Canal Town

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Dinty Jerrold, home for Christmas, surprised him in a new uniform, resplendent with silken sash and a cocked hat with tricolor plumes. He had just come back from the noon drill of the Light Dragoons. She was rapt in admiration.

  “Aren’t you pompous!” she cried. “Who are you beauing now?”

  “Nobody,” answered Horace.

  “Of course you are! Didn’t you take Margaret Van Wie skating on the canal?” she demanded, checking the items on her fingers. “And didn’t you escort Eliza Evernghim on the party to improve the minister’s woodpile? And who was it that invited Dora Macy twice to learned lectures? And wasn’t Sarah Ann …?”

  “Stop it! The child has swallowed the catechism.”

  She gazed at him pensively. “Don’t you like me to ask you questions?”

  “I’m flattered by your interest,” he replied sardonically.

  “Pa says curiosity killed the cat. Ma says I’m nosy. D’you think I’m nosy, Uncle Horace?”

  “Ahem! I think you exhibit a certain interest in other people’s affairs.”

  “Because I am interested. That’s just my mind standing up on tiptoe to see better.”

  “Who’s your local informant? You seem to have kept yourself current?”

  “Tip Crego writes me about things. You never write me any more. Did you weep at Miss Agatha’s wedding?”

  “One more question and I’ll dose you with jalap. You look a bit bilious, anyway.”

  “I do not,” she denied indignantly. “I never was better in my life. Mark Dillard says I look nicer than anyone he knows, even Wealthy.”

  “Is Mark Dillard the favored one?”

  Dinty looked noncommittal. “I don’t know,” she drawled affectedly. “There’s Philip Macy and Ethniel Craddock and a new boy named Page—his father has something to do with the canal. I like ’em all awfly, but … Oh, I don’t know! I don’t believe it’s the tender passion. Do you, Uncle Horace?”

  Horace grinned. “I hardly feel myself competent to judge.”

  “Sometimes I speculate a lot on the tender passion,” mused Dinty. “It’s very muddling. D’you think there are some unhappy maidens that it never comes to, Uncle Horace?”

  “I think you might better be speculating on your mathematics,” said he, brutally touching upon her weak point.

  Dinty was not to be diverted from the superior interest. “Haven’t you something about it in your learned library, Uncle Horace?”

  “Certainly,” said Horace and handed her a treatise on Quaternions.

  “I don’t mean that,” said Dinty, thrusting it aside loftily. She lifted another volume from his desk and dropped it as if it were hot. It was the revelatory Burns whose text, with illustrations, had been the topic of an earlier and unforgotten interview. Acutely conscious of her shamed face, Horace reflected uncomfortably that this was a changed and more informed Dinty.

  A caller in the heavy woolens of a woodsman relieved the embarrassment. As he entered, Dinty tactfully withdrew to the inner apartment. She overheard an indistinguishable dialogue, then Horace’s brisk query,

  “How far?”

  “Not more’n five mile.”

  “Can I get there on runners?”

  “Most of the way.”

  “As soon as my footwarmer is heated I’ll start.”

  The man left, mumbling his thanks. Dinty, reappearing, said, “Oh, Uncle Horace, take me!”

  Horace hesitated, peering out the window at the gray threat of the sky.

  “I’ll be as good as pie. You’ve always promised to take me on a country call. Do it for my Christmas treat,” she wheedled. “It’s almost Christmas.”

  Tip Crego, now installed as office boy and bill collector while he studied the classics with the doctor, was not at hand, so there was an empty seat.

  “Get your warmest clothes,” said Horace, “and come back here.”

  She was on hand, clad in her heavy coat of otter, by the time he had the warmer packed with coals. The case, he explained to her, should not take long. It was a “putrid” wound of the hand, not difficult to treat unless gangrene had set in. For some five miles they traveled the fairly level Canandaigua Pike, then turned off on a rugged woods road where they bumped and slewed and Fleetfoot picked her way distrustfully. A few rods short of a clearing with a bare log cabin in the center, they pulled up, the yard being impassable with stumps. Dinty wrinkled a delicate nose.

  “Pee-yoo!” she sniffed. “What’s that awful smell?”

  “Assafetida,” Horace explained. “They sprinkle it on the snow to keep the wolves away from the sheepfold.”

  “Are there wolves around here?”

  “Not with the wind as it is,” he reassured her. “They won’t come near. You’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.”

  He blanketed the mare, tucked his passenger warmly about, and threaded the stumps to the door. Happy at being back in her beloved wilds, Dinty burrowed down for a catnap.

  When she woke, dusk was already glooming. She saw Horace plowing his way through the snow. His face was cheerful.

  “Is it all right?” she asked.

  He nodded. “We’ll save the hand. Were you afraid?”

  “Of course not! I talked with a snow-owl for awhile, and then I fell asleep. Tell me all about the case.”

  They were in sight of the turnpike when a faint and dreadful cry, borne downwind, interrupted the recital. Fleetfoot pricked up her ears. Dinty began to quake.

  “What was that?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know.” He eased the mare to a halt.

  “Maybe it’s the wolves.”

  “No. It was only one voice. It sounded human.” He put the reins into her mittened hands.

  “What are you going to do, Uncle Horace?” she asked apprehensively.

  “I’d better have a look. It might be someone in trouble.”

  “Who could it be ’way out here at night?”

  “Somebody could be lost.”

  The ghoulish, wordless wail was repeated, a little fainter this time, a little less like anything known to earth.

  “Nobody could make a sound as awful as that,” she breathed. “Let’s go home.”

  “Not until I’ve investigated.” He jumped out.

  “You haven’t even got your gun.”

  “I’ll take a lancet.”

  Suddenly she leaned out and clutched him. “I know what it is. It’s a painter. You shan’t go.”

  He tried to soothe her. “I don’t believe it’s a panther. Be my brave Dinty now.”

  “I’m not afraid for me. I’m afraid for you,” she wept. “You’ll be killed and eaten.”

  He felt less assurance than he had expressed. Once before, when a sophomore on College Hill, he had heard the hunger cry of the great, stealthy cat, and in the morning had found the mark of the broad pads on the snow. Again the air quivered to the meaningless and grisly ululation.

  “Listen to me carefully, Dinty,” he bade her. “If I am not back in fifteen minutes, you go to the cabin for help. Keep your head now. And hold the mare firm.”

  For a moment he thought that she was going to defy his authority. She wavered and sank back. Her head drooped until her nose was buried in the fur of the robe. She sobbed desolately. He patted her shoulder and turned away.

  Sounds in the winter woods are deceptive. Pushing through the snow, knee-deep in spots, Horace paused from time to time to amend his direction, A clear, insistent call from the rear checked him.

  “Hoo-ee-ee! Uncle Ho-race! Hoo-ee-ee-ee!”

  The voice was more than excited; it was jubilant.

  “What do you want?” he shouted back.

  “It isn’t a painter. Fleetfoot would go crazy if it was. She’s quiet as a lamb.”

  Horace admitted to himself a surge of relief.

  “Good child!” he called back. “You’re a better woodsman than I.”

  The outcries from the forest sounded fainter and less terrifying now. There was a small watercours
e somewhere in the vicinity; possibly a wayfarer had fallen into that and injured himself. A broken leg, perhaps. Death would not be far away in the falling temperature. He toiled up a small elevation and, on the farther side strained his ear to the wind. A desolate whimper rewarded him.

  At first he saw nothing but the snowy forest, a felled ash, and its raw stump, bristling with splinters. A dark blob on the snow, hardly identifiable as human, was almost hidden by the trunk beneath which it was pinned. A dull, hurried babble rose from it.

  “Oh, bress God! Bress my deah Saviour! He done ansah mah prayer. Bress His name!”

  “Unk Zeb!” cried Horace.

  He floundered to the side of the aged Negro. A glance told him the nature of the accident. The white ash, most treacherous of trees, had sprung at the last ax-stroke and felled the feller, driving him down into the snow until he was pressed against the hard earth beneath, and inextricably wedging him there by wrist and forearm.

  In his youth Horace had accustomed himself to the ax. Attacking the tree-bole as near to the prisoned form as he dared, he hacked through it. Happily the severed lower end did not settle further, or the victim’s arm would have been crushed beyond repair. Cutting three saplings, Horace carefully inserted them to form a rough rollway, and with a fourth gently levered the trunk. Slowly it eased away, slid, half-turned, and old Helms was free. He blessed his Maker again in his quavering basso, and fainted.

  Working to revive him, Horace saw outlined the record of the grisly and brave tragedy, the almost hopeless struggle for life, determined for every last, slender chance in accordance with the woodsman’s ritualistic and grim tradition. With his free right hand, Unk Zeb had scooped and packed the snow about his body for warmth. The best he could do for his legs was to burrow a little. Horace judged that both feet would be frozen, as well as the vise-gripped left arm. Within easy reach, the keen utility knife, without which no veriest tyro ever ventured into the wilderness, was driven beneath the rough bark. Had the tree been a smaller one of pine, hemlock, or whitewood, its victim might have tried a race with death, cutting through it. Against the iron toughness of the ash the blade was futile.

  It was there for another purpose. When no hope of rescue remained, when cold and the ebbing strength imperatively called for the last gamble, forest lore prescribed the desperate venture. The prisoner would first cut strips from his clothing which he would place beside him in readiness for application. Minutes, even seconds, would count now. For his one chance was to hew through the elbow joint, severing the arm. How effectually he could staunch the spurting blood by ligature of the cloth strips, bound hard with hand and tooth, would determine whether he died on the spot. If he survived that ordeal, he must pit his last remaining powers against cold, night, and mortal weakness in the struggle to gain the public road where there was just a chance of being found in time. Such cases were not uncommon. No settlement was without its one-armed or single-footed victims. But the graveyards held most of them.

  To carry the bulky form through the drifts would have been an overstrain for Horace Amlie’s supple strength. With bandages from his pack he lashed together saplings to make a pole-sledge, bound the half-conscious old man upon it, and, supporting the ends upon his shoulders, dragged his burden to where the cutter stood. Dinty ran to meet them, carrying the flask. Together they got the old man up on the seat.

  So close were they to the turnpike that it seemed best to make for town rather than take the nearer course to the forest cabin. Horace set his companion to rubbing the Negro’s arm and wrist with snow while he urged the willing mare to her best speed. They made the Pinch in thirty minutes.

  Summoning the Cregos to build a fire in the hut, he examined his patient. Both feet were frozen as well as the left arm. But there was nothing beyond repair. A few days of care, and Unk Zeb would be about again.

  His account of his mishap was simple and commonplace. For the fall and winter he had turned his hand to his old, slave occupation of woodcutting. Only the hardwoods fetched a living price by the cord, so he located sections of unpre-empted oak and ash, not too far from some highway and cut systematically. After felling and portioning a tree, he would “rope-snake” the logs to the nearest road, pile his tiers, and either sell on the spot or dicker for an ox-team to drag them to market. Being skillful, though slow, he managed to keep himself in food and clothes. The usual practice for the industry was for the cutter to leave word with his family where he would be working that day. But old Helms lived alone; there was none to mark his comings and goings or to care. He would certainly not have been missed before morning, by which time he would be either dead or a one-armed “white-ash man.”

  “Who heah me fust?” he asked Horace.

  “Miss Dinty.”

  The old fellow rolled back his eyeballs in pious ecstasy. “Bress her sweet soul! I knewed it. I knewed it all de time.”

  “How did you know it, Unk Zeb?”

  “When de debbil in de ash st’uck me down, my sperrit floated in de air. I see a li’l white, shiny angel ovah me an’ I heah her say, ‘Po’ ol’ Unk Zeb! He in trile an’ tribbleation. Go git his perishin’ body.’ Den I knewed he’p is comin’ an’ I call till de speech lef’ me an’ I can on’y hollah.”

  From the time of his recovery the old Negro appointed himself Dr. Amlie’s retainer. Manifesting unexpected aptitudes, he became cook, house-hussey, groom to Fleetfoot, and man-of-all work. Invariably he prefaced breakfast by asking whether Marse Horuss had heard from “de li’l angel,” who had now returned to school where her reputation did not answer precisely to that description. He dictated to Tip Crego hifalutin messages of gratitude, few of which reached their object, postal rates being what they were.

  At first Horace found the ex-slave a responsibility, then a convenience, and finally an essential contributor to his ease of life.

  – 18 –

  Sometimes it is Nice to feel Grown Up. Sometimes it is Horrid. Other Times I do not know Which.

  (DINTY’S DIARY)

  To profess faith that the canal would be open for traffic in the spring now became the touchstone of loyalty to Palmyra. The Queen of the Waters was re-calked and fresh painted. Tactfully forgetting the episode of her earlier retirement from the life nautical, the community prepared for a second celebration. April found the trim craft, proudpied and decorated, poised on the verge of the cut, all dressed up and no place to go.

  For nature turned sour on Palmyra. The normal rains withheld. The sun blazed, day after cloudless day. The meager trickle of waters, feeding the gash in the earth, was absorbed as fast as it mounted. The only maritime enterprise visible was a toy sloop which Tip Crego had fashioned with his ready knife, as a gift to Dinty when she should return. The town went into mourning, as after a disastrous defeat.

  Dinty had written to her Uncle Horace, hinting that she might be coming home before long (she hoped that it might be in time for the Canal Fete, now indefinitely postponed) because of some trouble at school. The exact nature of it Horace could not clearly make out from the smudged lines. (Tears?) There was a minister’s son involved, and references to the Beauties of Nature and what they can Teach Us if Properly Appreciated. Also resentful reflections upon the severity of Miss Marriott’s discipline.

  He said [wrote Dinty without identifying the pronoun—the minister perhaps] that my Conduct was unworthy of the Brutes that perish. But Nobody would have known if Morris had not awakened the pesky Watch Dog. When I am Dead, some folks will be Sorry they were so Mean to me. And if they send me far away to Albany, I will Die and you will never again lay a Sorrowing Eye on,

  Your loving and respectful,

  Araminta Jerrold.

  Post Scriptum. Morris was whopped in the Woodshed and howled like a Highena. They could not make me cry.

  P. S. 2—If they do send me Home at term’s end I hope I can come by the Grand Canal.

  Reading between the lines and with his knowledge of Dinty’s propensities for a guide, Horace guessed tha
t the call of the wild had once more proven too much for her resistance and that she was in disgrace for having taken a nocturnal outing with Morris, presumably the son of the denunciatory parson.

  Her hope of canal traffic was unexpectedly borne out. For just as the Palmyra churches were about to combine in a service of lamentation and contrition for the sins implacably punished by a rainless heaven, the drought broke. A mighty thunderstorm heaved its mass out of the western horizon, spread, and discharged, ushering in a two-day downpour.

  Ten thousand trickles raced down from the conical hillocks to contribute to every little heights-born stream, pouring its swollen volume into the muddy excavation. Inch by painful inch the water gained. The sun came out and so did the hopeful townsfolk to line towpath and berm and exultantly watch the descending floods. By evening of the third day, success was assured. The leading citizens of the place could be observed, boot-deep in the sludge, anxiously consulting the notches of their yardsticks. At nine twenty-five, the Rev. Theron Strang stationed opposite the upper basin, lifted a jubilant voice.

  “The Lord hath prospered us. Two foot full, and still rising. Praise we the Lord!”

  “And De Witt Clinton,” supplemented Genter Latham. The cheers were impartially distributed.

  Eager hands laid hold on the waiting Queen and propelled her bulk into the swirl of dark-brown, viscous fluid which fulfilled the function of water sufficiently to buoy her proudly up. A cannon from the War of 1812 fired a salvo. Two school squads, organized by sex, formed up on the south side. The boys were headed by a banner inscribed “Village School” on one side, and “Science” on the other. The girls, led by Wealthia Latham, supported the twin sentiments, “Clinton & the Canal” and “Internal Improvements.” Squire Jerrold delivered the toast of the occasion, with gallant empressement:

  “The Erie Canal, opening an Intercourse between the Interior and the Extreme Parts of the United States; it will Assimilate Conflicting Interests, impart Energy and give Durability to the National Compact.”