The Call of Nature

For the customers of the Nashoba pizza parlor, the lack of public rest rooms was like the scarcity of indoor plumbing in the old town of Nashoba. Mary whirled the car into the weedy parking lot and zoomed to a stop, and Homer leaped out and plunged into the wilderness.

It was not a pretty wilderness, but a wasteland. Homer shoved hastily through a thicket of burdock, collecting burrs on the sleeves of his sweater, and headed for a stand of dead trees. But even here the protective cover was too sparse for Homer’s modesty, which was more hoity-toity than one might have expected in a burly, bewhiskered male of the species, six feet, six inches tall. Homer pushed on and broke through the wasteland at last into a glade screened by willow trees. It was perfect. Homer relieved himself gratefully, then looked around as he zipped up his pants, aware of something odd about the place, a kind of frowsy dignity.

Then he saw the reason. A tall stone stood at one side of the glade, half-overgrown with Virginia creeper. It did not look like a glacial boulder. Ankle-deep in brambles, Homer pulled aside the crimson leaves. He was not surprised to find an inscription neatly carved on the face of the granite. The letters were encrusted with moss and lichen, but he could make out a pair of crossed swords, the mark of a soldier’s grave.

Back in the parking lot, he found Mary napping in the backseat. “Come on,” he said, giving her a shake. “You’ve got to see this.”

She reared up sleepily and said, “Do I have to?”

“Yes, you have to.”

Grumpily, she waded after him through the burdock and the dead trees. Homer lifted aside the trailing curtains of willow and led her into the glade. Then she, too, was entranced by the gravestone. She fumbled for her glasses and peered at the inscription. “Lieutenant,” she murmured. “Lieutenant somebody. Wait a sec. I have it—‘Lieutenant James Jackson Shaw.’ That’s what it says.”

“Strange, don’t you think? A soldier buried here all by himself?”

Homer’s instinctive nosiness was fully aroused. On the way back to the parking lot, he jerked open the door of a shed attached to the back of the pizza parlor and poked around inside. When Mary pulled firmly on his shirttail, he said, “No, no, wait.” Reaching past a spade with a broken handle and a snaggletoothed rake, he murmured, “My God.”

It was a masterpiece. Behind the broken tools stood a piece of upright furniture carved with fruit and flowers. A noble pair of robed and bearded men supported a classical pediment.

Mary whispered, “What is it?” and Homer said, “Why is it here?”

Dreamily, they walked around the building and opened the door of Nashoba Pizza, hoping the girl behind the counter would stop being bitchy long enough to tell them about the gravestone and the beautiful object in the shed.

“Oh, hi, there,” she said with a radiant smile. “What can I do for you this fine morning? Did you ever see such a day? Sunshine and blue sky? All’s well with the world.” The girl laughed. “More or less, I guess.”

They gaped at her. What had happened to her bitchiness? Had there been a religious conversion? A flash of revelation?

“Oh, the usual, I guess,” said Mary, sitting down on a stool and glancing doubtfully at Homer.

“Right, the usual,” said Homer. “Me, too.”

“I’m sorry,” said the no-longer-bitchy girl, “but I don’t know what you usually order.” She laughed again. “Oh, it was my sister. You must have been ordering from my sister, Jane.”

“No, no, it was you,” said Homer, dumbfounded.

“Yes, it certainly was,” said Mary. But then her head cleared. “You mean you and your sister are—”

“Twins. She’s Jane Spratt; I’m Jean.” Jean smiled and nodded at the oddly shaped cupboard that rose high against the wall behind the counter. They had noticed it before. It was bedecked with little shelves, a tiny mirror, and a host of frolicsome curlicues. Jean reached behind a bottle of catsup and extracted a picture. “You see? It runs in the family.”

They had seen this, too, the faded photograph of two identical men in bowler hats standing with arms akimbo in front of a hot-air balloon.

In Homer’s cross-eyed vision, everything began to double. There were two bowler hats, two bottles of catsup, two identical young women. “You mean they were twins just like you?

Mary, too, was dazzled. “You mean twins run in the family?”

“Right.” Jean looked fondly at the photograph. “One of these guys was our great-great-great-grandfather, only we don’t know which. Now tell me”—Jean lifted a lid of the cupboard, revealing a keyboard, then pumped a pedal with one foot and ran her fingers up and down the yellow keys—“what is your usual, exactly?”