The Town

by Conrad Richter

  Oh, Chancey and she had a good time that night, but where was Chancey now? Her mother claimed she knew. She wouldn’t say right out who told her, but let it be known she had talked it over with Miss Bogardus. According to her, Chancey never gave a hait for Rosa, and it was good he didn’t, her mother hinted darkly, because he couldn’t give her the rights and rewards of a decent girl. All the time he came down here to see her, he had somebody else picked out for himself, a young lady who would fit in with the Wheelers and Morrisons and their fine houses on the square. No, there was nothing honest in Chancey Wheeler’s coming to see her, and if she knew what was good for her and him, too, she’d thank him for staying away from her and clear him out of her mind.

  All the times her mother said this, and when she didn’t, she sat there wrapped up in herself by the stove, living her life in her chair. Hardly had she changed, Rosa thought, since she first remembered her, although these last years she let Rosa comb some of the wild tangles out of her hair. Rosa’s father’s coal black mane had streaked long ago, and now it looked like iron strings dipped in lime. But her mother’s brown head hadn’t a gray thread woven in it. The only way you could tell she was older was by her glasses. All these years she had sat in her dark kitchen reading like an owl in a hollow tree. At last she claimed she could hardly tell any more who came in at the door. Rosa fetched pair after pair of glasses home to try until she found one to suit. They suited her in more ways than one, Rosa thought, for now no matter what was said, her mother could sit behind those spectacles in her own world and all you could make out from her eyes were the hard lights glinting on her glasses.

  When her mother spoke of Chancey and his fine young lady, Rosa kept still. Not even to herself would she admit it. She went on just as if her mother hadn’t spoken. She would give it no room in her mind, no shred of existence. Then it couldn’t hurt her, for so far as she was concerned, it wasn’t true and couldn’t be, like the story of the child that never knew about Death and never would believe it, and even on her death bed, Death couldn’t harm her, for it had no power over her. But if Rosa wouldn’t mention it, a mysterious voice in her mind would. Many times it plainly said, “Who is this fine young lady?” She would be sitting sewing a ribbon or combing her hair and suddenly in the silence this voice would ask, “What is she like that Chancey likes her better than you?” Never did the voice sound like her own or any voice she knew. Now whose voice could it be, she pondered, saying, “you” and not “me” in her own mind?

  When it wasn’t another voice breaking in, it was her mother’s.

  “I hear he took this young lady to Tateville Saturday night,” she would say. “You can be glad you didn’t go.”

  That would throw Rosa’s thought to the sleighing parties. They had started in January. First seven sleds had come to Americus from Tateville crowded with young folks shouting and singing. They carried a white flag with a green face and a thumb held to its nose. The young ladies of Tateville, it was said, had sewed it up, but what young ladies, Rosa’s mother asked, would sew up a thing like that? She said it must be a made-up story, but Dennis said he saw the flag with his own eyes at the Washington House where the Tateville people ate their supper. A good many others saw it, too, and said they couldn’t let Tateville get away with that. The next Saturday night sixteen four-horse sled loads went to Tateville from Americus crying out they wanted that flag. They got it, too, and lost it the next Saturday night when Tateville came back with twenty-three sleds. From then on every time Americus went to Tateville or Tateville came to Americus, it took more sleds and folks to get the flag.

  Now this was the last of February and everybody said that any day the snow would go. And yet it held on. Tateville had come to Americus last week with nearly eighty sleds, and all Americus prayed the snow would last another Saturday night. The biggest sleighing crowd in the history of Ohio would journey to Tateville then. The whole country around Americus, on both sides of the river, was scoured for the promise of teams and sleds. Nearly a dozen sleds were going from the waterfront alone, and Rosa told Idilla and Vic that she would ride along.

  And then she wished she hadn’t. It was all right, she saw clearly, just to lay eyes on Chancey again, but not if this other person was with him. Once her eyes glimpsed them together, never afterward could her mind deny her mother’s story. Perhaps their sleds would stop side by side, or they would all have supper at the same table. The sight of him and her together would be like a knife. She wished now she hadn’t said she would go, but it was too late. She couldn’t bear to go and see him, and yet now that she had gone this far, she couldn’t bear to stay away.

  There were ninety-six sleds that went to Tateville from Americus that night, counting the two-seaters and cutters. Not that many lined up on Sixth Street in Americus to start, but at every side road halfway to Tateville sleds with shouting and singing young people waited to join the procession. From the top of the Long Swamp hill Rosa could see against the snow an endless dark train of teams ahead and a longer one winding behind them. And instead of thawing, it was still snowing. Now and then flurries would come licking their faces with melting flakes, bringing the mighty chorus of a thousand voices ahead. Then when the wind stood still, she could hear the concord of another thousand voices behind her. It was a curious and wonderful thing to hear, the great song waxing and waning and turning upon itself with distance and the wind. The same words and bar would come a second and third time with such power that blood was fetched to her head. After the snowy swirls, the early moon came out, racing through the clouds, making the countryside bright as day. Oh, never, Rosa thought, had she seen and felt such deadly loveliness before.

  Half of Tateville lined the streets to welcome them when they got there. Only the first section of sleds could get near the square. Rosa and her friends had to get down a long way out. Where his sled would be later on, the driver did not know. Nobody cared. It was good to use your legs after so long a ride. Tonight Tateville belonged to Americus, with Americus folks tramping the sidewalks and streets, calling and laughing in a monster open-air party from one end of town to the other. But Rosa’s laugh didn’t carry very far. She was unwilling here to look at folks directly. She moved along taking care to see over heads and past faces. It would be too hard a blow for her eyes to come on them suddenly together. She had no fear to miss him. If Chancey were somewhere in the crowd, his face would make itself known to her, or his proud head or stiff spindly shoulders. The smallest part of him would jump to her eye from the crowd like the name, Wheeler, always jumped from a crowded column in the Centinel. What she would do then, she didn’t know.

  She and Idilla and Vic were standing outside the Rising Sun when she felt a hand on her arm. She knew without turning whose hand it was. She could tell by the violent feeling that went over her. She had been waiting with the others to get their supper. For a long time they had stood in the crowded line, moving by inches toward the dining room. They were almost at the door. Another minute or two they might have been in the warm. But now Rosa’s arm wasn’t hers any more but belonged to the hand that had touched it, and where it drew her, she went also.

  Shame rose before she went very far. Was she so weak that all this winter he could stay away from her at home without a word sent or written, and then when he chanced to see her in a strange city, he need only touch her arm and she would follow like a blind woman the hand that guided her! She would go with him only a little way, she told herself, just far enough to be out of hearing of Americus folks. Idilla and Vic could think she deserted them. Right now they had likely turned to watch the white scarf on her head ride through the crowd like a duck on the river. But if they waited a little, they would hardly know she had gone, for in a minute or two she would be back. She had said no word when she went, and it would be the same on her return.

  “Now I’m going back!” she would tell Chancey suddenly in a way so he knew that nothing would stop her. At the first stretch of empty sidewalk she would say it, or in the
middle of this long dark block. Surely at the next lamp post she would do it, where she could see his face when she told him.

  But he was the one who turned first.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” he blamed her. “I promised I wouldn’t see you again.”

  “Promised!” she blazed at him. “Why should you promise if you don’t want to?”

  “My father made me.”

  Rosa let that turn around slowly in her mind.

  “How did he make you?”

  “He said it wasn’t right for us to go together.”

  “Why?” she asked though she thought she knew.

  “Because it’s evil—who you are and who I am.”

  Now she wasn’t sure that she knew at all. That strange, half-hot, half-icy cold feeling of the Wheelers went over her, mysteriously strangling her and at the same time freezing the soft inner marrow of her bones.

  “Who am I?” she asked him so low that scarcely could she hear herself.

  “You can ask your mother,” was all he said.

  “Why must I ask her? She wouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “She told my father. That’s why he talked to me. She wrote him a letter. She said it was wicked and immoral, our being together and he had to keep us from ever seeing each other again.”

  “My mother!” Rosa whispered. Hardly could she believe it. Her mother, sitting in her chair in the brown dress Rosa herself had made for her, with the book Rosa fetched for her in her lap, with the glasses Rosa bought for her on her nose, and all the time it had been she who had kept them apart.

  “We’ll come back when we won’t have to wait for supper,” he promised, but Rosa scarcely heard him.

  “Is it true that it’s evil for us to go together?” she whispered.

  “It’s against the law—and the church.”

  “Then we can’t ever see each other again?”

  At his answer Rosa’s foot slipped in the snow and she would have stumbled had he not held her. The strangeness of the street at night was a dark cloud around her and he was the wind carrying her here and yonder. Her body might have been a snowflake blown this way and that, yet always coming back in the end to the shape of her body. Already the square was far away, Idilla and Vic small and distant in her mind. Could it be just a few minutes ago that she had stood there talking to them at the Rising Sun? So much had happened since Chancey had touched her. Where they were going now she didn’t know. These dim streets seemed all alike to her. Only the last one they came to she thought she knew. She had heard of Tateville’s Front Street, and here was the river. In summer it must be grand with the great houses getting the breeze, but now all was locked in a wintry and snowy death.

  A few blocks more and the street changed. One-sided above, it was two-sided below, with dark and deserted workshops crowding each other. She and Chancey could be alone here. They could find solitude among the silent warehouses and mills, the factories and brew houses. They could say anything they wanted and none except themselves would hear. Yet hardly a word passed between them. Always afterward would she mingle this night, she thought, with the warm soft smell of dyes, the cold hard scent of iron and the sweetness of malt and hops, with the mysterious stillness of the darkened buildings and visible between them on one side the bleak white expanse of river.

  It was late when they got back to the square, yet he would have it no other way than that she have her supper with him in the elegant Mansion House. The dining room, almost bare of both food and diners now, received them. When they came out, the square lay almost empty of teams and sleds. From far through the city and the country beyond, they could hear the stream of song and sleighbells drifting back to them.

  “They’re gone!” Rosa said, meaning Idilla and Vic.

  “Not everybody,” Chancey said. “I’ll get you home.” He took her hand and dragged her over to a long low bobsled with four black horses. “We missed our party, George,” he called to the driver. “Can we go back with you?”

  Like a Wheeler, he didn’t wait for a yes or no, but lifted her over the low board to an open space among the dark forms. Rosa slipped quickly down in the thick straw under the covers. Already it felt warm down there, but around her she thought she felt a slight chill. Though she couldn’t see their faces, they could have seen hers coming out of the Mansion House. She was aware now that there were no coarse quilts here as in the sled she had come in, only soft blankets. The scent of fine fabric and leather told her this was no common sled. She wished now she had held back. Sooner would she have walked all the way home with Chancey, if need be, than this.

  Once out in the country, the couples turned to themselves, became blind and deaf to the others around them. Rosa crept farther down under the blankets. The sled mounted the hills, slid through the high white banks, sped over snowy fields. They passed farm houses and barns standing extraordinarily still in the winter night. The road went so close, they could smell mows and horses and the soft milky scent of cows. Once through a wintry woods, Rosa fancied she smelled spring. Most of the time she lay back, making all she could of the night and of Chancey so close beside her, tasting it over and over, making it last. Such a feeling she never had before as when she lay there looking up at the sky. The sled slipped so effortlessly over the earth, it seemed to drop away and leave her riding, drifting among the great flying clouds and the sudden blue stars that flashed out between.

  Once when the low western moon came out she raised her head to see the snowy countryside crusted with lighted silver. Presently the magic was darkened. Cattycornered across the sled she was aware of the cool eyes of Chancey’s sister, Mercy, fixed upon her as if upon something wicked and unclean. All the rest of the ride Rosa tried to rid that evil from herself, but it lay too deep. It seemed like some dark stain in her blood, and she couldn’t tear it out or scour her white flesh clean.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SUMMER OUT

  Where the deer and the roe bounding lightly together

  Sport the long afternoon on the braes of Balquether.

  SUNG IN EARLY AMERICA

  WHAT Chancey’s sister told her father about them, Rosa never knew, nor wished to know. But it must have been something bad for Barney Shand to come to see her mother. He was the sheriff of Shawanee County and Judge Wheeler’s right hand man. In the parlor of his house, they said, he kept the rope of every man he had hanged and the last dishes the doomed man had eaten from. Barney Shand came to the waterfront on the softest day, the first mild day of March, a day full of the mercy of God and of the elements and of everything else save man. With winter and the snow gone, with spring in the air and the kindly sunlight lying on the sidewalks, he called at the little house behind the Red Mule, a stout man with small eyes and flabby jowls, and was alone with her mother a long time.

  Rosa felt herself steel when she went in the house afterward.

  “I know all about your going with that young Wheeler to Tateville,” her mother informed her bitterly. “So does Judge Wheeler. Now he forbids you two seeing each other under the penalty of the law.”

  Inside Rosa shook a little, though she would give small heed outside. So there was no limit, she told herself, to the cruelty that wicked old men and women practised on innocent young people who never harmed anybody. It hadn’t been enough for them that somewhere inside of her the dark eggs of some obscure taint had been laid to spoil and set her apart from the rest. Now they had to brand her flesh, tell her what she must do and mustn’t, and where she must never walk or pay the penalty.

  All the rest of the day a strong disquiet possessed her like that of the moths caught last summer behind the window pane. Hardly could she keep still or wait to clear early supper from the table, and when she slipped off and out into the free air, she felt like the moths must have felt when she raised the sash and let them soar.

  She went straight in the face of the setting sun to the Sixth Street bridge that spanned the canal, and when she got there, Chancey was waiting as they h
ad planned. He had his back turned, looking the other way, making as though he didn’t expect her. But just the anxious desperate way he stood she knew that they had bullied him as they had her.

  “Don’t tell me anything!” she begged him.

  Scarcely speaking, they walked out Sixth Street and took a back road into the hills. The deeper they went, the more the feel of evil and shame fell from her. Never, she thought, had the country been so beautiful as tonight after the sheriff’s call. One day or another each March she had noticed that a fine indeterminate haze hung in the air, but she couldn’t recall that it had ever been so delicate before or when it had given her such a grateful shelter. It was softer than smoke and dryer than fog. Indeed as the dusk deepened, it was like some mysterious and exquisite mist distilled by the gods to hide the secret and stealthy union of earth and heaven. She and Chancey walked through it tonight as if only half awake and yet with all the wisdom of dreamers.

  That was it, she told herself, it was like a dream. Through the luminous vapor the land, fields, trees and fence rows appeared as in a dream. The cries of late birds and of men and women across the fields had the same unearthly insubstantial quality. The ugly unreality of the day had dissolved. This was reality. Earthly time stood still. Even the rigs and wagons on the road moved in a curious, almost sleepy fashion while boys and girls standing in the lanes or outlined against the glowing red of brush fires seemed motionless, wholly under the spell.

  Coming back to the waterfront was like waking up in the morning to her lot, to the coarse wornout bed clothing and hearing the early tipplers grumble and cough in the saloon. Only the enchantment of this evening and their triumph over the law supported her. If Judge Wheeler and Barney Shand hadn’t been able to stop their happiness tonight, who would keep her and Chancey apart? The law would only draw them closer. As she neared her house she could feel her mind rising, resolving, sharpening, devising to protect themselves against her mother and those wicked old men. She would be cunning as the fox and watchful as the savage. Never would she and Chancey submit to such as they.