The Town

by Conrad Richter

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  YON THORN HEDGE

  Christmas comes but once a year, but when it comes, I’ll have my share.

  HULDAH WHEELER

  THE WORLD had changed, Sayward agreed, getting up this morning. Only yesterday she was thinking how time in the old days used to stand still. Late afternoons she could specially feel it, when the sunlight lay in the cleared ground and banked against the wall of woods. Nothing moved, save flies droning. It seemed then that a dead calm hung over cabin and clearing, like a spell had been laid. Early mornings when it was still dark, you could feel the hush, too, as if some time during the night the world had broken its spring and run down. All had stopped and as far as you knew, you were the only person left alive. That wasn’t such a far while ago, either.

  But today long before daylight, anybody who wasn’t deaf could tell that the world still moved and that plenty were alive to push it. Lying in bed you could hear town folks getting up to go to market and country folks fetching their stuff to town. Many of them came a long ways. They had to leave home about two or three o’clock in the morning, and them that lived far off had to get up around midnight. They liked to be the first to spread their turnips and horse-radish out in the market shed on the square. Or if they sold their flour and bacon down the river, they liked to be the first in line to unload. Americus was getting a name for herself. This was the place to ship from. Sometimes it had as many as eighteen keel boats and barges tied up here in one day.

  Oh, times had changed since her pappy had cut down the first big butts around here. Things moved mighty fast. Only a short while back, it seemed like, she had a cabin full of babies. She could wake up any time of night and know where they were all at. If one barked with the croup, she could lay her hands right on it. Now they were mostly grown or nigh onto it. Kinzie was going to government school back in Maryland. And today Resolve was getting married. This morning he would go out of her and Portius’s house and most likely never sleep under their roof again. He and Fay had their own house about half up. Till it was done he could stay with his bride in her father’s house on the square, a house different from his folks’ cabin as daylight from dark.

  When General Morrison first came to Moonshine Church, he lived in the Fitch place on Water Street. Last year he put up his own mansion house. It had blue shutters and a white doorway with side window lights, wood carving and stone steps smooth and even as sawn timbers. You went first in a long room that had no use save to walk through. It ran the whole length of the house and they called it the hall. Upstairs was the same. Those two halls would have made four good rooms, Sayward thought, although she didn’t know what use the Morrisons would have for more since already they had four rooms downstairs and nine upstairs counting the little sew room on the second floor and them on the third floor that the hired girls slept in. Not even Major Tate or Col. Sutphen owned so fine a place. Country folk always stared at it as they went by, and boatmen who used to brag up the French brick houses in New Orleans now bragged General Morrison’s mansion house from Tateville to Memphis.

  Sayward had been inside a good many times, but never had she seen it so lively and a flutter as today. Folks had come by stage, boat and their own carriages. Most were diked out in the new styles. It did her heart good to see how at home Portius felt in a big house and how easy he was with fine company. Not once had he ever breathed to her what kind of home he had been raised in back there in the Bay State, but you could tell it must have been of the gentry, the natural way he bowed and carried himself in here, and Dezia just like him. Now her own sister, Genny, held back as if struck all of a heap to think she would soon be kin to the Morrisons.

  Sayward sat herself down quiet and steady-headed, taking things as they came. Just the same, when the wedding started, it set her heart to swelling. She felt grateful Resolve had picked out such a sensible town body. Fay could have a ring on every finger save one and three on that, if she wanted. She would come into plenty some day. And yet more than once she had asked Sayward how would she do this or that if she was her. Sayward took care not to let her tongue run. Even her own girls when they married would have to get along as best they could without trotting to their mam. A bride did better standing on her own feet.

  Till it was over, she thought this wedding of Resolve’s the nicest she ever saw, and mighty different from the time she and Portius were made one. This was no squire’s dry and hasty tying of a knot just to be lawful, but marriage in the name and spirit of the Lord, and done by His bishop who traveled over two hundred miles just to say the words, although Americus had two or three preachers and circuit riders of its own now. A lady from Maytown sat at the black piano to play a march, and Leah sang beautiful. Everything was solemn as it should be, but you never heard such a lively carrying on afterwards. Plenty food and drink were passed. Sociability and good feelings flowed. Everybody talked so nice to Sayward. Her new daughter came up right off for a hug and a kiss, and after that kept fetching up her friends and relations to meet her mother-in-law. Folks from as far as the Western Reserve told her what a fine boy she had. By the time she and Portius went home, she felt like she had used up all her credit with the Lord. When things stayed bad with her or her family too long, she always felt she had saved up some blessing that the Lord owed her. But when Providence had given her a long stretch of favors, she told herself she better not think this was the way it was going to be from now on. No, she owed the Lord something and she better fetch her feet down to solid ground before He did it for her.

  Not till the second night after Resolve’s wedding did she recollect about her account with the Lord. That was when Huldah never showed up at supper or bed time. First thing in the morning she sent Sooth down to Amy MacMahon’s to see if Huldah had stayed all night, but Amy claimed she hadn’t seen her since she saw her on her way to Resolve’s wedding. Genny, when she heard it, came running over. If Huldah hadn’t come over night, it must be she was in the river, or if not, in the race, Genny said. She set all the boatmen looking for Huldah’s long black hair a floating on the water in some deep eddy where the cheesy brown foam went round and round, or for her head a laying on some rocky pillow soft with the flotsam of sticks and leaves that tried to ride the river to Orleans without paying freight. Or maybe, Genny said, some river Frenchman had stole her in the cabin of his boat and poled off with her up stream. But most likely he had gone down, running with the current by the Forks and Maytown, never tying up on shore where decent folk could hear a young girl’s call for help, but on and on he’d go with his ill-gotten gains till safe among his own countrymen on the muddy bayous that flowed slow and brown as molasses into the Massasip and thence to the salt sea.

  Sayward heard her through. Oh, hardly a word Sayward said to tempt Providence, but deep inside she felt Huldah had never fallen in the river. She was too sure-footed. She could tread a foot log over the race like a cat. And hardly likely had a Frenchman penned her in his cabin, for Huldah would be a match for any eat-frog feller. Oh, nothing did Sayward say out loud that the Almighty could make her rue, but over and over to herself she stuck to it that Huldah was not in or down the river. No, Huldah hated water too much, even the little in the wash basin. For all her handsome looks and ways, seldom would she wash her neck till her mam made her. Then how much more would she shy away from a whole river?

  Sayward just felt glad she didn’t have Portius home on her hands that day. He had to tend to business that wouldn’t wait. His voice when he came back sounded deep as usual, but you could see his hands couldn’t find the lawbook he wanted. If only Resolve, her staff and mainstay, wasn’t East with Fay to some Morrison kin, but she mustn’t begrudge them their wedding trip. Guerdon wanted to go down the river on one of John Quitman’s boats a looking for Huldah alive or drowned, but his mother told him to stay at the sawmill so she would know where he was at if she needed him.

  All that day and the next, the girls and others kept running in with wild tales of some dead body found in th
e English Lakes or over some hill and holler. It didn’t matter if it was last week, maybe it was Huldah. Now little Chancey was small good save to sit on his stool and watch her with those sad eyes of his. Dezia was her rock, staying close to the kitchen, going about her work like every day, talking matter-of-fact cabin talk of cooking and sewing, of this or that. Oh, if folks who wanted to help only knew what comfort it was to hear small talk at a time like this, to go on and forget your trouble as much as you could, to act like all was common as usual. It held off the burden for a while and left you a little more grit to stand bad things when they came.

  It hadn’t gone long in the afternoon when Leah and her mam called. Was there news of Huldah or anything they could do? Hardly were they settled in the front room when Sayward saw a stranger making for the door. She didn’t know as she ever saw him before, must be some Salt Creeker or Sassafrasser, as Portius called them, from back in the hills. He wanted to know did “the squire” live here and was he home? No, he was down in town, Sayward told him, then something made her say more.

  “Is it about our girl that’s missing?”

  “I don’t know right yet, ma’am,” he backed off. “Not till I talk to your man.”

  Quickly Sayward stepped out and faced him before he could get away.

  “You can tell me. Is she all right?”

  “Oh, she’s all right if it’s her,” he said, but so uneasy that the lightness in her lasted only for a lick.

  “Then where is she? Why isn’t she here?”

  “She’s out in the Orebank Valley.”

  “The Orebank Valley? What’s she a doing way out there?”

  The man looked mighty sober.

  “I kain’t tell you, ma’am. I only burn charcoal out ’ar. Accordin’ to what I heard, she come to the Holcomb furnace house night before last. She give another name than Wheeler. I had no idee who it was till I come to town this mornin’ and heard you and the squire had a young miss that never come home. Now this might not be her at all. She claimed she come from the Bay State.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Well, she’s handsome, they said, fair complected with black hair and eye winkers.”

  “That’s her!” Sayward heard Sooth and Libby say behind her.

  “What was she dressed in?” Dezia wanted to know.

  Now why did the charcoal burner have to scrouge around and not say anything?

  “What did she have on?” Sayward put to him sharply.

  “From what I heard, she hadn’t much on, ma’am,” he said, sober. “She had to holler from the bushes. Now I don’t know if it’s true. I didn’t see her, but that’s what they tell me. She claimed gypsies took her clothes and left her that way.”

  Behind her Sayward heard Sooth and Libby draw in their breaths. She looked around. Yes, either she or the girls had left the door stand open. The Morrisons sitting in their chairs in there could hear every word. Well, it was done now and no use crying over.

  “Whose place was this you said she came to?” she asked sternly.

  “The Holcomb furnace house, ma’am,” the charcoal burner said.

  She recollected now how a George Holcomb had set up a furnace on Orebank Creek far back in the hills. This was on the other side of the river near where they found iron. He was hardly thirty, if she minded him right, a single man whose folks, they said, had forges back in Pennsylvania. He had come to see Portius on law business and cut a figure with his rough red hair and fine red sorrel mare. He had ridden up to their door and tied the mare to Portius’ hitching post. Huldah could have seen him then if she wanted and most likely did, for there was blessed little those handsome black eyes of hers missed.

  Libby and Sooth were whispering to their mother. Did she reckon this true? Oh, Sayward couldn’t have told them one way or the other, for she didn’t know herself yet. All she knew was how like their Aunt Achsa it sounded, her own sister, Achsa, who had run off to the English Lakes with a man that belonged to Genny. That was a long time ago, and where Achsa was now or if she still lived and cut up her didos, only God knew. Not a word had they had from her since she went and few tales about her. You would think that would be an end to it, but, no, the Lord had said, “unto the third and fourth generation,” and here was Huldah. Always had Sayward noticed how Huldah minded her of Achsa, not so coarse or rough spoken, but the same black Monsey hair and wild Indian ways. But hardly had she reckoned Huldah so bold as to do a fool trick like this, stuff her dress in a log some place and go naked to the man she had her eye on, figuring that was the way to win him for a husband.

  This story would be all over town till nightfall, Sayward told herself, if not already there. It wasn’t likely the charcoal burner had held his tongue in town. Yes, she could see Genny now cutting the square. But she hated it most on account of Resolve’s new mother-in-law and his bride’s sister. That’s the usual way it worked out, the ones you’d like to keep it from the longest had to hear it the first. As for herself, she didn’t know what would come out of this, but she had overed it the time Achsa ran off with Genny’s man. She reckoned she would over it now. The Lord had put her feet back on the ground like she expected, and she oughtn’t to complain if the ground was hard and none too clean.

  Mrs. Morrison had stood up to go when Sayward came back in the house.

  “Don’t you want me to send the General?” she asked. “He could drive out and get Huldah before Mr. Wheeler came home.”

  “Thankee,” Sayward said humbly, “But this is something I got to do my own self.”

  It was good, she thought, that Portius wasn’t off in Tateville, or she’d have no horse. She had Libby and Sooth hitch up Hector in the covered two-wheeler. No, she couldn’t take either one along, not even Genny. She would need room to pick up some farmer’s boy or woodsy to show her the way. She fetched out a dress and shoes and stockings for Huldah, just in case. Then with a small flask of brandy under the seat, she sat very straight in the two-wheeler and started for the river.

  The ferry was just in with a team driving off when she got there. Hector and she were the first on the wide splintery old scow. Before old Mike, the ferryman, could cast off, he was called up to the Ferry House and she thought he would never get back. Now what would they keep her waiting so long for? Could it be true what she heard, that King Sam blamed Portius, among others, for holding court at the Central instead of the Ferry House, and would he now try to take it out on any Wheeler he could?

  “Couldn’t help it, Miz Wheeler,” old Mike apologized as he pushed past the two-wheeler, the pole fitted to his shoulder.

  Sayward didn’t say anything. She had trouble enough of her own this day without letting King Sam set her teeth on edge. She would make up the time once she reached the other side, for Hector was a good traveler, better in the gig than Brig. He could trot smart where the road lay smooth, was a faster walker up hill and down. It was something to see him step briskly along, his head nodding. It took a good man on foot to keep up with him. Never on the steepest hills did he like to rest. Once started, he was out to get where he was going and back home again. You had to watch out only when some high-lifed rider tried to pass him on the road, for Hector wouldn’t let any other horse around him. George Holcomb was such a rider, Sayward heard, even when no drink was in him, running his horse like crazy and spattering himself with mud. Now wasn’t it strange that both Huldah and Achsa had took to a man like that? She only hoped for Huldah’s sake that George Holcomb would turn out better than Louie Scurrah.

  Well, she would soon find out. It surprised her how many folks it had living over here to tell her which way to the furnace. Why, farms were plenty as blackberries on this side of the river. The woods for a ways had melted away like last year’s snow. Black stumps sprinkled the fields of clover and grain. Twice she passed country mills with their muley saws a riding up and down. She could tell now her own self which way to go. All she had to do was follow the creek, they said, for this was the water that ran the cold bl
ast in the Holcomb furnace.

  She was getting in the woods now. The only clearings she saw were charcoal pits. So Huldah reckoned she’d be safe to do as she pleased way back here and nobody in town would know the difference! She found the furnace in a wild glen, laid of brown native stone with a stone bridge running to the side hill, and down below, a big stone cabin. That was the furnace house, no doubt, and behind it the brush where Huldah must have stood naked and brazen calling that gypsies had taken her clothes. Sight of that brush and cabin fetched Sayward up straight and watchful. Oh, this was no sociable visit she was making, but she would not let her mouth get bitter like it wanted to. Putting on a good face, she knocked on the door.

  Whoever was in there must have heard her and Hector coming. Hardly a man or woman in the country that didn’t run to the door or window, if they had any, to see a traveler go by, let alone stop. But nobody answered here. She had to rap louder and try the latch. Then somebody came to the door in a bright red check dress Sayward had never seen before, with a bowl of batter in her hand like she was a lawfully married housewife making her man’s supper. She gave no start to see her mother, and that showed she had peeked out of the window when she heard wheels. Only her eyes had a strange look that said, now how did you know where I was, but never did Huldah speak it.

  “Kin I come in?” Oh, Sayward knew she was welcome as a pig in a turnip patch, so she didn’t wait for a bid. She just stepped across the doorlog.