The Waters of Kronos

by Conrad Richter

  The walker could smell the new tannery now as he went down the Methodist church hill. Across from it lived another tannery owner, whose wife and eight children, John Donner knew, were within the decade to die of tuberculosis. Passing, he could see some of them tonight through the bay window, Mrs. Bambrick, a gracious woman, reading to three of her younger children. They made a disturbing scene, the blond hair of the girl down over her shoulders, the boys too young and fair for death. There had been a time, John Donner grimly remembered, when he wished he might have knowledge of the future.

  Oh, the town was shot through with things now he would give a great deal not to know, tragedies that cried tonight to be halted before it was too late. He put down his head as he passed the bitter house where Helen Easterly had taken her life some four months after John Donner as a boy had seen her with three older boys lying in the straw of her grandfather’s stable. And there was the house where Alice Seltzer had her girl child in the dead of night, never to see her again. Before daylight they had taken the babe twenty-five miles by horse and buggy to the Lebanon hospital, from which she was adopted by a country couple to be brought up in the Amish faith and never to know that her father and uncle were one.

  Certain houses almost cringed as he passed, but the sorriest, most wretched and hopeless of all was the frame cottage of the Flails. John Bonner himself at the age of ten had come with the curious to see the blood still dripping into the tiny front room while upstairs in two still smaller and more accursed rooms lay huddled shapes that had once been Griff Flail’s wife and four small children, struck down in their sleep by the father, who had then dispatched himself. It was a masterly job by an experienced hand, for Griff was a butcher for Sherm Rhine, and the nearest neighbors during the night had never heard a sound.

  As John Donner approached the tragic little house tonight he could see the soft lump of Mrs. Flail, still alive, with two of her younger children, one rocking in her arms, the other at play at her feet. Concern for them swept him, and he halted at the rail.

  “Go away!” he cried, his voice thick. “Leave Griff. Leave him tonight. Go home. Don’t risk another day or it might be too late.”

  The answer he got was horrified silence. He saw that the mother had snatched up the second child and was staring at him through the dusk, while neighbors started up from their porches to see who was threatening a poor woman and did she need help to save herself and her small children from a madman?

  Perhaps he was mad, he told himself, expecting others to listen to his ravings. He escaped uptown, but he felt debased. In youth or even manhood walking was a joy, effortless, almost an act of flight, but given age and weariness the walker was aware of its grotesqueness, to be cut in two below the waist and able to transport yourself about only by setting one of these severed parts in front of you and then the other, and so on monotonously like a tadpole split down the middle imagining itself king of creation.

  Everywhere he went now he thought he tasted a strange bitterness in the air as if the unhappy Unionville dead released by the hour were abroad in the town, trying like he to find solace on the streets where they had walked before, leaving trails of melancholy and despair. He puzzled over the deep insupportable sadness. Were he and the dead the only victims or did many of the living feel it, too? At this very moment here in Unionville were there those who went about their chores and errands, confessing nothing to those about them, saying “It’s a warm evening” or “See you tomorrow,” carrying their grief with them to their beds and to their feet when they got up in the morning, never knowing its source, nor did any other man?

  Some of the stores were closing but the depot remained open and lighted, waiting for the eight fifty-five from Auburn, the last train till the early miners’ train in the morning. John Donner was grateful for the open waiting room. He felt a little peace here in this house that belonged to an absentee landlord and was free from the pressures of the personally occupied. Nobody resented his presence or showed that he wished him to leave. The very look of the benches was impersonal, meant for transients such as he and the two old men smoking and talking with long lapses of silence in this pleasant retreat shot with the scent of travel and far places and the sudden chatter of the telegraph instrument.

  Sitting here, John Donner thought of the stations of the cross. Well, there were also stations of the aged and out of work of all ages, sanctuaries in which to catch their breath and pass that which lay such a daily burden on them. As a boy he had never thought much about it, but he could see the stations in his mind now, all over Unionville, the watch box at the crossing, the stools in Rehrer’s saddlery and at the shoemaker’s, standing room at Hoy’s blacksmith and wheelwright shops, the chairs on the DeWitt porch and store benches under the wooden mercantile awnings, a dozen facilities now vanished. And yet modern towns considered themselves humane and all-providing.

  He watched with regret the train come in, the sprinkle of passengers and the two old men depart to their homes. Never had lighted windows looked so desirable and unattainable, even those far back from the street. As a boy he had thought the peculiar and withdrawn lived there. Tonight the gloomy paths leading to these distant houses were gilded with golden light. Their windows and those of all Unionville houses, he noticed, had a mysterious and elusive quality like life, not artificial and glittering as the electric-lit windows he had left above the chasm. Down here they flushed with a soft bloom, as if a glowworm had turned on its cold light. You looked for it to go out but it kept on and you kept watching it like a modest flower or small miracle. Almost never did these windows plunge suddenly on, or off into blackness, like lamps fed by the fickle magnetic spark. They dimmed and faintly brightened as if even the inanimate here breathed and was alive.

  Everywhere he wandered now the smell of the river pursued him, soft and seductive, like the scent of a woman following him, reaching out and touching him, till at length he turned and submitted, crossing the lower tracks, passing Christenson’s coalyard office, another station of the aged, and Felty’s Mill, which he had always thought the best-proportioned building in town. The black mouth of the covered bridge known as Felty’s opened before him. Entering, he could taste the dry smell of ancient dust and make out through the gloom the great double arches rising on either side. He remembered how in the Red Bridge as boys they would climb the whitewashed arches and lie hugging the wood while a train roared through, shaking the structure as if to demolish it and them all.

  He felt his way up the south arch here, a triple one of great planks from the early forest, steamed, bent and riveted together. At least he would have a roof over his head. It wasn’t too bad stretching out on his wooden couch, feeling the massive strength of his bedstead, hearing the low twittering of fellow lodgers about him, grateful for a high open place to look on the dim world outside. A mist was rising from the river, obscuring all the familiar forms and landmarks, shrouding them in an impenetrable veil. Even the stars were hidden. Well, the old must steel themselves to the obscuring of familiar sights, become resigned to an existence in mist and veil. The pueblo Indians of New Mexico were wise to build their houses of earth, to become accustomed to dwelling in the clay of their final resting place.

  Lying there, he heard the sudden cry of terror from a bird in a nearby treetop, then all was still. Had it, he wondered, been picked up in the talons of a feathery flying beast, carried off God knows where as dark shapes rise at night from the abyss to do the same to men? John Donner kept thinking of the birds as he lay there, the peril of their common nightfall. Small wonder they sang in the morning but why did they also at approaching night?

  The river made mysterious occult gurgling noises beneath him. He remembered it shallow enough here. The older men said that a ford had preceded the bridge, and yet the sound was deep, black, stirring with nameless imaginings.

  “Never cross water,” a palmist had once told him.

  He would not cross it. He just intended to stay here suspended over it. If he did not
sleep, keeping vigilant, waiting for daylight, he would be safe.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Confluence

  When the man awoke he did not know at first where he was. Troubled sleep had confused him, taken with dreams of a bridge that men had to pass through. It was a dark bridge, very late at night, and the men were nearly always alone, most of them on foot, reluctant, talking incoherently to themselves to brave them into the black unknown. Only one had been in a hurry, with a horse and buggy that rattled the plank and stirred the dry dust so the dreamer could taste it in his throat. Now the dreamer lay remembering, seeing again in his mind the shadowy figures, hearing their lonely voices, feeling the threat and sadness of that bridge, and the chill of the river it spanned. The chill was still in his flesh and his bones when he awoke.

  Gradually the dusty ax-scarred rafters and black-stained shingles overhead took shape and brought him back to reality. With stiff joints and muscles he came backward down the wooden arch. Once down, the tender town scene through the telescope of the bridge revived his spirit, the red tin roofs of the remembered streets, blue summer woodsmoke rising from the lazy chimneys, the familiar odd shapes of Unionville houses half hidden in the fog of leaves, the green hills lifting beyond and pink clouds hanging over them, all simmering and asleep as if in an early-morning spell. He stood drinking in the delicate perishable picture, then descended the path through rank-smelling weeds to wash his face in the river.

  All the way up Mill Street with no sidewalks and very few houses he noted the vagaries of the ambient envelope here in the eddy behind Shade Mountain, the unseen layers of cool and warmer air, the winding currents of some elusive scent now gained, now lost. Distillations of hearty old-time breakfasts, of frying ham and potatoes, pursued him. His fingers felt the thin change in his pocket. He must go hungry or unshaven today and the latter was unthinkable if he wanted to look presentable to his mother. God knows that his best would be lacking enough.

  Joe Heisler’s barber shop already at this early hour held faces and heads to be readied for the funeral. Sitting on the long bench were Rob Felty, the miller, Charley Hartman, the station agent, and Sherm Rhine, the staunch friend of and moneylender to his Aunt Jess, but neither they nor Joe acknowledged his presence after the first glance. Only the eyes of the customer reclining under the razor watched him covertly through the mirror, secure in his turned back and lathery disguise.

  Sitting back at last in the leathern chair, John Donner saw the old mine boss from the west end of the county pass the window. He had had a stroke, lost his family, and come down off Broad Mountain to the DeWitt House to board. Daily, summer and winter, he could be seen dressed in the same lightweight coat and trousers, never an overcoat, exercising his bad leg, a tall, gaunt, alien-looking figure moving painfully but persistently up and down Kronos Street. The man had become a resident of Unionville some years before he died and yet had remained almost unknown, an outsider and intruder. They called him “the foreigner.”

  That’s who he felt like, John Donner told himself, as he left the barber shop, his shaven skin sensitive to his home street after so many years. He hadn’t realized how gratefully the darkness last evening had shielded and covered him. At the Eagle Hotel he turned back to the alley and pursued its secluded way downtown, stopping only by his grandfather’s red stable. It was dim inside but he could make out through the open half of the stable door the black tail and bay rump of a horse. The old man unhooked the lower door and stepped in.

  The beast turned his head and the great dark orbs observed him. It was Mike, the old retainer, whom Pap-pa had kept so long. As a boy John Donner had played in his stall, climbed on his back, ducked between his legs, had thought this horse wiser than most men, a beast who could tell the time of day. The afternoon mail came to Unionville at four in the afternoon. If Pap-pa returned to town after this time, the horse went to the post office and stopped. If earlier, Mike went straight to the stable.

  The stranger stepped into the stall.

  “Mike horse!” he said, giving the old childhood name, and the aged beast buried his muzzle in his arm.

  So another besides Aunt Teresa knew him. Standing there in this frequented place, under the cobwebs laden with dust, with the furry ears so close to his face and the distinctive horse scent in his nostrils, John Donner half expected to see his dead grandfather come from the house, lowering his head to protect his stovepipe hat at the stable door. Pap-pa kept three high silk hats, his best for church and funerals, the second best for rainy weather, the third for garden and stable.

  “Mike, do you want a drink?” he would ask in his sharp metallic voice. If Mike whinnied, he was thirsty and would drink. If he shook his head and you gave him water, he would turn the bucket over impatiently with his nose.

  Twice while John Donner was there Mike lifted his head to whinny. He did it again after Morris Striker had come to curry him.

  “He’s been doing that ever since old Morgan took to his bed,” Morris said. “I guess that’s the way it goes when you get up in years like you and me. We keep looking for people that can’t never come around no more.”

  John Donner left through the parsonage yard. Things were still as he recalled them, the curious high narrow boardwalk, the rich black powdery soil, the greenish privy called “the outhouse.” The parsonage and church looked ageless, the vegetable garden neglected. Pap-pa had been the best gardener in Unionville, his mother said, raising the earliest lettuce and never tasting it, saying slyly that he didn’t belong to the ruminating tribe. Here were the octagonal wooden pump, unused since water had come to town, and the summer kitchen, on the roof of which his young mother, Aunt Jess and Uncle Peter used to dance in their night-dresses when Pap-pa and Ma went out in the evening. Today the summer kitchen buzzed with activity and cooking smells but the green blinds of the house were pulled down.

  When John Donner came around to the front gate he found Kronos Street filled with activity. From Union to Maple street it had been roped off, and neighbors had set out benches and kitchen chairs for the country folk. Inside the ropes it was clear of vehicles but farther down, as far as he could see, horses and buggies, carriages and spring wagons stood end to end along both sides of the street. At the church a steady human stream already flowed through the iron gates and up the stone steps to the front door. The old stranger in the coal driver’s coat had trouble getting to the church proper. They tried to shunt him into the Sunday-school room downstairs, filling up now for the overflow service.

  It was a little shock for John Donner to find himself again in his father’s and mother’s church, as if coming back to a bit of the stone age, the grim ancestral Unionville faces, the rigid backs of church worthies up front, the unmistakable Ira H. Smather family seated in their family pew like boulders embedded in their glacial hill. The ancient high red plush chairs on the pulpit platform might have been from Moses’ time. The design of painted leaves on the wall behind the altar were horseshoes upside down. The baronial silken purple cloths on the pulpit furniture still hung embroidered with IHS that Timmy had once thought stood for Ira H. Smather. But the organ sounded slow and wavering. Could that be the instrument on which John Donner remembered his Aunt Jess playing such magnificent Bach, sitting like a priestess at her altar? A strange woman sat there today.

  The older church members, the visitor recalled, hadn’t liked the new colored windows, wishing for the ancient frosted panes. John Donner had disagreed. The stained glass sparkling with color had been a refuge from his grandfather’s sermons, especially the tedious morning sermon in Pennsylvania German. He had passed much time in their bright world. The pink lamb, the white dove, the feathered angel, the harp, the scroll, the beards and rich robes of the apostles, the green hills of Judea and the blue water of Galilee had all been boon companions of his Sabbath youth. His favorite was the purple grape and he had often supped on it until dinnertime. The names of donors lettered below were a roster of the pillars of the church. He thought the colore
d pictures their personal choice and property. Of an early summer evening service, the western window “to the memory of Mary S. Morgan” sometimes flamed with crimson and gold as befitted his grandmother in heaven at thirty-nine.

  Many times had he heard the story of her death. He sometimes thought that he, as yet unborn, had been present in person. He could see it so clearly, Pap-pa standing like Lincoln at the head of the bed, young Aunt Jess and Uncle Peter at the foot, and his mother, the littlest of the children, held up to see her mother die. She had been carried upstairs by Cousin Vic, a junior at Gettysburg College, who in less than a year was to follow with galloping consumption taken on the football field. It was a grief-stricken hour for all save the chief participant, who sat propped up in bed, her cheeks pink with pain and fever, glassiness already in her eyes, crying out triumphantly that she was going to heaven that day and would see Jesus. Grave, bearded Dr. Sypher sat on the edge of the bed holding her wrist. Twice he begged her to take a little brandy but Mary Morgan refused, saying she wanted to go to God and the Saints with her mind clear and all her senses intact.

  That had been some thirty years before—ninety years to the nineteen sixties—and now her husband, who had acquired a second wife in the interim, lay here in his extraordinarily long golden-oak coffin by the altar rail under the lectern and pulpit he had read and preached from for more than forty years. Sunday mornings, they said, he had had a habit of looking keenly out over his Bible to see who was missing, and God help those who were not sick when he called Monday morning. There was the story of Katy Gangloff, who saw him coming and hid under the bed in the front room of her log house, telling her son what to say. When he answered the door he said dutifully that his mother was over the mountain. “I see, I see,” Pap-pa had said dryly, looking at the pair of shoes sticking out from under the bed. “Well, next time your mother goes over the mountain, tell her to take her feet along.”