Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “I’ll look about,” said Dr. Horace Amlie.

  – 2 –

  Palmyra is a very Hospittible Place but not nessarily to Strangers.

  (DIARY OF MISS ARAMINTA JERROLD)

  Mr. Carlisle Sneed was a bit of a nighthawk. Seldom was he abed before nine-thirty. On mild and sleepless nights he might be observed (by hoot owl or whippoorwill) strolling the streets as late as eleven o’clock, thinking up tomorrow’s jokes for the delectation of the coterie at Silas Bewar’s smithy. Mr. Sneed was the village wit.

  If a late light shone, he might drop in for a chat or, luck being with him, a quaff of home-brew. On this night all Main Street was darkened except for one window where Constable Mynderse sat up with his boils and would therefore be no fit associate for any man. Passing the place, Mr. Sneed was gratified to see a figure moving leisurely along in front of him. Here would be company. He did not at once identify the late pedestrian by his bearing. A stranger, presumably. As no passenger had disembarked from the mail coach, this must be the young physician from the east who had arrived in his own rig. Mr. Sneed set out in pursuit.

  The young man’s easy gait was accompanied by a soft and musical whistling. He pulled up beside a refuse heap, stirred it with his cane, bent above it, and stood, pondering. A little farther along another collection of muck engaged his attention. Rummaging in this, he extracted the remains of two skinned muskrats discarded, not too recently, by some casual trapper. The stranger seemed to be sniffing. Singular taste in odors, reflected Mr. Sneed. He coughed loudly. The stranger turned with a pleasant, “Good evening.”

  “Evenin’ to you,” returned Mr. Sneed with the proper emphasis of the townsman on his own ground. “You must be the young doc they say is settlin’ amongst us.”

  “Do they?”

  “They do so.” The time was come for introductions. “Name’s Sneed.”

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Sneed.”

  “Kinda smellin’ around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like it?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t haffta smell it if you don’t like it,” pointed out the citizen, slightly huffy.

  “It’s my line of business.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Sneed, who did not see at all, but was interested. “Kinda nosin’ around for trade, as you might say?”

  “You might,” allowed the other.

  “What do you think of our town?”

  “I’ve smelled sweeter.”

  “Huh! I guess we don’t stink no worse’n any other town in the wet heat. You’d oughta smell Rochesterville. Or Lyons, when the rains wash out the sheep pastures.” He paused and added thoughtfully, “I’ve knowed a man’s smeller to get him into trouble. Mostly by pokin’ it into other folks’s private business.”

  “I’m not interested in other people’s private business.”

  “Didn’t say you was, did I? As to that”—he pointed to the reeking gutter—“you can always report to the village trustees.”

  “Thank you. Would it do any good?”

  “Not a bit. But I’d admire to see you try. See that speck of red up there?”

  Dr. Amlie looked in the direction indicated. The glow of a segar-tip moved deliberately along a slope on a rise near the street end. He nodded.

  “That’s a trustee. That’s Genter Latham.”

  “I’ve heard the name.”

  “Guess you have. You’ll hear more of it if you stay here.”

  “He keeps late hours.”

  “Don’t think it’s his conscience keeps him awake,” grinned Mr. Sneed. “Hain’t got any. More likely than not he’s schemin’ to nick some friend out of his dollars. Or waitin’ for—no, it wouldn’t be Sarah Dorch. Not any more.”

  “Romance in the moonlight?” asked the other, smiling.

  “Might still be, the old goat! Takes whatever comes his way, and never a thank-you—women, money, or the shirt off’n your back.” The emerging moon displayed what Dr. Amlie at first thought to be a glare of peculiar malevolence, until he perceived that its one-sided fixity was due to a poorly matched glass eye. “If you want rich smellin’, hang your snoot over the brook that comes down from his house.”

  “I’m walking that way. Will you come along?”

  “Not me!” declined Mr. Sneed with emphasis.

  The small, red spark checked for a moment as Horace Amlie approached the spot where a small culvert carried off what little water was moving, then proceeded upon its patrol. Below the investigator a semi-stagnant pool lay, iridescent with scum. Tracing the watercourse, the observer could see that it flowed directly beneath the impressive cobblestone mansion, for which it served as drain. Beyond the road, it meandered through a meadow.

  The red light was approaching now. Horace Amlie looked up to see a formidably built, bearded, handsome man who removed the segar from his lips and stared silently.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Horace.

  “What are you about?”

  “Looking around.”

  “At my property?”

  “I took this for a public thoroughfare.”

  “So it is. But it’s my property you’re overlooking.”

  “I mean it no harm, Mr. Latham.”

  “So you know me by name. I asked you before—what are you about?”

  “I was wondering where the outflow of this brook went,” said Horace pleasantly.

  “Into Red Creek.”

  “And from there into Mud Creek, I suppose.”

  “Quite a geographist,” said Genter Latham. “It does.”

  “Isn’t there a settlement on the bank?”

  “If you call the Pinch a settlement.”

  “So, all this matter eventually discharges there where people bathe.”

  “Bathe? The Pinch folk?” Genter Latham laughed.

  “Or, worse, get their cooking and drinking water.”

  “What of it?”

  The young man peered down. “There’s a chicken’s head in that eddy. And what looks like fish-cleanings in the weeds. And worse.”

  The man above observed him intently. “The next rain will wash ’em away.”

  “Into the source of water supply for people below.”

  “What of it?” repeated the owner.

  “Disease, I should say.”

  “Newfangled folderol. What are you? A scavenger? Where’s your pick?” proceeded the great man, pleased with his fancy.

  “I am a doctor of medicine,” said Horace Amlie.

  This was no news to the other. He had heard of the day’s arrival. “Do you doctor folks or ditches?” he demanded.

  “I’ll doctor your ditch, free gratis.”

  “You’ll come on my premises when you’re bidden, not before,” returned the householder, but without rancor. “Do your scavenging downwind of some of the canal camps. They’ll find that prowling beak of yours.”

  “I had it in mind.”

  “And be careful some of the diggers don’t take you by the scruff and heave you into the ditch.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind, too,” said the young man so composedly that the magnate accorded him a reluctant respect. “Good night.”

  The stranger sat his saddle lightly, contemplating the brisk and laborious scene beneath him. He had ridden three miles westward from Palmyra village in the cool of the morning to watch the great ditch being driven, east and west, to its slow completion. A hundred men and a score of horses sweated and strained in the cut, dragging dredges, plucking out recalcitrant stumps as a dentist plucks a broken root, plying pick and shovel, prying with bar and bough at obstructive boulders, fashioning the towpath on one side, the berm on the other, toilfully embodying the dream of De Witt Clinton, the pride of the Empire State, the longest, broadest, deepest, mightiest canal in all history.

  All this Horace Amlie had seen before, in the rocky Herkimer gorges, the steamy Rome swamps, the feverous Montezuma marshlands. It never failed to stir his pulses. For already the Erie Canal
was a classic of American achievement, a future artery through which would flow the lifeblood of a new commerce, the inspiration of a stronger, more cohesive national sentiment. It was to be a solvent, ameliorating the narrow partisanships of county and state lines, clearing the way for a closer-knit patriotism.

  For youth it had a special appeal. Odes were written to it, songs composed, eloquence dispensed in the forums of government. The haughty press of London, so contemptuous of all that was “Yankee,” had begun to note its progress with grudging interest. “Who reads an American book?” Ah, but those snoot-in-the-air foreigners were watching an American triumph of traffic-building which they could never hope to equal!

  A gang of barrowmen, trundling the new Brainard or “canal” wheelbarrows back to the sheds, lifted rough voices in the song of the ditch.

  We are digging the Ditch through the gravel;

  Through the gravel and mud and slime, by God!

  So the people and freight can travel,

  And the packets can move on time, by God!

  Horace hummed the dogged refrain under his breath. “So the people and freight can travel.” A saying of his old mentor, the wise, robust, irascible Dr. John Vought, merged with the measure. “The mainspring of human progress is the itch of restless man to be otherwhere than where he is.” There beneath him was the surge and pressure of that invincible desire. It was a vision of expanding America. And it was threatened, as Horace Amlie well knew, by a subtle and unpredictable enemy.

  Hitching Fleetfoot to an ash, Horace walked down the hillside. A whistle shrilled. The men knocked off work and gathered for instructions from a grizzled Irishman who removed his willow instrument from his mouth, substituting a richly foul briar.

  “Mr. Shea?” asked the visitor.

  “William Shea,” confirmed the smoker. “Old Bill. Have a hearty?” He poured a hooker of raw rum into a tin cup.

  “Your health, sir,” said Horace.

  “Health,” grunted the overseer. “I’d wish my men more of it. A pinin’, pindlin’ lot. Who might you be, young sir?”

  “Horace Amlie, M.D., from Oneida County.”

  “Lookin’ for trade?”

  “I wouldn’t have far to look, I expect. Much fever here?”

  “Not yet. Gripes and woolywambles a-plenty. No shakes so far. Smells aguish, though, don’t it, now?”

  Horace took a deep inhalation and promptly regretted it. The effluvium from the adjacent open latrine which drained to the creek when the rain flushed it, struck to his brain-core. A stone oven, flanked by a rude shack, smoked near by. The cookee emerged from the shack.

  “Stinks, huh?” he remarked genially.

  Horace gave an unqualified assent. “Is that where the men eat?” he inquired.

  “That’s it,” answered Old Bill. “Tavern fare, liberal whisky, and fifty cents a day. Live like kings. Yet they’re always sickenin’ and growlin’. A pack of daffydillies,” he added disgustedly.

  A few rods away stood the log bunkhouses. A huckster’s chant came to their ears.

  “Pennyroyal! Fresh and fresh. A royal dozen for your penny. Pennyroyal!”

  A dark, lithe, handsome lad with a wicker on his shoulder rounded the angle of the nearest building.

  “Peddling charms against the shakes,” Shea explained. “I don’t hold with it, myself. But it keeps the gnats off. Hey, you!”

  The boy came over to take the overseer’s penny. Horace, also, invested in a pennyworth, crushed the aromatic leaves between his hands, and rubbed them against his face. At least the effluence mitigated the stench from the drain. The vendor thanked them civilly.

  “I’d give something for a true charm against the damn fever,” said Old Bill gloomily. “I had a gang on the Big Marshes last season and they was rotten with it. D’you think it’ll hit us here?”

  “It’s the right, low-lying land for it. Plenty of night-mist rising?”

  “Ay-ah. All through the valley.” The Irishman peered through his protective smoke screen at the visitor. “You hold with this myazzama notion?”

  “The best authorities believe that fevers are caused by miasmatic exhalations,” answered the young man evasively.

  “We gotta dig where we gotta dig,” pronounced Shea. “There ain’t no way as I know to keep the mists from risin’ and the men from breathin’ ’em.”

  “Did you ever think of moving the living quarters to high ground?”

  A hoot of derision answered this suggestion. “Ask Genter Latham to spend money on such didoes.”

  Horace said, “I sell medical advice to those who can pay for it. I don’t give it away where it isn’t wanted.”

  “Latham ain’t your market, then. He’s doin’ fine on this stretch, or was, till the gangs took to sickenin’. Stands to make a pot of money out of it if we can hold ’em to the work. You might talk to Squire Jerrold, though. He’ll listen to anything. Fine gentleman, the Squire.”

  “Is he Mr. Latham’s partner?”

  “Not exactly. He’s got the next reach west, up through Macedon. Latham had it first and passed it over to the Squire. Maybe he suspicioned there was quicksand and shifts there and maybe he didn’t, but Jerrold stands to lose his money if things don’t go better’n they have.” He stared meditatively through his pipe smoke. “There don’t many cuckoos lay their aigs in Genter Latham’s hat,” he observed. “Well, drop around and see us,” he went on as the caller rose. “There might be some bellyache trade for you, even allowin’ that the fever don’t strike.”

  Horace thanked him and rode back to the hotel to sleep over his unsolved problem. He had still to make himself acquainted with the populace. Having been raised in a small town, he knew that there is no place like the blacksmith shop to give the flavor and trend of a community. He did not need to make occasion for going there since, after the long journey from Oneida County, his spirited mare’s hooves needed attention. Late in the afternoon would be the best time. Then the informal town meeting would have gathered for that exchange of unfettered opinion which is the rural American’s privilege and pleasure.

  At four o’clock he rode Fleetfoot down Main Street, tethered her before the smithy, and went inside. From the silence which fell, he guessed that he had been the subject of discussion.

  Silas Bewar, the bulky, bright-eyed Quaker blacksmith, glanced up from his task of rounding out a dog-wedge, and resumed it. Of the dozen men strewn about on boxes and barrels, none spoke articulately to the newcomer. Some nodded, a few grunted, others merely spat thoughtfully. Among these was the cadaverous and glass-eyed Mr. Sneed. He had no intention of recognizing this interloper and thus inferentially sponsoring him, until he had proved himself. Knowing the type, Horace, on his part, made no sign. He respected the other’s caution.

  The atmosphere was not positively unfriendly. Rather, it was that of sagaciously suspended judgment, neutrally expectant.

  Having set aside the finished wedge, Silas stretched his hairy arms, shouldered his way between Cassius Moore’s span of oxen, waiting to be shod, picked up a beetle-ring, and on his way back to the forge stopped before the stranger.

  “Give thee good day, friend. What’s thy pleasure?”

  “Shoes for my mare, if you please.”

  “Where has thee left her?”

  “Outside.”

  As at a signal, every man in the place rose, hunched his trousers, and followed the smith out for inspection. In the common interest of man toward horse the fetters of speech were loosened. Billy Dorch, the baker, delivered the initial opinion.

  “A likely lass.”

  “Well-paced, I’ll warrant,” confirmed George W. Woodcock, who developed town lots for sale to the expanding population. “Look at those shoulders.”

  T. Lay, who trafficked in anything and everything vendible, passed an expertizing hand over the smooth hide. “Too light in the barrel for my taste,” he pronounced.

  “A man would take a desperation chance, offering more than a hundred for her,”
opined Jim Cronkhite, the political office seeker.

  Carlisle Sneed spoke up.

  “Got paper proof of ownership, Mister?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her price?”

  “None.”

  “Not for sale, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Say!” The questioner winked at his fellows. “If words was notes, you’d never start a bank.”

  Loud guffaws greeted the witticism for which the group had been waiting hopefully. The smith lifted his head from examination of the mare’s feet and addressed the stranger.

  “Shilling a hoof.”

  “When can you do it?”

  “Soon as I finish the oxen. Come thee back in and set.”

  The assemblage trooped back and settled down to smoking, chewing and thought. Dr. Amlie found a chunk of wood for his seat. Silas Bewar tapped a keg against the wall, drew two beakers of a pale and beady liquid, handed one to the young man, and held the other aloft. Dr. Amlie touched it with his own. Both drank.

  A quiver ran down the young man’s spine. His stomach gave a start of surprise. His throat contracted. Tears rose to his eyes. He had drunk hard cider before, plenty of it. But this fermentation, aged to the verge of applejack, laced with raw corn whisky, sweetened with molasses, and hotly flavored with the local distillation of mint, was new to his system. Nevertheless, not a cough, not so much as a catch of breath, marked the passage of the astonishing liquid to its destination.

  “Your very good health,” said he pleasantly.

  “D’you like it?” grinned Carlisle Sneed.

  “A very mild, tasty brew,” said the stranger judgmatically.

  Thus far he had scored two points: he knew a good horse and he could take his liquor. Every man in the place was cognizant of his name, his profession, his purpose in coming to Palmyra, and a number of other things about him, some of which were true. But to give any indication of this knowledge would be a solecism. The smithy was sitting in Committee of the Whole to determine of what quality the stranger might prove himself.

  “Hep! Jenk!” cried the smith.