The Town Read online

  The new Moonshine Church Weekly Centinel black-guarded Tateville and the Western Repository Gazette of Tateville ran down Moonshine Church. That was all right. But it went too far when it poked fun at the other town’s name.

  “Whoever heard of a seat of justice with a name like Moonshine Church?” the Tateville paper printed. “Our very prisoners at the bar would snicker. Shawanee County would be a laughing stock to the nation, the name of its seat an offense to all of Christendom.”

  That’s when folks in Moonshine Church started getting up a petition to change the name. Sayward told them they had a right to their opinion, but so had she, and she wouldn’t sign it. For one thing, it had been Portius who named it Moonshine Church, and for another, it always seemed like a decent commonplace name to her. Why, it sounded right and natural as her own name. She didn’t see in her mind a church made out of moonshine when she said it any more than she saw a boy hopping out of the grass when she said johnny-jump-up. She always reckoned johnny-jump-up a pert flower name and Moonshine Church a pert name for a town. But now these later comers wanted to give it some stale old second-hand name. Make it Syracuse, they said. Make it Portland. Make it Concord, Albany, London or Berlin. One woman even said, make it Jerusalem.

  That woman was in the kitchen tonight. So were some other women and men. They were waiting for the Corporation meeting to be over. Portius called it the Corporation because not every crossroads settlement had a bill of incorporation by the state legislature. But to most folks it was just the select council of trustees elected by the freeholders, with the president, the mayor. As a rule they met at the academy or the back room of one of the taverns, for they had no town hall as yet. Tonight this was supposed to be a secret meeting to decide about the name and they came over here to the house of their lawyer. But secrets traveled fast in Moonshine Church, and now seven others sat in the kitchen waiting to hear or to have their say when the meeting broke up.

  It lasted a long time. You could hear the sounds of wrangling back and forward over there like the wind in the old days coming through the deep woods. After while a door sounded and Sayward heard a rap on the door to the sweep. Those waiting in the kitchen braced up, expecting to see somebody come out with news, but that was only Portius telling her what they had made out beforehand. Now she put the coffee on to boil and ham to fry and set the table with her new white crockery plates and heavy white cups and fine wooden handled knives and forks and pewter spoons. In time a rumble sounded like putting through a motion, then a racket of chairs being pushed back over a plank floor and a stumping of boots as they came out.

  Those men of the Corporation looked surprised to see so many crowded in the kitchen. Most had to go back for chairs and benches from the other room.

  “Any of you ladies object to tobacco?” Major Hocking asked with a cigar in his hand. He lived in the two-story house at High and Race streets, and never had he been in war except to sell goods to the army commissary, but everybody called him Major.

  “I do,” the Fly Trap said. She was the one who wanted Moonshine Church called Jerusalem, a thorny maiden lady who kept two boards hanging up in her house smeared with molasses. Whenever they got full of flies, she would smack them together.

  “In that case, I’ll put it out,” the Major said courteously. He threw his cigar in the fire, but back in the chimney corner old lady Winters sat and puffed all the harder on her corncob pipe, her eyes black with disdain.

  “It smells mighty good in here, Mrs. Wheeler,” one said.

  “It ought to. It smells like my coffee,” this from Oliver Meek, the storekeeper.

  “I bought the coffee at George Roebuck’s,” Sayward said mildly, and the men laughed, set up by the sight of their plates filled with ham and their cups with the steaming black coffee.

  “I have a petition to read to you, gentlemen,” the Fly Trap announced, standing up and unrolling a long paper. “I call it ‘Resolved to Change the Name of Moonshine Church to Jerusalem.’ ”

  The councilmen drew long faces. Oh, they didn’t say they wouldn’t listen. They just didn’t save any racket. Their chairs scraped and bumped as they sat down. Now and then for a minute they’d put on pious faces as if to hear, then they’d take fresh bites or smack their lips over coffee. Cups, knives and forks clattered by mistake and on purpose. Trustees turned to their neighbors to ask them to pass this or that or could they have another cup of coffee? Hardly one looked at the Fly Trap. It took a long time for her to read all her “resolves.” The minute she was done, talk broke out in the open like the academy after school, but not about the paper. Oliver Meek plagued John Quitman how a teamster hauled sixteen barrels of whiskey from Cincinnati in ten hours, what did he think of that? Quitman, who owned keel boats and barges, answered it didn’t scare him. He said the teamster was lucky he didn’t break his horses’ legs, for the state corduroy road was worse than no road at all, being mostly mudholes that let horses down to their bellies and full of floating logs besides. So it went. They talked of the census and each had his own reckoning for the town and the county. They told what banks had gone bad lately, and how much such and such buildings cost.

  Sayward couldn’t help thinking. Helped by her girls, she waited on the table and other company, seeing that each had enough to eat. But she couldn’t help remembering how it used to be in the old days. Most of the men then had to come a mighty long ways through the woods, on foot and with night dogs snapping after. It wasn’t often they didn’t fetch their families along. Their women and young ones wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Oh, at first those oldtime settlers would talk what was afoot in the woods, about some house raising or taxing. But the main part of the evening was sociable, for fun and frolic. They told stories that made you wipe your eyes one minute and scream and holler the next. Your insides warmed and your hearts stretched. Till it was over you felt like a brother and sister to all, if you didn’t beforehand. You hated to see the night go so fast. And when the hour for parting came, you never knew if you would see each other again. You stood at the door and watched them off through the snow or leaves, a whirling their flambeaus to keep them lit, a calling back something they forgot or maybe their third and fourth farewells. “Goodby!” they’d call. “Goodby!” you’d call back. “Goodby!” “Goodby!” Fainter and fainter they sounded till all you could make out was their light like pale spook fire in the dark woods, and when you turned back in the house, it looked lonesome and desperate without them. She could feel that choked feeling for your friends and folks come over her now. Even when you lay abed with your head on your bolster, your heart still tramped along with them through the dark woods till they got home.

  Now these men tonight at Moonshine Church were different, town bodies, reckoning town things. Figures of money and time and such entered in their talk. Hardly one spoke that he didn’t mention so many dollars or hours and days it took to do something or so many boats tied up last week at one time and how many tons they carried. They were good enough folks and friendly to her and Portius, if not to the Fly Trap, but they weren’t the settler folks she and Portius used to know in the woods in the old days. She recollected now how Granny MacWhirter used to complain of how folks changed since the Revolution. Before the War, Granny used to say, it had no classes. A poor man was good as a rich man and welcome at his house or table. Sayward never hardly could make Granny out. She reckoned Granny was just getting old. The old always complained of the young. No, she hadn’t seen what Granny meant then, but she was beginning to now.

  When rations were over, the council went home, saying nothing of what it had done. Most of the company went, too. Only Genny stayed, not to help Sayward and the girls with the dishes but believing Portius would tell something of what had gone on. And so he did, but not to Genny. He would give one of his young ones the honor first.

  “Well, Massey,” he said. “I understand you’re not living in Moonshine Church any more. Did you know that?”

  Quickly the young ones crowd
ed round. So they changed the name after all, Sayward thought. But they wouldn’t give the Fly Trap the satisfaction of knowing that they did in part what she “resolved.” No, they would sooner have the Fly Trap on the other side, to go against her.

  “What’s the name now?” Genny, sharp as scissors, wanted to know.

  Portius bent over the fire, lighting a taper for his pipe so a coal wouldn’t blacken his fingers. Then he puffed cheerfully, his eyes green and bright.

  “Americus, Ohio! How does that strike you?”

  Genny’s face hardened.

  “Well, I intend to go on calling it Moonshine Church. So I expect will a lot of other folks.” She nodded her head, took her wrap from the peg and went home.

  As soon as she had left, Sayward’s children gave their opinion. Huldah was still out some place. Kinzie was back East, and Resolve at the Morrisons’, but the rest told what they thought. All through it, Portius sat dragging on his pipe, his eyes dancing, the puffs coming from his lips, but not a word till they were done. That was the way, Sayward reckoned, he must sit in court down at Maytown letting the other lawyers bandy their words, in no hurry to deliver his say-so till his turn came.

  Now when the children had their say, he pulled from his pocket a long paper written on both sides.

  “I was given an original poem to read to the council tonight. Unfortunately the effort was in vain. But I understand it’s to be printed this week in the Centinel. You may want to hear it and guess who wrote it.” He cleared his throat.

  There is a prayer of wide renown

  Which I dislike to hear,

  To change the name of this fair town

  We citizens hold dear.

  They pray for some conventional name.

  The muses answer, No!

  Such names belong to alien fame

  And not to O-hi-o.

  Our cherished name is strong and plain

  ’Tis clear and easy spoken,

  Descending to us by a chain

  That never should be broken.

  No poet that the world has heard,

  No scholar in research,

  Can offer a more moral word

  Than that of Moonshine Church.

  Oh, let us hand it down the stream

  Of time, to coming ages,

  So Moonshine Church may be the theme

  Of future bards and sages.

  Our kinsfolk slumber here, are blest,

  Their wish we shan’t besmirch.

  Let them still rest upon the breast

  Of peaceful Moonshine Church.

  So my defense remains the same.

  No further need to search.

  Dismiss the plaintiffs, not the name

  Of guiltless Moonshine Church!

  All the time he was reading it, Sayward watched little Chancey. Most times he was in bed at this hour, but tonight was a special occasion, and she had let him come down with Massey in their bedgowns to have a chance at the news and leftovers. As a rule the little feller sat wrapped in his own thinking, but tonight he hung on every word, as he mostly did for rhyming pieces.

  Now when Portius finished, everyone but Chancey guessed who was the poet. Most of them reckoned it a woman. Some said the Fly Trap. But none, Portius said, was right. Then he asked Chancey.

  “I couldn’t tell that it was a woman,” he said.

  “Why not?” his father asked.

  “Because when you read it I could see a man all the time.”

  “What made you see a man?” his father persisted.

  “It was a word in it. I don’t know what it was any more, but I knew he wouldn’t say it if he was a woman.”

  “Who was the man you saw?” Libby asked him.

  “I didn’t see him with my eyes. I just saw him in my mind. It might have been a big man or a little man. I don’t know. But I think maybe it was Papa.”

  They all hollered at that and demanded of Portius if it was true, and when he laughed and admitted it, they said Chancey had been over in the law office so much he saw him write it.

  “No, I didn’t see him, just in my mind,” Chancey insisted.

  “I didn’t think you wrote the poem, Papa,” Dezia said, “because Americus sounds like Latin and I thought maybe you were the one who wanted Americus.”

  “Well, as a matter of fact, I did propose the name, Americus, too,” Portius conceded.

  Sayward had sat silent, listening. Now she smiled to herself. Wasn’t that just like Portius, being on both sides? First he wrote a poem against changing the name. Then he told the council what new name to change it to. He wasn’t satisfied to be the one who named Moonshine Church. He had to name Americus, too. Oh, she could see he had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote that poem. That way he would be on both sides and none could be against him. He would be a judge of Shawanee County yet.

  “Now you all go to bed right away!” she told them.

  Late that night she awoke and lay sleepless for a while. She turned the new name over in her mind. Americus, was it? Now why did it mind her of the old days? She was like Chancey. It minded her of something and she didn’t know what. Oh, yes, she did, too. It minded her when she was a girl and a young married woman. Hardly anybody then save Portius said America. No, they said Ameriky. They said Pennsylvany, too, and Virginny. Americus was something like that. That old name, Ameriky, had a power of strength and feeling in it, and Americus was much like it, having only a trammel tacked on the end.

  CHAPTER SIX

  COUNTY SEAT

  Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

  INSCRIPTION ON THE SHAWANEE COUNTY COURT HOUSE

  SOON after daylight Chancey crawled to the window. This was Americus now, his father said, and yet it still could have been Moonshine Church, the same brick red and stone brown and the same weathered gray that logs took on when once they couldn’t sprout forth leaves any more.

  A good many must have thought like Chancey, for they went on calling it Moonshine Church. Most all at home did. Chancey’s father heard them a few days in disapproving silence. Then one noontime he laid down his knife and fork and looked around the table. It was a look like the Lion of Barberry gave. They had seen the lion on exhibition at the Central House, admission a levy for grownups and a fip for children. The man said that a hair cut from that lion and rubbed under the arm pit would make weakly children strong. But Portius wouldn’t let Aunt Genny try it on Chancey.

  “Our town council has voted to rename this town,” Portius said sternly. “Of course, it must be ratified by the courts. But meantime, regardless of what you hear outside, I don’t want to hear Moonshine Church in this house again.”

  Oh, the younger ones in the Wheeler house had to watch their step after that, for none of them said Americus when their pappy wasn’t around. It sounded too stiff and stuck up. Now Moonshine Church slipped out easy as an old tooth.

  The next day their father fetched home a handbill and hung it up where all could see. It had a drawing on it of three men at a fork in the road. They were pushing a wheelbarrow with a little court house in it. The three men, Chancey’s father said, were the county commissioners. One road fork led to a cruel monster with a whip. That was marked Major Tate. The other led to a spread eagle over an American flag. That was marked Americus.

  “Notice that it doesn’t say Moonshine Church,” their father pointed out.

  Now how did that handbill stir up so much trouble, Chancey wondered. A gang of men came down from Tateville a tearing down every one they saw pasted up on roadside fences and stables. That night Chancey could hear them over in town yelling, “Hurroar for Tateville!” Then some Moonshine Church men came out of the taverns and yelled, “Hurroar for Americus!” The two sides had a fight and the Moonshine Church men threw the Tateville men in the race. Most everybody in Moonshine Church found it easier to say Americus after that. Even Aunt Genny, who never would put the name in her mouth, took to it now. “Right here in Americus,” she would say. Why, some folks, Cha
ncey’s mother told, were so strong for it now, they felt cheated when Americus got only the county seat. They thought they’d get the capitol at Washington and the White House besides.

  The night Americus celebrated the county seat, Chancey lay in his bed a listening. When he looked out of the window he could see torches flickering in the dark. They were sure making high jack over getting the county court. Little did the small boy think how he would hate to see that new county court in session, that on it would hang his life and well being. But that’s what he found out a few days more. He was in the front room when his father was called downtown.

  “If Mr. Abernathy and a client come, tell him I’ll be back soon,” he told Chancey.

  The little feller felt mighty proud. He sat up straight on his stool listening. When a knock sounded, he called “Come in. Papa will be back soon.” In walked Mr. Abernathy and an Indian, but Mr. Abernathy couldn’t stay.

  “Tell your father I’ll see him later,” he said. “You can entertain Little Turtle till he gets back.”

  Chancey had no time to think about that. Before he could get up a word, Mr. Abernathy had gone and all the little boy could see of him was his back through the window as he left. When Chancey turned around on his stool, there was the Indian standing by the fire. He was big and gaunt and his face the ugliest Chancey ever saw. He wore a dirty shirt and britches like a white man, but his foot gear was moccasins.

  “Maybe my father won’t be back today,” Chancey stammered. “Do you want to come back some other time?”

  The Indian’s face stayed brown and hard and unwashed as a big copper penny. His arrogant eyes and fierce hooked nose showed not the slightest notice that he had heard. It gave the little feller a desperate feeling. Now how would you entertain a man that wouldn’t listen, especially an Indian man? It would be easier to talk to a stump or stone. More than once Chancey had talked to the big rock down by the run. It was a friendly rock, warm in the sun, and had no eyes to bore through you when you asked such a kindly thing as if Little Turtle was deaf and dumb. Every time he turned to see if his father was coming, those fierce eyes were like pitchy awls a pinning him to the stool.