Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  He buried his face on the farm woman’s shoulder and refused to look at the world. The farm boy had found the injured bee and was showing it to the girls. “He tried to eat it. He was eating grass,” he whispered and the girls shrieked again.

  These terrible women!

  Now his sister would go back to town and tell John. She would tell neighbor children who came to play in the Moorehead yard. The place inside Tar was hurting harder than ever.

  The little party went along the lane through the woods and to the house. The great voyage alone that was to have utterly separated Tar from mankind, from the world that had no understanding, was retraced in but a few minutes. The two farm men and the boy had gone back to the field and the horse that had brought Tar out from town was hitched to the buggy and was standing tied to a post at the side of the house.

  Tar would have his face washed and would be put into the buggy and taken back to town. The farm men and the boy he would not have to see again. The farm woman who had him in her arms had made his sister and the farm girl stop laughing but would his sister stop when she had got back to town and to his brother?

  Alas, she was a woman and Tar had no faith. If women could only be more like men. The farm woman had taken him into the house, had washed the grass stains from his face and had applied a soothing lotion to his swollen lip but the thing inside kept on swelling and swelling.

  In fancy he could hear his sister, his brother and the neighbor children whispering and giggling in the yard at home. Shut out from his mother by the presence of the younger babe in her arms and from the yard by malicious voices saying over and over, “The little rabbit tried to eat grass; he was stung by a bee,” where could he turn?

  Tar did not know and could not think. He kept his face buried in the farm woman’s bosom and continued sobbing broken-heartedly.

  Growing up, in anyway he could conceive of at the moment, seemed a terrible, if not impossible, task. For the moment he was glad enough to be a babe in the arms of the strange woman and in a place where there was no other babe [waiting to push him aside].

  CHAPTER III

  MEN LIVE IN one world, women in another. People kept coming to the kitchen door to talk to Mary Moorehead when Tar was a small child. There was an old carpenter whose back had been hurt by a fall from a building and who was sometimes [a little] drunk. He did not enter the house but sat on the steps by the kitchen door and talked with the woman while she worked at her ironing board. A doctor also came. He was a tall thin man with strange looking hands. The hands were like old grape vines that cling to the trunks of trees. People’s hands, rooms in houses, the faces of fields were things the child did not forget. The old carpenter had short stumpy-looking fingers. The nails were black and broken. The fingers on the doctor[‘s hands] were like his mother’s, rather long. Afterward Tar used the doctor in several of his printed tales. When the boy grew up he did not remember exactly how the old doctor looked but his imagination had by that time invented a figure to take his place. What he got from the doctor, the old carpenter and from several of the women visitors was a sense of gentleness. They were all people defeated by life. Something had gone wrong with them as something had gone wrong with Tar’s mother.

  Could it have been her marriage? He did not ask himself that question until long afterward. When he grew to be a man Tar found in an old trunk a diary kept by his father during his time in the war and immediately afterwards. The notes were short. For several days there would be nothing written and then the soldier had written page after page. He also had an inclination to be a scribbler.

  All during the war there was something eating at the soldier’s conscience. Knowing his brothers would be enlisted on the Southern side he was beset by the notion that someday he might meet one of them in battle. Then, if nothing worse happened, he would be found out. How could he explain, “Well, the women were cheering, the flags flying, the bands playing.” When he fired a shot in a battle the bullet, flying across the space between the Northern and Southern men, might lodge in the breast of a brother or even in his father’s breast. Perhaps his father had also enlisted, on the Southern side. He had himself gone into the war without convictions, almost casually, because the men about him were going, for the sake of a captain’s uniform and a sword to hang at his side. If a man thought much about any war he wouldn’t go in — of course. As for the niggers — their being free men or slaves.... He had still the Southerner’s] attitude. If, walking in the street with Dick Moorehead, you had seen a negro woman who was in her own way beautiful, who walked with an easy care-free carriage, whose skin was in color a lovely golden brown, and had mentioned the fact of her beauty, Dick Moorehead would have looked at you with amazement in his eyes. “Beautiful! I say! My dear fellow! She is a nigger.” Looking at negroes Dick saw nothing. If a negro served his purpose, if he was amusing — very well. “I am a white man and a Southerner. I belong to the ruling race. We had an old black at home. You should have heard him play the pipes. Niggers are what they are. Only we Southerners understand them.”

  The book kept by the soldier, during the war and later, was full of notes concerning women. Sometimes Dick Moorehead was a religious man, going regularly to church, and sometimes he was not. In one town, where he had lived immediately after the war, he was superintendent of a Sunday school and at another place taught the Bible class.

  When he had become a grown man Tar looked at the [note] book filled with delight. He had quite forgotten his father was so naïve, so charmingly human and understandable. “I was at the Baptist Church and succeeded in taking Gertrude home. We went the long way by the bridge and stopped almost an hour. I tried to kiss her and at first she would not let me but later she did. Now I am in love with her.”

  “On Wednesday evening Mable went past the shop. I closed up at once and followed her to the end of Main Street. Harry Thompson was after her and had got his boss to let him off, on some trumped up excuse. We were both sailing down the street but I got there first. I went home with her but her father and mother were still awake. They sat up until I had to go so I gained nothing. Her father is a fearful talker. He has got a new driving horse and talked and bragged about the horse all evening. For me the evening was a failure.”

  Note after note of that sort in the diary kept by the young soldier after he had got home from the war and when he had begun his restless march from town to town. At last he had found, in one of the towns, the woman Mary and had married her. Life took on for him a new flavor. Having a wife and children he now sought the company of men.

  In some of the towns into which Dick went after the war life went well enough but in others he was unhappy. For one thing, and although he had gone into the war on the Northern side, he would not forget the fact that he was a Southerner and therefore a Democrat. In one of the towns there was a half insane man the small boys used to tease. There he was, Dick Moorehead, the young merchant, the ex-officer in the army who, whatever his inner feeling may have been, had nevertheless fought for the preservation of the Union, who had helped hold together these United States, and there on the same street was that crazy man. The crazy man walked with his mouth hanging open and with a queer vacant look in his eyes. Winter or summer he wore no coat but went about in his shirt sleeves. He lived with a sister in a little house at the edge of the town and when let alone was harmless enough but when small boys, concealed behind trees or in the doorways of stores, shouted, calling him a “Democrat,” he became furiously angry. Running into the roadway he picked up stones and threw them recklessly. Once he broke a window in a store-front and his sister had to pay for it.

  Was it not an insult to Dick? A Democrat indeed! When he wrote about it in his notebook his hand trembled. Being the only real Democrat in the town the cries of the small boys made him want to run and beat them. He kept his dignity, did not betray himself, but as soon as he could he sold his shop and moved on.

  Well, the crazy man in his shirt sleeves was not really a Democrat, he wasn’t like
Dick, a born Southerner. The word, picked up by the boys and repeated over and over, merely touched off his half-hidden insanity but for Dick the effect was something special. It made him feel that, although he had fought in a long and bitter war, he had fought in vain. “Such people,” he muttered to himself as he hurried away. When he had sold his shop he had to buy, in the next town, a somewhat smaller one. After the end of the war and his marriage Dick was constantly sliding down the financial hill.

  For the child the man of the home, the father, is one thing and the mother quite another. The mother is something warm and safe toward which the child may go while the father is the one who goes out into the world. Now the house in which Tar lived was something he began to understand a little. Even though you live in many houses in many towns a house is a house. There are walls and rooms. You go through doors into a yard. There is a street with other houses and other children. You can see a long way along the street. On Saturday evenings, sometimes, a neighbor woman, who had been engaged for the purpose, came to care for the other children and Tar was permitted to go uptown with his mother.

  Now Tar was five and his older brother John was ten. There was Robert, now three, and a new babe, always lying in a crib. Although the babe could do nothing but cry it already had a name. It was called Will and when she was at home was always in the mother’s arms. What a little pest! And to have a name too, a boy’s name! There was another Will in the street, a tall freckle-faced boy who sometimes came to the house to play with John. He called John “Jack” and John called him “Bill.” He could throw a ball like a shot. There was a trapeze John had hung from a tree and the boy named Will could hang by his toes. He went to school, as John and Margaret did, and had been in a fight with a boy two years older than himself. Tar had heard John speak of it. When John was not about he himself spoke of it to Robert, pretending he had seen the fight. Well, Bill had punched the boy, had knocked him down. He had given the boy a bloody nose. “You should have seen it.”

  It was something right and proper that such a one should be named Will and be called Bill but a babe in a crib, a little thing always in its mother’s arms. What nonsense!

  On Saturday nights, sometimes, Tar was permitted to go with his mother down into town. They could not start until the lights were lit. First of all the dishes had to be washed, Margaret helping, and then the baby had to be put to sleep.

  What a fuss he made, the little wretch. Now, when he might so well have ingratiated himself with his brother [Tar] by being reasonable, he cried and cried. First Margaret had to hold him and then Tar’s mother had to take her turn. It was fun for Margaret. She could pretend she was a woman and girls like that. When there are no babies around they make them out of rags. They talk and scold and coo and hold the things in their arms. Tar was already dressed and so was his mother. The best part of going to town was the feeling of being alone with her. Nowdays that so seldom happened. The baby was spoiling everything. Pretty soon it would be too late to go, the stores would be closed. Tar moved restlessly about the front yard wanting to cry. If he did he would [have to stay at home]. He had to appear at ease, say nothing.

  The neighbor woman came and the baby went to sleep. Now his mother had stopped to talk with the woman. They talked and talked. Tar had hold of his mother’s hand and kept pulling but she paid no attention. At last however they got into the street and into darkness.

  Tar walked along holding his mother’s hand and took ten steps, twenty, a hundred. He and his mother had got through the gate and were walking on a sidewalk. They passed the Musgrave house, the Wellivers’ place. When they had got to the Rogers’ house and had turned a corner they would be safe. Then, if the baby cried, Tar’s mother could not hear.

  He began to feel at ease. What a time for him. Now he was going out into the world, not with his sister — who had her own ways and thought too much of herself and her own desires — or with a neighbor woman in a buggy, a woman who could understand nothing, but with his mother. Mary Moorehead had put on her black Sunday dress. That was fine. When she wore the black dress she wore also a bit of white lace about the neck, and other bits about the wrists. The black dress made her look young and slender. The lace was fine and white. It was like cobweb. Tar wanted to touch it with his fingers but did not dare. He might tear it.

  They walked past one street lamp and then another. Electric fights had not yet come and the streets of the Ohio town were lighted by kerosene lamps set on posts. They were far apart, at the street corners mostly, and between the lamps was darkness.

  What fun to walk in darkness feeling safe. Going anywhere with his mother was to Tar like being at home and at the same time [being] abroad.

  When he and his mother had got out of their own street the adventure began. The Mooreheads lived nowdays always in small houses in streets far out at the edges of towns but when they went to Main Street they went through streets fined with tall houses. The houses were set far back in lawns and great trees were growing along the sidewalks. There was a large white house with women and children sitting on a wide front porch and as Tar and his mother passed a carriage with a negro driver came out at a driveway. The woman and child had to stand aside to let it pass.

  What a princely place. The white house had at least ten rooms and lamps of its own hanging from the ceiling on the front porch. There was a girl of about Margaret’s age dressed all in white. The carriage, Tar saw the negro driving, could go right into the house. There was a porte-cochère. His mother told him. What splendor!

  [What a world this into which Tar had come.] The Mooreheads were poor and were getting every year poorer but that Tar did not know. He did not ask himself why his mother, he thought so beautiful, had but one good dress and walked while another woman rode in a carriage, why the Mooreheads lived in a small house through the cracks of which the snow sifted during the winter while others were in warm brightly-lighted houses.

  The world was the world and he was seeing it, his mother’s hand in his. They passed other street lamps, went through other dark places and now they had turned a corner and there was Main Street.

  Now life had indeed begun. How many lights, how many people! To the town droves of country people had come for the Saturday night and the street was filled with horses, wagons and buggies. [What a lot to see.]

  Young fellows with red faces, who all week had been at work in corn fields, had come into town dressed in their best clothes and wearing white collars. Some of them rode alone while others, more fortunate, had girls with them. They hitched their horses to posts along the street and walked on the sidewalk. Grown men went clattering through the street on horseback and women stood talking at the doors of stores.

  The Mooreheads were living for the moment in quite a large town. It was a county seat and there was a square and a court house past which the main street ran. Well, there were stores on the side streets too.

  A patent medicine seller had come to town and had set up his stand at a corner. He bawled in a loud voice, inviting [the] people to stop and hear him and for a few minutes Mary Moorehead and Tar stood at the edge of the crowd. There was a sputtering torchlight at the end of a pole and two negro men who sang the songs. Tar remembered one of the verses. What did it mean?

  The white man he lives in a big brick house,

  The yellow man wants to do the same,

  The old black man lives in the county jail,

  But he’s got a brick house just the same.

  When the black men sang the verses the crowd whooped with delight and Tar also laughed. Well, he laughed because he was so excited. His eyes shone with excitement [now]. When he grew to be a man he would spend all his time in the midst of crowds. He and his mother moved off along the street, the child clinging to the woman’s hand. He did not dare wink for fear of missing something. [Again] the Moorehead house seemed miles away, in another world. Now even the baby could not come between him and his mother. The little wretch might cry [and cry] but [he need not care], John Moorehead, h
is brother, was almost grown [up]. On Saturday evenings he sold newspapers on Main Street. He sold a paper called the Cincinnati Enquirer and another called the Chicago Blade. The Blade had brightly colored pictures and sold for five cents.

  There was a man leaning over a pile of money on a table and another fierce-looking man was creeping up on him with an open knife in his hand.

  A wild-looking woman was about to throw a baby off a [high] bridge to [the] rocks [far] below but a boy rushed forward and saved the babe.

  Now a train rushed around a curve in the mountains and four men on horseback and with guns in their hands were waiting. They had piled rocks and trees on the tracks.

  Well, they intended to force the train to stop and then rob it. It was Jesse James and his band. Tar had heard his brother John explain the pictures to the boy Bill. Later when no one was about he had looked long and long. Looking at the pictures made him dream bad dreams at night but during the day [time] they were wonderfully exciting.

  It was fun, during the daytime, to imagine yourself a part of the adventures that went on in life, in the world of men. The people who bought John’s papers sure got a lot for five cents. Why, you could take such a scene and change it all about.

  What you did was to sit on the porch of your house and close your eyes. John and Margaret had gone to school, the baby and Robert were both asleep. The baby slept well enough when Tar did not want to go somewhere with his mother.

  You sat on the porch of the house and closed your eyes. Your mother was ironing. Damp clean clothes being ironed made a nice smell. That old crippled carpenter, who could not work any more, who had been a soldier and drew what was called a “pension,” was on the back porch of the house talking. He was telling [Tar’s] mother of buildings on which he had worked when he was young.

  He told of how log cabins were built in the forest when the country was new and of how men went out to shoot wild turkey and deer.