The Town

by Conrad Richter

  She looked so formidable, he let his eyes go a bit out of focus, and that made her look less so, just a brown blurr in the haze of whitish light from the window.

  “I rode over to town on a cow,” he told her.

  “You can’t expect me to believe that, Chancey,” her voice came back at him just as quiet and mild as before. “In the first place, folks don’t ride cows, and if they did, it wouldn’t do them any good because cows are contrary. If you ever tried to take one any place on a rope, you’d find out they won’t go where you want.”

  “This one did,” Chancey declared stubbornly. “I rode it up and down Water Street and through the bridge. Mr. Jackson saw me. He said I better go home now, it was going to rain.”

  A kind of slow bleakness and pain spread over his mother’s face until her eyes were blue stones set deep in her sockets and drawn far away.

  “Mr. Jackson isn’t here in Americus, Chancey. He’s down in Hamilton County somewhere putting up a bridge. Guerdon had a letter from him just yesterday wanting him to come down and work. Now I don’t know why you say you saw him and rode a cow. Maybe you made this up, maybe you were dreaming. But whatever you did, you give me no other way than send you to bed. You can lay up there a while and study this thing out. When you reckon you know enough to tell when you’re make believing or dreaming, you can come down.”

  If there was one thing Chancey hated more than another, it was to have the ignominy of putting on his bedgown when it was still daylight and going up to the loft before supper. Dezia took him, and all the time she stood over him, his lip quivered. Then she went down and the door to the windsweep closed behind her. All he could hear was the faint flow of voices from the faraway kitchen. They could have a good time together getting supper, and he had to be up here alone. When the sound of laughter reached him he felt himself shrink. They were laughing at him and his red cow, but they wouldn’t laugh at him long. He would run away. He would search the world over for his true mother and sisters, and when he found his mother she would be a lady with pale golden hair. She would take him up in her white arms and kiss him and thank God for his safe return. She would tell how she had missed him all these years he spent among alien folk who refused to believe his truest words.

  All night like a lighted candle in his mind was the memory of the little girl whose father laid his hand on Chancey’s head and cried, and they were his really true father and his sister, and that’s why his father had cried, because he had to go back to Chancey’s real mother without him. They lived somewhere across the river. Their name Chancey didn’t remember but it would be a fine name, he knew, like Davenport or Pemberton or Ormsbee, most likely Ormsbee, for that was the name that always rang silver bells in his mind.

  By morning the rain had stopped, but the girls said that the river was very high and still rising, and they all wanted to go to Aunt Genny’s to see it, all save himself who said he didn’t feel good enough to do anything except lay on the couch. But once they had all left, he put on his cap and made his way best he could out to Wheeler Street beyond the barn, where a countryman in a cart took him along to Water Street. Here a little crowd stood watching the strong press of high water where it almost came up to the bridge. The brown flood moved so wide and silent and queer, like something in a dream, and suddenly it struck him, could this be a dream like his mother told him to watch for? He remembered Massey tell of a dream once where she couldn’t stop or go back but had to walk a board over high water with one white shoe and one black one. And now all at once he knew it wasn’t real, for coming behind him to cross the bridge was a wagon with a white horse on one side of the tongue and a black mule on the other, driven by a strange looking man with one good eye and a red patch on the other.

  The wagon had a step in back and when it moved slowly up the bridge hill, Chancey waded in the water that flowed across the road and climbed up and in.

  “Hold on there,” said the driver, looking around. “Where do you think you’re a goin’?”

  “I’m going home to my father and mother and my little sister and all my other brothers and sisters who pray for me every day to come home,” Chancey told him.

  “And where do they live?” the man asked, surprised.

  “Far over there on the other side of the river where the woods is thick and dark and lonely to live without me.”

  “What’s their name?”

  “It’s Ormsbee, sir.”

  “Ormsbee,” he muttered and shook his head. “Well, I’ll take you as far as Kettering’s store and he can tell you how to go from there.”

  Chancey lay back in the wagon box. They were in the tunnel of the bridge now, and the dream was a very clever, deceitful and hard-to-tell dream, because it was just like it had been in real life yesterday when he rode the red cow through the bridge. The hole of light behind him grew smaller and smaller till it was only the white eye of the town looking through a dark telescope after him. Then at last it started to grow light and they were getting out of the tunnel where a tollhouse sat right on the bridge cribbing with no front yard save the roadway and no back yard save the river over which some wash hung.

  The pole was down and the tollkeeper’s woman came out with her mending in one hand and took toll with the other.

  “I have to collect for him, too,” she said pointing to Chancey.

  “I pay nothing for my folks,” the driver protested.

  “No, but he’s not your folks. He’s a foot passenger. He could have crawled on your wagon just to get out of paying toll.”

  “He’s only a little tyke.”

  “He’s a foot passenger just the same, and the law says foot passengers have to pay.”

  “My father will pay you,” Chancey called. “He’ll pay you a dollar, he’ll be so glad to see me when he sees me.”

  The sharp face of the woman moved around to the side of the wagon, and at her look, Chancey remembered how she had once thrown the pole down on a driver who forgot to stop and pay and had knocked him off the seat of his wagon.

  “Who’s this?” she wanted to know.

  “Ormsbee, he says his name is.”

  “So it’s Ormsbee now? It used to be Wheeler, unless I miss my guess. Lawyer Wheeler’s boy.”

  Chancey saw the driver’s astonished face.

  “He’s not my real father,” the boy said.

  “No? Who is then?”

  “My father, Mr. Ormsbee.”

  The woman clicked her tongue, looked at the driver and back to the boy.

  “Who told you?”

  “It’s true,” Chancey said solemnly.

  “What does your mother say?”

  “She isn’t my real mother, either. She’s just been keeping me for her!”

  The tollkeeper’s wife looked suddenly angry.

  “Now that’s enough from you. You go back and tell that cock and bull story to your mother. Come on. Get out and go back before they close the bridge on you.”

  The yellow road looked so near and free, Chancey climbed down and tried to make a dash for it, but the tollkeeper’s wife caught him and sent him reeling back on the bridge. He ran till his heart stopped him. When he looked around, the wagon had vanished into thin air and all he could see was a white cat in the road where the tollkeeper’s wife had been, and that showed still more that it was unreal, for he knew how in a nightmare, people turned into animals and animals into people and one kind of thing into another. His heart still choked off his wind. He had thought for sure he was going to die, but now that he saw the cat and remembered nothing could hurt you in a nightmare, his heart let go of his throat. He could breathe again and everything grew light and airy as it should in a dream.

  Twice the little fellow halted and looked around. The wagon of his friend with the patch over his eye was still invisible, but the white cat lay on the pole that stretched across the middle of the road, and that was the tollkeeper’s wife watching him. The third time he turned, the cat was gone. Quick as he could, he stumbled into
the shelter of the wall of timbers that rose beside the roadway. Here were endless nooks and crannies to hide in, cubbies and cubby holes already brown with dust although suspended over the dustless water. Here were thick timbers and supports, and the thickest was a great arch of half a dozen timbers fastened into one, all bent and curving like a bow in the sky. This was what held the bridge up. As he climbed the easy sloping arch, a stage rumbled through, and he could feel the gentle quivers in the great flexed wooden muscles under his hands.

  This was a master place to be, he told himself, lying flat on the top of the arch and looking out on the swollen river. Sometimes it looked like the river stood still and the bridge moved. It made him drowsy just to see the bridge go up stream over the halted water.

  Now what was that rapping and knocking? he wondered, after he napped. He looked down inside and saw water flowing over the planking of the bridge. It scared him a little even though he knew it wasn’t really true, the fantastic pounding and groaning, the weird hissing and wailing of the river as it boiled up white through the cracks in the planking. He imagined in the sounds of water that he heard voices, a great many voices swelling and receding as the great arch under him rose and fell. They sounded so real, like in waking life when he heard a camp meeting or torchlight procession. But now he told himself he could tell his mother that at last he knew when he was dreaming, for never could that which was happening at this moment be true. He could feel the bridge lifting, lifting. His ears were deafened by a terrible crashing. The bridge seemed to be turning over and over. Then the whole world, and he with it, went down deep in the water, breaking into pieces as it went. What happened to the world he didn’t know, but he felt something rise up under him like a great terrapin coming to the surface, and when the water ran from his eyes and was coughed from his nose and pipes, he found himself stretched out on the terrapin’s back that was a shell of the bridge floating like an old leaky scow bottom on the flood. He could see the houses of Americus over there and the shore line black with people. Back where the bridge had been, only the unfamiliar wide flatness of the river met his eye.

  Oh, Chancey lay there on his raft and watched the town as long as he was able. Once he thought he could make out the cabin he lived in with the barn behind it. Just for an instant it stood there. Then the revolving wheel of the town shut it from view. Another time he thought he saw boats push out from shore, but they soon turned back. The flood ran too fast and they had to leave him to the river. Already he had gone so far that Americus didn’t look like itself any more. It was just a smudge vanishing back yonder behind the hills.

  All morning he lay gently rocking, riding his raft of bridgework, breathing the soft smell of the river and watching the country move by. He looked amazed on all the woods and fields and hills he passed, creeks opening their mouths to the river, horses and cows, barns, houses and mills, some of them standing knee deep in the flood. And to think that all these were nameless, vaporous, with no more reality than thoughts and pictures in his mind! Wasn’t it fearful how a dream could turn out such an endless lot of things and never repeat itself, all being different? How long would the spectacle last, he asked himself, and how long would he have to lie here, half in water and half out, holding on to boards and timbers, afraid every moment that a worse part of the dream was still to come.

  The middle of the afternoon he looked up and saw a town ahead. A bridge like Guerdon helped to build at home spanned the river. Now, he told himself, his dream was nearly done. It was fetching him back to Americus and there was the bridge unhurt all the time. First thing he knew, he’d find himself waking up in his bed in the loft over his pappy’s bedroom and office. He could see the walk on the north side of the bridge lined with people, and he stood up to see if he knew any. They all shouted at him but he couldn’t make out what they said. Oh, this was most like a dream, their grotesque yells and the faces they made and gesticulations. But not a vestige of their meaning could he get. Just in time he lost his balance and flattened himself on his raft. For a fleeting moment he saw a row of faces bent down toward him, then he shot beneath with only a foot to spare. But not a face had he seen that he knew, and when he came out on the other side, he sat up and looked around. Here the flood spread out like a great brown sea across which a boat with two rowers came swiftly out to meet him.

  The front man, who smelled of chewing tobacco, lifted him in the boat and passed him dripping like a fish to the other man who set him on the back seat. Then both men bent their backs and oars upstream for shore.

  “Where’d you come from, boy, and what’s your name?” the front man said.

  “You mean my old name or my new name that’s really my oldest name?” he asked them, for he thought that since he was back home, they better take him to the house for dry clothes.

  “What’s that?” the man said surprised.

  The back rower held an unlighted pipe between his teeth. Far ahead was the bridge, and now the town began to look strange, for Chancey couldn’t see his Uncle Will’s boatyard and besides, the town was on the wrong side of the river.

  “How did Americus get over there?” he asked.

  “This is Forkville,” the man with the pipe told him.

  “Is that its real name or just in the dream?”

  The men eyed him.

  “What dream?”

  “Aren’t you in a dream then?” Chancey stammered. “Or are you real?”

  “We be,” said the man, biting his pipe stem gently.

  “Would you mind if you’d do me a favor?” Chancey begged him. “I’d like if you’d give me a pinch.”

  The man watched him carefully, keeping on rowing for a while. Then he reached forward and gave the skin of the boy’s leg a blistering squeeze between thumb and forefinger.

  “Ouch! Thank you,” Chancey told him. “Now I think I know that you are real people.”

  “And who are you?” the rower in the front seat wanted to know again.

  “Ormsbee, Henry Ormsbee,” Chancey said. “That’s my really true name.”

  The men eyed him strangely, though they said nothing, and presently the little fellow wondered if you couldn’t expect people in a dream to admit they weren’t real, for never did he see such an unreal town like this one they took him to, built in the water instead of on dry land, and instead of walking or driving, they rowed him up the street to a fine brick house where they talked from the boat to a lady and left him.

  She was a small lady with very black hair except over her ears where it was white, and she had a gold chain with a cross around her neck. First she gave him a cup of hot brandy milk that made him gasp from the fire. Then she carried him upstairs to a room with sloping ceilings so low at the side that she couldn’t walk except at the windows which were carved out of roof and plaster. All the time she took off his clothes and dried him and rubbed warmth in his legs and arms, she asked about where he lived and his people. Finally she laid him in a bed with four yellow posts and white and yellow curtains hanging like great butterflies on the side. Here she brought him china dishes to eat out of and a tall china pot to sit on and make his water in. The door had an iron latch. When he heard it lift, he would open his eyes and see strange faces there in the hall staring at him.

  He lay the rest of the afternoon and whenever he looked, he found the yellow and white curtains still above him and the white china pot still under the bed. When evening came, the room was soft in the candle light. The bed posts looked rich and golden, and the flame of the candle shone in the polish like stars of pointed fire. He had come to this room only a few hours ago, and already it seemed like he knew it a long time. He might even have been born in this room, he whispered to himself, and the lady with the gold cross who was so good and tender to him, might be his secret mother.

  Now why did his brother have to come down from Americus and spoil it?

  “There’s a man down at the door, Henry,” the lady told him the next morning. “He’s looking for a boy called Chancey Wheel
er. They think he came down on the flood.”

  Chancey closed his eyes quickly, but he could feel the lady waiting. After while he got out of bed and went to the window. Had he not known the dream was over, he would know it now. The water in the town was gone leaving mud over everything. In the street by the front door was Hector and his father’s chaise and on the muddy step stood Guerdon. Oh, he would know that familiar, homely figure anywhere in his muddy red shirt and his pantaloons stained with water and mud.

  Suddenly the man below looked up and saw him at the window.

  “Chancey, that you? Are you all right?” The next minute he came bursting in the house and ran up the stairs a calling.

  Guerdon’s honest joy at finding him alive sent the pity into the little boy’s heart. Never would he tell him that he wasn’t his real brother. All the way out of Forkville and north toward Americus, he let Guerdon pour out his talk to him.

  “What were you on that bridge for when it went down? You ought to knowed better. I told you all the time that bridge wouldn’t stand high water. I kept telling old Jackson, but he wouldn’t listen. What were you doing on it anyways?”

  “I was lying on the arch,” Chancey said carefully.

  “I knowed it. The toll woman said you were off. She claimed you got back through in plenty of time, but other folks said they seen you go down the river. All yesterday I wished I was with you. I tried to get to Forkville ahead of you, but it took too long the way the roads were. Then I had to stop every place along the river and ask if they seen any drowned corpse come down. I sure would a hated to go in and find you laying out in the shed with a gunny sack over you.”

  “What would they have a gunny sack over me for?” Chancey wondered.

  “So they wouldn’t have to look at your bloated up face and belly. That’s why I couldn’t get to Forkville in time. If I had, I’d a got out on the bridge. Then I’d a waited for you to come along. I’d a watched my chance and dropped on your raft when you came out from under. Just to keep you company. Me and you’d stayed right on and gone down the river. If we got thirsty we could drink river water. We could a seen the country. You could a got off, if you wanted, but not me. I’d a stayed on till I seen the Gulf of Mexico, and I’d never come home again.”