The Town Read online

  Sayward set her mouth. Oh, she knew what he was after, trying to get her to give up the cabin and live in town. She had more than one lot left on the square just in case and on purpose. But it took money to put up a new house, and she wasn’t ready yet. On the other hand, neither did she hanker to stay living here at the cabin with canalers hollering and drinking and carrying on a short ways from her door. Some of her young ones were still of mighty tender years to listen to broad talk. And worst of all, she didn’t like to see such good rich ground like hers dug up and ruined for ever raising anything on it.

  But she told herself she might as well have given in at the start as at the finish. She woke up one winter day and found state men and engineers surveying and appraising her good bottom land. They didn’t want just a narrow strip now but a whole canal basin. Oh, Portius went out and made like he never heard of such high-handed doings. He argued up and down with the engineers. But Sayward wasn’t fooled. She hadn’t been born yesterday. If the canal company lawyer wouldn’t have known about this, she asked herself, who would? She even reckoned that Portius had put them up to it, only she couldn’t prove it. In the end she made up her mind not to fight the whole state and town to boot. So long as they paid a fair price and didn’t try to cheat her. But Portius better walk straight from now on. She wouldn’t forgive him easy after this.

  They had already dug a good part of the canal farther up north. Now the fourth of July they were starting work down here. A monster jubilee would set it off, half to celebrate Independence but mostly to break the first canal ground in Shawanee county. Sayward didn’t have to go up town to see the parade because it would wind up right here in back of the house. Right this minute she could hear the Tateville Cornet Band marching up Water Street and the Americus Drum Corps coming down Union Street and turning at Wheeler Street with their fifes squealing and their drums rolling through the square. And now she could see Major Hocking, the marshal, on his iron gray, and behind him the veterans of the Revolution, each one, it looked like, in different regimentals. It ought to be the other way round, Sayward thought, those poor old men on horseback and Major Hocking on foot.

  And now it sounded like the fifes were marching right into her kitchen, as they turned down the lane. She could stand here at the door and see them all go by, Dr. Haneman, the chief engineer for the canal, and his helpers with their surveying instruments all bright and polished. Behind them came General Morrison, flanked by two Honorable Ploughers, guiding a plough laid on its side and drawn by Petticord’s two white oxen. After him marched Judge Devanter and Senator Voorhees trundling empty wheelbarrows, and behind them the Hon. Harold Birchard and George MacKinnon, president of the select council, each with a spade on his shoulder. Now what was the matter with her, Sayward abused herself, curling a lip at these men in high hats playing at sweat and labor? They couldn’t help it if their soft white hands hardly knew which end of a plough or wheelbarrow were the handles. General Morrison was a good friend of hers and relation besides. She had no business picking on him. She reckoned it was this tearing up of her land that galled her.

  The truth was she had no taste to look at them when they reached her meadow where the canal basin was to be. Some folks already stood waiting, and many more, especially young folks, ran along side the paraders. But they were nothing to the crowd that swept after, like a river of folks from town. Lucky the hay in her own field had been made early and the wheat in the other harvested and hauled off even if the heads hadn’t filled out right yet. For now she wondered if those two fields would hold the crowd. Never had she seen such a company of people. Why, they must have come from all over Shawanee County. They were still pouring like through a sluice gate from the square, coming from Water and Union Streets where they had watched along the line of march. She could see them in her mind’s eye a swarming over her corn field and potato patch. That corn field and potato patch didn’t belong to the canal company and never would, if she could help it, and yet they had to be tramped down in the cause.

  Over the heads of the crowd she could see Dr. Haneman sighting through his transit, and waving this way and that to his rodman and chainman. He was making like he was running a line, locating a few rods of the basin, but everybody knew the canal and basin had been laid out and staked long ago. After that, General Morrison and the other Honorable Ploughers each turned up a furrow with the white oxen. The two canal commissioners received the spades from the bearers and threw some ground in the wheelbarrows. Then Judge Devanter and Senator Voorhees ran the barrows up on a platform built for the occasion. That’s the way they made a canal bank, Portius had said. The crowd smiled to see those bigwigs in high hats running their wheelbarrows up the boards. Now they gave three “hurroars” and some held their ears for the salute of the military.

  But Sayward didn’t hold hers. She felt too glum. This was her ground they were tearing up. Her pap had settled it, and she and Portius had cleared it. For thirty years or so her own hand had helped plough and seed it. Well, she reckoned, all good things come to an end sometime. She just felt glad her father wasn’t here. He’d be liable to take a shot at them. Of his whole family, she and Genny were the only ones left, and now they could know how the Indians felt when the white men ran them off of their land.

  Oh, she buttoned up her face and went with Portius to the Independence Day dinner out there under the bower. They had poles set up and laid across on top with green brush. Under the green, boards were laid for a long table and benches. Only the special guests could sit down and eat. The worst was that she had to sit there and listen to toasts praising the tearing up and ruination of her land. The chief canal commissioner gave the first.

  “The Fourth of July. The worthies of the Revolution on this day commenced the system of Internal Improvement by breaking ground on the line of our Political Independence.”

  So that was it, Sayward told herself. Before they got through, they would have God Almighty making the first canal with His flood and Noah a building the first canal boat. Down the line the toasts went—the State of Ohio, the Governor of Ohio, the Canal Commissioners, Our Soldiers and Sailors of the Late War, the memory of Washington. Sayward heard them all stonily. Even Washington, she told herself, was not the father of his country any more. No, he had to be the Father of Public Works and Internal Improvement.

  Portius gave one of the best of the day, she had to admit.

  “Our Ladies. The only product of Ohio we do not want to see exported.”

  She hadn’t realized before that toast what a hard face she must have been making. Not till he turned and bowed right at her in front of all the company and gave her such a nice smile. It was like he might mean all the women folk of Ohio in general but in particular she was the one he had in mind. She felt the nerve strings and tendons of her face give in. It minded her of the night they were married and she was so provoked at him for going to bed first. Now, she told herself, she could never go in after him. Then she saw that he was holding back the blanket for her, and his eyes had a look in them as toward a lady. She had heard how sometimes one of the gentry did polite things such as this or helping a woman over a log. Now today at the canal jubilee she guessed what he was being nice to her for, but better that than not give a hait. He knew how she felt and was trying to make amends.

  All that summer Portius acted mighty thoughtful toward her. Inside, she knew, he was pleased as a basket of chips over the canal, but for her sake he tried not to show it. Especially he watched out not to puff the canal too high when she was around. Instead he would give it a dig. It got so that when company in the house praised the canal too much, he would nod sagely.

  “Yes, it’s a summer that will go down in Americus’ history. The summer of the two diggings.”

  “Two!” the company would say. “Where’s the other one?”

  “You mean you haven’t heard about Jethro Cox?” Portius would ask. “He’s one of the most solid citizens we have and very well known. He wanted to help in the expansion o
f our young city. Knowing the shortage of houses for emigrants, he built one next door to his own very nice home and put it up for sale. There was, I believe, no privy, but he promised to supply one. An emigrant from Maine by name of Tom Henderson bought the house and paid for it. ‘Now I’d like if you’d build my privy,’ he said. But Cox claimed he didn’t know anything about such an article. ‘There’s nothing in the deed about a privy,’ he said. ‘If you want one, you’ll have to build it yourself.’ Well, of course, this emigrant, Tom Henderson, did want and desire the article in question. He brought the deed for me to read and I told him regretfully that Cox was legally sound in his contention. ‘Well, then,’ Henderson said, ‘I guess I’ll have to do the building myself.’

  “Now the line runs fairly close between the two houses. Henderson looked the ground over carefully and, doubtless after discussion and due agreement with his good wife, he started to dig a hole at the front fence corner beneath Jethro Cox’s parlor windows. It wasn’t long until Cox came out. ‘What are you doing there?’ he asked. ‘Why, I’m digging for my privy,’ Henderson said. ‘But you can’t do that in your front yard and under my parlor window!’ Cox said. ‘There’s nothing in the deed about that,’ Henderson told him.

  “Yes,” Portius used to end his story, “if we had more self reliant freeholders like Tom Henderson, Shawanee County would be better off. Quite a few of our citizens when they heard about it turned out to see him dig. Indeed some of the select council came and watched. They agreed with me that there was no ordinance that could stop him. Cox shut himself up in his house for a time. Now in view of the fact that the building he was erecting would be practically on the street front, Henderson wanted to do the right thing. He had Lowdermilk, the carpenter, make him a very serviceable and appropriate door with slats below and various figures cut out above so one within could look out and see the sky and know that all was well with the world. In fact he based it on my suggestion. In any event, when Cox saw that door, it smoked him out. He claimed that according to their verbal contract, it was his sacred right to supply the privy and choose its site. He wanted to put it back at the alley, but Henderson said that was too far on cold or rainy nights. I believe they compromised half way back in the garden. You can see it there now yourself if you walk down that way. But they never could agree about filling in the hole at the front fence. Henderson claimed it was Cox’s responsibility and Cox said it was Henderson’s. So far as I know, the hole is still there. Sometimes I think it is more pointed out and talked about than the canal.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ROSA

  They’re a strange bird. Nobody sees them come, and nobody sees them go.

  BILLY HARBISON

  NOW he’s laid around home long enough,” his mother said. “He’s crowding eight years old and this fall he’s going to school.”

  Chancey looked at her in dismay. He knew that ropy look around her mouth. Even without seeing it, he could tell she meant business by her voice. She’d put up with a thing a long time. She mightn’t like it much, but hardly a word would she say against it. She’d go along with it so far. Then she’d stop, and crowbars couldn’t move her.

  This was at the dinner table. His father looked up dryly.

  “I’m not exactly averse to education. I’ve been teaching him at home what I could. But school is an apple off another tree. How do you propose to get him back and forward?”

  “He can walk like the other young ones.”

  Chancey looked anxiously around the table. How could he do that when hardly could he go out to the barn without his heart acting like it did? It wouldn’t be so bad if school still kept in the small log house that used to stand yonder across the run. His father had been master then they said. But now the academy stood uptown, a big one-story brick building heated by its floor. A low kiln stood at one end. It burned logs, and the fire and smoke went through flues in the floor. That brick floor, they said, kept your feet warm as a toddy. If they were wet, it dried them, but only boys’ feet. Girls had to go to Miss Porter’s or Miss Bly’s school.

  “Unfortunately, our boy is not like other children,” Portius mentioned gravely.

  “That’s all he’s heard since he’s old enough to tell one word from another,” his mother said. “He has legs like the rest of us. Old lady Winters told me many a time she’d a give up and died long ago if she couldn’t get out every day for a tramp, and she’s eighty-four.”

  “Even at eighty, she probably has a good heart.”

  “Chancey might have a good heart at eight years old, too,” Sayward said grimly. “You always claim a body’s innocent till he’s proved guilty. Anyway I’m taking him to the new doctor this afternoon.”

  Chancey looked in alarm at his father.

  “He’s a quack, Sayward,” Portius declared. “He boasted to me himself that he was a stable boy in Kentucky. A horse kicked him and they took him to a doctor. He told me he thought that if doctors could be so stupid, egotistical and well paid, he would be one, too. All the preparation he ever had was hanging up his shingle.”

  “That’s what I like about him,” Sayward said. “He tells you what he isn’t and what he doesn’t know.”

  “Well, I’m only sorry for the boy,” Portius rose from the table and retreated to his law room. The last glimpse Chancey had of him, his face looked dark and grave, and the boy felt that darkness and gravity spread over him. His father had deserted him. He was left now to the ministrations of his mother and the quack.

  A verse he had heard in church kept going through his head as his sisters got him ready for the doctor. It was about a sheep that was dumb, yea, it opened not its mouth. That was plainly himself as his sisters scrubbed, dressed and combed him for the doctor. He was like the ram lamb his mother had sold last week to the butcher. That lamb didn’t know what was ahead as they pulled it away, but he did. He couldn’t bear to see it going to a place of knives and blood. He couldn’t understand how his mother could be so cruel. But she said there were some cruel things in life you had to go through.

  She and Dezia drove him away in the chaise. As they came to the doctor’s house they saw two-wheelers, four-wheelers and saddled horses from the country, tied outside. It was a big green house but the windows were pale as sightless eyes, and as they walked from the chaise to the front porch, something came out of that house at them. Chancey couldn’t see what it was, but as they stepped through the front door, he could smell strange and fearful compounds. He tried to turn back. Almost, he believed now that he could run. But it was too late. Dezia was closing the door behind him, and his mother dragged him into a room where women in pained faces and men with solemnly bandaged heads and arms sat around in silent and dismal conclave.

  For hours, it seemed, they had to sit there while the sores and sicknesses of those present and past, the crippled, the cankered and the dying, hid in the dim corners and hovered under the ceiling, a lifeless congregation of invisible vapors and soundless whispers slowly turning and wheeling and pressing in upon his chest. Many of those who had once frequented this room, Chancey felt, must now lie buried in the church yard, but the intangible vestiges of their wretched sufferings still hung here behind the curtains, as their blood and ointments still stained the carpet and walls.

  None of the patients he saw go in the doctor’s office came out again. Dezia said they went out another way, but fear paralyzed the boy. In time there were so few left in the waiting room that Dezia felt free enough to make him spell out the letters of the framed notice on the wall, and by this he knew that whatever happened to him, his fate was lawfully sealed, for this was the doctor’s license hung up for everyone to see, stating that he had the right to practise physic and surgery. There it was for all men to know by these presents that Zephon Brown, president of the Court of Common Pleas of Shawanee County, by the authority vested in him had made it true and according to law, and so had set his hand and official seal. Furthermore, the secretary of the third medical district had sworn that th
is was a true copy of the license and had so signed it with his unintelligible hand.

  Whenever the doctor’s door opened now, Chancey’s heart shook him. His hour approached. When it came, his mother had to drag him like she had the ram lamb from the barn.

  “Now who’s this young gentleman?” a brusque cheery voice demanded. “And what’s he so pale and contrary about?”

  Chancey looked up and saw a tall ponderous man in a long black coat with velvet lapels and collar.

  “It’s his heart, doctor,” Chancey’s mother said.

  “You’re too young to be worried about your heart, young man,” the doctor reproved him. He bent down and laid his head against the wildly agitated breast. It was a great head with a shag of iron gray hair that pressed up against the little boy’s face.

  “Quiet, boy, quiet!” the doctor said as if talking to a horse. “There’s nothing to frighten anybody in here.” While he spoke, Chancey had to breathe the choking medical scent of that hair, and through it he could see shelves lined with jars of poisonous looking pastes and liquids. A mortar and pestle stood on top of the cabinet, and on the table below were strewn evil-looking knives, scissors and forceps, while in the midst stood a white basin half filled with blood, and now he could make out drops of blood scattered over the brown table and floor, while over in the corner crouched and grinned what once upon a time had walked the earth as a man or woman but of which now nothing remained but its bones like a bundle of dried roots of a blown down willow tree.

  The doctor seemed unusually sober when he raised his head, as if it were tragic to have found what he had in one so young. He went on methodically to examine tongue, ribs and other more private parts. When he finished he took down a jar from the cabinet and poured out a few many-colored pills in the boy’s trembling hand.