The Town

by Conrad Richter

  His toes loosed from the railing. After a moment, he went back in his room and closed the door.

  —

  When everybody had gone home, Sayward finished the girl’s work in the kitchen and went to bed. Even with her door open to the hall, she felt pretty much alone. It seemed so far from Kinzie and everybody else in this big house. In the cabin they all had lived and slept close together. But she might as well get used to it. For the rest of her life, this would likely be her lot. Portius was willing enough for her to sleep alone for style’s sake now, though he had raised sand when she had done the same thing in the cabin. She set a spool under one of her windows and went to bed. Gowan had made these walls tight as the bottom of a new kettle. It seemed town folks thought the night air poisonous and wanted to keep it out. But she slept out many a night, and it never hurt her. Poison or no poison, she liked the night air, such as used to sift through the chinking of the cabin.

  She thought they had been up late tonight, but it seemed like other folks were up later. Lying there she could hear the voices of a company of people coming down the square. The talk grew pleasantly nearer. Now they were going past the house and now stopping at a door beyond where some of the party lived. “Goodnight! Goodnight!” the voices called back and forward. “Pleasant dreams! We had such a nice evening!” More things were called as the rest of the party went on. A half dozen houses away a man thought of something else to shout back. It sounded like John Quitman. Oh, that was a pleasant thing for a lonesome body who lived most of her life in the woods and fields to hear. Only those who knew what it meant not to see a strange face from one season to another could appreciate how sweet was the music of human voices. She took after her mother’s side and liked the feel of other folks around, although that didn’t mean they had to live right up against you. Across the field or through a patch of woods would be close enough, just so you could see the smoke of their chimney and hear them call the dog, cows or young ones.

  Now wasn’t it a shame, she thought as she went to sleep, that little Gerty hadn’t lived long enough to visit here. She’d have company then, for Gerty always loved to sleep with her grandmam. Her warm voice and running feet would take up some of the slack and coldness in this house. That’s what the place needed. It wouldn’t seem so empty and useless with a lively little body around, if only for a few months of the year.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ROSA HAS TO BE HERSELF

  “You didn’t e’er a thing,” she said under her breath.

  “Did you think you heard something a-callen?”

  ELIZABETH MADDOX ROBERTS

  THE TENCH house stood along the river like a box with two or three uneven windows, a roof of black shakes above, and a dark slab fence around it below.

  All evening in that house Rosa had the tight, stretched-out feeling she always had before her father came. It had started today about four o’clock when Mr. Higgins, the man in Oliver Meek’s store, put up the sign on the sidewalk.

  TO RENT

  By that, Rosa knew her father’s boat was tied up in the basin, though he wasn’t home as yet. This kind of thing had been going on for a long time. Whenever her father got too far back in the rent, Mr. Higgins would put up the sign, always the same one. Her father wouldn’t see it when he first came home. That usually happened late at night, and, besides, when he was drunk he took no notice of signs. But the next day when he went out of the house and saw it, the sign would make him mad. He’d curse terribly, pull it out by the stake and throw it down the river bank. But he would never break it or hurt it. Sooner or later he would scrape up the money to pay Mr. Meek the four dollars a month back rent he owed him. After while Mr. Higgins would come up and get the sign and take it back to the store. He knew just where on the river bank to look for it, and he never got mad like Rosa’s father.

  The rain reached the house tonight long before her father did. A little while after supper she had to take the big jar and pan up in the loft where the roof leaked and go up now and then to empty them in the bucket before they spilled over. She could tell downstairs by the sound whenever one was getting close to the top. The pan always got full first, and if she didn’t watch out, it would run over the loft and down in the room. Oh, it wasn’t a favor that she didn’t have to go to bed but could sit up late tonight watching her mother read. Her mother was a wonderful reader. You never even saw her lips move. Every two weeks or so, Rosa had to go down to the back door of the Phillips’ house to take one book back and get another if Mrs. Phillips had one to give her. Most times the maid had the book ready, wrapped in the Ohio Repository. The same paper went back and forward and her mother never failed to read that too, including the sermons, the advertisements and the death notices under the heading, “END OF EARTH” which always struck a kind of terror in Rosa.

  Once Mrs. Phillips took her into a room in the house where the walls were covered with books.

  “I’ve always taken an interest in your mother,” she told Rosa. “I feel sorry for her in her present station.”

  Now Rosa sat watching her mother’s eye run along the page, trying to tell from her face what she read, for her mother wouldn’t let Rosa read the books for herself.

  “You’re much too young. Novels and plays aren’t for young girls,” she said sharply, but her face never changed either then or when she read, or if it did, you couldn’t see it through the film of unwashed olive that had gathered on her skin ever since the girl could remember, growing a little darker green with time. But sometimes as her mother read, her eyes would dilate and gather, the light in them would heighten, and the pupils deepen so Rosa could look far back in them, and after a moment she seemed to be in there herself with the bright mysterious light of the story all around her, with things happening to the right and left, but never could Rosa quite tell what they were, for you couldn’t see, just feel, them, and they had no shape save shadows.

  All of a sudden she found herself sitting up in her chair. She heard them bringing her father home. It was still early, and fear like a dark flame threatened her. She knew it was her father, for she could hear his voice. No one ever brought him home before that she could remember. He came by himself, very late, as a rule. No matter how much he drank, nobody needed to help him, and yet it sounded like there were two men with him tonight. They came stumbling up on the porch and her father opened the door. Something flew into Rosa then, for he had a great rag stained with blood around his head.

  The men with him would come no farther than the doorway. They were grown waterfront men and yet shied away from her mother as the boys did who ventured in the yard with Turkey.

  “Jake got in a little argument, Miz Tench,” Boiling William Gates broke the news cautiously. “But he’s all right. It was a draw.”

  “It was a fight,” Strap Johnson corrected.

  “Tell her about Pete Easley!” Jake roared. “What happened to that Fly-Up-the-Crick!”

  “Jake and Pete got in a little argument at the tavern,” Boiling William started again.

  “It was a knock-down, drag-out fight,” Strap insisted.

  “Tell her how I bit off his nose!” Jake shouted. “If my mouth’d a been bigger, I’d a bit off his head.”

  “He bit off a chunk of you first,” Strap reminded.

  “You see what I mean, Miz Tench,” Boiling William said. “That’s what made it a draw. Jake bit off Pete’s nose and Pete bit off Jake’s ear.”

  “Take the rag off and show her, Jake,” Strap urged. “Maybe she could put some liniment on.”

  While they talked, Rosa’s mother sat there hardly listening. All the peculiar yellow light from the novel had gone out of her eyes, as if what she looked at and listened to now wasn’t real life or true. No, the real world was in the book she still held in her hand, keeping the place open, waiting to return to it as soon as this make-believe scene from a story was over. Nothing changed on her face as Jake fumbled with the bloody rag. Before he got it off, Rosa bolted, slipping between th
e two men at the door.

  “Rosa!” her mother called.

  But Rosa fled, out of the gate into darkness like a moth suddenly released from the window pane. It seemed for a minute that her feet never touched the ground. An effortless power flowed through her, lightening her legs and body, lifting her up like a bird. Never had running and the darkness tasted so sweet. The rain felt good in her face and washed it. She held open her lips to let it wash out her mouth. She let the clean night air wash through her flesh and mind. It cooled her to see nothing, nothing but shapeless shadows and the yellow lights in other houses that carried oblivion from her own. She could remember when she was a little tot how far it seemed down town, how daring she thought her father to go all that long way himself and how clever that he could find his way back.

  In the dark houses people already lay sleeping. She would have the night to herself. Only the dogs in this part of town were awake, tied in their backyards, sending their alarm down the line. She walked so lightly now, hardly did she kick a pebble. Now how could the first dog to bark know that such a small body as she shouldn’t be abroad? Dogs, they said, could tell if a body was good or bad. Then why couldn’t they tell she was only a slip of a girl who wouldn’t hurt them, not even a hair of Cottrils’s fice that had bit her so she still carried the scar on her knee?

  When anybody came along, she hid by the side of a house till they passed. Not that she had to. She had gone out many a time before when her mother said she couldn’t. “Give me a minute, Mama, just a minute!” she’d beg and then she’d walk up and down with the moon. No matter how far she walked, the moon would walk with her, all the way and back again. She wouldn’t be locked out those nights and she wouldn’t be tonight. Never from one year to another did her mother bar the door, for nobody dared come in their house even in the daytime. Oh, her mother would scold her with scalding words when she got back, but they wouldn’t hurt, and if they did, her walk would be worth it, getting away for a while, looking through windows into rooms where candles still burned. Daytimes you could see nothing inside, but at night her eye could go right through the glass. She could see herself living there in other folks’ houses, sitting on those chairs, eating or reading at the table, lying on the couch.

  Down on the Square, most of the houses still had light. Folks on the Square were the latest to bed in town, save those in the taverns. An invisible lady came out of her front door calling, “Here, pussy, pussy, pussy. Come, pussy, pussy, pussy!” Rosa moved around the Square slowly, feeling the spell of the great houses, the awe of the court house ball and the sacred presence of the church with the graves behind it. That was Judge Wheeler’s new mansion house standing so high on its white marble steps. Nine regular steps it had and a little step at the top to go to the front door. Why did they have the little step, she wondered. You couldn’t see it tonight. She would like to go up and try it with her feet, but somebody might come out and catch her.

  That was old Judge Wheeler himself she saw through the window, with the great bulging forehead and the bush of hair on the top. He thought himself so much. Her father said he had been his lawyer, yet never would he look at her when he went by on the street, his big head down, his brows drawn over some weighty matter, the green bag in his hand.

  Tonight she could see Judge Wheeler’s wife with him. The house stood so high, Rosa could only see the top of her head. She was the plainest woman on the Square and the richest. She was part Indian, they said. Her hair was combed plain, parted in the middle. She was common as dirt and spoke to everybody when she passed. Twice she had spoken to her, once on the street and once when she took the flowers. But when Rosa came home and told about it, her mother said never to speak to her or any other Wheeler, and especially not with that young liar, Chancey. Better had she cross the street when she saw a deceitful Wheeler coming.

  Wasn’t it a strange thing about people in this world, why they were themselves and why you were the person you were? When she tried to think who it was that stood here in her flesh living and thinking, she seemed to be blown away and lost far back in her mind. She felt giddy and queer, as she did when she looked at a star and pretended herself way up there hanging on it.

  She could see a light high in the house, on the third floor. Somebody must live high under the roof. The younger girls and Chancey likely. They must dress and undress and sleep up there. When they got tired of being downstairs they could run up the steps and get away from everybody and everything. Weren’t they lucky to have a place to be by themselves? They could look out like birds. They could lie in bed in the morning and see green leaves wave by their window and clouds sail by. Wasn’t it the saddest thing in this world that you always had to be yourself, that you couldn’t be somebody else, that never, never, never could you be the person you most wanted to be?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE BLUE STOCKING

  Know him? I’d know his hide if I saw it in the tanyard.

  EARLY SAYING

  IT was a winter’s day and bitter cold, Sayward thought, for such a poor old man to be out in the wind without a heavy coat. She was upstairs sewing by the window when she saw him. Now who could he be looking in at the house, as he went by? He had on a battered slouch roaram hat and corduroy jacket like an old hunting coat. His leggins were snowy to his knees. Just the same, he held himself mighty straight, like an old poking stick that had been used a long time, worn thin and soon to be thrown on the fire.

  Hardly had he passed till he turned and tramped slowly back, looking at the house again. Why, he was turning in! She couldn’t hear his rap from the stairs but she could his boots stamp off the snow on the back porch. Chancey and Massey were at their schools, Dezia at the seminary. When Sayward opened the back door, the old man stood there with a drop froze at the end of his nose, his cheeks crossed and criss-crossed with a mess of wrinkles like scrub apples still a hanging to some wild tree in the snow.

  “Is this Judge Wheeler’s place?” he wanted to know.

  “Step in the warm,” Sayward bid him kindly. At the same time she was thinking, now where did I hear that voice before and see those eyes running back in his head?

  “Are you his woman?” he asked, holding back. And when she nodded. “Then you must be Saird. Don’t you know me any more?”

  Sayward stared at him a moment. Then she took the broom and swept the snow from his legs and boots.

  “I know you but I can’t name you,” she complained. Something in the way he said “Saird” touched off a queer notion in her and when he came in and stood there in the kitchen with his hat on, a storm of feeling ran over her. It couldn’t be. No, it couldn’t possibly be. Why, all the old folks thought her father dead this long time. The last they heard, he was skinning wild bulls beyond the Mississippi, and that was thirty-five years ago. One of those wild bulls, Portius allowed, must have killed him. Hardly an Indian would, for Worth had Indian in his blood and could get along with them if anybody could. Genny thought that a Spanishman must have cut his throat for his gold. He had sent word how well off he was, but this old bushnipple in her kitchen today didn’t look like he ever had a shilling to his name.

  “Is it you, Pap?” Sayward asked. “I never expected to see you again!”

  “You know me now!” he called out, pleased. “It took you a good while. But I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t a knowed you from Adam’s ox. You’re married to the lawyer, they tell me. I knowed him before I went but I never looked for you to get hitched to him.”

  “Take a chair, Pap,” Sayward begged him. “I’ll make you something to warm you up.” She remembered how he never drank tea or coffee. Slops, woodsmen used to call them. Liquor was the only drink to stick to a man’s guts, they said. Sayward made him a hot toddy, putting in lots of brown sugar, and he sat there, sucking it up from the cup from time to time with a lusty rattle.

  “Achsa stayin’ with you?”

  “No, she’s not here any more. In fact she’s gone nigh as long as you have. We don’t know if s
he’s living or dead.”

  Some of the brightness went out of those shiny black buttons at the bottom of his eye pits.

  “Well, Ginny and Louie are still around?”

  “Genny is. She’s married again. Will Beagle’s her second man. But Louie’s gone. He’s the one Achsa run off with. We heard he drowned in a river up beyond the English lakes.”

  Worth had set down his trembling toddy cup on his knee. It took him a while to digest this.

  “Well, Wyitt’s all right, ain’t he?” he asked.

  “We hope so,” Sayward said carefully. “He always was. Somebody told Jake Tench he saw him in the woods of Michigan territory, but he never sent word home himself. We thought maybe he would run into you some place out there.”

  Her father shook his head. He sat still a long time. Sayward thought he was thinking of her sister, Sulie; wondering had they ever had news of her. But he didn’t mention her name. Likely he was afraid to, for Sulie was his favor-rite.

  “You know you’re a grandpappy now and a great-grandpappy to boot?” she said to cheer him up. “I have nine of my own and one dead. And six grandchildren a living.”