The Town

by Conrad Richter

  Did his great Aunt Unity talk like that, Chancey pondered, and did she tell stories like his father? For instance, the one he told lately about Polly Becker of the White Horse Tavern in Tateville. “Polly is the perfect tavern keeper,” he would say, “She’s an especially clever cook. She takes the bone out of every chicken so it carves easily and beautifully at the table. She makes excellent bread in a special oven she uses for no other purpose. She’s also good as a man behind the bar. But her pride and joy was the pure white steed on her tavern sign. Well, last month some of the young men rallied her about her sign. What did she mean calling her place the White Horse Tavern? they said. It ought to be called the White Mare Tavern, as anybody with half an eye could see. Let her come outside now and see for herself. That broke Polly’s heart. She had to give in and call a painter to make the proper adjustment and now no one can justly criticize any more the name of the White Horse Tavern.”

  The ladies usually blushed and the men chuckled whenever his father told the story. Looking at Aunt Unity, Chancey wondered if she had liked to tell stories like that, dressed in her heliotrope gown and sitting in her fine parlor back in the Bay State.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD

  I hear a voice you cannot hear

  Which says I must not stay;

  I see a hand you cannot see

  Which beckons me away.

  T. TICKELL

  Inscription in italics on gravestone of Guerda Wheeler.

  FOR a while when Portius wanted to take a dig at Sayward, he would call her Granny. But Sayward didn’t mind. Next to being a mammy would she be a grand-mammy.

  Her first grandchild was Resolve’s and Fay’s babe, named Henry William after his grandfather Morrison. He was a smart little fellow with a big nose from the day he was born, and eyes that looked like they knew already what a shilling was and how many silver levies and fips could be cut from it. It wasn’t long till he had a little sister they called, Mary Leah. Then Sooth came along with the first of her close-together brood. Oh, till her children got through, Sayward was to be a granny a dozen times over. She loved them all. Every last one was the apple of her eye. The sun rose and set on one like the other, for she was bound she’d be even-handed alike to children and grandchildren. But you couldn’t always carry through what you made out to do. Certain young ones had a way of crawling unwanted in your heart like they did sometimes in your womb. Now wasn’t it strange that the least likely of all should turn out to be her favor-rite?

  The first time Sayward heard that Effie was having a baby, she didn’t know what to think. Knowing Effie, how could she ever tell was this Guerdon’s child or some other man’s, perhaps the one Guerdon had slain in bed with her? Just the same she felt it her bounden duty to go out there, for she owed only an extra debt to the child if Guerdon had robbed it of its father. Besides, there was some small chance that Effie had news from Guerdon. But Effie said she hadn’t a scrap of word from him, nor was she likely to, and what was she to do now that she was to bear Guerdon’s child, and how would she raise it without a father to keep it in clothes and rations?

  Sayward looked mighty sober. If Effie was having a baby it must have a long time to go yet, for she gave not the slightest sign. Also, it would be to Effie’s advantage to have the Wheelers acknowledge it as their own flesh and blood. But the more Effie kept sniffling and claiming it Guerdon’s and the higher the stack of bibles she said she would swear it on, the less stock Sayward took in her, though she said nothing.

  She thought from the fuss Effie made, she’d surely send her word when the baby came. But no, not so, though Genny fetched news that a girl child had been born to Guerdon’s woman. Now why did Effie hold off letting her know? Sayward wondered. Genny said she heard the child was the image of somebody else than Guerdon, and that was likely why Effie didn’t want Sayward to come out and see it. Sayward felt a strong temptation to take the easiest way and not go out at all. She had knitted a tiny jacket from her softest fleece for the baby. She could send that out with Dezia or Massey and make an end to it.

  “Now this is enough holding back!” she flared at herself one day. “That poor little thing can’t help who was its pap or if it was conceived in sin. I’m a going out tomorrow.”

  She’d have blamed herself all her life if she hadn’t for when she got there and saw the babe, something went through her like the corncutter that sliced off Guerdon’s finger. Had she seen that babe in Africy or the coast of Noraway, she’d have known it as her own flesh and blood. The tiny face and eyes had a stamp on them as plain as her girls’ clothes hanging on their pegs in the cabin. It was a mighty pert and independent look peering out from inside that tiny skull, a certain knowing way that had been in her sister Sulie who got lost in the woods and in her own first girl child, Sulie, who was burned to her death running from the soap kettle. You’d think that would have been the last of it, but here that look had cropped up again in this bundle of flesh of the third generation. How it got here was a mystery and a wonder to Sayward. It must be that a look like hers could keep floating around in the bloodstream, first in one body, then in another, get carried around here and yon all these years, through cold and hot, sickness and famine, never getting lost in blood-letting or finger-chopping, coming all the way from old Grandmam Powelly who could say such spunky things when you’d least expect them back along the Conestoga in Pennsylvania.

  The first thing flew into Sayward’s mind was the fear that by some mischance Effie might call her Sulie. Guerdon must have told her the stories of what happened to his aunt and sister and Effie might think to please the Wheelers by giving the child that name. Sayward didn’t believe in signs and superstitions, but just the same twice had the name turned up unlucky in her life time. Where there were two, her mother always said, there’d be three. Besides, what would be the use saddling a bad-token like that around a helpless little girl-child’s neck when there were a thousand names in the world to pick from, sound and hearty names like Sarah, Betsy and Susannah, and fancy names like Rosemary, Jobyanna and Heleneor. It made her feel good when Effie said she was calling her Guerda.

  Now wasn’t that a nice name, Sayward told herself on the way home. Effie had surprised her. She’d have to give her credit for more sense from now on. Guerda after Guerdon, she repeated to herself. It sounded real good and clever. When she was a little bigger, they could call her Guerdy for short, like they called Guerdon pretty nearly up to the time he was married.

  That name, Guerdy, fetched back a lot of water that had gone over the dam.

  “Oh, Guerdon, where are you?” something inside her cried out. “Don’t you know you’re a pappy now! Come on home, for your babe needs you.”

  Every night since he run off, she had worried for him. Around Americus where most folks knew and liked him, he did tolerably well. But how would it go in a foreign place where folks wouldn’t give a hait for the stranger? He might go without rations and nobody would know it. If he got sick, who would there be to nurse him? She had felt bad enough when Kinzie left with government men to look after him and always tell her where he was. But who would look after Guerdon or write and tell her where he was at, for Guerdon himself was never one for schooling or his letters.

  “Wherever in these United American States you be,” she called to him in her mind, “come on home, for what you wanted has come to pass. You needn’t linger in jail. Your pappy and Resolve are good lawyers. They will get you lawfully out. No twelve men good and true will ever send you to the gallows.”

  But the days passed, and never did the stranger coming up to the door turn out to be the babe’s father, nor his face appear among the crowd on Water Street. The only time she saw him was in her dreams, and then he was ever a small boy, quarreling with Resolve and Kinzie. Now why did she never dream of him grown up? she wondered. Did it mean he was a man deprived of life? No, it couldn’t be, for in her heart she felt him still alive, although in which direction, whether on the pra
iries of Iowa, or in the back settlements of Missouri, or east in the old states, or some other place far from the law, the compass needle of her heart would never point.

  She was only thankful now for the small part of him he had left behind. From almost the first, Sayward took out for Guerda all of Massey’s baby clothes. When she was one year old, she was fetched on a visit to the Wheelers, and after that she was at her Grandmam Wheeler’s as much as she was at home. It wasn’t Guerdy any more but Gerty. Even Portius was taken with her and liked to rally her at the table. Ever she had a sharp pert answer waiting for him on the end of her small tongue. When Sayward saw her outside running, bobbing, dancing, going back and forward like her Sulie used to do, such a feeling came over her for the little form that she could hardly bear it. She wished that when Effie first complained about raising her that they had taken her off her hands, but the Clousers wouldn’t think of giving her up now.

  Sayward fretted somewhat the life the tot had to live in Fishtown. To offset it a little, she took her along to church whenever she could and had Dezia tell her Bible stories. Then she wished she hadn’t. One Sunday Preacher Harbaugh preached fire and damnation against women who paid too much attention to frills and ruffles on their dresses when what they should wear was the humility and meekness of the Lord’s commandments. The next morning Libby caught Gerty on the loft with the big shears and Libby’s best dress. She was cutting off the ruffles and bows, and fought like a bobkitten to hold on to those shears.

  “The Lord don’t want no fancy fixens on your gown!” she kept hollering. “And I’m a going to cut them off like He said.”

  Oh, you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry to see and hear that small tot in a white apron that came down within two inches of the hem of her red dress, with pantalettes coming down farther, with barred stockings striped around in rings and scarf hanging loose behind, telling Libby what kind of dress the Lord wanted.

  Another time Sayward missed her at the house and thought of the canal. She ran down, and there the tot was on the tow path, leaning far over the water so all you could see were her chubby legs and little fat behind. She was, she said, sailing ships on the Red Sea.

  “Now I don’t want to find you down here alone again,” Sayward told her on the way home.

  “Did you fret about me, Granmam?”

  “Well, I felt a mite uneasy.”

  “Did you reckon I’d fall in?”

  “No, I didn’t all-the-way reckon so. But I knew a little girl once that fell in the river, and when they pulled her out, she was a gone Josie.”

  “Oh, you needn’t worry about me, Granmam,” she bragged. “Somebody looks after me.”

  “Who?”

  “Somebody you never saw,” she said mysteriously.

  “Well, I didn’t see anybody around. He better stay closer so he can keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh, you could never see him, Granmam. It’s an angel takes care of me.” She said it so big that Sayward looked down stern.

  “Well, I hope he’s strong enough to pull you out if you fall in,” was all she said.

  “It’s a lady angel,” Gerty corrected her.

  Sayward said no more about it. Was it last Sunday or Sunday before, she mused, that Preacher Harbaugh had a sermon about Elijah and how the angel of the Lord took care of him? If Elijah had an angel to look after him, she reckoned, Gerty would have one, too. But wasn’t it just like Gerty to go Elijah one better? Elijah could have his man angel. She would have a lady angel.

  Angel or no angel, Sayward kept a wary eye on the little tot after that. But none of them paid much attention to the strange things she said, save to laugh over them; and sometimes to cry. One evening they were having a birthday party for Libby. That afternoon Effie came in to take Gerty home. Libby said she’d bring Gerty up to Fishtown next day, but Effie wouldn’t have it. The more the child cried and carried on to stay, the more stubborn Effie got. There were no two ways about it. Grandmam Clouser was coming back from a visit and Gerty had to be home.

  In the end, the child went in tears to the front room to give her Grandpappy Wheeler goodby at his desk.

  “You better kiss me good, Granpappy,” she said. “Because you won’t never see me again.”

  “Are you moving away?” he asked in surprise, not knowing any of the talk in the kitchen.

  “Yes, and a mighty far place from here,” she let him know.

  “When are you going?”

  “I daresn’t tell. It’s a secret,” she said. “But it’s pretty soon, they told me.”

  Portius came along out to the kitchen to ask Effie where they were moving. Effie said angrily it was one of Gerty’s notions, that there wasn’t a particle of truth in it, and Sayward for once was inclined to agree with Effie, for she noticed that Gerty gave goodby to none of them save Portius.

  That was a Thursday. Friday night a week, Libby came in and said she heard Gerty was down with a throat distemper. Early Saturday morning Sayward killed a chicken, dressed it and put it on to boil. Right after noon dinner she took a kettle of hot broth and some of the white meat out for Gerty. She took Massey along. When they got to the Clouser shack, Gerty lay in bed reading out loud to some neighbor children from the book her Grandpappy Wheeler gave her last Christmas. Oh, she could hardly tell one letter from the other, though you would hardly know it to hear her read. She knew that book by heart. But she threw it away quick once she saw who was there.

  “I won’t be sick long, Granmam,” she promised. “The angel said I could get up Sunday and run out.” But though she tried hard, she couldn’t drink any of the warm broth. She claimed her throat wouldn’t let her swallow.

  “Why don’t you eat it, Mam?” Effie said to her fat and grinning mother. “It’s a shame to let that good white meat and soup spoil and go to waste.” If Sayward ever begrudged anything, it was to see that huge and sloppy old woman take the cud of snuff from her mouth and sit there sucking, smacking and grunting over what was meant to bring a bit of strength and recovery to a small ailing child.

  The girls and Chancey came in that afternoon to see how Gerty was getting along. They said Portius had been called to Tateville and wouldn’t be home till some time tomorrow. Sayward had intended to go along back with them, but something Gerty did stopped her. Oh, the tot was pleased as a puppy with two tails having her young uncle and aunts come all the way up here just to see her, and when they went she said she had presents for them. To Libby she tried to give her Job’s tears, to Dezia her button box, to Massey her spoon wagon and to Chancey her medicine which she said she wouldn’t need any more. Now why did that make Sayward uneasy? She told them they could go on home. She would come later.

  She didn’t go after supper either. Oh, she never saw a sick and wasted child with more signs of getting better. She kept chattering away to her grandmam, and when Sayward said it would be better for her throat if she kept still, she rapped out tunes with her knuckles on the headboard and had her grandmam try to guess what they were. And yet Sayward stayed. She told Effie and Granmam Clouser they could lay down and get some rest if they wanted. She would stay up with Gerty and sleep on a chair. And that’s what she did, taking a short nap now and then.

  About ten o’clock when it was time for the medicine, Sayward got the candle from the mantel. But when she fetched it close to Gerty, she stopped short. A power of sweetness, like a master secret, had come out on the child’s face, and that was something Sayward hated to see worse than any rash or pox. More than once had she seen that look before, and never had she known it to be long for this world. She went straight to Effie to wake her up and send her for the doctor.

  “If the new doctor can’t come, get the old,” she said. “Tell him I’m here and that I’ll pay for it.”

  About eleven, there was the sound of a gig, and it was Effie with Dr. Pearsall. He came in the room, a slow Old England man, greeting Sayward with respect, paying no attention to the fat and chattering Grandmam Clouser. Sayward watched him and didn
’t like what she saw presently in his good eye. Some folks wouldn’t have him, complaining he had been a king’s man and lost that eye as a boy on the wrong side of the Revolution, but that didn’t matter to Sayward if he could help Gerty. He still wore his clothes old style like Col. Sutphen and a few others. His hair, long and silvery, hung tied with a ribbon. He ordered Effie to pull a chair by the bed for him like she was a servant. But to Gerty he was kindness itself. When she couldn’t swallow his powder, spilling the white foaming water on his coat sleeve and the bed clothes, he never reproached her but sat the chair by her side like a magistrate, his legs crossed, his single eye fixed on the small face, one hand on the smaller pulse, the other regularly switching his long queue. Now and then his white fingers would feel and knead the child’s neck. Then they would go back to the pulse and queue again.

  Sayward had no idea an hour had passed when he turned on her in the candle light a face that told her what she must know. Suddenly the clock struck twelve, though you had to count fast to tell it. Sayward remembered with a touch of horror what Gerty had said, that on Sunday “the angel” said she could get up and run out. A curious shiver ran up her backbone. Could it be there was any truth in this wild talk of Gerty’s about an angel? Other things she had given no thought to at the time swarmed in her mind, like whenever she sent the child on an errand, Gerty would ask so serious, “What will you do, Granmam, when I’m not here to help you?” And the time a canaler told her how the small tyke cried to his boy not to beat the poor mules so. The boy told her to mind her own business, but she stood right up to him and what she preached, he said, was good as a sermon. She called him a sinner but said she’d ask the Lord to forgive him when she went to Heaven.