Poor White: A Novel

by Sherwood Anderson

  CHAPTER V

  Hugh's first inventive effort stirred the town of Bidwell deeply. Whenword of it ran about, the men who had been listening to the talk ofJudge Horace Hanby and whose minds had turned toward the arrival of thenew forward-pushing impulse in American life thought they saw in Hughthe instrument of its coming to Bidwell. From the day of his coming tolive among them, there had been much curiosity in the stores and housesregarding the tall, gaunt, slow-speaking stranger at Pickleville. GeorgePike had told Birdie Spinks the druggist how Hugh worked all day overbooks, and how he made drawings for parts of mysterious machines andleft them on his desk in the telegraph office. Birdie Spinks told othersand the tale grew. When Hugh walked alone in the streets during theevening and thought no one took account of his presence, hundreds ofpairs of curious eyes followed him about.

  A tradition in regard to the telegraph operator began to grow up. Thetradition made Hugh a gigantic figure, one who walked always on a planeabove that on which other men lived. In the imagination of his fellowcitizens of the Ohio town, he went about always thinking great thoughts,solving mysterious and intricate problems that had to do with the newmechanical age Judge Hanby talked about to the eager listeners in thedrug-store. An alert, talkative people saw among them one who could nottalk and whose long face was habitually serious, and could not thinkof him as having daily to face the same kind of minor problems asthemselves.

  The Bidwell young man who had come down to the Wheeling station with agroup of other young men, who had seen the evening train go away tothe south, who had met at the station one of the town girls and had, inorder to escape the others and be alone with her, taken her to the pumpin George Pike's yard on the pretense of wanting a drink, walked awaywith her into the darkness of the summer evening with his mind fixedon Hugh. The young man's name was Ed Hall and he was apprentice to BenPeeler, the carpenter who had sent his son to Cleveland to a technicalschool. He wanted to marry the girl he had met at the station anddid not see how he could manage it on his salary as a carpenter'sapprentice. When he looked back and saw Hugh standing on the stationplatform, he took the arm he had put around the girl's waist quicklyaway and began to talk. "I'll tell you what," he said earnestly, "ifthings don't pretty soon get on the stir around here I'm going to getout. I'll go over by Gibsonburg and get a job in the oil fields, that'swhat I'll do. I got to have more money." He sighed heavily and lookedover the girl's head into the darkness. "They say that telegraph fellowback there at the station is up to something," he ventured. "It's allthe talk. Birdie Spinks says he is an inventor; says George Pike toldhim; says he is working all the time on new inventions to do things bymachinery; that his passing off as a telegraph operator is only a bluff.Some think maybe he was sent here to see about starting a factory tomake one of his inventions, sent by rich men maybe in Cleveland or someother place. Everybody says they'll bet there'll be factories here inBidwell before very long now. I wish I knew. I don't want to go away ifI don't have to, but I got to have more money. Ben Peeler won't nevergive me a raise so I can get married or nothing. I wish I knew thatfellow back there so I could ask him what's up. They say he's smart. Isuppose he wouldn't tell me nothing. I wish I was smart enough to inventsomething and maybe get rich. I wish I was the kind of fellow they sayhe is."

  Ed Hall again put his arm about the girl's waist and walked away. Heforgot Hugh and thought of himself and of how he wanted to marry thegirl whose young body nestled close to his own--wanted her to be utterlyhis. For a few hours he passed out of Hugh's growing sphere of influenceon the collective thought of the town, and lost himself in the immediatedeliciousness of kisses.

  And as he passed out of Hugh's influence others came in. On Main Streetin the evening every one speculated on the Missourian's purpose incoming to Bidwell. The forty dollars a month paid him by the Wheelingrailroad could not have tempted such a man. They were sure of that.Steve Hunter the jeweler's son had returned to town from a course ina business college at Buffalo, New York, and hearing the talk becameinterested. Steve had in him the making of a live man of affairs, andhe decided to investigate. It was not, however, Steve's method to goat things directly, and he was impressed by the notion, then abroad inBidwell, that Hugh had been sent to town by some one, perhaps by a groupof capitalists who intended to start factories there.

  Steve thought he would go easy. In Buffalo, where he had gone to thebusiness college, he had met a girl whose father, E. P. Horn, owneda soap factory; had become acquainted with her at church and had beenintroduced to her father. The soap maker, an assertive positive man whomanufactured a product called Horn's Household Friend Soap, had his ownnotion of what a young man should be and how he should make his wayin the world, and had taken pleasure in talking to Steve. He told theBidwell jeweler's son of how he had started his own factory with butlittle money and had succeeded and gave Steve many practical hints onthe organization of companies. He talked a great deal of a thing called"control." "When you get ready to start for yourself keep that in mind,"he said. "You can sell stock and borrow money at the bank, all you canget, but don't give up control. Hang on to that. That's the way I mademy success. I always kept the control."

  Steve wanted to marry Ernestine Horn, but felt that he should show whathe could do as a business man before he attempted to thrust himself intoso wealthy and prominent a family. When he returned to his own townand heard the talk regarding Hugh McVey and his inventive genius, heremembered the soap maker's words regarding control, and repeated themto himself. One evening he walked along Turner's Pike and stood in thedarkness by the old pickle factory. He saw Hugh at work under a lamp inthe telegraph office and was impressed. "I'll lay low and see whathe's up to," he told himself. "If he's got an invention, I'll get up acompany. I'll get money in and I'll start a factory. The people here'lltumble over each other to get into a thing like that. I don't believeany one sent him here. I'll bet he's just an inventor. That kind alwaysare queer. I'll keep my mouth shut and watch my chance. If there isanything starts, I'll start it and I'll get into control, that's whatI'll do, I'll get into control."

  * * * * *

  In the country stretching away north beyond the fringe of small berryfarms lying directly about town, were other and larger farms. The landthat made up these larger farms was also rich and raised big crops.Great stretches of it were planted to cabbage for which a market hadbeen built up in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati. Bidwell wasoften in derision called Cabbageville by the citizens of nearby towns.One of the largest of the cabbage farms belonged to a man named EzraFrench, and was situated on Turner's Pike, two miles from town and amile beyond the Wheeling station.

  On spring evenings when it was dark and silent about the stationand when the air was heavy with the smell of new growth and of landfresh-turned by the plow, Hugh got out of his chair in the telegraphoffice and walked in the soft darkness. He went along Turner's Pike totown, saw groups of men standing on the sidewalks before the stores andyoung girls walking arm in arm along the street, and then came back tothe silent station. Into his long and habitually cold body the warmthof desire began to creep. The spring rains came and soft winds blew downfrom the hill country to the south. One evening when the moon shone hewent around the old pickle factory to where the creek went chatteringunder leaning willow trees, and as he stood in the heavy shadows by thefactory wall, tried to imagine himself as one who had become suddenlyclean-limbed, graceful, and agile. A bush grew beside the stream nearthe factory and he took hold of it with his powerful hands and tore itout by the roots. For a moment the strength in his shoulders and armsgave him an intense masculine satisfaction. He thought of how powerfullyhe could hold the body of a woman against his body and the spark of thefires of spring that had touched him became a flame. He felt new-madeand tried to leap lightly and gracefully across the stream, but stumbledand fell in the water. Later he went soberly back to the station andtried again to lose himself in the study of the problems he had found inhis books.

  The
Ezra French farm lay beside Turner's Pike a mile north of theWheeling station and contained two hundred acres of land of which alarge part was planted to cabbages. It was a profitable crop to raiseand required no more care than corn, but the planting was a terribletask. Thousands of plants that had been raised from seeds planted in aseed-bed back of the barn had to be laboriously transplanted. The plantswere tender and it was necessary to handle them carefully. The plantercrawled slowly and painfully along, and from the road looked like awounded beast striving to make his way to a hole in a distant wood. Hecrawled forward a little and then stopped and hunched himself up intoa ball-like mass. Taking the plant, dropped on the ground by one ofthe plant droppers, he made a hole in the soft ground with a smallthree-cornered hoe, and with his hands packed the earth about the plantroots. Then he crawled on again.

  Ezra the cabbage farmer had come west from one of the New England statesand had grown comfortably wealthy, but he would not employ extra laborfor the plant setting and the work was done by his sons and daughters.He was a short, bearded man whose leg had been broken in his youth by afall from the loft of a barn. As it had not mended properly he coulddo little work and limped painfully about. To the men of Bidwell he wasknown as something of a wit, and in the winter he went to town everyafternoon to stand in the stores and tell the Rabelaisian stories forwhich he was famous; but when spring came he became restlessly active,and in his own house and on the farm, became a tyrant. During the timeof the cabbage setting he drove his sons and daughters like slaves.When in the evening the moon came up, he made them go back to the fieldsimmediately after supper and work until midnight. They went in sullensilence, the girls to limp slowly along dropping the plants out ofbaskets carried on their arms, and the boys to crawl after them and setthe plants. In the half darkness the little group of humans went slowlyup and down the long fields. Ezra hitched a horse to a wagon and broughtthe plants from the seed-bed behind the barn. He went here and thereswearing and protesting against every delay in the work. When his wife,a tired little old woman, had finished the evening's work in the house,he made her come also to the fields. "Come, come," he said, sharply, "weneed every pair of hands we can get." Although he had several thousanddollars in the Bidwell bank and owned mortgages on two or threeneighboring farms, Ezra was afraid of poverty, and to keep his family atwork pretended to be upon the point of losing all his possessions. "Nowis our chance to save ourselves," he declared. "We must get in a bigcrop. If we do not work hard now we'll starve." When in the field hissons found themselves unable to crawl longer without resting, and stoodup to stretch their tired bodies, he stood by the fence at the field'sedge and swore. "Well, look at the mouths I have to feed, you lazies!"he shouted. "Keep at the work. Don't be idling around. In two weeksit'll be too late for planting and then you can rest. Now every plantwe set will help to save us from ruin. Keep at the job. Don't be idlingaround."

  In the spring of his second year in Bidwell, Hugh went often in theevening to watch the plant setters at work in the moonlight on theFrench farm. He did not make his presence known but hid himself ina fence corner behind bushes and watched the workers. As he saw thestooped misshapen figures crawling slowly along and heard the words ofthe old man driving them like cattle, his heart was deeply touched andhe wanted to protest. In the dim light the slowly moving figures ofwomen appeared, and after them came the crouched crawling men. Theycame down the long row toward him, wriggling into his line of sight likegrotesquely misshapen animals driven by some god of the night to theperformance of a terrible task. An arm went up. It came down againswiftly. The three-cornered hoe sank into the ground. The slow rhythmof the crawler was broken. He reached with his disengaged hand for theplant that lay on the ground before him and lowered it into the hole thehoe had made. With his fingers he packed the earth about the roots ofthe plant and then again began the slow crawl forward. There were fourof the French boys and the two older ones worked in silence. The youngerboys complained. The three girls and their mother, who were attendingto the plant dropping, came to the end of the row and turning, went awayinto the darkness. "I'm going to quit this slavery," one of the youngerboys said. "I'll get a job over in town. I hope it's true what they say,that factories are coming."

  The four young men came to the end of the row and, as Ezra was not insight, stood a moment by the fence near where Hugh was concealed. "I'drather be a horse or a cow than what I am," the complaining voice wenton. "What's the good being alive if you have to work like this?"

  For a moment as he listened to the voices of the complaining workers,Hugh wanted to go to them and ask them to let him share in their labor.Then another thought came. The crawling figures came sharply into hisline of vision. He no longer heard the voice of the youngest of theFrench boys that seemed to come out of the ground. The machine-likeswing of the bodies of the plant setters suggested vaguely to his mindthe possibility of building a machine that would do the work they weredoing. His mind took eager hold of that thought and he was relieved.There had been something in the crawling figures and in the moonlightout of which the voices came that had begun to awaken in his mind thefluttering, dreamy state in which he had spent so much of his boyhood.To think of the possibility of building a plant-setting machine wassafer. It fitted into what Sarah Shepard had so often told him was thesafe way of life. As he went back through the darkness to the railroadstation, he thought about the matter and decided that to become aninventor would be the sure way of placing his feet at last upon the pathof progress he was trying to find.

  Hugh became absorbed in the notion of inventing a machine that woulddo the work he had seen the men doing in the field. All day he thoughtabout it. The notion once fixed in his mind gave him something tangibleto work upon. In the study of mechanics, taken up in a purelyamateur spirit, he had not gone far enough to feel himself capable ofundertaking the actual construction of such a machine, but thoughtthe difficulty might be overcome by patience and by experimenting withcombinations of wheels, gears and levers whittled out of pieces of wood.From Hunter's Jewelry Store he got a cheap clock and spent daystaking it apart and putting it together again. He dropped the doingof mathematical problems and sent away for books describing theconstruction of machines. Already the flood of new inventions, that wasso completely to change the methods of cultivating the soil in America,had begun to spread over the country, and many new and strange kindsof agricultural implements arrived at the Bidwell freight house ofthe Wheeling railroad. There Hugh saw a harvesting machine for cuttinggrain, a mowing machine for cutting hay and a long-nosed strange-lookingimplement that was intended to root potatoes out of the ground very muchafter the method pursued by energetic pigs. He studied these carefully.For a time his mind turned away from the hunger for human contact andhe was content to remain an isolated figure, absorbed in the workings ofhis own awakening mind.

  An absurd and amusing thing happened. After the impulse to try to inventa plant-setting machine came to him, he went every evening to concealhimself in the fence corner and watch the French family at their labors.Absorbed in watching the mechanical movements of the men who crawledacross the fields in the moonlight, he forgot they were human. Afterhe had watched them crawl into sight, turn at the end of the rows, andcrawl away again into the hazy light that had reminded him of the dimdistances of his own Mississippi River country, he was seized witha desire to crawl after them and to try to imitate their movements.Certain intricate mechanical problems, that had already come into hismind in connection with the proposed machine, he thought could be betterunderstood if he could get the movements necessary to plant settinginto his own body. His lips began to mutter words and getting out of thefence corner where he had been concealed he began to crawl across thefield behind the French boys. "The down stroke will go so," he muttered,and bringing up his arm swung it above his head. His fist descended intothe soft ground. He had forgotten the rows of new set plants and crawleddirectly over them, crushing them into the soft ground. He stoppedcrawling and waved his arm about. He tried to
relate his arms to themechanical arms of the machine that was being created in his mind.Holding one arm stiffly in front of him he moved it up and down. "Thestroke will be shorter than that. The machine must be built close to theground. The wheels and the horses will travel in paths between therows. The wheels must be broad to provide traction. I will gear from thewheels to get power for the operation of the mechanism," he said aloud.

  Hugh arose and stood in the moonlight in the cabbage field, his armsstill going stiffly up and down. The great length of his figure andhis arms was accentuated by the wavering uncertain light. The laborers,aware of some strange presence, sprang to their feet and stood listeningand looking. Hugh advanced toward them, still muttering words andwaving his arms. Terror took hold of the workers. One of the woman plantdroppers screamed and ran away across the field, and the others rancrying at her heels. "Don't do it. Go away," the older of the Frenchboys shouted, and then he with his brothers also ran.

  Hearing the voices Hugh stopped and stared about. The field was empty.Again he lost himself in his mechanical calculations. He went back alongthe road to the Wheeling station and to the telegraph office where heworked half the night on a rude drawing he was trying to make of theparts of his plant setting machine, oblivious to the fact that he hadcreated a myth that would run through the whole countryside. The Frenchboys and their sisters stoutly declared that a ghost had come into thecabbage fields and had threatened them with death if they did not goaway and quit working at night. In a trembling voice their mother backedup their assertion. Ezra French, who had not seen the apparition and didnot believe the tale, scented a revolution. He swore. He threatened theentire family with starvation. He declared that a lie had been inventedto deceive and betray him.

  However, the work at night in the cabbage fields on the French farm wasat an end. The story was told in the town of Bidwell, and as the entireFrench family except Ezra swore to its truth, was generally believed.Tom Foresby, an old citizen who was a spiritualist, claimed to haveheard his father say that there had been in early days an Indianburying-ground on the Turner Pike.

  The cabbage field on the French farm became locally famous. Withina year two other men declared they had seen the figure of a giganticIndian dancing and singing a funeral dirge in the moonlight. Farmerboys, who had been for an evening in town and were returning late atnight to lonely farmhouses, whipped their horses into a run when theycame to the farm. When it was far behind them they breathed more freely.Although he continued to swear and threaten, Ezra never again succeededin getting his family into the fields at night. In Bidwell he declaredthat the story of the ghost invented by his lazy sons and daughters hadruined his chance for making a decent living out of his farm.