The Town Page 4

  “Not you, Papa?” Sooth told him. “Why, you are the one who wrote the bill and got it passed and made the new county.”

  The little boy felt his father breathing heavily.

  “Your father is an agnostic. He doesn’t claim to be personally acquainted with the Almighty. He never gets happy or the jerks at camp meeting. His morals are in doubt. He’s not that monument of virtue and rectitude to hold the scales of justice for the people.”

  The little boy looked quickly to his mother. How could she sit there at the table so calm, her strong brown hands keeping on peeling potatoes which Huldah or Libby could do as well, and never a word of sympathy for his father, only that cruel expression that sometimes steeled her face. If she were his own flesh and blood, never could she be like this, for now his own heart was twisted with pity for his father.

  “Who are the judges then?” Huldah braved to ask him.

  The names came thickly from his mouth. There were a squire and storekeeper from Tateville and Talcott Simms from Moonshine Church.

  “And the president judge?” Huldah persisted.

  Chancey felt himself slide to the floor as his father got to his feet. Looking up, he saw his father’s face twitching in a horrible grimace and he knew that at last they had got to the place of torment.

  “Mr. Zephon Brown,” he told them.

  “Him a judge!” Libby cried. “Why he’s just a skinflint farmer and tax collector!”

  Nobody else said anything. When Chancey glanced around the girls were looking at their father as if this was the lowest degradation of all. In self defense he took down the brown jug that hung on the rafter and poured a cupful. The sweetish fumes filled the room and the fiery liquid spilled down his chin and waistcoat. Afterward he stood there inclining a little this way and that, the spasm still distorting one side of his face.

  “He’s also an elder in your mother’s church,” he told them. Then with careful dignity, the jug in one hand and pewter cup in the other, he made his way to his office in the front room.

  That was a painful afternoon. Chancey’s ear ache was gone, but a greater ache filled his small breast. Aunt Genny and Mrs. Weaver along with others came to the kitchen. Was it true that Portius had lost out to Zephon Brown, they wanted to know. But how did he lose his horse and have to come home afoot? It was Genny spoke most of the time. And what was Sayward going to do about the load of hay Portius ordered before he went away, for Zephon himself was down the road this minute fetching it, and Sayward would hardly need it now, having fodder for her cows till pasture came in again!

  The little boy sat tightly on his stool. His mother claimed that God was good and kind, but it looked like God was cruel, playing with his father like a cat with a mouse. First He had given a fine new horse to his father as a judge to ride on. Then he took the judgeship away, and now when the hay for this fine horse was coming, He had taken the horse away. Chancey peered out of the window. How he hated the sight of the triumphant Zephon sitting high as he could on his load of hay driving his best pair of horses. God had not taken Zephon Brown’s horses away.

  Where the road came nearest the house, he halted his team and called Massey outside to tell her father he was to meet him at the hay scales.

  “Even his hay’s come up in the world,” Mollie Weaver said. “He don’t want to sell it by the load any more.”

  “You better go over your own self, Saird,” Genny warned her sister. “He’ll skin the eyes off Portius today.”

  Chancey’s mother made no reply but the little boy could tell by her face that she had no intention of going, for that would admit to all that his father was drunk and couldn’t take care of his own business. She sat bitter-faced and still. Then the other door opened and Portius stood there. His eyes were bloodshot but no blood flowed in his face. His eyes darkened a bit at the sight of his sister-in-law. Then majestically he made his difficult way across the room.

  “Most potent, grave and reverend signiors, my approved good masters,” he said with irony, looking out of the window. With both hands he fitted on his gray beaver hat which Sayward had meantime cleaned.

  Then he came toward Chancey. The little boy had no notion of his intent until he saw Mollie Weaver put her hand to her mouth and heard Aunt Genny draw her breath.

  “I don’t believe I’d take a little feller like him along today, Portius,” Genny told him.

  He straightened and stood there, regarding her with those fiery gray-green eyes.

  “It happens to be my custom to do as I please, Genny,” he informed her. “You can ambulate where you please. You can gossip in every kitchen in town, and probably do. But this lad has been deprived and hindered by the powers that be. I want to show him some of the spiders and scorpions created by their Maker to crawl upon civilization.”

  Over his shoulder as they went, Chancey had a glimpse of his mother’s cruel face, but never a word of protest from the lines that were her mouth. She was letting him go. Now he would have to see and bear his father’s shame and drunkenness in front of the whole town.

  Once outside, his father set him on his shoulder and his course for the road. The wagon with its wide swaying load had gone on, and his father followed about as unsteadily. Sometimes the little boy found himself almost at the fence on one side, and sometimes almost in the ditch at the other. It was nicer to lay back his head and look at the sky. When he pitched this way, the clouds went flying that. And when he pitched that way, the clouds all came sailing back. It gave him the most extraordinary sensation. Where before had he felt the heavens whirling around him like this, the sense of rising and falling in space, while soft blue and white worlds like vast seas floated around him, soothing his ears and dragging his memory with long forgotten impressions?

  The hay scales were new and belonged to George Roebuck. They stood by his store, the handsomest spot in town, Chancey thought, for across the road was the Ferry House and a little beyond, the ferry on the slow tide of the river. When Chancey and his father got there, Zephon Brown had already driven under the very high shed with its little roof house far above. Anselm, the clerk, waited as if he expected the driver to get down from the load while they weighed the wagon, but Zephon’s half closed eye looked back at Portius reeling after. He gave a little cough, blew himself up a bit and kept sitting there while Anselm lowered the chains and put one around each hub. The great clicking windlass turned, the pulleys screeched, the four wheels lifted one by one clear of the ground, and presently you could see Anselm up at the window of the little roof house, moving the weights on the pair of great black steelyards.

  Now what were the men down here nudging each other for? Chancey wondered. They had done it ever since Zephon had kept sitting like a king on the hay. The little boy looked at his father. He seemed to see or understand nothing that was going on. He talked to no one, steadying himself at the hogshead on which he had seated Chancey. Never had the little boy seen his features so dissolved and run together. Anselm came down with the figures on a scrap of paper. This was the gross weight, this was the weight of the wagon. Portius paid no attention. Zephon’s black man, Caesar, came up on foot to drive the load off to the Wheeler stable, and Zephon slid down from the wagon.

  “Now shall we settle?” he asked, turning his head so that only his half-closed eye was on Chancey’s father.

  “I’m at your service,” he agreed thickly.

  Zephon gave his little cough.

  “I’d like the cash, Portius.”

  For the first time Chancey’s father seemed to come out of his lethargy.

  “Cash!” he fetched out, trying to keep his balance. “Why, there isn’t that much cash in the new county. Fortunately I brought some with me from the old. Shall we retire to the Ferry House? We’ll seal the bargain with a clincher.”

  More than once Chancey had been carried by the Ferry House, by the tantalizing smells and the sound of the fiddle that came out of it. These had made him itch to see what it was like inside, but now that he was i
n at last, he felt cheated. Why, it looked bare as a barn, with sand on the floor, a few worn brown benches and tables and a high counter they called the bar. Even the man behind it, Sam Sloper, the proprietor and ferryman whom everyone called King Sam, looked disappointing, and today there was no fiddle. Chancey’s father set him on the bar with his heels hanging down. Zephon Brown looked disapproving at the little boy sitting among the mugs and bottles, as if this was a sure way to make a drunkard out of a child. Zephon and Chancey’s father drank. The men drank from mugs drawn from a mysterious looking barrel. Chancey’s father reached in pocket after pocket, fetching out silver shillings, paper shinplasters and banknotes each of which latter Zephon looked up in his Banknote Detector.

  When the money in full lay on the bar, Zephon Brown stroked his hand over his mouth as if in apology for the condition of the man with whom he must do business.

  “You’re entirely satisfied, Portius?”

  “Oh, I’m perfectly satisfied. I feel I have a bargain. I hope you have no regrets.”

  “Regrets? No indeed,” Zephon concealed a smile. He carefully drained the last drops from his mug. “Well, I’ll have to be going.”

  Chancey’s father seemed almost asleep. Suddenly he woke up.

  “But you can’t do that,” he said thickly.

  “How’s that?” Zephon asked in good humor as to a child, pocketing the money.

  “Why, you belong to me! I bought you,” Portius told him.

  In the eyes of the men standing back of his father, Chancey glimpsed a sudden wild light of astonishment and exhilaration. Elbows poked into neighbors’ ribs.

  “What do you mean?” Zephon looked startled.

  Portius gave him his sodden and majestic attention.

  “You acted in this transaction entirely of your own free will, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zephon protested, but his face had paled.

  Bracing himself at the bar, Portius turned further and further until he could gaze direct at the other. Here he stood swaying and making horrible grimaces.

  “You’re an adult sober and in sound mind, aren’t you? You had no reservations in adding your own body and weight to that of the hay, did you? You demanded cash payment in full and received and acknowledged it. Your purpose surely wasn’t to cheat me, was it? Not in front of so many of your fellow citizens?”

  Zephon looked frightened for the first time.

  “If there was anything amiss, Portius—”

  “Ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law.” Chancey had never seen his father’s face so terrifying.

  Zephon cast his good eye at the door.

  “Let me give you some sound and gratuitous advice,” Portius leered at him. “Do not try to escape. It will only be used against you in court.”

  “You can’t hold me!” Zephon cried, but he made no move to go. Instead he figured hastily on a piece of paper, then from his pocket counted out a small amount of silver and banknotes on the bar. “If you noticed my forgetfulness, you should have called my attention to the mistake in the first place,” he declared angrily.

  “Not so fast!” Portius said. “You must know that a thief may discharge his debt to his victim after he is caught. But he cannot so easily discharge his debt to the law once it’s broken.”

  “What’ll you take to let him buy himself loose, Portius?” King Sam behind the bar propounded.

  “Not a shilling.” Chancey’s father waved it aside with an unstable hand. “The defendant may be willing to traffic in his human soul. I’ll have none of it. The only possible condition that might absolve him of duplicity and debt would be for him to solemnly and truthfully swear that he had no intention to charge in the first place, that the hay was a gift bathed with the milk of human kindness and warmed by the sun of human brotherhood—”

  “I’ll never do it!” Zephon shouted.

  Portius turned, his face working in grim and righteous retribution.

  “I only stated a hypothetical case, in which I should be helpless to bring against you charges of sharp practice and connivance, of scheming and intent to defraud, of willful extortion, of acceptance of moneys secured by fraud and, in the event of your running away, of the perfidious breaking of your bond!”

  Never had Chancey seen such a look on anyone’s face as on Zephon Brown’s while hurriedly he counted out a further sum, threw it on the bar and rushed from the Ferry House. The barroom broke into such wild yells of delight as to startle and frighten the little boy. Even on King Sam’s wintry face the thin sun of a grin had appeared. Boatmen and loafers surrounded Chancey’s father and shook his hand, while the latter stood like a tipsy king surrounded by his backwoods court.

  “It’s my intention to treat those present, Sam,” he stated. “You may also mix up a little rum and warm milk for the boy.”

  Chancey wished his father hadn’t said that. Now no matter how much he disliked the taste, he would have to drink it. More than once had he tried the watered whiskey handed out at the house to children on festive occasions. Never could he keep it down long and this, he knew, would be the same. He would have to throw it up in front of everybody here or over his father on the way home.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A NAME TO CALL IT BY

  Spit on your hands and take a fresh holt.

  EARLY SAYING

  SAYWARD was put out. Whoever heard of such a thing as being ashamed of the name of your own home town? But that’s how some folks felt about Moonshine Church.

  The first time she heard it was when Portius told her a fight was on between their town and Tateville for the county seat. Then Zephon Brown stopped her on Water Street sober as an owl. He told her the court house would likely go to Tateville, and Moonshine Church to the dogs. She better sell off her land for what she could get while she had buyers for it.

  “I wouldn’t a thought he’d speak to me after what he tried to do to you,” she told Portius. “Anyway I didn’t thank him none for it.”

  To herself she guessed that Moonshine Church could get along by itself. It wasn’t doing bad for an upstart town along the river. All day long you could hear the broken tune of the sash sawmills like giant horseflies buzzing and lighting, stopping and starting, whining and skipping, for the saws cut only on the down stroke. Griswold’s Race from Crazy Creek had to be dug wider. Five mills took water from that race now, three of them sawmills. Even that wasn’t enough to fill the bill for the town. A thousand feet of boards was a good day’s sawing, and that had to be cut out of soft poplar logs. Oak and hickory took longer. Truth to tell, the hardwoods were mostly broad-axed. If you went up in the hills, you could hear the chip of hewing all day. House and barn timbers were in great demand, and it didn’t pay to use walnut or cherry any more, for they fetched a better price boated down the river.

  Oh, Sayward knew what Zephon Brown was after. He wanted her to sell him some of her land cheap, but he could go suck his thumbs. She had no trouble finding buyers. Her trouble was holding on. Every month town men came and plagued her to sell. They offered good inducement. She had sold all Water Street in parcels and lots, why wouldn’t she sell this? But that piece of three acres down town she let Oliver Meek have, taught her a lesson. Oliver gave her four hundred dollars. She thought that a pile of money. But after while he sold it to Seth Collins for seven hundred and fifty. Seth didn’t hold it long till Colonel Suydam gave him a thousand, and now the colonel had cut it up into six parcels and was asking three hundred dollars a lot. Why, he was making more clear profit out of that one piece of her land in six months than she had got for it after holding on to it for nigh onto thirty years, clearing it in the bargain, chopping down the butts and vines, burning out the stumps, grubbing the wild sprouts that for years tried to come up, and working the ground till it was fit and fine.

  “If anybody makes money out of our land after this, it’s going to be the Wheelers,” she told Portius.

  And who had a better right, she’d like
to know? Who came here when all this ground was nothing save a howling wilderness? But it wasn’t them that came first like her father who made anything out of it, she noticed. There was Billy Harbison, one of the earliest. He was beat out of his first place by Zephon Brown and induced to sell pieces oil his second till now when movers in red-wheeled wagons were coming in ready to pay good money for bottom land, Billy had none left. Their old neighbor, Mrs. Covenhoven, had sold out long ago when Big John died, and now strangers were selling high-priced town lots off that farm. Till it was done, it would fetch a small fortune, but Martha Covenhoven wouldn’t get it. No, it wasn’t the old settlers that reaped the harvest, save for those stubborn few who held on to their land till the cows came home.

  Now Portius was all for Sayward selling out. It would make more land available for the town to build on, he claimed, and the more folks Moonshine Church had, the more argument to be the county seat.

  “Lawsy me!” Sayward said. “If Tateville’s entitled to the court house, let them have it.”

  It didn’t bother her any. Everybody knew Tateville was bigger than Moonshine Church. It was richer, too, they said, with ditches dug on both sides of its main street, and sidewalks laid in brick or stone and no team had dared to drive over them. Besides, Tateville had a wool mill with she-didn’t-know-how-many-looms, and when men and boys came out from work their faces and hands were red as blood from the new dyed wool. They looked like Indians, Mollie Weaver told her.

  So let them have their county seat, she said, but do you think folks like the Meeks and Suydams would hear to it? No, they fought Tateville tooth and nail. To hear them talk, you’d half believe the world would go flat as a pancake if the court house went to Tateville. Even General Morrison worked like a horse trying to get the county seat in Moonshine Church. The shorter time men lived here, it looked like, the harder they fought against losing something they never had. The way they were riled up and talked, you’d reckon a county seat was like heaven with golden streets, with pumps that fetched up whiskey instead of water, and where folks were always washed so all-fired clean and white of their sins that a person from another settlement couldn’t stand looking at them till he smoked up a piece of glass like Jake Tench had the time he claimed the sun spotted like a rattlesnake.