The Town

by Conrad Richter

  “Is Papa home?” Sooth formed with her lips.

  Sayward shook her head.

  “He’s not here,” Sooth turned and told him with regret.

  “Then I do your mother the honor,” he said, nothing abashed, and you could hear the foreign saw or French locust in his tongue. He came up and gave Sayward a springy bow. Oh, you could see he had plenty of cheek and wouldn’t be taken down easy. “Good evening, madame, I ask the honor of marriage with Miss Sooth?”

  Libby and Dezia drew their breaths, but Sayward sat there like she was used to officers of the great Napoleon coming to seek her aid. Just the same, her mind ran fast enough. They must have been mighty thick with each other these nights at practise, she thought, for this to travel so quick. What did Sooth mean letting it go so far? Her eyes went to Sooth and there they halted.

  There was out in Welsh Valley a family of brothers named Griffin. All bachelors, they did their own cooking, washing, thread-spinning and weaving. They even sewed up their own clothes. They had a few fields of wheat and corn for bread, cows for milk and stands of bees for honey. In the winter two of the brothers burned charcoal to send to town. The other sometimes fetched in honey and a kind of apple he called the Summer Sweeting. Two or three times a year he would come along riding that two-wheeled cart of his, a blowing his long shepherd’s pipe so any who wanted could come out on the road and buy.

  All this year whenever Sayward heard Sooth come in the house singing, it minded her of the shepherd’s pipe, and she would say to herself, “Here comes the Summer Sweeting!” But now she thought that never before tonight had she seen her so mortal fair with her pure blue eyes, her fresh white skin and light red hair. “So this eat-frog feller wants to take our Summer Sweeting!” she thought, giving him a black look. Why, never would he see thirty again, and Sooth no more than sixteen. He must have been behind the door when good looks were given out, while Sooth ever took your breath like Genny used to as a barefoot girl a running like a white-head through the woods. Why, little girls when they went by would stop stock still to see Genny like some white flower that sprouted from this black ground. But Genny had no red hair, and never had she quite come up to Sooth who hadn’t been born or even thought of then.

  “Mama!” Sooth reminded her.

  “I heard him,” her mother said mildly in her broadest woodsy accent so that he at once would see the worst of her. “I couldn’t say right off. I’d have to talk it over with your pappy first.”

  Sooth looked at her quickly. Now what was in the back of her mother’s mind that she would say that? Why, her mother had her own opinions and would stand up for them in front of anybody. She didn’t have to talk anything over with her father first. And never would she speak to one for another as she was doing now. This must be just to put him off, and to let her know that already she stood against their wedding.

  Sooth was ever the one to wound easy. Her stricken glance flew to her suitor but all he did was bow as though her mother had spoken to him directly.

  “I will wait till the next practise,” he said. “Good evening, madame. Good evening, young ladies.” He gave two more bows, stiffly, from the waist up. Then Sooth went out with him for a few minutes, closing the door behind her, and you could hear her whisper.

  When she came in, Huldah and George were with her.

  “Sooth’s going to be married!” Libby cried before they had the door shut.

  Huldah’s face instantly distorted and darkened.

  “Why, you young whipper snapper!” she said. “Who to?”

  “Captain Bernd.”

  “That cheek puffer! When?”

  “In December, I think—if Mama lets us.”

  “Why, that’s next month!” Huldah declared. Her eyes had strange tongues of black venom for her young sister. “How is it you can’t wait? It doesn’t sound decent. People will think—”

  “Huldah!” Sayward warned her sharply. “Don’t say anything you shouldn’t or you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  Her oldest daughter stood there silent for a little but you could see the forbidden words working under her pretty skin.

  “I thought you were cracked on a June wedding!” she jeered.

  “December is a very nice month, Huldah,” Sayward broke in calmly. “It’s the month our Lord was born in.”

  Sooth had been standing there blanching. Now she threw her mother a blinding and grateful glance. It minded Sayward of the time Genny had done that. Louie had said he couldn’t get a missionary to wed them here in the woods, and Sayward had said, “You might boat Ginny down the river. I don’t allow she would mind.” Oh, that blinding look that Genny threw her then Sayward never could forget any more than the one Sooth gave her today. It was as much to say, “I feared you were against me, Mama, but now I know that all the time you were on my side.”

  Huldah’s black eyes didn’t miss that look.

  “So you think you could sneak in and get married ahead of me!” she told Sooth. “Well, you’re not. I was going to keep it a surprise, but now I’ll tell you. George and me are getting married next week. We made it out all along, didn’t we, George? Tell her, am I telling the truth or not?” She turned on the startled young iron master who backed her up in every particular, but he looked much too pleased and thankful all of a sudden to have it go down with Sayward.

  “Oh, Huldah!” Sooth stood there alive with pleasure. She ran up to her sister and kissed her. “I’m real happy for you, Huldah!” she said. She wrung George’s hand. “You’re getting my wonderful sister!” she told him. “And now you’ll be my brother!”

  Sayward could still see and hear her that evening when she made things ready for tomorrow’s breakfast. Wasn’t it just like Sooth to feel happier for Huldah than Huldah for herself? That was Sooth all over, blooming at night the same as by day. Early in bed in the morning, most girls looked sleepy and sulky, their skin washed out and their eyes sticky. But the minute Sooth woke up she lay there in bed like a fresh-opened daisy. Now how could Sayward trust a flower like her to this short-spoken soldier? Why, he was old and hard-wayed enough to be her pappy.

  Wasn’t it a pity it couldn’t be Sooth and George, and the rough soldier and Huldah. Then never she need worry, for George with all his hard riding was tender and sweet as a young boy, and Huldah could handle any Great Nates who had slain men for his emperor. Why couldn’t likes get married sometimes? Why always had opposites to pull each other? She reckoned it some wise plan of the Lord to keep the pretty from getting prettier and the homely homlier, the sweet sweeter and the mean meaner. But if so, the devil had spiked that way of the Lord. Little did those opposites know a standing up before the preacher promising to love each other till death did them part, little did they know what they carried inside themselves against each other. They might know the other’s sweetness that pulled them together, but mostly hidden yet were their own differences that, like handspikes between two logs, would ever try to push and worry them apart.

  Sayward went to the front room and undressed for bed. She felt relieved Portius hadn’t come yet. There were matters pertaining to a girl child you couldn’t easy talk over with a man. Especially if that girl child had been Sooth. Thank God she had outgrown it now, and could laugh at what once bothered her. But when she was a little tyke, never would she say her A B C’s like her brothers and sisters. When she got to M she would start hurrying a little and say M N O Q R, slurring from O to Q so none might notice she let out the letter P, that being a coarse word she couldn’t say in public. It was something like that in church when the preacher read some verse like the commandment, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his man servant, nor his maid servant, nor his ox, nor his ass…” Libby’s face might twitch, but Sayward used to feel Sooth’s little form stiffen and tighten beside her. But the pitiful thing was the time Preacher Selin came to the house. He was a saint on earth if there ever was one. He looked like his whole face and frame were locked and his eyes saw the glory of the Lord a co
ming. Little Sooth sat on her young ’un’s stool at his feet. When he went out after dinner, they tried to stop her, but she would tag after. Then she came a running back, all the light gone out of her small face.

  “I told you he was goin’ to the back house,” Huldah jeered at her in her coarse voice.

  “Mama!” Sooth whispered, pulling at her skirt. “Is it true, Mama? Does he have to go out just the same as we do?”

  Oh, Sayward reckoned the light would go out of Sooth’s face a good many times when she found out all you had to do in this life, married life in particular, and how men were. The same time, what sort of mam would she be to try and stop her? Not always could she be here to fend for her child, to try to save it from harm and hardship. Better had it find out for itself about life at the beginning than at the end. Your bones bent easier when you were young, and your flesh sooner mended. Once you were old, the marks that life gave stayed in your flesh a long time, and a right good bump could break your bones like pipe stems.

  Long after Portius came home and slept by her side, Sayward prayed that God would guide her what to say about Sooth. But make it real guidance so I can tell when it comes, she prayed, for she didn’t believe in taking every stray sign and notion that came along and claiming it the hand of God. A lost person in a woods could find twigs pointing the way home in any direction it wanted to go, and even in the Bible the devil could find plenty verses to quote for his business. No, unless the Lord spoke to her strong and plain, she would fall back on her own good sense. That sense told her that the hand of the Almighty might be a little slow but it was more knowing than hers. Once she had reckoned to save Guerdon from life by tying him close to home. All that came out of it was spilled blood, and sending him away from home for good.

  Oh, she would give a good deal to get this eat-frog feller alone out behind the barn and catechise him for thinking himself good enough for Sooth. And yet, who was she to do that? What woodsy had thought herself good enough for a Bay State lawyer, to make herself a wife to him and the mother of his children?

  No, she daresn’t complain, not even on a bitter cold night. Now she better try to get a little sleep before it was time to get up. But whoever heard of a summer sweeting ripe and picked in the winter time? Wasn’t it pitiful how a mother raised a girl child, tended it loving for fifteen or sixteen years, and then before it was full-grown, some rough-handed man came along and spoiled it?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  STANDING WATER

  Here I sow hemp seed, hemp seed I sow.

  Whoever wants me, come after and mow.

  EARLY SETTLER CHILDREN’S GAME

  NOW that Chancey was at school, he didn’t know if he liked it or not. Some days he’d sit at his desk blind to his book, reading the patch of window. If his heart hadn’t got better, he told himself, he’d still be out there in the free air. Then if it wouldn’t act up too much, he could drag around where he liked. Goods would be piled outside the stores, and the gold ball perched on the new court house roof. Hitching posts would stand to be tagged as you went by, and things in town would pull him this way and that, the boat yards, the loading docks and the Irish cemetery for those who couldn’t be buried with other folks.

  But the strongest call came from the canal, for the engineers were letting the water in for the first time today. As far as you could see, the big ditch ran, like a hill turned down and inside out. An army of Irishmen had scooped it out, cursing at the boys who threw stones at their clay pipes when they laid them up on the ground. Now they were gone and the ditch lay new and dry. But God help the dog or cat found in it when the water came down today. They were letting it in from the river. Oh, this would be a day to remember. Folks were coming from twenty miles to see boats floating where had been only dry earth before.

  It was a high March day with the snow already gone and the ground warm in sheltered spots. Chancey had hoped they would let out school for the great event. But the master said they all had to come back after dinner. The master was a Yankee from Yale College, and the boys on their way home at noon yelled rebelliously an old round the boatmen used to jeer at the Yankee tavern keeper of the Seven Stars.

  He puts pine tops in his whiskey!

  And then he calls it gin!

  Some of the boys went down to the river instead of going back to school, and Chancey tagged along. They headed for the Hollow Sycamore, for they daren’t be seen along the canal. A holy feeling came over Chancey as they let him in. This was the mysterious pagan temple where men came on Sundays drinking and gambling. When the second bell rang, it sounded in here like a voice from another world, the world of the dead and imprisoned. On the academy grounds you ran like a rabbit to get in when the second bell sounded, but here it had no more power over you than a cow bell. Between the black-burned walls of this great hollow tree, you were a free man.

  In fact, they were all free men now, taking turns at the corncob pipe Turkey Tench had stolen from his father. Chancey was the last to get it. He put the hard stem, still wet from the last smoker, in his mouth. Why, it wasn’t hard to smoke. All you had to do was suck at the pipe. Wasn’t it strange that such powerful tasting stuff could be soft as silk between your lips when you blew it out? He watched it float blue and delicate over his head and fought to keep the pipe till it rattled and went out. Something tasted bitter as gall in his mouth, but he daren’t spit it out in front of the bunch, so he swallowed it.

  Wasn’t it a pity he couldn’t do anything without getting sick, he told himself bitterly. It always used to be his heart. Now today it was his stomach. It must have been something he ate for dinner. The sunshine outside the tree was fading fast from the light of day, and all he could see of his companions were cloudy forms alarmed at the croupy sounds he made in his windpipe trying to catch his breath after puking. Waves of nausea swept over him. Oh, he had heard that this old sycamore was an evil place and that those who came here would have a bad end, but never did he dream it would come true so quick. Why, he had just got here, you might say, and this was the first time.

  The boys helped him up the bank where he found himself stumbling on a littered porch while his stomach tried to turn inside out like an old umbrella in a storm. Suddenly all the boys around him except Turkey scattered like quail, and Chancey saw Rosa’s mother in her wild matted hair standing inside the doorway. He didn’t want to go in but Turkey pulled him.

  “Can you do something for him, Mama?” he begged her. “He was smokin’ grape leaves, and he’s throwin’ up all his toe nails.”

  Swaying and helpless, Chancey saw the horrible uncombed woman come toward him. She sniffed around at his face.

  “Put him on a chair. He’s green as a gooseberry,” she said. “But he doesn’t smell like grape leaves to me.”

  Sick as a dog, Chancey watched her go to one of the joists for tea, then the strong scent of some unknown herb filled the room. Never had the boy tasted anything so loathesome as the cup of brown liquid her claws pushed into his hands. It could be a poison for his heart, he thought as he sipped it, for she had warned him never to come near her house and Rosa again. Or it could be some witch’s brew to turn him into a wolf or catamount, and then she could shoot him lawfully with the rifle that stood behind the door, and never could they put her in jail for it or even make her bury him. No, she could skin him and use his hide for a rug on this dirty floor, and the only time his father and mother and sisters would ever see him again would be when they came to watch this witch woman wipe her feet on him.

  Could he have gotten out of it, he wouldn’t have drank a drop, but she stood over him and he had to swallow it to the dregs. That was to make him surely die, he knew. Already he felt sicker from the vile stuff. Often had he wondered what it was people meant when they spoke of the point of death, but now his eyes found a double crack that looked like a butcher’s knife on the plastered wall. Where the two lines came together for the knife’s point, that, he told himself, was the point of death.

  Wasn’t it st
range how when you were dying, things came to you clearer than ever before! Here he was halfway down to the grave, and yet he could taste the strangeness of this unfamiliar house as if it was in a cup and he had to drink it, the tick of the curious clock, the shape of these unaccustomed rafters, the litter of disarray and dirt, the picture on the wall black with smoke and dust so that you couldn’t tell if it was a cart or a camel; the cracked and broken plates and cups on the table, the coarse pewter, and shining among them, the slender shells of spoons that looked pure-spun silver, tooth marked and twisted.

  But the most alien thing was Rosa’s mother sitting here with him, her tangled hair falling over the soiled shoulders of her once fine dress with tassels. She was reading a book in the darkest corner as if she had owl’s or cat’s eyes. Right in the middle of all this dirt and disorder she sat at her ease, and in the middle of the day when women still had most of their work to do. You wouldn’t reckon to look at her she could read a lick, but she’d turn the old page and suck out the meaning of the new like a bird pulling out a worm. Oh, a bird looked handsome enough on the wing, and soft as a ball of down on the treetop, but once Chancey had seen a hawk chained to its perch. Its face was fierce as a snapping turtle’s, its eyes on either side of its beak a glitter and ready for the beak to strike. That’s the way Rosa’s mother looked at her book, like a stooped, round-shouldered hawk in an uncleaned cage, her head and neck feathers askew and disheveled; her brown back and clipped wings smutched and smirked like the filthy old shawl she had around her shoulders. Now why wouldn’t she ever come out of this house, he wondered. All he knew was that boys talked of setting fire to the house some day, and then, they said, she’d have to come out. But they were too afraid of Jake Tench to try it.