“Hanh, Chancey, big boy now,” Little Turtle smacked his lips as he shook hands. “Good um not dead. Better that way. Come back for um now. Bring squaw. Help take um back to Indian.”
Chancey knew he was only joking, and yet a great abhorrence came over him. He could barely bring himself to touch the hand of Little Turtle’s squaw. Her hair was greasy, her skin a mass of wrinkles, her expression such that her face seemed a blur, a broad mass of flesh like a buttock, almost devoid of features. She eyed the preparations for dinner greedily, and Chancey’s mother gave her a melon to eat before the meal would be ready, setting the pail of kitchen slop beside her so she could throw away the seeds. The squaw cut the melon with a knife and drank all the insides including the seeds, cut off a large piece of melon, stuck it on the point of the knife, then shook it around in the slop and ate it. Little Turtle laughed broadly to cover his pride. The others smiled but Chancey couldn’t. Just the way she had done it filled him with uneasy loathing.
Chancey’s father sent word he’d be down for dinner and stay until the doctor came. He looked like a member of some weak and bloodless race beside the coppery face of the Indian, but was glad to see his old friend. Little Turtle’s face glowed like some oaken knot in the fire. Oh, you could see he was pleased seeing his friend, the white judge again, and especially sitting up to his dining table. To him this was a ceremonial room with its white cloth, blue china, great sideboard and mirror hanging there. He carried himself like a Roman senator. Everything had to be just so. With great dignity he tried to instruct his squaw in the use of fork and spoons but it was no use.
“Can’t do so,” he defended her. “Squaw good. Never cross like white squaw. White man court too long. Maybe get good wife. Maybe get bad. Bad scold all time. All same white man must keep um. Well, how do Indian? Indian see good squaw. Him go right up. Put two finger like this, hanh? Make two look like one. Squaw know what him mean. Take um home. No danger him be cross. Squaw know what him do if be cross. Throw um away and get other one. So live happy. Go to heaven.”
In the parlor after dinner, Little Turtle showed his squaw what a piano was.
“Make music!” he explained. “Go toot toot.” He turned to Portius. “Him like music. Him father like music. Him fight General Wayne. Say General Wayne make music. Have big dinner horn. General Wayne dinner horn go toot, toot here. Go toot, toot yonder. Gun crack. Indian whoop. Dinner horn go toot toot. Much music.”
The Indian woman’s face never changed and Chancey didn’t think she looked like she cared a hoot for music, but Little Turtle went on to praise her.
“Him Christian,” he said. “All same like you. Go church. All sister, brother. One sister get up talk. Talk all night. By and by him get tired. Choke sister down. That stop um. Make talk, pray. Sister start sing hymn. Sing loud. Drown um out. Nobody hear. Have choke sister another time. Then can talk, pray. Sing. You want hear um sing?”
“I think that would be very nice,” Chancey’s mother said from the doorway.
Little Turtle turned to his squaw and urged her in Delaware, encouraging her by singing himself as you do to start a child. Chancey didn’t recognize a word, but he could make out the air of the doxology.
Kain nom moo tooqk owk woz.
Kain nom moo waim uh keeng ah yaigh.
Kain nom moo wuh Koung kagh tay laick.
Kain nom way gweez mint wauk w’jih joqk.
The squaw wouldn’t join. She only grunted in Delaware.
“Him want hear you make music,” Little Turtle said.
“Tell her I’m extremely sorry I don’t play,” Portius said courteously.
“Wife play?”
“No, the only one at home now who plays is Chancey.”
“Him! Well, glad can do something. You tell um play.”
All eyes were on Chancey. He wished now he had sneaked out after dinner. He never enjoyed playing for anyone, let alone for a heathen Indian and his squaw who wouldn’t know a black key from a white one.
“I don’t know what to play,” he protested.
“Play the Lady of Loti Polka,” Massey suggested.
Chancey shook his head. If he did play, never would it be anything gay and fast, or the Indians might want more. No, if he had to play, it would be something they’d never want to hear again. He’d make it so dismal and sad they’d be relieved beyond measure to have it done. He went up to the piano and sat for a little. Then he began the harrowing strains of “On Nebo’s Lonely Mount” or “Moses’ Funeral March.”
Before long he was conscious of extraordinary interest behind him. He couldn’t look around, but in one of Aunt Unity’s mirrors he glimpsed the Indians manifesting unusual excitement. Even the old squaw had become alive and was swaying back and forth on her chair while Little Turtle had got up on his feet and was doing a kind of dance. The boy couldn’t see him continuously, only when he came in range of the glass at which times he perceived wild and terrifying arms flung over him.
When he got to the end of the piece, Chancey felt considerably relieved.
“More, make more!” Little Turtle shouted.
But nothing could have induced Chancey to play again.
“I don’t know any more,” he lied.
The Indian was disappointed. Almost at once his animation dropped from him and he became his old resolved self. Grim dignity wrapped him like a blanket, and he sat down. But you could see he felt cheated by Chancey.
“If can’t make so, can’t make so,” he grunted. “Minds me like story. Indian scout take out white men. Tell how to go. Come on tracks in mud. White men say buffalo track. Scout say maybe no. Maybe Mingue take sticks, make track. Fool white man. Maybe Mingue wait, ambush, scalp. White man be careful. Go slow. Look every bush. White men do so. By and by find dung of buffalo. Indian scout laugh. Now all right, he say. Mingue can’t make so. Only buffalo can make so. Minds me like Chancey here. Only music man make so. Chancey can’t make so.”
While Chancey’s father was laughing, Dr. Howie came. The boy tried to sneak off, but the doctor caught him.
“Wait a minute, Chancey,” he said. “I want you to recover my other bag from the carriage.”
The boy went reluctantly for the bulging bag and its evilly clanking contents.
“Now don’t go away,” the doctor instructed him, “I suspect I am going to need you.”
Ever since Libby had married young Doctor Harry, Sayward and the children had called him faithfully when ailing. Libby thought her father should have him, too, but Portius said he had had Dr. Howie ever since Dr. Pearsall died, that he liked the man and his wit and felt it an injustice to discriminate against him simply because he was no churchman or son-in-law. Not that he had any prejudices against Harry Conyngham, he went on, who was an estimable and rising young physician. Libby told her mother that her father just wanted his complaints kept secret from the rest of the family, but Chancey thought he understood why his father liked the ironical Dr. Howie. They were two of a kind.
The doctor stood here now, a tall delicate-appearing man who nearly always looked nearer death than his patients. He moved delicately, too, like one on his way to heaven, but when he opened his mouth, you knew he had no intention of going there, nor was he delicate. He liked to say that he would prescribe pills to the goddess Diana and administer physic to the vestal virgins, but the only patient he’d practise phlebotomy on would be a brass monkey. It was too messy. However, today at the sight of Chief Little Turtle and his squaw, some perverse humor seemed to possess him. It appeared to please him to have savage Indians for an audience and the judge’s grand parlor for a lancing room. Not for a moment did he suggest removal to the kitchen. He helped the judge off with his coat, then rolled up the patient’s white shirt sleeves with his own white tapered fingers.
Now, pleased with himself and the attention, he handed Chancey a wicked looking gallipot from the bag and held up half a dozen fierce and bloodthirsty lances to select from. Chancey had an uncomfortable feeling at the pit of h
is stomach.
“Hold the vessel here,” the doctor said dryly, “and don’t look so terrified. It’s not you I’m going to lance, but your father, and I daren’t let him bleed to death or the bench might forfeit my license.”
Chancey bore up, screwing his nerves to the needed pitch, holding the gallipot at the required place. He saw the unhealthy white flesh of his father, with black hairs curling like worms, the cruel curve of the rusty lance, then his father’s warm red life’s blood gushing out like from a steer’s throat at the butcher’s. A violent wave of sickness went over him, and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the sofa with Massey applying cold cloths to his head. Strings of unrecognizable words came from the doctor’s mouth while Chancey’s mother worked with a rag on his bloodstained pantaloons and Dezia on her knees wiped up the floor where the gallipot still lay.
Chancey wanted to scramble up, but his father sternly bade him lie. He had never seen his father so grave and pale. The boy lay there with his eyes closed, every muscle conscious of itself and aquiver. Once he lifted a lid and saw Little Turtle regarding him with contemptuous eyes. Presently the Indian spoke sardonically to his friend.
“Long time past Little Turtle say give um Chancey. Indian make um over. Make um do what don’t like. Make um walk in snow. Make um sleep on ground. Make um man or be with Great Spirit. Not now, you say. By and by. Now by and by come. What have you? Look like man. Eat like man. Walk like man. But act like baby. Got pigeon heart. Indian can’t make um over now. Better be with Great Spirit.”
Chancey’s father said nothing. The boy still lay rigid like a prisoner at the scaffold. He heard the doctor go, then his mother help his father upstairs. Soon as his parents’ feet sounded in the upper hall, the boy sprang up and fled. As he snatched his cap from the rack, he could hear Little Turtle’s hoarse laugh after him.
The air outside, when he reached it, was sweet as wild honey. It seemed at that moment that if he drank enough of it, all his troubles would be ended, wiped out of existence. But that, he found, was only his fancy, for as fast as he outraced his dishonor, it caught up to him in painful humiliation. He fled the square and headed for the waterfront where fewer would know him. The canal smelled good as he approached it, the scent of stale water and tarry ropes and frying eels, of wood and paint drying in the sun, of mules and down-to-earth manure. The very sight of the district soothed him, the shacks and warehouses, the humble little shops, the muddy street and all the boats tied up in the basin. The canal had a kind of bay dug out from it for a boat yard. They called it the Level. It was another world than the square. Boat carpenters sawed, hammered, pounded with calking mallets. The hot foreign scent of tar was stronger here. On the decks of condemned boats, men sat fishing; a huge darky fried his fish over a fire of oaken chips, using a shovel for a frying pan. Running wild on the condemned boats, a gang of naked boys played Whoop, jumping from boat to boat, hiding between, climbing down into empty holds and cabins, and diving out of open windows into the yellow water.
Chancey sat for a while with his feet down over the side of an abandoned boat, rocking faintly in the small waves stirred up by the boys. Then he lay down on the deck. The rocking, the sound of small lapping against the boat soothed him only for a while. He started to tramp aimlessly again, crossing the lower bridge and back over the next, threading the narrow streets and alleys, his eyes devouring glimpses of strange life through open doors and windows. What he searched for he never knew till he passed an open door on Dock Street. Above it was painted THE RED MULE, and inside he saw Turkey Tench behind the bar.
Then he thought he knew. The bitter scent of whiskey and gin flowed like a slow river of air from the door. He had always hated the smell, and the stuff worse, even when diluted with water for himself and others as children. He remembered once they had made him drink rum and milk in the Ferry House, and the awful mess he had made over his father on the way home. The clear persistent pattern of it shook him. Then he was only a child. Now he was grown, and yet today he had fainted dead away, defiling himself, his father, the doctor and the carpet.
“How are you, Turk?”
“Why, how are you, Mr. Chancey?”
“Will you stake me to a drink? I’ll pay you next time I come down.”
“Why, sure. You have all the credit you want.” Turkey’s look of surprise had not abated and his small black eyes continued to scan Chancey’s face. “What will you have?”
“Brandy.” Chancey heard himself say it like his father. He would drink it if it burned out his throat like a soot fire did a chimney—if he had to drink a second glass to hold the first one down.
Turkey poured him half a tumblerful, and Chancey stared at the thick glass, trying not to smell it. When he lifted it up, it tasted of fire and musty old cellar barrels. He saw Turkey watching him and the almost imperceptible ebb of the liquor from the glass. After while a girl’s voice sounded in the back room, and Turkey opened the door between.
“Rosa!” he called briefly. “Somebody in here you know.”
He left the door open and went back to the bar. When Chancey turned his head again, she was in the doorway, looking extraordinarily slight and sensitive in this uncouth place. So this was where she lived, he told himself, here in this waterfront barroom shack.
“Rosa! Who is it?” her mother’s sharp voice called from the unseen room.
She didn’t answer.
“Rosa! Come back here. I want to talk to you!” the mother demanded.
The girl moved with quiet surety into the tavern to stand with Chancey at the end of the bar.
“Don’t mind her,” she begged in that gentle way he remembered.
But Chancey couldn’t help minding or feeling for Rosa. She was like he, wronged by the stars, caught in the blind machinations of birth and life. For himself he could do little as yet, but for her he would do a great deal. It made him feel stronger. He could swallow this liquor now. Once he had it down, his mind and tongue began working on all the bitter injustice that had been done him, but before he could bring out half of it, he was stopped by the quick uncommon shadow on her face. When he looked around, he saw through the open door a group of ladies approaching in the street. In their fine gowns, bonnets and manners they looked out of place on the waterfront. They picked their way across Dock Street and formed themselves directly in front of the Red Mule, where they stood meekly enough with open hymn books in their hands as in church. One of them struck a note. Then their voices rose oddly high, pure and mild in this rough place.
O, for a heart to praise my God,
A heart from sin set free!
A heart that ever feels Thy blood
So freely spent for me.
“Don’t mind them,” Chancey said. It was his turn now to apologize, for these were intruders from his own part of town. His father frowned on the Temperance Crusaders, but Sooth belonged, joining the group on certain days, helping to besiege some tavern, singing the most reproachful hymns they knew to melt men’s hearts. They went summer and winter, knelt in snow or driving rain to pray aloud for the men inside. Chancey had often seen them on Water Street. More than once he had stopped amused to listen. But it was less amusing to be caught inside, especially if your own sister happened to be among the besiegers. When the hymn was over, a voice that sounded like Fay’s sister, Leah, started to pray for the salvation of the poor souls and sots within. Inside among those sots themselves, all was interest, respect and a little perplexity. This was something that had to be handled with care like walking on eggs or smoking around black powder.
The prayer done, another sacred song was begun. It sounded nearer.
“I believe they’re coming in,” Rosa said.
Chancey looked around for escape.
“You can use the back way,” she told him and showed him how to go. He had a passing glimpse of the same sort of dim room as in the other Tench house along the river and the same Mrs. Tench uncombed and unaged, staring at him like an outraged owl.
&
nbsp; “Rosa! Who is that?” she demanded but Rosa did not reply.
“Wait, I’ll go with you,” she whispered at the back door. She threw on a wrap and guided him through several alleys. They came out on the waterfront again and they stood on a deserted dock, taking up their talk where they had left off until dusk descended. “I don’t want to go home yet,” she told him. “Will you walk with me to Butterman’s Lock?”
Was it he himself and what he had heard or was it Rosa’s mother and what she said, or why did he have this feeling all evening that he and Rosa were surmounting the world in being together? The canal basin tonight seemed like their inland sea with a faint mist already rising and making the rows of moored boats on the other side seem very far away.
Silent barges lay nearer. A loaded boat was pulling out, the mules moving like shadows along the tow path, the dark hump of a boy on one of their backs. Rosa and Chancey slowed their pace to keep even with the boat. When it entered the long stretch to Butterman’s Lock, the captain’s horn called to the locktender over the aisle of dark water. The wild note hung in the air, lingered, trailed off and came again like the dying strain of the vanished spirit of the wilderness.
“Can you float on it, too?” Rosa asked him. “Especially in the night time like this? Most every night I lie in bed and close my eyes and go on it wherever I want to. And the longer they draw it out, the farther I can go.”
It wasn’t the boat horn but themselves, that did it, Chancey told her, their rebellion and liberty that lifted them up. That’s what made life tonight richer and wiser than he remembered it. Seldom had he been so aware of the warm musky scent of the water, the half moon in it and all around him the velvet night, including Rosa. Something appeared to flow from her slight body to his. She seemed like someone he had known a long time, longer than his mother or Aunt Genny, closer than Sooth or even Massey. No one else knew like she did the words he was about to speak of the troubles and problems that lay on his mind. Sometimes he could tell in advance what she was about to say, but not always. Frequently her fancy rose like the strange killdeer to circle and cry its wild note over water and cloud. Then often he had to go back to childhood to follow, to know what she meant, to a time when he was very young and could stand in a floating leaf and steer it across a mudpuddle sea. For a moment then his feet felt extraordinarily tiny, like the feet of the little old boatman Rosa told him about, who could dance a jig on a dinner plate and never once get off or break it.
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