The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [8]
On Reba’s front lawn there was a skiff planted with petunias.
Going down the west side of Wapshot Hill with the full weight of the wagon forward on the shafts the mare picked her way slowly. Beyond Reba’s there was a patch of woodland, charmingly dappled with sunlight, and this grove had on them all, even on Mr. Pincher, a happy effect as if it were some reminder of paradise—some happy authentication of the beauty of the summer countryside—for it was the kind of scene that most of them had hanging on their parlor walls and yet this was no photograph or painting through which they traveled with the spotty lights flowing over them. It was all real and they were flesh and blood.
Beyond the woods they came to Peter Covell’s place.
Peter was a farmer. He had a small cash crop—sweet corn, gladioli, butter and potatoes—and in the past he had made some money building stone walls. A powerful man of perhaps seventy with rusty tools, a collapsed barn, chickens in his kitchen, cats in his parlor, lusty and sometimes drunk and always clean-spoken, he had pulled stones out of the earth with a mare that was older than Lady and had set them together into walls that would outlive the village, whatever its destiny. Dam the river and flood it for a reservoir (this could happen) and in the summer droughts people would drive or fly—this being in the future—to see the pattern of Covell’s walls as they appeared above the receding water; or let the scrub take hold, maple saplings and horse brier, and fishermen and hunters, climbing the walls, would say that this must have been pasture once upon a time. His daughter Alice had never married, she loved the old man so, and even now on Sunday afternoons they climbed the hill hand in hand, carrying a spyglass to watch the ships in the bay. Alice raised collies. A sign hung on the house: COLLIES FOR SALE. Who wanted collies? She would have done better raising children or selling eggs.
All the unsold collies barked at the wagon as it went by.
Beyond Covells’ there was Brown’s River—a little stream or brook with a wooden bridge that set up peals of false thunder as they crossed it. On the other side of the river was the Pluzinskis’ farm—a small brown house with glass ornaments on the lightning rods and two rose trees in the front yard. The Pluzinskis were hardworking foreigners who kept to themselves although their oldest son had won a scholarship at the Academy. Their farm, rectilinear and self-contained, was the opposite of Peter Covell’s place as if, although they could not speak English, they had come much more naturally to the valley land than the old Yankee.
Beyond Pluzinskis’ the road turned to the right and they could see the handsome Greek portico of Theophilus Gates’ house. Theophilus was president of the Pocamasset Bank and Trust Company and as an advocate of probity and thrift he could be seen splitting wood in front of his house each morning before he went to work. His house was not shabby, but it needed paint, and this, like his wood splitting, was meant to put honest shabbiness above improvident show. There was a FOR SALE sign on his lawn. Theophilus had inherited from his father the public utilities of Travertine and St. Botolphs and had sold them at a great profit. On the day these negotiations were completed he came home and put the FOR SALE sign on his grass. The house, of course, was not for sale. The sign was only meant to set in motion a rumor that he had sold the utilities at a loss and to help preserve his reputation as a poor, gloomy, God-fearing and overworked man. One more thing. When Theophilus invited guests for the evening they would be expected, after supper, to go into the garden and play hide-and-go-seek.
As they passed Gates’ the ladies could see in the distance the slate roof of Honora Wapshot’s house on Boat Street. Honora would not appear to them. Honora had once been introduced to the President of the United States and wringing his hand she had said: “I come from St. Botolphs. I guess you must know where that is. They say that St. Botolphs is like a pumpkin pie. No upper crust.