The Town

by Conrad Richter

  Once while Chancey was sitting there, she spoke to Turkey, calling him Harold, in a mild voice. Why, never did Chancey know that Turkey had another name. To hear it said so fine astonished him. He looked to see if it could really be Turkey that his mother meant. She treated the others well enough, too, but when the door opened and Rosa came in, harsh words flew at her for staying so long. Now why did her mother feel so mean against Rosa, he wondered, for when she came in, the dark and dying world in Chancey’s head lightened. The picture on the wall turned into no cart or camel but a dish of fruit with grapes and a ripe apple. The heavy close air sweetened, and when he saw it again, the knife cracks on the wall didn’t come to the point of death at all but ended in a round button like Turkey’s nose. His own leg that had grown numb with the sleep of death, he thought, began to waken and itch. He knew that Rosa had sat down and put her hands in her lap. Even with his head turned, he could feel her sitting still as a pin against the hostility of her mother.

  Once her mother leaned forward over her book.

  “What’s your name, boy?” she put to him like she hadn’t seen him before.

  “You mean my real name?” Chancey stammered. “Or my other one? My real name’s Ormsbee.”

  “Your real name’s Wheeler,” she told him sharply. “You are faithless and deceitful like your father. You think nothing of betraying hospitality and telling a lie. You can take your cap and go.”

  “Don’t go!” Rosa made with her lips. “She doesn’t mean it.”

  He stayed fearfully, ready to run if she came for him. After a while she sat back. The glitter went out of her eyes. She became wrapped up in her book again. What was in that book, Chancey wondered. The stained tassels of her dress would hang still for a moment and then faintly quiver or be violently shaken. He could not see her eyes. They were lowered on her book. When he could sit no longer and rose to go, she looked up, and her eyes gazed on him with some ancient bitterness as from the pit. They gave him the most unpleasant feeling. They would follow him all the way home. He’d wake up tonight, and there they would be, pitiful and accursed.

  Rosa had stood up, too.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Miss Rosa?” her mother asked.

  “I want to see that Chancey gets home all right.”

  “You’ll stay right here, Miss. He can get home by himself now. And he needn’t honor us with his presence again. He was welcome only in his illness.”

  But when Chancey got to the fulling mill, someone called from down the side street and it was Rosa. She must have gone out the back way and run around by the river.

  “I wanted to tell you I dreamed about you last night,” she said when she joined him.

  “About me!”

  “It was such a clear dream. I was wading in the water and the water ran up hill. When I got to the woods, a fawn came out and drank. You could see its sides go in and out. So I knew it was afraid of me.”

  “Maybe it was just running fast and that’s what made its sides go in and out.”

  “No, it was afraid of me and it was you,” Rosa told him.

  “Why should I be afraid of you?” Chancey stammered. “And how do you know it was me?”

  “I could tell. You know how it is in a dream. A person doesn’t have to look like a person to be that person. Why are you afraid of Mama? She wouldn’t hurt you. We have a picture of her painted on glass when she was young. She has on a wonderful white dress with a fine black velvet ribbon wound around her neck and down around her waist. Her complexion is so fair and smooth, and she holds her hands so you can see they’re a lady’s hands. They’re white as milk. You wouldn’t believe how beautiful she is.”

  In his mind Chancey could see her as Rosa described her, young and beautiful and clean so that men took off their hats when they met her on the street, and yet all the time this fresh young girl was going to be Mrs. Tench who never washed or combed and wouldn’t go out of her house till she died.

  “Why are you thinking of dying?” Rosa asked, watching him anxiously as they walked along. “Don’t let’s you and I ever think of dying.”

  Now how did she know that? he wondered, but all he said was, “You ought to take longer steps. Don’t you know every step you take is one step less in your life.”

  She turned on him a sudden anguished face. Not another step would she take but sat down on the log curb.

  “It’s not true, Chancey?” she begged.

  “I heard it’s true,” he said. “Maybe that’s why your mother never goes any place.”

  “I must go back now,” the girl rose and started away.

  “Rosa, wait!” he asked her.

  She didn’t answer, only walked the faster.

  “Rosa!” he called.

  She didn’t turn and now he knew that she wasn’t going to.

  “Goodby, Rosa!”

  She lifted her hand as if to wave and then dropped it. She was almost running now, and Chancey stood there distressed, watching her go. Suddenly he became aware that she was taking very long steps. Even when she was only a speck, he could see her in his mind taking longer and longer steps till she was shut up in the house of that woman with the awful clouded and stagnant look in her eyes. And yet once upon a time she had been young and beautiful, Rosa said.

  When Chancey reached the canal, the water was already in and the crowds had gone home. He stopped on the bridge, staring. He hadn’t dreamed canal water would be slow and muddy like this. His father said they were going to let it in from the river. He thought that like the river, it would be bright and sparkling in the sun. Instead it was dirty and stagnant in its bed. Did canal water ever remember, he wondered, when yesterday it had run fresh and beautiful in the river?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  HIS FATHER’S SIDE OF THE HOUSE

  A word and a blow, and the blow first.

  A FAVORITE SAYING OF JUDGE WHEELER

  BOATS were ploughing the canal when Portius had it out with Sayward for a new house befitting their station.

  “What’s the matter with the one we’ve got?” she asked mildly.

  “We’re not in the woods any more,” Portius reminded her. “We live in a growing young city. You’re its largest landholder and I happen to be a leading lawyer and citizen. Don’t you think we’re entitled to more than a cabin to live in?”

  “It’s a double cabin,” Sayward pointed out. He just stared at her blankly, and she went on, defending herself. “We don’t need much room. Guerdon’s off and Kinzie’s in the navy. Resolve’s married and so are Huldah and Sooth. That leaves five. By the time we’d get a house up, Libby might be married, too. That would leave only four.”

  “The devil plague you, Sayward! It makes no matter if they were all married. Don’t you want a respectable place for yourself, if not for me? We’re not savages. We’ve lived long enough in this confounded hole. It was useful in its time. Now it’s served its purpose and should go to some canaler or millhand.”

  Sayward’s eyes threw him a cruel whitish look. She could have reminded him what he lived in when she married him, a rough cabin of buckeye logs no bigger than a pigpen, far out in the lonesome woods where he saw no face but his own staring up at him from the run or heard a voice save his own croaking. But she would not throw that up to him. All she would do was show him that he might bamboozle a judge and jury with strong words, he could not her. Oh, she would take his every argument just and fair, but when it came to routing her from under her own roof, he might as well try to head off a gadd or talk down a whaup, as Worth used to say. Why, her father had built this cabin his own self. She had been married in it. All her children had been born between these walls, and now Portius wanted her to give it up and move to some fine new house, cold, bare and big, likely, as a church that never had the feel of living, cooking and sleeping, or of household stuff and creature comforts in it.

  Her eyes mutinied and her lips got ropier, but never did she tell her true reason for not wishing to give up this cabin. It was d
eep down, a part of her flesh and bones, and hardly would Portius understand it, for he was of gentleman stock, used to riding and having things done for him from his youth. Now she was of common stock, a woodsy with Monsey blood in her veins, used to walking where she wanted to go and working with her own hands for what she got. Never did she believe in setting yourself up too high. Better keep your feet on the ground. Then you didn’t have so far to fall, nor to get back up again. What’s more, working for what you got kept your body stout and your mind sharp. But the main thing was that from down on the ground the whole world looked mortal fair above you. Bring up young ones humble and lacking in all save manners and school, and they had reason to work themselves higher. Raise them in a fine mansion house with all they wanted for the asking, and what would be the use working for anything? They’d have most everything already. Bring them up on top of the world, and they could only look down on the rest of it.

  But if she had a secret she wouldn’t tell, so did Portius, though she didn’t know it then.

  It was a warm spell in July when she found it out. In the old days seldom did they know what hot weather was in the woods, for the deep shade tempered even the dog days. Evenings in mid-summer were mighty cool and mornings fresh enough to make you shiver when you washed your face at the run. But now the run was gone, swallowed up by the canal. The woods were long since down and the sun drew the heat right out of the ground. You could look across open lots on a hot day and see it dancing in the air like fat from a griddle.

  For some time lately she noticed that Portius stood a little straighter and nobler, like a pillar holding up his community. Always when sober had he carried himself with dignity, but now Genny told Sayward she met him downtown on the street only yesterday and he acted toward her like he didn’t know where his own behind hung. Sayward wouldn’t give into that. He couldn’t have been nicer at the house. Of course he was full of sharp and shrewd sayings, of comic fiddle faddle and jawbreaking words. But ever polite if a mite puffed up. This noon he came up the new street for dinner like a ninety-foot hullhead a swinging up the canal. Sayward reckoned he must have walked off with some big case at court that had been hanging fire since spring, only she never heard of it. Neither would she ask him. He acted so munificent in his helpings to the younger ones at the table that he had no second helping left for himself, and she was at the fire frying him more when he spoke.

  “Did I acquaint you, Sayward, with the death of my Aunt Unity near Boston?”

  Sayward kept her face turned. Never had she even known that he had an Aunt Unity or any other kin for that matter, save the little George Roebuck had once told her. Indeed for all Portius let on, he had neither father nor mother but was born grown-up like a mushroom, nowhere in sight one minute, and the next, there it stands with the ground broke away around it under a buttonwood tree. She turned and saw him proud and pleased as Lowdermilk’s hound bitch that reached her head in their oven and ate the roast.

  “I feel sorry for you and your Aunt Unity,” she said, sober, and added, “I’d reckon you’d be still more so, being it’s your own flesh and blood, or at least by marriage.”

  His eye gave her that flicker of sharp respect it did at times when she caught him napping.

  “I was indeed shocked and grieved at the time,” he told her. “But I hadn’t seen her for many years. Also, I’ve known of her death for some time—since February, in fact.”

  So he kept it back all this time, Sayward thought, turning the slice of ham she had for him in the long-handled pan. She let it rest on the coals while she got his plate from the table. The girls and Chancey sat with eyes glued on their pappy, ears big as pitchers. Neither had they known about the one who died though she was their own great Aunty. Sayward didn’t mind it so much never telling her, for she was only a Luckett and a woodsy. But she shouldn’t easy forgive him for not telling his children of their own blood relation. Right now Sayward saw how he held them all on tenterhooks as long as he could. Oh, he was the master hand for that, she thought, to get witness and jury under his thumb in court and then hold them spellbound, keeping back something they wished to know, bringing out some shocking or tantalizing words, then halting to let the meaning sink in before he said more, till you could hardly sit on the bench, they said, for excitement.

  He buttered a piece of Sayward’s baking to go with the ham.

  “My sister and I happened to be the only heirs,” he added, dry as dust for you didn’t have to speak strong when you said anything like that.

  His sister! Sayward thought. Now what might her name be? Although the girls and Chancey were done eating, none of them asked to be excused but sat there like plucked and skewered fowls ready to be basted. Were Huldah home, she would soon ask some questions in her coarse voice to get the rest of this out, but her sisters only waited.

  “If you want to go back to Boston and see about it, Portius,” Sayward told him, “we can get along.”

  “It won’t be necessary, thank you, Sayward,” Portius said. “My sister has put up Aunt Unity’s house for sale. She has a comfortable home of her own, and there’s little likelihood of us ever going to Massachusetts to live. She’s also taken what pieces of furniture she wants and has shipped the rest to me.”

  Massey and Libby gave a little cry, but Sayward felt grave. She was beginning to see where all this talk was headed for.

  “Out here, Papa?” Massey wanted to know. “How long does it take?”

  “Well, it was shipped from Boston by sea to New Orleans, and then up the Mississippi and Ohio.”

  “When did it go?”

  “I’m not certain without looking it up,” Portius told her. “But I can tell you when it will get here. It arrived on the Mary Bibb today, and I’m having it unloaded this afternoon and stored in Mr. Dyke’s warehouse where I’m afraid it will have to stay till your mother provides a lot for us to build on.”

  Sayward looked at him without anger, but her face felt dull and resigned as it had been that long time ago when she found Louie a lying out in the woods with their Genny. In either case, the deed was done and all she could do now was make the best of it. Never would it be said about her that she made her man keep his fine furniture in a warehouse because it had no room in her cabin.

  She went ahead clearing the rest of the table.

  “Had you any lot in mind?” she asked.

  “I’m considering,” Portius said, “the hundred foot lot on the square across from General Morrison’s. It should be suitable for us.”

  So that’s the one he wanted, Sayward thought, as she soaped the dishes. He would put up no small house on that. Oh, he could live with her thirty years going on forty and never a hint of what dark secret sent him out here in the western woods. He could read what letters came from his folks and put them away in his lawyer’s strong box, and never a word spoken. But he could tell her mighty quick what lot of hers he wanted, though it was the finest lot in Americus.

  “A house on that would cost money,” she mentioned.

  “I intend to pay for its erection myself, Sayward,” he promised.

  “Well, I reckon your mind’s made up.”

  “It is, thank you, Sayward,” he told her. “The house shall be in both our names, if you desire.”

  Now what did he mean by that? she asked herself. Was it that she would have to pay half of the taxes?

  After school Chancey went straight to Dyke’s warehouse. They had his father’s part of the canal boat unloaded already, but the girls were there chattering over the long rolls of burlap and the endless crates and boxes of every size. Chancey gazed speechless at one monster box bigger than Hector’s stall in the stable. Their father said it might be Aunt Unity’s piano. The girls complained that they couldn’t actually see any of the furniture, but Chancey could see it all in his mind. What’s more, he could see the house it came from back in the Bay State, much like the Forkville house he lay in at the time of the flood, the same red brick walls with imposing white stones under
the windows. He could see Aunt Unity, too, when she was still alive, walking around her house, small, plump and sweet like the Forkville lady.

  The only thing his father fetched home that night, was a high narrow box marked, “Miss U.” in black paint. Inside the boards was burlap, and when they took off the burlap, there was the large painting of a grand lady in what Dezia called a heliotrope dress. It was Aunt Unity, their father told them, but she didn’t look like Chancey’s Forkville lady, rather like Papa. Everybody who came in the house and saw it, said so, the same bushy hair and fiery green eyes. She even sat on her chair like he did, noble and firm. They hung the painting up on the front room wall and whichever side of the room Chancey went to, the eyes followed him.

  That painting was the girls’ pride. Sometimes Chancey would sit there studying it and before he knew it, he would be in the same room as the picture back in the Bay State. There was something about that room he knew and which made him feel at home. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not, but it had the same feeling as his father, and likely the same smell, too. He even thought he could hear Aunt Unity talk and she talked like his father. He couldn’t hear any special words she said, but she gave sharp little cuts and barbs like when his father said, “Your heavenly mother, Juno,” and like when he called country folks, Salt Creekers, and their butter, sassafras butter. He had some things he said over and over. If he didn’t like a man, he would say, “A pestilent fellow.” On the other hand, if he looked up to him, he might say, “Fear is a stranger to his bosom” or, “Add to the courage of the lion, the sagacity of the fox.” “Give me a Jefferson or a Clay man,” he would say, “never a Polk, Jackson or Vanburen.” Seldom did he “think,” “reckon” or “suppose” like other folks, but was “sensible of” or “entertained the notion” or was “profoundly penetrated by” or “had a fixed resolve.” Never was he “down in the mouth” but only “suffered my spirits to droop.”