The Town
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 1950 by Conrad Richter, renewed in 1977 by Harvena Richter.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published April 24, 1950
ISBN 9780394443010
eBook ISBN 9780451493743
v4.1
a
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author acknowledges his debt to the rich historical collections of HENRY HOWE and SHERMAN DAY; to the excellent manuscripts of JOHN BUTZ BOWMAN; to obscure early volumes, manuscripts, newspaper files and personal records made available by H. C. SHETRONE, director, Miss HELEN M. WILLS, reference librarian, and Miss BERTHA E. JOSEPHSON, head of the Department of Documents, of the Ohio State Historical Society; by SYLVESTER L. VIGILANTE, head, and IVOR AVELLINO, assistant, of the American History Room of the New York Public Library; by Col. HENRY W. SHOEMAKER, Pennsylvania state archivist, and Mrs. ETHEL S. DAVENPORT, assistant; by Librarians Miss EDITH PATTERSON, Miss ISABEL CRAWFORD SCHOCH, Miss NELL B. STEVENS, Miss CATHERINE T. SHULENBERGER, and others; and to the help, firsthand material or counsel of W. T. BOYD, Mrs. SAMANTHA RIGGS, Miss EDNA STINE, Miss AUGUSTA R. FILBERT, Misses ANNA and MARY BOYER, MARION S. SCHOCH, Miss AGNES SELIN SCHOCH, MILTON T. JARRETT, FREDERICK RICHTER, Mrs. ANNIE NEIDLINGER and many others.
Finally the author wants again to set down his obligation to those men and women of pioneer stock among whom he lived both in the East and West, whose lives and whose tales of older days gave him a passionate love for the early American way of thought and speech, and a great respect for many whose names never figured in the history books but whose influence on their own times and country was incalculable. If this novel has had any other purpose than to tell some of their story, it has been to try to impart to the reader the feeling of having lived for a little while in those earlier days and of having come in contact, not with the sound and fury of dramatic historical events that is the fortune of the relative, and often uninteresting, few, but with the broader stuff of reality that was the lot of the great majority of men and women who, if they did not experience the certain incidents related in these pages, lived through comparable events and emotions, for life is endlessly resourceful and inexhaustible. It’s only the author who is limited and mortal.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER
1 Towards Evening
2 The Dark and Ancient Earth
3 The Bride’s Bed
4 The Hay Scales
5 A Name to Call It By
6 County Seat
7 Yon Thorn Hedge
8 The Bridge
9 The Dream
10 A Posy for Portius
11 The Two Diggings
12 Rosa
13 Rosa’s Rainbow
14 The Summer Sweeting
15 Standing Water
16 His Father’s Side of the House
17 Not Long for This World
18 The Mansion House
19 Rosa Has to Be Herself
20 The Blue Stocking
21 Rosa’s Cloudberries
22 Ant Sulie
23 The Trees
24 Dock Street
25 The Off–Ox
26 The Flowering of the Wilderness
27 Winter In
28 Summer Out
29 All Her Born Years
30 Sayward Feels the Earth Turn
31 Past and Present
32 A Slipped Collar
33 The Witness Tree
34 The Woodcutter
CHAPTER ONE
TOWARDS EVENING
Hit all comes with bein’ a woman.
LAMB IN HIS BOSOM
SAYWARD awoke this day with the feeling that something had happened to her. What it was, she didn’t know as yet, or if it was for better or for worse, but inside of her a change had taken place. She wasn’t the same as last month or last year. That much she could tell.
She lay beside Portius studying this thing out. Twice, she recollected, she had such a feeling before, the first time when she was no more than a stout chit of a girl. She lived in old Pennsylvany then with her mammy, pappy, brother and sisters. She had woke up in the middle of the night with the singular notion that her life was over and done. Now wasn’t that a funny way for a young girl to think? Well, if her time on earth was done, then it was done, she said to herself, and she was much obliged for being told so she could get ready for heaven. It sobered her but she couldn’t say that it frightened her any. She reckoned she could get along in the next life, if she tried, as well as in this one.
That day or the next her pappy came home and told how the squirrels were leaving the country. Before the week was up, her life by the Juniata was over and she was following the trace westward along with Worth and Jary, Genny and Achsa, Wyitt and Sulie, lighting out with all they had on their backs, traipsing for another land, saying goodby to old Pennsylvany, the only state she ever knew up to then and would never lay eyes on again.
The second time she felt such a change inside her was the time she and Portius got married. Not when she stood up and heard Squire Chew say the lawful words nor during the frolic afterwards. No, it came deep in the night long after all the folks had gone home, all save her and Portius. They were in the cabin alone. She lay in bed with her new man a sleeping beside her like he did now. But she had no notion to waste this hour in foolish deadness to the world. No, she wanted to study out what had happened to her tonight. Never before had she known a man or what it was like. Oh, she had heard enough about it. They was some who played it up to the sky, but as far as she was concerned, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Just the same, as she lay there still as a mouse, she could feel the change in her, something she had never known before, a running along her blood and stirring in all her veins. And if she didn’t know it then, she did a couple months afterwards that it was life.
Now this third time she wouldn’t be sure. Not always could you put off Death and she wasn’t as young and spry as she used to be. No, she had lived a mighty long time. She was in her late forties and she thought her mam an old woman when she gave up and died at thirty-seven. Now she lay quiet till daylight came a sifting in the window. Then she got up, making no noise. Outside she stopped a minute on the way to the backhouse to look around. This was the top hour of the day and foolish were them who reckoned it the bottom, for the world like a human rested up at night, and that’s why it was never so fresh after the first hour of the morning. The fields looked as if they just came out of the dye kettle. The town lay like it always lay there, with two streets already on the river bank and crossway streets at either end reaching out and closing her place in. Just to see it made her feel old for fair. Why, when she came here as a girl, all this was solid woods. Not a white folks cabin for miles east or west, south to the Forks or north towards the English Lakes. Anywhere you turned, the trees stood so close and thick that Jary had to suck for breath. The first year you hardly saw another white person. These days folks were always stopping off from their old states to settle down at Moonshine Church.
When she came back in, the fire looked like it was out, but she knew there would be coals a glowing and winking down under the ash and that the water in the big kettle would still be good and warm. The others could lay abed a while till she washed herself all over, for so busy was she
Saturday and Saturday night with ten others to get washed that she had to wait for Sunday morning when it was generally too chilly for these younger ones. She pulled off her old robe and bedgown. Let the girls look down the loft hole at their mam naked if they liked. They would only see how they’d look themselves thirty or forty years hence.
Now why, she wondered, did a woman’s hams have to get heavy just when she needed them supple and light the most? Could those hams spell out that no more child would rise up between them? And why did her breasts, that used to be stout as wood ducks, hang down now like old shook-out meal bags? Ten babes, counting the one that lay over yonder in the burying ground, had drunk from those bags months on end. Were those tits a telling her now that they didn’t have to stand up and feed greedy mouths any more? Was that it? Was that the change that had come on her, that never could she give flesh, blood and breath to a squalling young one again?
Seven years back she would have thanked her lucky stars to know she had no more on the way and never could have another even if she wanted. But now that she was a scutched tree, that it had come true like winter or taxes, she didn’t know as she liked it so much. Not that she could do anything about it. Never could you go back once the door closed behind you. You could dig in your heels and grab holt, if you wanted, but you had to go on. Even them that had to pass to another world went without making too much fuss about it.
As soon as she had her clothes on, she called the boys from the loft over her and Portius’s room, for they had chores to do—Resolve, the first, a man already and a lawyer like his pappy; then Guerdon with his Yankee gimber jaw, always a scheming to get out of work like his Grandpappy Luckett; next, freckled Kinzie who was going on an appointment to the government academy at Annapolis in the fall. Then it was the girls’ turn—Huldah, sly as a young fisher fox with her black eyes and eye winkers; next Libby with her fine hazel eyes, fat bottom and teasing ways; Sooth who would be a beauty some day with her white skin, red hair and sweet mouth; and Dezia, ten or eleven, the little oldest Bay State lady you ever saw. After that she called Portius, a winking and blinking in the morning like an untamed, uncombed lion with weak eyes. Last of all she sent one of the girls up for her two littlest, no more than babes in the manger, both of them unexpected and coming a long ways after the rest, Massey who couldn’t keep still and Chancey who hadn’t dare to run, a rubbing their eyes and holding fast to each other, for they were two against the rest.
Once they were all in the kitchen, Sayward felt better. Her chances to have more young ones might be gone, but she had made hay while the sun shone. Why, seeing them all come down in the morning made her think of that light-handed professor at the Ferry House last winter who took more things out of Portius’s old high hat than you could shake a stick at. What’s more, Resolve was itching to marry and fetch his bride home. Before she’d know it, there’d be more young ones a landing at this cabin. She couldn’t figure out where they’d put them all. Maybe Portius was right and they did need that big house he wanted to put up.
Come to think of it, she had no time to think of getting old or of Death or of how she felt when she was young and spunky. She better forget mooning now and get to work. She could be glad her changes had stopped so she could have all her snap to tend what she had. The wars were over now. The Indians and Old England for the second time were peaceful. But her young ones weren’t. They hadn’t signed any peace treaties. What was coming, neither they nor her nor anybody else knew, or whether it would be good or bad, but however it came, she had a notion it would be plenty.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DARK AND ANCIENT EARTH
The babe is wise that weepeth, being born.
ZOROASTER
WHAT sin had she done, Sayward asked herself, for that sin to be visited on the youngest of her children? She had asked it ever since he was born. Not that she said it to anybody, just in her own heart. Those she gave birth to before him had been stout and hearty enough. One or two might have been on the slim side like her sister, Genny, used to be. A mite more flesh on their little ribs and haunches wouldn’t have hurt. But they had nothing wrong with them. They could fight like wild kits, go it tooth and nail, daylight and dark.
Now this last one had come puny and ailing. Mrs. Covenhoven said she never saw such a delicate babe. She told Sayward right off not to expect to raise him. He was like a flower budded out in the fall before the frosts. He had come too late. Sayward should remember that her oldest boy was a grown man before his youngest brother ever lay in her womb. Likely all the best sap had been used up by them that came before.
Genny said, did you ever see a boy’s flesh so pure? Why, you could look right through at his blue veins going about their business, which you weren’t supposed to. That’s what was the matter with him, she claimed. His thin hide couldn’t keep out the chills and fever. Genny wiped her eyes. He was Heaven’s child, that’s what he was, and Sayward might as well make up her mind that the Lord wouldn’t give him up long.
In her heart Sayward rose up to deny it. That wasn’t the Lord talking. It was Genny Beagle, and nobody had to listen to a woman’s say-so. It was true that Chancey took all the young ones’ sickness that came around. Usually he was the first to go down and the last to be free. He had spells, too, that nobody knew the name of. She told Portius never to speak the name of any new plague or pox in the house or Chancey would surely catch it. But that didn’t mean he had no chance, that the Lord’s black ox had tramped him. No, she had health and stoutness to spare, if he hadn’t, and more than one feverish night she felt it was her will and the Lord’s that held him up till morning. Then from daylight on, his five sisters could watch and tend him, for their young brother was the apple of their eye, especially when Death prowled near.
Today Sayward had put him by the window in Portius’s room, and there he would sit for hours looking out and never opening his mouth. What he saw only he and God knew. Sometimes from his face and the faraway look in his eyes she thought it must be another world than this that he mostly lived in. Just what world it could be, whether the one he came from or the one he was going to, Sayward did not claim to know. But ever had he such shy ways, even to her, that he made her think of some creature of the deep woods she had known as a girl, one of those wild things that came into the world and went out of it without the benefit of human minds or hands, and while here followed paths no human feet had trod.
Portius wasn’t partial to the young ones coming in his office, but Chancey was his clerk, he said. No matter how private a client’s law business, the boy could stay and listen if he wanted. He was four years old now, and the rheumatism had left his heart too poorly to race around. To see him sitting stock-still on his stool while the others tore and ran always bothered Sayward. Even when Portius hoisted him to his back and took him along to town yonder, his puny white body stayed behind like a pack on her heart.
—
The little boy sat by the window. Summer had come out of Kentucky into Ohio, and the window stood open. It was raining. Out through the window he could see his sister, Massey, and the Patterson girl trying to run between the drops like his mother said. But never could they. Wet as fish they would come in every time. Now he could run between the drops, Chancey believed, if only he could run. He could feel himself small as a tomtit and thin as paper slipping right through, swimming all the muddy rivers that ran between the potato hills in his mother’s garden and crossing the great lakes in the side yard on a chip for a keel boat and with a straw for a pole.
After while he heard a whispering at the door to the windsweep that led to the kitchen. As he looked, the string was stealthily pulled, the door opened and Massey’s white head pushed through. He could see Ellin Patterson’s black head close behind her.
“Chancey!” Massey whispered, though he was looking right at her.
Oh, he knew pretty close what she wanted. Only yesterday when he was sick, Libby had put him on the old cedar bucket in the kitchen to do his business. It set
in a dark corner and she claimed she couldn’t see it was filled with boiling water to scald it. He had risen up with a howl, and all day he had known anguish. Even now his mother had something soft and comforting under him on the stool.
“Chancey!” Massey whispered again, for she feared her father sitting at his law table with the strange man and little girl before it. “Don’t it hurt sitting on it all the time?”
“No,” he lied and gave her a dark look to go about her business, but never a ripple marred the innocence of that wide speculative gaze.
“Chancey,” she went on. “Will you let Ellin see how bad you hurt it?”
With great dignity the little boy made as though he didn’t hear. Massey only bent forward and raised her whisper.
“Why won’t you? She won’t hurt it or nothing. You showed it to A’nt Ginny.”
The little boy shut his eyes to thrust the pain from his mind. It was still raining. He could feel the dampness like a great mittened hand reaching through the window, touching walls and bed, nudging the desk and cold dark fireplace. Under its dank fingering, he could smell the chinked logs, the bitter ink and the slept-in odor of his mother’s and father’s bed. Once he opened his eyes and peeped. They had gone. Near him at his father’s law table were just the strange man and the strange little girl. She sat white and stiff as a china chick in a glass dish, while the men’s deep voices like bumblebees droned and rested.
Sometimes when the voices ceased, when all he could hear was the running of the tiny feet of rain on the roof, when the mist rolling over the world outside the window seemed to roll over him, too, then the close sheets-and-blankets smell of his mother’s and father’s bed took him off somewhere. It was like a path, more like a beam of motes, for he could follow it without feet.
Only a moment or two it took, and he was there. This was the Effortless Place, the Unencumbered World. Never did he feel heavy or tired here, for he could leap and run without moving his legs, and speak without his lips. Scarcely did he even think about having a heart, for here he seemed all in one piece. He could do anything he liked. He need only wish for a thing, and there it was, more wonderful than he had any notion and sometimes in colors he never saw before. And the people mostly were like nobody he had ever noticed around Moonshine Church. They knew what he wanted to say before he said it. Why, then, he wondered, could he never recollect just what they said that pleased him or what they showed him that gave him wonder? So long as he stayed in the Effortless Place, all was crystal clear. But once he got back, a mist lay on his mind, and he couldn’t remember till something brought it up. Perhaps it was a strange face in town or the sunset sky with painted clouds banked like continents with stretches of bottomless green sea between. Then some memory returned like a flash and was gone, leaving that indescribably blissful feel of the Dream World like a soft phosphorescent glow behind.