The Man in the Woods Read online

  “I think the cops have kind of had it with me,” said Helen. “They think I’m a nut.”

  “Okay. You’re right. It was just a thought. I can go to the police for you, of course. But I need more than this. There’s a sergeant on the force, name’s Sandy Reynolds. I tutored his son for free last year. He owes me a favor. But first we have to have the location of that machine. That—what is it?—Thurber. And before we even think of doing that, I have to know you’re safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Safe,” repeated Mr. Bro. “Let’s see what we know. We know this guy has an education. He knows how to punctuate beautifully. He whistles, but not just tootleydo. He whistles like James Galway. You know who James Galway is?”

  “Of course,” said Helen. “Irish flutist. Dad took me to his concert in Boston last April.”

  “Good for you,” said Mr. Bro. “And you know he uses a typewriter so old and so unusual there are only two others known in the world. Was there a picture of this Thurber in Uncle Max’s book?”

  “Yes. It looked more like a funny old … well, sort of like a funny old harpsichord or carpenter’s machine. It’s big. About as high as this desk. And it has lots of wooden knobs and rollers—”

  “Rickety? Delicate?”

  “I think so.”

  “Then it probably hasn’t been moved. It’s likely it’s still in its original location because it’s in working order,” said Mr. Bro, “and moving it would almost certainly have broken it. Now, you say the tip-off note was put in the squad car around six o’clock? On the corner of Wharf and Broad?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was up in the woods an hour before. He’d have to get out of the woods … somehow get down to Wharf Street in about forty-five minutes. Not much time. My guess is the machine is in New Bedford. Not far. The bad thing is the town is full of old warehouses, attics, houses, you name it. The good thing is he doesn’t know you saw the tip-off note in the police station, or that Pinky made a copy of it, or that you went to Uncle Max and traced it to the Thurber. So, very quietly, you must find this machine. If you do it exactly the way I tell you, he’ll never guess what you’re up to, even if he is watching you from time to time. He’ll be happy, because you’ll be good, just as he wants. Then, when you find where it is, I promise to go to Sergeant Reynolds.” Mr. Bro looked straight up for a second, smiled, and wrote something on a piece of paper. “Here,” he said. “Your official assignment is History of the Writing Machine, Civil War Era. I will assign similar papers to the rest of the class, which they will hate. Threshing machines, sewing machines, reaping machines. You will keep me informed every single step of the way. Eat this Hershey bar and pray that whoever is after you won’t find out what you’re up to while I explain how you should start.”

  Helen munched on the chocolate. While she listened to Mr. Bro, Sister Ignatius’s explanation of the power of prayer came suddenly into her mind and stuck there. It was as crisply imprinted in her memory as the word Hershey was on the candy wrapper.

  Sister Ignatius despised the religion textbook as much as Mr. Bro despised the history textbook. She taught her students that the power of good was greater than the power of evil. “However, dear children,” she added to this, “do not for one minute think the good Lord is a public official who rushes around answering every prayer like a mayor answering ten phones at once. Do not suppose that in His great wisdom He reaches down into our world like a herring fisherman with a net to pluck every fallen child from the road or every sparrow from the mouth of a fox.”

  Mr. Oliver Jenkins, curator of the New Bedford Preservation Society, was an apologetic young man with wispy hair and pink-rimmed eyes. He showed Helen the bank of files. “We’re going to have them microfilmed in a couple of weeks,” he said mournfully, “but until then …

  There were four thousand eight hundred and ninety folders, each one so dusty that on Thursday, the third day of her search, Helen brought with her a whole box of Kleenex and a Vicks inhaler. Her eye rims had taken on the same pinkish tinge that Oliver Jenkins’s had, and Aunt Stella had said she was going to take her to the doctor for her mysterious allergies. On Friday Helen brought Pinky along. He said he hated papers, city halls, and preservation societies, but Helen convinced him he didn’t have to read anything. He just had to find a paper or document with typing on it from the years 1847 to 1880.

  “Why 1880?” Pinky asked.

  “Because that’s when commercial typewriters were invented. A Thurber would have been outdated by then.”

  Pinky sat in an unforgiving oak chair under an excruciatingly dim ceiling light with file number 3020. Helen took up file number 3050, and Oliver Jenkins, in another uncomfortable oak chair, sat with them and made notes on old railroad maps and chewed to bits the stem of an unlit corncob pipe.

  Friday afternoon at four-thirty they finished.

  “I knew you wouldn’t find anything,” said Oliver Jenkins when Helen replaced the last file in the last drawer. “Sorry we couldn’t help you,” he went on. “But everybody knows there were no typewriters until about 1885. Even then it was considered bad manners to type.” He folded his railway map with care. “After the First World War, of course, everybody typed. But then, you’re not interested in the First World War.”

  “No,” said Helen as kindly as she could. She sneezed. Pinky took a sniff of the Vicks. “There was such a machine, though, and it was here in New Bedford,” she added hopefully, but feeling no hope at all.

  “All those files,” said Oliver Jenkins mournfully. “It’s not in them, is it?”

  “No,” said Helen, thinking what a good undertaker Oliver Jenkins would have been and hoping desperately he would have some other files or ideas.

  He went on grudgingly. “Of coarse I only believe in hard, factual research, but I hate to see you get a failing grade on your history paper, so I might as well suggest you go see Asa Roche.”

  Helen’s eyes lit up. Pinky asked, “Who?”

  “He’s a very old man, very old,” said Oliver Jenkins, as if he expected Asa Roche to be dead in the morning. “There aren’t many of the old people left who might still remember. He must have been born around 1890 or so. He won’t remember the Civil War days of course, but the Thurber machine would have been an unusual invention back then. Perhaps his parents or his grandparents remarked on it to him. Doubtful though.” Oliver Jenkins took one of Helen’s Kleenexes and blew his nose. “He or his sister, Elizabeth Fairchild, might be able to tell you who had the first telephone in New Bedford or the first electric lights. You might as well try, even though you’ll probably fail. You’ll have a hard time getting in the front door. Elizabeth Fairchild guards the house like a mastiff.”

  “Can’t you comb your hair just a little?” asked Helen.

  “I don’t carry a comb,” said Pinky. “What do you think I am? A greaser?”

  The old and dignified streets of colonial New Bedford sailed past the windows of the bus. Helen kept her eyes sharp, looking for 156 Orchard Street. “Besides that,” Pinky grumbled, “you’re the one with the hair around here. Not me.”

  Helen hated to think that Pinky noticed her hair. Today was a very frizzy day due to the humidity. She glanced at her well-shined shoes and then at Pinky’s sneakers, which were worn and filthy and had two different color laces. “It’s just that it’s going to be hard enough getting through Elizabeth Fairchild without giving her more to object to,” said Helen.

  “What exactly do you mean by ‘more to object to’?” Pinky asked.

  Helen checked the house numbers. They were now passing the high three hundreds.

  “Old Elizabeth might go in for shoeshines and neckties,” she said.

  “Neckties!” Pinky squealed.

  “Shush!” said Helen. “We’re on a crowded bus. In the historic district!”

  “I won’t shush,” said Pinky. “You’re worse than most females. Boy! You’ll give a man a hard time someday, Miss Brillo-head!”

  “Don�
��t you ever call me that again, Pinky Levy!” she snapped, biting off the end of every word.

  “I’ll say what I like.”

  “You apologize for that.”

  “I’m staying on the bus,” said Pinky loftily. “You can go see them yourself, Miss Shiny Shoes.”

  Helen stood up and grabbed hold of a strap. As she did, she heard a familiar voice.

  “Ellen! There you are. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you down at the Whaler in a week!”

  Helen ground her teeth. Filled with guilt, she faced Barry, who’d been sitting behind them all the time listening to every word of their conversation and hearing Pinky call her Miss Brillo-head. “I’m researching a history paper for Mr. Bro,” she said weakly.

  “Where are the Hummel drawings?” asked Barry.

  “Not finished,” said Helen. “I’ve been working on them all week.”

  “When do you expect to finish them?” Barry asked.

  “Very soon!” said Helen. She hadn’t looked at them for days. Worst of all Aunt Stella had not been able to replace the chipped Hummel figurine yet. There were no more like it at Perry and Crowe. Aunt Stella had promised to drive to a store in Fall River to buy one.

  “All right,” said Barry. “But don’t forget. Bring the figurine back when you finish the drawings.” Barry collected his books and swung himself down the steps of the bus. “Don’t forget!” he called out to her again. The bus lurched onward.

  Pinky was grinning at her. “Aunt Stella get a new statue for you yet?” he asked.

  “You know perfectly well she didn’t, Pinky Levy. I told you.”

  “Come on,” said Pinky. “We’ve got better things to do than worry about that. This looks like the right stop.”

  Helen banged the brass door knocker at the Fairchild house loudly but an eternity seemed to pass before the door was answered. Then Elizabeth Fairchild, her hair in a shining silver wave, was looking down at them with cold lapis lazuli eyes over a nose like a hatchet. She measured Pinky and Helen with some internal yardstick and asked them why it was they wanted to speak to Mr. Roche.

  “It’s for a school assignment,” Helen answered brightly, dredging up the safe and familiar reason. Adults never argued with school assignments for fear of obstructing education. “New Bedford history,” Helen added.

  “Mr. Roche is resting. He is not well,” said Mrs. Fairchild in a final sort of voice. She obviously did not care a fig for education.

  “Lizzy!” yelled a scratchy voice from somewhere inside the house. “Lizzy? Who is it?”

  Mrs. Fairchild turned. “It’s no one, Asa!” she shouted back. Then she stared severely at Helen’s plaintive face and at Pinky’s sneaker laces. “A few minutes only, then,” she said. “He tires easily.”

  Mrs. Fairchild led them to an upstairs sitting room. Asa Roche looked extremely well to Pinky and Helen.

  “Let’s have some tea, Lizzy,” he suggested when they had sat down on a hard sofa and Mrs. Fairchild had placed herself near the doorway like a sentinel. Reluctantly she agreed to tea.

  “That’ll take her some time,” cackled Asa Roche with a grin. “Minute I heard the door knocker, I hid the tea.” He ambled over to the mantelpiece and removed one of the two Staffordshire spaniels that sat on either side of a Staffordshire clock. He smiled at the sound of distant cupboards being opened and slammed shut in the search for tea. He screwed off the head of the spaniel, drank deeply from it, and put it back. “I like young people,” he said with a contented sigh. Then he added, “The doctor keeps my bottle filled for me. It’s just vodka. She can’t smell it. The reason she’s such a crotchety old hoddy-doddy is she thinks I’m going to cut her out of my will,” said Asa with another impossible cackle.

  “Asa!” Mrs. Fairchild’s angry voice floated upstairs from the kitchen. “Asa! Where did you put the tea?”

  “In with the ice cubes, dear,” Asa Roche bellowed back. In his softly crinkled pink face was the wickedness of a puppy who had swallowed a stick of butter. “Lizzy’s got a surprise coming when I snuff out,” he went on. “I didn’t make a will.”

  “Oh?” asked Helen politely.

  “Nope! Nope! No will at all. Course she’ll get my money all the same from the state of Massachusetts since she’s my only living relative. I don’t want the old fossil to starve. All her husband’s family have died out. On the other hand, I do want the last laugh, that’s all. For years she’s been feeding me boiled beef and carrots with a puddle of water in the plate and depriving me of my one comfort.” He looked at the trick bottle on the mantel. “Now, what can I do for you folks?”

  Helen glanced at Pinky and then back at Mr. Roche. “We came just on the chance that you might remember something from long, long ago,” she explained. “It goes back to Civil War times. A typewriter, or a writing machine, as it was called back then. It was made over in Worcester by a man named Thurber.”

  “I’m not that old,” said Asa Roche.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Roche. I didn’t mean that. I just thought maybe your parents or grandparents might have told you about it.”

  Asa Roche yanked on his earlobe and shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Can’t say I ever heard of such a thing.”

  Despite herself, Helen began to cry. It was hopeless.

  Asa Roche frowned at her in alarm. “I’m so sorry I can’t help you,” he said. “Here, let me get you a handkerchief.”

  “It’s all right,” said Helen. “It was just I was so hoping that …

  “I heard you tell Lizzy it was for a school paper. It must be a pretty important school paper to get you crying. Here!” he said kindly. “I’ll show you another trick. Look at this.” Asa Roche shuffled over to a desk that stood in the corner. It was an enormous mahogany secretary. The feet were gigantic lions’ paws, and snaking vines with bunches of grapes ran up the sides and inexplicably turned into lions’ heads at all four top corners. The lions’ mouths were open, lips curled in fearful wooden snarls. Beneath shaggy wooden brows the lions’ eyes were green glass.

  Asa Roche pushed the left eye of the left rear lion. Immediately a whirring and popping sound began, and out of the lion’s head rose a small wooden box, beautifully shaped with a tiny brass door in it.

  Pinky was entranced. Asa grinned at him. “The desk belonged to an old geezer called Lorenzo Fairchild,” he explained. He opened the little door. Out spilled about thirty buttons. He picked them up and put them back. Then he turned to Helen, who did not look a bit cheered up by the desk with the secret compartment. “Take one,” he said and handed a button to Helen. “It’s solid gold,” he added. “Don’t tell Lizzy, though. She’ll put me on bread and water for two weeks!”

  “Thank you, Mr. Roche,” said Helen. She slipped the button into her purse. Asa Roche was so kind. At least she would have something to string on the empty chain that had held her locket.

  “Yup,” Asa went on. “Solid gold. Came off old Lorenzo’s uniform. See him up there?” He pointed to a dark photograph of a portly, middle-aged man in a Civil War uniform. “Lorenzo was friends with Lincoln himself,” Asa went on. “Grandfather of my sister Lizzy’s husband, John Fairchild. Lincoln made him a general. If you ask me, he didn’t deserve it. He never spent a day in danger. If you ask me, he was a war profiteer. That’s all.”

  “What’s that?” asked Pinky.

  Asa Roche’s face was wreathed in smiles. “Lorenzo Fairchild found more ways to make money than six Rockefellers,” he answered. “Nobody like him before or since. Made a mint importing arms and munitions from Great Britain during the Civil War. He was in whaling first, of course. Then, when they discovered oil in Pennsylvania, why, he went and invented a way to refine Pennsylvania crude oil here in New Bedford before they found out how to do it in Pennsylvania. He was some fellow, believe me. Died many years before my time. Strong as an ox, smart as a whip, mean as a snake. Lorenzo was the first man in town to install indoor plumbing and gas lamps. He even had a private railway line run up
to his house. Lorenzo Fairchild was the first man in New Bedford to wear long trousers ’stead of breeches. Did you know that?”

  “No,” said Helen. “I didn’t.” Pinky was trying out the secret drawer and all the other lions’ eyes to see if anything else happened.

  “You know, it’s funny,” said Asa. “A typewriter would have been a very newfangled item back then, wouldn’t it? I’d make a bet that if anybody in this town had a machine like that in those days, it would have been Lorenzo. He had every gadget and contrivance to come along. He or his poor benighted daughter, Lucy. She was just like him in that respect.”

  “What happened to Lucy?” asked Pinky.

  Asa shuffled over to the door and listened. “Thought she was on her way,” he said. “Lucy?” He laughed saucily. “Lucy was her dad’s favorite. She was a caution, so they say. A card. Dressed up like a boy. Once she went on one of his whaling ships, and the captain didn’t know till they’d rounded Cape Horn that he had a girl on board. My mother told me that story. Lucy threw harpoons with the best of them, she said.”

  “But what happened to her?” asked Pinky.

  There was a tinkling sound from the kitchen. Asa heard it. “Vanished,” he said. “Nobody ever knew. She was forgotten. Lorenzo had gotten himself elected mayor of New Bedford by that time. He erased every memory of his own flesh and blood. Every trace of her. There’s no record of her anywhere.”

  “Why?” asked Helen.

  Asa Roche shrugged. “Nobody knows,” he said. “Lorenzo tried to get the house he’d given her as a wedding present condemned as a public pestilence. Town wouldn’t go that far, of course, even if he was mayor, so he got a couple of convicts from the jail to burn it down one night. No one knows where the house—” Here there was a great clanking and squeaking. Mrs. Fairchild entered the room with a silver tea service that looked as if it weighed over seventy pounds. Helen and Pinky jumped up to help her but were stopped by a withering glance, and Mrs. Fairchild placed the heavy tray on the table as if it were as light as tin.

  Elizabeth Fairchild had reached out a strong left arm to pour when Helen remarked earnestly, “What a wonderful thing to talk with your brother, Mrs. Fairchild. He was just telling us the story of Lucy Fairchild. She sounds like such a colorful ancestor.” The arm holding the teapot stopped in midair and then put it abruptly back on the tray. “Time for your medicine, Asa!” she announced. “Come, children!”