Well, okay, I guess so.”

“You darling! You’re sure now? We can really use your name?”

“Why not?” said Hope, recklessly burning all her bridges, taking up a sledgehammer to destroy those made of stone, tearing apart with savage fingernails the cobweb threads she had flung out into empty air.