The Town

by Conrad Richter

  “If it’s our Sulie, why do you reckon she don’t answer?” Genny asked her.

  “We let a mighty long time go by ourselves before we wrote her. We can’t expect an answer right on the dot,” Sayward said, but she looked mighty grave when she said it.

  “Did you ever think, Saird, that Pap might a been a little out of his head before he passed on?”

  “It could be,” Sayward admitted. “On the other hand, Portius told me about a man up in the Firelands who was crazy for thirty years, and just before he died, his mind turned good as yours or mine. ‘I wish I could see my mother,’ he said, and that was the last thing he did say.”

  “I think it’s mighty strange Pap never said anything about Sulie all that while,” Genny complained.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time he acted like that,” Sayward reminded her. “You ought to know the time we had no idea anybody was living in the woods besides us till just before Martha Covenhoven came a calling. Then Pap told us and went off hunting but he knew it all the time. No, this would be just like him as far as that’s concerned.”

  “It still seems funny to me.”

  “Then you got to recollect Sulie was a little tyke the last we knew her. Now we were a good bit older and would mind her better than she could us. But I’d know her anywheres, and if I don’t hear anything by the middle of summer, I’m going out.”

  “All the way out there!” Genny said. “Well, if you’re really going, I’m a going with you. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her or me and then think I passed up a chance to see our Sulie.”

  They made out to go early in August. Sayward said she would take Massey and Chancey along. She didn’t like leaving them back here alone with Dezia and Portius. It would be something for them to see the country and their Ant Sulie. Besides, Will, being in the boat trade, got such low rates it was cheaper to take them along than leave them behind.

  They left Americus on a fine morning with the sun not yet high enough to be hot and a good-sized bunch of relations and friends down to the basin to see them off. Portius and Will stood on the wharf holding up their hats, and little Resolve kept waving till Dyke’s warehouse shut them off from view. From the Sixth Street bridge curious folks looked down on them as they passed under. Genny wiped her eyes as the city fell behind them. Even Chancey looked a mite uncertain, but Sayward felt an anxious kind of hope and peace. Oh, she hated going off where she couldn’t see all her children and grandchildren for five or six weeks. But how long had it been since she saw her baby sister? Hardly had there been a rainy night all this time that she hadn’t thought of her and wondered what had happened to her that time in the woods so long ago. Could she still be among the living, she used to ask herself, and did she still say such grand and spunky things that minded them of their Grandmother Powelly back along the Conestoga.

  “Do you mind what she said that time we first looked over this country?” Sayward asked.

  “I mind,” Genny nodded. “We were up on a hill. We could look over a hundred miles of country it seemed like. Woods, nothing but woods it was. I mind it good. She said—now what was it she said, Saird?”

  “ ‘We mought even get rich and have shoes!’ ” Sayward told her. “I can still hear how cunning she said it. That seemed like a mighty rash and bold thing to say them days. We couldn’t see smoke from a single cabin.”

  “I wonder what she’s like now!” Genny said.

  Sayward had been wondering the same. Sitting here on the quiet deck of the boat, keeping an eye on Massey and Chancey that they didn’t fall in, she figured that Sulie must be going on fifty years old. They’d have to remember she’d be changed, Sayward told Genny. Likely she’d be grander than either one of them, Genny agreed, with a ring on every finger but one, and three on that, for their pap said how she had a good man and was good off. She might even have a coach, for she was always one to do spunky things. Whether she had any young ones or not, pap didn’t say, but if she had, they would likely give Massey and Chancey a run to keep up with them.

  They came to Vinita on a Saturday, and Sayward reckoned it the prettiest country she ever saw. The canal ahead looked like it would run head on into a handsome wooded hill. But when they got there, they found the water turning against the hill till a gap opened up where it could go through, and there was the town with rows of stone and log cabins, some fine white and yellow clapboard houses and a stone mansion house with a great stone stable, while across the canal and river lay the smooth green banks and meadows of a fine gentleman’s farm with the big house, farm house, barn and out buildings all painted to match, of pale green with brown narrow strips where at regular intervals strips of wood went up and down closing the cracks. It made a wonderful sight, like some place in old England, and all of them admired it together with the fat stock grazing in soft fields that hadn’t a weed in them.

  “That could be her place,” Genny whispered. “You know what Pap said.”

  But when they stepped off the boat to the smooth stone work of the basin, an old boatman standing there said Mrs. Sulie Harris lived on the far side of town. Sayward thought that he and the men hanging around the basin looked at her a little strange. They were shorter spoken, too, than most men on the trip. When she looked back, she saw them all standing where she left them, looking after. Genny said she guessed they made a sight tramping up the middle of the road carrying their own traps, two women and two young ones all the way from Ohio without a man. She said it looked like a poor way to go visiting a sister who was well-off. She thought perhaps they should hire a carriage. But Sayward said it felt good to get their feet on the ground. They had been cooped up on the boat too long, and could tramp a mile or two without it hurting them any.

  There was no house to ask at for a good ways save a log cabin standing back from the road a little under the trees. It looked dark from weather. The ground lay tramped hard and bare around it. On this side stood a cleared patch of corn.

  “I declare I never saw such poor and scrubby corn,” Genny said. “But maybe they could tell us how to go.”

  As they came abreast of the cabin, a pack of dogs rushed out. Sayward picked up a stout club and they stayed their distance barking and carrying on. A dark-faced boy about sixteen came out hollering at them with strange words. When he saw the four strangers in the road, he stopped. Genny called shrilly above the hullabaloo.

  “Can you tell us how to get to the Harris place?”

  The boy stood stock still, never saying back a word. After a little, he turned and went into the cabin.

  “He don’t know nothing. He’s Injun,” Genny said.

  They had started on when a man still older than Sayward came out. He was dressed in pants and shirt but was plainly an Indian. He moved stiffly, very straight, and with great deliberation. He spoke in the same language as the boy to the dogs and when one wouldn’t obey him, he picked it up and threw it with such force against a tree that it ran yelping pitifully into the cabin. As he came toward them, Sayward felt the children move behind her.

  “We’re looking for the Harris place,” she told him.

  “Him live here,” the Indian said. “My name Harris.”

  There was dead silence for a moment.

  “It must be some mistake,” Genny put in lordly. “We’re looking for Mrs. Sulie Harris.”

  “Him my woman,” he said.

  Sayward saw Genny draw back as if he had hit her. She felt Massey and Chancey push up against her and freeze. She waited a little, gathering her thought, setting her face.

  “Can we see her?” she asked friendly.

  “Sure. Him in house.” He made no move to take them in, only stood there with all the time and indifference in the world.

  Sayward started toward the cabin.

  “Saird!” Genny begged, holding fast to her arm. “This can’t be our Sulie?”

  “That’s what I want to find out,” Sayward declared. She had come this far. Nothing was going to stop her now.

  �
��If it was Sulie, she’d be out,” Genny stammered. “She’d hear us. She’d come to the door.”

  “She might want to fix up a little first,” Sayward said.

  But when she got to the door, she found no sign that anyone had tried to redd up the cabin. The door stood wide open. Inside were neither chairs, table nor stools. A younger Indian woman with three small children sat on the hard earth floor. A younger Indian man and the boy stood on the other side. At the fire with her back toward them, bent an older woman. She was cooking something in a pot. She wore a shapeless gray cabin gown, was barefoot, her feet and legs brown. Her back remained toward the door as if she were deaf, and yet something passed over Sayward when she saw her. With the dogs baring their teeth and snarling at her, Sayward stepped unbidden into the cabin.

  “We’re looking for Mrs. Sulie Harris,” she said.

  The older woman made no movement. Not till one of the younger Indians said something to her in the Delaware language did she turn around, and then aversely. Her face was brown as her feet, wrinkled, the face of an older squaw, and yet Sayward saw something in it of her own Grandmam Powelly she had seen as a girl back along the Conestoga in Pennsylvania. It shook her to her bones.

  “Sulie!” she said starting toward her, but such a hard implacable look came into the woman’s black Indian eyes that it stopped her. “Wasn’t your name Sulie Luckett when you were a young one?” Sayward stammered.

  “My name Sulie Harris,” she answered, without feeling.

  “But when you were a little tyke, didn’t you have a family by name of Luckett? Back in Pennsylvania? Then you all went to Northwest Territory. Didn’t you go out with the cows and get lost in the woods and never lay eyes on your folks again?”

  “No remember.”

  “Try to recollect!” Sayward begged her. “Can’t you mind your mam and pap? He was out here to see you not so long ago. Worth, his name was. Don’t you mind your brother Wyitt and your sisters Achsa, Genny and Saird that used to live with you in that cabin? Well, if you do, I’m your sister, Saird, and out there’s Genny. Don’t you mind us now?”

  “No. Me Indian,” she said stolidly.

  She was lying, Sayward told herself. Genny and the younger ones were watching from the door. Massey and Chancey turned piteous faces toward her.

  “Mama, let’s go,” Massey whispered.

  “Genny, maybe you’d sing something for her?” Sayward asked. “Something she used to know, like Fly Up. It might help her remember.”

  Genny looked shocked. Her face said she couldn’t do that, not here in front of Indians. Yet never had she refused Sayward anything, and in the end she gave in. She started very low, not even clearing her throat. It seemed at first she was only going to hum, then the song came out as of itself, like spring water rises from the ground. So clear and strong it sounded at last that it gave Sayward a turn to hear it.

  Haycocks in the meader,

  Cherries in the dish.

  Red bird, fly up,

  Give me my wish.

  Chestnuts in the tree top,

  Punkin in the dish.

  Brown bird, fly up,

  Give me my wish.

  Ice in the river.

  Possum in the dish,

  Snow bird, fly up,

  Give me my wish.

  Vi’lets in the holler,

  Poke greens in the dish.

  Blue bird, fly up,

  Give me my wish.

  How many times, Sayward thought, had they heard that in the old days? Till Genny was half ways through, it seemed like they were back in the woods with their mam still living, and Achsa and Wyitt still at home. It was almost like this was her pap’s cabin and Sulie was a little tyke still there with them.

  But when the song stopped and the spell broke, Sulie Harris’s eyes looked back at her with all the stoic relentlessness of the savage as when you and he stare at each other across the uncrossable gulf.

  “It’s not her,” Genny said very low. “Or she’d say something.”

  Oh, what, Sayward thought, could Genny expect Sulie Harris to say? How did she reckon her sister felt standing there in her bare feet and ragged dress, in her dirty Indian cabin with her dark Indian children and grandchildren around her? Did Genny expect Sulie to thank her white sisters for coming to see her in their soft leather shoes and fine dresses, with elegant mits on their hands and bonnets with silken ribbons on their heads, with their own clean white children along and their white husbands at home? What was that story pap used to tell of Janie Gosset who the Shawanees took from Buffalo Valley? Years later, when her folks found her, she had an Indian family, and even though her Shawanee man was dead, she wouldn’t go back. She would be a disgrace to her white people, she said. Her oldtime friends and relations would look down on her and her Indian young ones. No, it was too late now. Never could she go back and never could Sulie. They had taken up the Indian life, and that’s the life they had to live till they died.

  Sayward couldn’t look at Sulie now without her heart yearning toward her till she could hardly stand it. Gladly would she have done most anything to make it right, but what could she do? Is this what they had come all the long way from Ohio for? Is this what brave young hopes and spunkiness like Sulie’s came to in the end? How far off that little tyke she used to know seemed now. Lost and alone in the woods, she had played cabin to remind her of her brother and sisters, but now that two of her sisters were here, she wouldn’t give in that she knew them. One time she must have cried bitterly for them, but now she wished them far off and the biggest favor they could do her was not to claim any more that they were her sisters.

  Sulie Harris stared back at her without winking. After a while, she spoke in Delaware to the young Indian who was likely her boy.

  “She say,” he translated to Sayward, “you and her go. But leave young ones. Wait by road. By and by come out.”

  Genny looked alarmed, and Chancey and Massey begged their mother not to leave them but she cut them short. They could do that much for their Ant Sulie. She saw them wince at the word. Sayward herself spoke to Sulie Harris before she went, taking the cold impassive hand in both of hers.

  “I hope this won’t be the last time I see you, Sulie. If you ever need anything, let me know. I’ll send it to you if I can. You got my address. If you ever get that way, stop and visit me.” But although Indians loved to visit, she felt that her sister Sulie never would.

  As they left, Sulie Harris spoke deep in her throat to the rest of her family. The latter followed them out reluctantly, leaving her alone inside with the white young ones. Sayward reckoned she would not soon forget Chan-cey’s frightened face at the door when she went. The Indians moved off by themselves to the other side of the cabin. The older Indian man she could see down along the river. She and Genny went to the road.

  “Not a foot farther will I budge,” Genny said, “till Massey and Chancey come out.”

  It seemed a mighty long time until they came running like deer from the cabin. Chancey looked pale and Massey was craing.

  “What did she do to you?” Genny wanted to know right away.

  “She didn’t do anything. She just stayed in there with us. After while she took Chancey’s hand and stroked it. She said how he minded her of somebody.”

  Sayward and Genny looked at each other.

  “Wyitt!” they said together.

  “She didn’t say Uncle Wyitt or any name,” Massey said. “She just stroked Chancey’s hand and said how white it was. And then she started to cry. It looked so terrible when she cried, I had to cry, too.”

  “And then what?”

  “She stopped and asked what I was crying for. She threw Chancey’s hand down. She said white was a very bad color. She said white men were good in church but bad in the woods. They killed and cheated the Indians she said. But her man was always good and kind, she said. We should tell you he was always good and kind to her. He was a great soldier and killed lots of white men in battle. One time he scalp
ed so many white men, his arm got tired. He was brave and not afraid to do what was right. More than once he burned white men at a fire he made himself.”

  Genny drew an expressive face to Sayward.

  “What else did she say?”

  “That’s all.”

  “But you were in such a long time.”

  “She just stood most of the time looking at us. I couldn’t tell if she hated us or liked us. Then she gave us each something and said we could go.” Massey opened her hand and showed a silver shilling. “She had them in a little leather bag under her dress. I saw her reach in and her skin in there was as white as mine is, Mama.”

  Sayward stood there, her face working. Genny put her handkerchief away.

  “I’m going back and talk to her and try to do something for her,” she announced.

  “I wouldn’t if I was you, Genny,” Sayward said gravely. “You know what Pap used to say, that a white person never does the Indians any good. He always tries to make a white person out of them. Pap said he never knew a single Indian who made a good white person, though he knew plenty whites who made good Indians.”

  “Well, I don’t believe it that strong,” Genny said. “I feel terrible sorry for her if you don’t. I didn’t think it was really her when we were in there with her. Now I’m going back and talk to her and see what I can do. Anyway I can give her goodby when I leave and tell her I hope we’ll meet in heaven.”

  Sayward and the children waited. Genny was white as a sheet when she returned. She wouldn’t talk about it until they were some distance back to town.

  “She acted queer again like she was at first,” she said grimly. “She wouldn’t even talk till I made her. Then she said right out she didn’t know us. Said her name never was Luckett. Claimed she never seen us before. I tried to talk to her like a sister, and she told me to clear out or she’d sic the dogs on us.”

  Sayward said nothing. Her face felt weary and benumbed. She should never have left Genny go back. How she hated now turning away from her own flesh and blood sister, leaving her behind in that poor cabin while she set out for another state and a mansion house. She tried to tell herself it wasn’t so bad as she and Genny felt. She reminded herself of what pap used to say that white folks liked to think their life the only way and that any savage ought to jump at the chance to be a white person. But, he used to tell them, none of those white prisoners his old colonel took from the Indians ever thanked him for giving them back to their white folks. Most of them, he said, fought like cats and dogs to stay with their Indian step-mammies and pappies. Even when they got home, some ran off to lead the Indian life again.