Sherwood Anderson

by Collected Stories- Winesburg, Ohio, The Triumph of the Egg, Horses

  In the days after the talk with Lillian the puzzled woman in the yellow house thought much about life. Her mind, naturally a busy active one, could not remain passive and for the time she dared not think much of herself and of her own future. She thought abstractly.

  She had done a thing and how natural and yet how strange the doing of it had been. There she was at work in a berry field—it was morning, the sun shone, boys, young girls, and mature women laughed and talked in the rows behind her. Her fingers were very busy but she listened while a woman’s voice talked of canning fruit. “Cherries take so much sugar,” the voice said. A young girl’s voice talked endlessly of some boy and girl affair. There was a tale of a ride into the country on a hay wagon, and an involved recital of “he saids” and “I saids.”

  And then the man had come along the rows and had got down on his knees to work beside herself—May Edgley. He was a man out of the town’s life, and had come thus, suddenly, unexpectedly. No one had ever come to her in that way. Oh, people had been kind. They had smiled and nodded, and had gone their own ways.

  May had not seen the sly winks Jerome Hadley had bestowed on the other berry pickers and had taken his impulse to come to her as a simple and lovely fact in life. Perhaps he was lonely like herself. For a time the two had worked together in silence and then a bantering conversation began. May had found herself able to carry her end of a conversation, to give and take with the man. She laughed at him because, although his fingers were skilled, he could not fill the berry boxes as fast as herself.

  And then, quite suddenly, the tone of the conversation had changed. The man became bold and his boldness had excited May. What words he had said. “I’d like to hold you in my arms. I’d like to have you alone where I could kiss you. I’d like to be alone with you in the woods or somewhere.” The others working, now far away along the rows, young girls and women, too, must also have heard just such words from the lips of men. It was the fact that they had heard such words and responded to them in kind that differentiated them from herself. It was by responding to such words that a woman got herself a lover, got married, connected herself with the stream of life. She heard such words and something within herself stirred, as it was stirring now in herself. Like a flower she opened to receive life. Strange beautiful things happened and her experience became the experience of all life, of trees, of flowers, of grasses and most of all of other women. Something arose within her and then broke. The wall of life was broken down. She became a living thing, receiving life, giving it forth, one with all life.

  In the berry field that morning May had gone on working after the words were said. Her fingers automatically picked berries and put them in the boxes slowly, hesitatingly. She turned to the man and laughed. How wonderful that she could control herself so.

  Her mind had raced. What a thing her mind was. It was always doing that—racing, running madly, a little out of control. Her fingers moved more slowly. She picked berries and put them in the man’s box, and now and then gave him large fine round berries to eat and was conscious that the others in the field were looking in her direction. They were listening, wondering, and she grew resentful. “What did they want? What did all this have to do with them?”

  Her mind took a new turn. “What would it be like to be held in the arms of a man, to have a man’s lips pressed down upon her lips. It was an experience all women, who had lived, had known. It had come to her own mother, to the married women, working with her in the field, to young girls, too, to many much younger than herself.” She imagined arms soft and yet firm, strong arms, holding her closely, and sank into a dim, splendid world of emotion. The stream of life in which she had always wanted to float had picked her up—it carried her along. All life became colorful. The red berries in the boxes—how red they were, the green of the vines, what a living green! The colors merged—they ran together, the stream of life was flowing over them, over her.

  What a terrible day that had been for May. Later she could not focus her mind upon it, dared not do so. The actual experience with the man in the forest had been quite brutal—an assault had been made upon her. She had consented—yes—but not to what happened. Why had she gone into the woods with him? Well, she had gone, and by her manner she had invited, urged him to follow, but she had not expected anything really to happen.

  It had been her own fault, everything had been her own fault. She had got up from among the berry pickers, angry at them—resentful. They knew too much and not enough and she had hated their knowledge, their smartness. She had got up and walked away from them, looking back, expecting him.

  What had she expected? What she had expected could not get itself put into words. She knew nothing of poets and their efforts, of the things they live to try to do, of things men try to paint into canvasses, translate into song. She was an Ohio woman, an Edgley, the daughter of a teamster, the sister of Lillian Edgley who had gone on the turf. May expected to walk into a new world, into life—she expected to bathe herself in the living waters of life. There was to be something warm, close, comforting, secure. Hands were to arise out of darkness and grasp her hands, her hands covered with the stain of red berries and the yellow dust of fields. She was to be held closely in the warm place and then like a flower she was to break open, throw herself, her fragrance into the air.

  What had been the matter with her, with her notion of life? May had asked herself that question a thousand times, had asked it until she was weary of asking, could not ask any more. She had known her mother—thought she had known her—if she had not, no Edgley had. Had none of the others cared? Her mother had met a man and had been held in his arms, she had become the mother of sons and daughters, and the sons and daughters had gone their own way, lived brutally. They had gone after what they thought they wanted from life, directly, brutally—like animals. And her mother had stood aside. How long ago she must have died, really. It was then only flesh and blood that went on living, working, making beds, cooking, lying with a husband.

  It was plain that was true of her mother—it must have been true. If it were not true why had she not spoken, why had no words come to her lips. Day after day May had worked with her mother. Well, then she was a virgin, young, tender and her mother had not kissed her, had not held her closely. No word had been said. It was not true, as Lillian had said, that her mother had counted on her. It was because of death that she was silent, when Lillian and then Kate went on the turf. The dead did not care! The dead are dead!

  May wondered if she herself had passed out of life, if she had died. “It may be,” she thought, “I may never have lived and my thinking I was alive may only have been a trick of mind.”

  “I’m smart,” May thought. Lillian had said that, her brothers had said it, the whole town had said it. How she hated her own smartness.

  The others had been proud of it, glad of it. The whole town had been proud of her, had hailed her. It was because she was smart, because she thought quicker and faster than others, it was because of that the women schoolteachers had smiled at her, because of that old men spoke to her on the streets.

  Once an old man had met her on the sidewalk in front of one of the stores and taking her by the hand had led her inside and had bought her a bag of candy. The man was a merchant in Bidwell and had a daughter who was a teacher in the schools, but May had never seen him before, had heard nothing of him, knew nothing about him. He came up to her out of nothingness, out of the stream of life. He had heard about May, of her quick active mind, that always defeated the other children in the school room, that in every test came out ahead. Her imagination played about his figure.

  At that time May went every Sunday morning to the Presbyterian Sunday School, as there was a tradition in the Edgley family that Ma Edgley had once been a Presbyterian. None of the other children had ever gone, but for a time she did and they all seemed to want her to go. She remembered the men, the Sunday School teachers were always talking about. There was a gigantic strong old man named Abraham who
walked in God’s footsteps. He must have been huge, strong, and good, too. His children were like the sands of the seas for numbers, and was that not a sign of strength. How many children! All the children in the world could not be more than that! The man who had taken hold of her hand and had led her into the store to buy the candy for her was, she imagined just such another. He also must own lands and be the father of innumerable children and no doubt he could ride all day on a fast horse and never get off his own possessions. It was possible he thought her one of his innumerable children.

  There was no doubt he was a mighty man. He looked like one and he had admired her. “I’m giving you this candy because my daughter says you are the smartest girl in school,” he said. She remembered that another man stood in the store and that, as she ran away with the bag of candy gripped in her small fingers, the old man, the mighty one, turned to him. He said something to the man. “They are all cattle except her, just cattle,” he had said. Later she had thought out what he meant. He meant her family, the Edgleys.

  How many things she had thought out as she went back and forth to school, always alone. There was always plenty of time for thinking things out—in the late afternoons as she helped her mother with the housework and in the long winter evenings when she went to bed early and for a long time did not go to sleep. The old man in the store had admired her quick brain—for that he had forgiven her being an Edgley, one of the cattle. Her thoughts went round and round in circles. Even as a child she had always felt shut in, walled in from life. She struggled to escape out of herself, out into life.

  And now she was a woman who had experienced life, tested it, and she stood, silent and attentive on the stairway of the Edgley house or by the stove in the kitchen and with an effort forced herself to quit thinking. On another street, in another house, a door banged. Her sense of hearing was extraordinarily acute, and it seemed to her she could hear every sound made by every man, woman, and child in town. The circle of thoughts began again and again she fought to think, to feel her way out of herself. On another street, in another house a woman was doing housework, just as she had been doing—making beds, washing dishes, cooking food. The woman had just passed from one room of her house to another and a door had shut with a bang. “Well,” May thought, “she is a human being, she feels things as I do, she thinks, eats food, sleeps, dreams, walks about her house.”

  It didn’t matter who the woman was. Being or not being an Edgley made no difference. Any woman would do for the purposes of May’s thoughts. All people who lived, lived! Men walked about too, and had thoughts, young girls laughed. She had heard a girl in school, when no one was speaking to her—paying any attention to her—burst suddenly into loud laughter. What was she laughing about?

  How cruelly the town had patronized May, setting her apart from the others, calling her smart. They had cared about her because of her smartness. She was smart. Her mind was quick, it reached out. And she was one of the Edgleys—“cattle,” the bearded man in the store had said.

  And what of that—what was an Edgley—why were they cattle? An Edgley also slept, ate food, had dreams, walked about. Lillian had said that an Edgley man was like all other men, only less stuck on himself.

  May’s mind fought to realize herself in the world of people, she wanted to be a part of all life, to function in life—did not want to be a special thing—smart—patted on the head—smiled at because she was smart.

  What was smartness? She could work out problems in school quickly, swiftly, but as each problem was solved she forgot it. It meant nothing to her. A merchant in Egypt wanted to transport goods across the desert and had 370 pounds of tea and such another number of pounds of dried fruits and spices. There was a problem concerning the matter. Camels were to be loaded. How far away? The result of all her quick thinking was some number like twelve or eighteen, arrived at before the others. There was a little trick. It consisted in throwing everything else out of the mind and concentrating on the one thing—and that was smartness.

  But what did it matter to her about the loading of camels? It might have meant something could she have seen into the mind, the soul of the man who owned all that merchandise and who was to carry it so far, if she could have understood him, if she could have understood anyone, if anyone could have understood her.

  May stood in the kitchen of the Edgley house, quiet, attentive—for ten minutes, a half hour. Once a dish she held in her hand fell to the floor and broke, awakening her suddenly and to awaken was like coming back to the Edgley house after a long journey, during which she had traveled far, over mountains, rivers, seas—it was like coming back to a place she wanted to leave for good.

  “And all the time,” she told herself, “life swept on, other people lived, laughed, achieved life.”

  And then, through the lie she had told Maud Welliver, May stepped into a new world, a world of boundless release. Through the lie and the telling of it she found out that, if she could not live in the life about her, she could create a life. If she was walled in, shut off from participation in the life of the Ohio town—hated, feared by the town—she could come out of the town. The people would not really look at her, try to understand her and they would not let her look down into themselves.

  The lie she had told was the foundation stone, the first of the foundation stones. A tower was to be built, a tall tower on which she could stand, from the ramparts of which she could look down into a world created by herself, by her own mind. If her mind was really what Lillian, the teachers in the school, all the others, had said, she would use it, it would become the tool which in her hands, would force stone after stone into its place in her tower.

  * * *

  In the Edgley house May had a room of her own, a tiny room at the back of the house and there was one window looking down into the field, that every spring and fall became a swamp. In the winter sometimes it was covered with ice and boys came there to skate. On the evening she had told Maud Welliver the great lie—recreated the incident in the wood with Jerome Hadley—she hurried home and went up to her room and, pulling a chair to the window, sat down. What a thing she had done! The encounter with Jerome Hadley in the wood had been terrible—she had been unable to think about it, did not dare to think about it, and trying not to think had almost upset her reason.

  And now it was gone. The whole thing had really never happened. What had happened was this other thing, or something like that, something no one knew about. There had really been an attempt at murder. May sat by the window and smiled sadly. “I stretched it a little,” she thought. “Of course I stretched it, but what was the use trying to tell what happened. I couldn’t make it understood. I can’t understand it myself.”

  All through the weeks that had passed since that day in the wood May had been obsessed by the notion that she was unclean, physically unclean. Doing the housework she wore calico dresses—she had several of them and two or three times a day she changed her dress and the soiled dress she could not leave hanging in a closet until washday but washed the dress at once and hung it on a line in the back yard. The wind blowing through it gave her a comforting feeling.

  The Edgleys had no bathroom or bathtub. Few people in towns in her day owned any such luxurious appendages to life. And a washtub was kept in the woodshed by the kitchen door and what baths were taken were taken in the tub. It was a ceremony that did not often occur in the family, and when it did occur the tub was filled from the cistern and set in the sun to warm. Then it was carried into the shed. The candidate for cleanliness went into the shed and closed the door. In the winter the ceremony took place in the kitchen and Ma Edgley came at the last moment and poured a kettle of boiling water into the cold water in the tub. In the summer in the shed that was not necessary. The bather undressed and put his clothes about, on the piles of wood, and there was a great splashing.

  During that summer May took a bath every afternoon, but did not bother to put the water out in the sun. How good it felt to have it cold! Often when th
ere was no one about, she filled the tub and got into it again before going to bed. Her small body, dark and strong, sank into the cold water and she took strong soap and scrubbed her legs, her breasts, her neck where Jerome Hadley’s kisses had alighted. Her neck and breasts she wished she could scrub quite away.

  Her body was strong and wiry. All the Edgleys, even Ma Edgley, had been strong. They were all, except May, large people and in her the family strength seemed to have concentrated. She was never physically weary and after the time of her intensive thinking began, and when she often slept little at night her body seemed to grow constantly stronger. Her breasts grew larger and her figure changed slightly. It grew less boyish. She was becoming a woman.

  * * *

  After the telling of the lie, May’s body became for a time no more than a tree growing in a forest through which she walked. It was something through which life made itself manifest; it was a house within which she lived, a house, in which, and in spite of the enmity of the town, life went on. “I’m not dead like those who die while their bodies are still alive,” May thought, and there was intense comfort in the thought.

  She sat by the window of her room in the darkness thinking. Jerome Hadley had tried to commit a murder and how often such attempts must have been made in the history of other men and women—and how often they must have succeeded. The spirit within was killed. Boys and girls grew up full of notions, brave notions too. In Bidwell, as in other towns, they went to schools and Sunday schools. Words were said—they heard many brave words—but within themselves, within their own tiny houses, all life was uncertain, hesitating. They looked abroad and saw men and women, bearded men, kind strong women. How many were dead! How many of the houses were but empty haunted places! Their town was not the town they had thought it and some day they would have to find that out. It was not a place of warm friendly closeness. Feeling instinctively the uncertainty of life, the difficulty of arriving at truth the people did not draw together. They were not humble in the face of the great mystery. The mystery was to be solved with lies, with truth put away. A great noise must be made. Everything was to be covered up. There must be a great noise and bustle, the firing of cannons, the roll of drums, the shouting of many words. The spirit within must be killed. “What liars people are,” May thought breathlessly. It seemed to her that all the people of her town stood before her, were in a way being judged by her, and her own lie, told to defeat a universal lie, now seemed a small, a white innocent thing.