The Best Short Stories of 1920, and the Yearbook of the American Short Story. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
The mill owners and managers came first, bringing strong warp threads for the Life. They had to have the town to take out their products and bring in supplies. They wanted to make money as fast as possible. "Let the town go to hell!" they said. They cared little how the Life went so that it did go. Most of them lived alternately as heads of families at home two hundred miles away and as bachelors at their mills and extract works.
Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones of the town.
Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in those of his workers who had families.
Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.
George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he felt in his ability to manipulate.
Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was doing at the town hotel.
Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress, left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish. He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a well-established village.
Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.
Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be sure of some one to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It made little difference to her where she earned the family living by washing.
So they came, one after another, and filled up the town—Abe Cohen, the Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr. Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy, school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand souls. There the town stood.
Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store, as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office. The Five Points Argus issued weekly its two pages from the dingy office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down near the station.
Each church had gathered its own rightful members within its round of Sunday and mid-week services, its special observances on Christmas, and Easter, and Children's Day. In the spring of each year a one-ring circus encamped for a day on the common ground in the centre of the town and drew all the people in orderly array under its tent. On the Fourth of July the whole town again came together in the centre common, in fashion less orderly, irrespective of creed or money worth, celebrating the deeds of their ancestors by drinking lemonade and setting off firecrackers.
After a while no one could remember when it had been any different. Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand was thick and strong and woven in securely among the old scaly ones.
The folk who lived at the mills had hardly anything to do with the Life of Five Points. They were merely the dynamo that kept the Life alive. They were busied down in the woods making the money for the men who made the town. They came to town only on Saturday nights. They bought a flannel shirt and provisions at the Company store, a bag of candy at Andy's for the hotel and then went back to have their weekly orgy in their own familiar surroundings. They had little effect on the Life of the town. That was contained almost entirely within the five points where the road met the forest.
The Life of Five Points had one fearful enemy. Its home was in the black forest. Without any warning it was likely to break out upon the town, its long red tongues leaping out, striving to lick everything into its red gullet. It was a thirsty animal. If one gave it enough water, it went back into its lair. Five Points had only drilled wells in back yards. The nearest big stream was a mile away.
Twice already during the existence of the Life the enemy had started forth from its lair. The first time was not long after the town had started and the pattern of Life was hardly more than indicated in the loosely woven threads.
Down in the forest the people saw a long red tongue leaping. With brooms and staves they ran to meet it far from their dwellings, beating it with fury. As they felt the heat of its breath in their faces, they thought of ministers' words in past sermons. Young desires and aspirations long dormant began to throb into being. They prayed for safety. They promised to give up their sins. They determined to be hard on themselves in the performance of daily duties. The Life suspended above them untwisted its loosely gathered in strands, the strands shone with a golden light and entwined again in soft forms.
With death-dealing blows they laid the enemy black and broken about Grant's Mills, a mile away, and then went back to their homes telling each other how brave they had been. Pride swelled up their hearts. They boasted that they could take care of themselves. Old habits slipped back upon their aspirations and crushed them again into hidden corners. Life gathered up its loose-woven pattern of dull threads and hung trembling over the town.
Worsting the enemy brought the people more closely together. Suddenly they seemed to know each other for the first time. They made changes, entered into bonds, drew lines, and settled into their ways. Life grew quickly with its strands woven tightly together into a weaving that would be hard to unloose.
The mill managers made money. They saw to it that their mills buzzed away continually. They visited their homes regularly. Mr. Stillman's farm flourished. His apple trees were bearing. The school children understood that they